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Stack ranking is organizational cancer. This is Bryan Cantrill. He was a distinguished engineer at the original Sun Microsystems and I asked him about everything he learned over his 30-year career. Performance review is not about you performing better. It's about us measuring your performance. He had interesting stories from competing with Jeff Bezos. He is not merely a predator. He is an apex predator in capitalist. This is what makes him so good. To stories from when he started his own company Oxide. You go to hang up on a VC, they'll be like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait." I was like, "Oh, okay." And he even let me grill him about his past. You raise this long thing and you reply with just a few words. You say, "Have you ever kissed a girl?" We actually, I mean, this is dark, but we Here's the full episode. You know, your career started at Sun Microsystems and that's kind of a legendary company. It was It was before my time. What was the industry like when you first entered it? Was there a FAANG equivalents at the time? What was Sun Microsystems like? What were the other companies like? >> Yeah, you know, it's kind of funny cuz there's always been like a FAANG kind of equivalent, you know, in the In the '60s, it was called the bunch. Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell were the were were the bunch. It was IBM and the bunch. So, they For kind of every era, there's always, you know, some hot group, some some growing sector. Um and in my day though, so things were I I mean, I think in a bit of a divot. So, I graduated in '96. So, I was really interviewing in '95. And there was there was for sure on-campus interviews happening. But, they Microsoft was very dominant in that era. And I definitely knew I was not going to go to Microsoft as a kind of a point of principle. Um Why was that? Oh, I I view Bill Gates robbed me of my childhood. Microsoft had such garbage. I mean they really did. Um In what sense? In their their operating system was you know I I came up in the personal computer era. So I I came up in the 80s and it wasn't until uh you know I I went to to university in 1992 and it wasn't um you know I had just been accustomed to kind of like garbage on the computer. It's like it's garbage in a way that is kind of unfathomable. Now DOS itself the disk operating system from Microsoft had no memory protection whatsoever. So if an application misbehaved the machine would just reboot. And this is this just became like part of life is like the machines reboot. You got to boy you got to save your work because you'd be in WordPerfect or WordStar whatever. This is why I sound like a true like living fossil. I feel like I'm I'm relaying like coming across the Oregon Trail or something. But the you'd be in your word processor you know working on your English paper and all of a sudden the machine would reboot. And the and I just that that was just that was life. And you hope you saved it. You hope you had a hard copy. And it was only when I got to college that I realized like wait a minute hold on there's there's actually something called there's memory protection in the microprocessor. And for much of my adolescence there had been memory protection present. And it DOS didn't use it at all. And the and Windows used it I mean with Windows it gets complicated. But the answer the the short answer is Windows didn't use it either. And uh so it wasn't until I I got to like Unix on a workstation and I just remember being like you know 18 years old and having like having a a command line shell up in one window having an FTP to wuarchive downloading some like EGA game that I'd want to go play back in my dorm in another window having something else going on in a third window having a compile in a fourth window and having this happen magically concurrently was just mind-bending. It's like, how is this even possible? I mean, it again, it it sounds and it's and I I I appreciate how old this sounds, but but this is what it was. And the then looking back, I'm like, why do I have garbage from Microsoft? And it's Microsoft was just not an operating system company. They were the dominant operating system provider, but it but in their DNA, the most fundamental, like the nucleotide base pairs of Microsoft are compilers. They were a compiler company, not an operating systems company. And Apple was, you know, Apple what was Apple at that time? I mean, Apple had this is long fired Steve Jobs. This is the the the the Apple was kind of the the Mac was really honestly not that much better. It was like cleaner, but also didn't make use of memory protection. So, this is just like unconscionable to me, and there was just and this is like aside from all the bad behavior from Microsoft, and there was plenty of bad behavior from Microsoft. Microsoft was very anti-competitive. And, you know, the findings of fact in the Netscape case, you know, years later would be just very underhanded, very wanting to like to it was not a company that had the best technology. It was a company that that that jockeyed for position and then would kind of abuse its position. What's the TLDR of that that abuse? So, what Microsoft would do, and this is a pattern you would see repeated since, but what Microsoft would do is they would announce, you know, you have a promising company that has something that that is that's that's a application that people might use, they would announce that it's going to become a forthcoming feature of the operating system. And then, but as it turns out, it then it wouldn't show up. It was vaporware. Uh the the term vaporware, I think if it didn't originate with Microsoft, Microsoft definitely perfected the art of vaporware, of announcing something that that didn't exist. And they were kind of dominant with this mediocrity. Now, to their credit, they also when they went and for so for example, Microsoft Word, which I mean um still exists, but WordPerfect was the really the dominant word processor, WordPerfect and WordStar. But, Microsoft Word was very bad, and to their credit, it would get better over time and ultimately supplanted uh WordPerfect in part because they started bundling it with the operating system. So, they they were very deeply anticompetitive, and that's not like an opinion, that's like a that's like a judicial finding of fact. That's a Judge Alsup finding of fact. Um and the um and that changed a lot when Gates I mean Gates when he hit middle age, that company changed a bunch and after the antitrust case in the late '90s. But, I was not going to work for Microsoft. I saw in your goodbye post for from Sun Microsystems. When you were leaving the company, you wrote a public post, and you said that uh you when you joined the company and you interviewed, you only knew two things. That you one, you wanted to work on an operating system kernel development, and two is that you didn't particularly want to work for Sun. But, it looks like you had an amazing time. So, what what flipped the switch from going from I don't want to work here to I love working here? So, the when I I had kind of talked with other groups at Sun, and I just like the people I dealt with at Sun were um fine, but just not where it didn't feel energizing. And uh and especially PBN did not feel energizing. Um and I you know, I was kind of accustomed to being the youngest person in a group, but you know, you don't want to be completely by your lonesome. You would you want to feel like there are other people that have that kind of that same shared passion. And uh when I met Kevin Clark and Jeff Bonwick, um it was like a bolt of lightning. Um those two were um were uh energized, passionate, really they they saw all of the same things that I saw in terms of the potential for operating systems to be innovative and were and wanted to go like rip out broken code and replace it with with beautiful code and all that that same verve um, that that I felt um, and yeah, it was it was absolutely meeting those two. You're just like, okay, I I I there are I am going to work for Sun. I remember actually very vividly coming back from that trip being like, oh my god, I'm going to go work for Sun. If they make they're going to make me an offer and I'm absolutely going to go work there. I saw that eventually you grew to a distinguished engineer there. What was the career ladder like? It'd be interesting to know where the kind of member of technical staff, staff engineer, senior staff engineer, distinguished engineer comes from. Um, I think it might come from Sun. I think it's possible that Sun is the originating company. It's also possible from Xerox PARC. You have to kind of take it apart where and I actually remember when I you know, I had interacted with some folks at Sun and they'd give me a business card and I remember like coming out to Sun being like and not really knowing what my rank was and I'm like because I I was going to make business cards. I'm like, what? I'm an engineer and I'm on staff. So I like I think I'm a staff engineer. So and and you know, I kind of go to make business cards and then I kind of like didn't didn't complete submission on the form or whatever and then of course it wasn't that long afterwards I was like, oh wait a minute. That was like that would have been like saying I had got tenure. Like I definitely not a staff engineer. I'm a member of technical staff. Um, I was an MTS three. So the there was the uh, you would kind of climb up through those ranks and then to to staff engineer, senior staff engineer, distinguished engineer and And three was the start of the good No, I mean it's supposed I think it did start at MTS one. Um, no, most college hires would start at MTS two. Um, but they um, but I I was an unusual college hire in a lot of ways. Interesting. So they brought you on two levels deep as a new grad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Um, I mean I'd had a lot I um, so Sun was actually not the first company I worked for. I worked for a company called QNX in Canada. Um, and I'd done kernel development there. So, I'd done um, OS development at at QNX for for two summers. Um, and I'd done some actually some work that I was that I still think is actually I love that. I love working for QNX. I love being in Canada. Uh, and really and and I I had decided I didn't want to go back to QNX professionally that I that I did want The other The other thing I would say is I decided that I wanted to come out to Silicon Valley. I I did not want to be I'd gone to school in the Northeast, had worked in Canada, but I really wanted to come out to Silicon Valley. I see. So, then when you when you look at your journey growing from I guess this MTS3 to up to where you grew, like if you were to break down that I guess the story behind that growth and kind of what are the highlights that that stuck out to you that made you grow? Yeah, so I mean, I was not I was very much not focused on my my my grade, my rank, or promotion. That was not on I was not interested in that. My view was always like I I would much rather be under-promoted than over-promoted. Um, I'd much rather be doing work where people are like, "Wait a minute. Why is Wait, why why are you back here? Like, what happened to you?" You know, I I've I that's just I I am not interested in being kind of doing work performatively. Um, I was always going to do what like what I thought was the most important thing to go do. Um, and you know, Sun was a company that was very accommodating of headstrong engineers. Uh, and um, so I um, that's where I I what I wanted to do was solve the problems that our customers had, make the operating system what I believed it could be, kind of realize that vision for what the OS could be. Um, Sun was the only company, honestly, in 1996 that was really invested in the operating system. Every other company was mortgaging its future to Microsoft and Windows. And all these computer companies were giving up on their own operating system, giving up on Unix. It was really Unix's darkest hour. And the being in that group in Solaris kernel development during those years was enormously energizing and allowed us to do all sorts of things. And then along the way you get promoted, right? Along the way like promotions were just the kind of thing that that happened as you as you went along the way. Um the I mean Sun's I became I learned I would say I I took a away a lot of life lessons in terms of of what works and doesn't work. Um I found that the because of course we had had formalized performance review. And I find this is like not a deep thought, but that formalized performance review never resulted in me having higher performance. And this is like this is one of these things that you kind of like feels very naive to say cuz it's like you know dummy like performance review is not about you performing better, it's about us measuring your performance. It's like well that's not what it should be about. It what it should be about is like what feedback is great. Like we should be making everyone be the best that they can possibly be. And the the the formalized the annual cadence of it I felt was very broken. You know, we would have submit a self review of course, and then your review is like oh wow my review looks stunningly like my self review albeit with great grammatical errors introduced. Uh and you know that it and every review um even the reviews in which I was promoted there was not uplifting. Like that was not when I look back at the moments of like what were the the the highlights for me during that progression. It was never being promoted. It was always doing a significant body of work or nailing a hard bug or working with someone on something that we thought was impossible. Like that was the stuff that that that was really catalytic for me. Um and then there's like Sun just kind of had to promote me along the way. Now the one exception though I would say to that is that the the promotion to distinguished engineer is was very regrettable and stupid. I mean not my promotion, but just in general like the process. The process for being promoted at Sun was I would say very traditional in that you know, you're taking your folks that are performing very well and you're promoting them up to the next grade. Uh the Sun did have a very uh silly process thing that you know, they had three grades they would give you superlative, excellent, and good. And then I think there was like a you know, and like 70% good, maybe 20% excellent, and 10% superlative something like that. And they had this thing where if you were superlative, they had to promote you. Like that was like the index for promoting you. Like if you got that superlative grade, they'd promote you. But also they had to promote you if you they gave you that superlative grade. So you would have I had these I had these reviews that were like apologetic being like, "Look, I have to give you an excellent grade even though like the work that you've done over this past period has been extraordinary and innovative and actually better than the work that you did 2 years ago or a year ago, but I I I can't actually give you the superlative grade because if I give you the superlative grade, I would have to promote you and we just promoted you a year ago and it's really like we don't want to promote people any faster than every 18 months." And you're like, "Okay. Does this make sense to you? I mean this doesn't like I was like, "Okay, if like if if you're satisfied with this, like fortunately like I just don't care one way or the other. So like sounds good. Okay, can I get back to work now? Are we are are we done here? It's like are we And then are we getting trying not to be trolled by the grammatical reviews in my in in in in the review that's being handed to me?" Um so now the difference for that was the And then you know, the promotion to staff engineers was a big deal. And like great, fine. Actually it was funny because all the staff engineers so Sun had this thing called KEEP, the key employee incentive program. And KEEP was effectively like an annual dividend. It was like a bonus. So that you know and there was like a keep pool that was set across the company and you know kind of a traditional thing, right? And the the metric was based on like company performance. That's what they and so I would did hear when I was you know an MTS3 MTS4 the staff engineers like you know they would get their keep bonus and if the keep bonus is really good they take everyone out to dinner and it was kind of like you know it was like being at the the mining town, right? when there's a big or strike or what have you gold strike. So I was like okay wow this is like this would be great. So of course I mean just like of course like when do I get promoted to staff engineer must have been in like 2000 2001. I get promoted to staff engineer as like the dot com nuclear bomb goes off and the keep bonus was I never got like keep bonus was zero from then on out. Sun lost 98% of its value in the public markets and like I never so it's a good thing that I wasn't doing it for the keep bonus because the keep bonus was was zero. Um but then getting so that was staff engineer to senior staff engineer and then distinguished engineer what is was really unfortunate in that there were there were kind of two paths in to distinguished engineer. And this may be true of of a lot of companies I don't know. I mean I have we I don't have ranks at Oxide for this reason like I think ranks are corrosive. I don't think they get people to do their best work I'm not interested in them. Um but the at Sun there were two ways to be a distinguished engineer. One was of course to be like promoted from a senior staff engineer to distinguished engineer and that was a very very I mean I would say rigorous but it's giving it far too much credit. It was very political process. The DEs would vote on whether you should be admitted to this country club of distinguished engineers which is a terrible idea. Putting like this is like the wrong place for democracy in a society right the for so many different reasons. And the but so that's how you would get promoted to distinguished engineer. Very hard to get promoted. The other way to become a distinguished engineer is Sun is buying your little company. Is Aqua hiring your company? And your the company's got just enough leverage during that process to be like, oh by the way, our CTO needs to be a DE. So, you would have these like DEs just kind of like pop in the side. You're like, who is this person? Like, oh yeah, we yeah, then we acquired their company. So, and and there was definitely a difference in like you you knew the the homegrown DEs versus the ones that had been had been aqua-hired in. Um but when I and I I actually like and this is like I just do not want to even think about this process. Like again, I'm not a real political person. Like the last thing I want to do. Uh fortunately, we had um I I'd done work that was kind of so indisputable at that point that it was going to be um it was pretty clear that if Sun is going to have such a rank, I was probably worthy of it. But again, I didn't want to deal with it. Uh Sun's CTO at the time, Greg Papadopoulos, very grateful to Greg. Um Greg had chartered this group that we'd developed um inside as actually in San Francisco for Sun mission called Fishworks where we had developed a new storage product. Uh storage product was going gangbusters. Um it was a great product. Uh although a great product with asterisks on it. Wasn't as great as we thought it was. We should have that. We learned a lot about it. Um but the product was doing really well. Uh Greg Again, I was not in the meeting, so this was told to me secondhand. Um but uh your DE case needs to be presented by someone, another DE. Well, Greg presented my case. And so, you had the CTO of the company and Sun was not a very hierarchical company and Greg was not a very hierarchical person. But Greg put apparently my materials up and it's like, I don't expect anyone to vote against this. Take your vote. He said that? Yeah. And apparently it was unanimous. So, it's like, thank you, Greg. Um deeply appreciate it. So, Greg, I didn't have to deal with that because uh Greg was dealing with it for me. Um and it was kind of like, you know, honestly, it was kind of a validation of my hypothesis. Like, Greg honestly viewed it more of a reflection on the company than a reflection on me. It's like, great. I had done work that was at some level kind of indisputable and that's kind of the way I I had wanted to chart my career. I I think there's two schools of thoughts on on, you know, how people structure their careers within these, I guess, ladders. If a really ambitious new graduate engineer comes to you and say, "Hey, I want to be a distinguished engineer one day." I have two ideas. One idea is I'm going to just focus on the work and just, you know, promotions will be a byproduct. Or I'm going to do the other thing where Yeah, I talk to my manager. I'm like, "Hey, how do I get to that next level?" And "Hey, what are those things that the next level needs to do?" And then I will do work that molds to that mold. Yeah, I would try to to steer someone with a third path. What's the third path? >> Like, what Why? Why do you want to be What What is it Why do you want to be a distinguished engineer? Because if that's the goal, if the goal is to be a distinguished engineer, you you get there. You'll be a distinguished engineer. Now what? I mean, you you you can be so fixated on that. It's like it doesn't at some level it doesn't that doesn't actually That's not the thing that matters. That's That doesn't give you meaning. And to me, if I had a young engineer who's like, "I'm I want to be a distinguished engineer." I'm like, "That's a recipe for a midlife crisis." So, what what the what the what What's try to dial you differently. And I think that what I think what you would what I would steer someone to is What What's get you on a path that has meaning, where you're going to be developing, and what drives meaning for you. What's important to you? And it's like, "Well, what's What's important to me is to be a distinguished engineer." I'll be like, "Okay." I mean, you you'd want to tease it apart. Get them on the couch a little bit. Like, why I mean, are you not Were you not loved enough as a child? Like, what's going on? Like, you know, you And and you know, kind of work through some of these issues because you don't want to be dependent on that kind of external validation. You I would want to be like, "Let let introduce you to people who've achieved what you are putatively setting out as your goal and are miserable. Like, let me introduce you to some miserable D's. You want to be wealthy? Let me introduce you to some miserable wealthy people. So, you know that it's like that's that can't be it. It's there's got to be something else that that is that the fuel in that furnace. And like, let's go find that thing. And and and then we then then the like the promotions will happen and the work will happen. Okay, but let's say okay, mente comes to you and says you have a good point. I want financial independence. A lot of people I think want that. Is they they want to Yeah, what's financial independence though? Because like we are in such a well-compensated domain. It's like you and I right now could go out and get a cup of coffee that is the best cup of coffee in the We're in San Francisco, we're in the mission. We can get some coffee that is like some Ethiopian coffee, some amazing coffee that is like club and that is attainable to you and me and and to basically everyone else. It's like a $6 cup of coffee. Right? Yeah, yeah. Well, okay. Well, let's say you define it as, you don't need to work for money ever again. But then what? I I mean, this is like okay, you don't need to work for money ever again. Like, okay, I get that. But but so you can go off and do the thing that actually motivates you. Well, then go off and do the thing that actually motivates you. What if it doesn't make money? Well, I think it and I Well, this is where I you want to take it apart. And so like you want to find a way I mean, certainly you're going to have things like the the the the difference that you want to make, the meaning that you're going to find is going to be something that's like, yeah, this is this is just not a career path at all. Like, I can't actually sustain myself at all. So, then you need to find a way to balance that, I would say, with your career. And you want to keep that balanced. I think it I also think it's a mistake to be like, I'm going to achieve financial independence and then I'm going to do the thing that is meaningful to me. It's like And again, you just And I I definitely had the blessing of know Most people were like me. Made a lot of money on paper in the dot com boom and just lost every penny of it. I mean, I had a I had a loss carry forward for so many years that I actually like One year I lost track of my loss carry forward. I'm like, "I got to I I just So But I had a loss carry forward I that And I was like, "You know, I had like fun memories of the dot com bubble when I would take my whatever it was, $3,000 a year against my from a loss carry forward." Um the That was most people around here. Most people kind of like lost it all, but also were fine. And I think this is the other thing. Like the dot com bust was super helpful because if you had geared yourself to be really economically motivated in '99, 2000, '98, '99, 2000, which would have been easy. 2001, 2002, 2003, like you That was not why you were here. Because this place was nuclear winter. And And you had had to find something else. And I I knew like So the funny thing I knew like lots of people that like had to remind themselves why they got in this, and it wasn't money. I also knew people I didn't know people that made a bunch of money in the dot com boom. The people that made a bunch of money in the dot com boom weren't that interested in tech to begin with. So when it went up in, you know, late '99, 2000, they're like, "I'm selling it all. Like I actually don't want to do this." And those people, and there are a couple of them that I know, and some of them really really struggled in the next decade cuz they didn't have to work for the rest of their lives. But now what? Like you don't have to work, so like now what do you do? And And they were on their own search for meaning. And like not easy. And going through periods of like, "Oh, like I'll buy six houses." Then you realize like six houses are kind of like a pain in the ass. It's like you and I could go drink six cups of coffee concurrently, but you're just like, "What am I doing here? Am I just like proving that I can buy six cups of So like why do I want six houses? All right, then I then I then you you scale that way back. I mean, it gives you like it really opens your eyes about what matters and what doesn't matter. What doesn't matter as much. Certainly, you need to be able to provide for yourself and provide for for a family. You want to be able to raise a family and so on. So, you want to be able to have that But, you want to do that in a way that's honestly sustainable. I think that that too many folks are focused on like, I'm going to do this so I can leave. It's like, then maybe you shouldn't be in this industry at all. Like, go do It's like, go do the thing you would do when you left and find a way to do that in a way like and go pursue that dream. And cuz you'll be you'll be happier. You'll you'll have meaning doing that. Quit your job at Meta and become a podcaster, you know? >> Oh, well, I did Yeah, [laughter] yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, um yeah, it's it's uh it's interesting you say that because there's this um there's this subreddit, this community that's all about uh financial independence, earning enough, and >> Yeah. Oh, Jesus. >> see a a very regular post that says, "Guys, I did it and I don't know what to do now." >> Oh, yeah, exactly. [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. I did it. I did And also like I geared I mean, I think this is like this is a problem, by the way, in engineering, not even in the even when the goal was has meaning, this is a problem. This is what I This is what I call postpartum in engineering. you are really focused on shipping something and you're just like, "Shipping this thing is just the lens through which you're doing everything." And when we shipped our first rocket oxide, I was very concerned about like, "We are going to have postpartum." And there are going to be people who are like, "I was working so hard and pulling so hard for so long and now we shipped it and like, now what?" And I'm I So, even when the thing you've done is obviously meaningful and you've achieved something extraordinary, you're going to have that. When the thing you've also achieved is like, "Well, I can like buy any cup of coffee I want." It's like, "The thing I want like now I'm not even sure I got I got like what am I supposed to do?" I it's just easy to see how you people be wonder what the meaning of it really is. And then there are some people that are just like snip all the wires and they're like, well, the meaning of it is to get even more. And then just like, you know, then you get like Larry Ellison or whatever. But like that's also not something that people should aspire to. Right. I Well, what would you say cuz I I do know someone who is genuinely happy just doing nothing. By doing nothing, I just mean like relaxing in bed, you know, watching their shows, you know, going to hanging out with friends and stuff. I think if they had a billion dollars, they'd just do that every day. Yeah. But what you said doesn't work in that case cuz that doesn't earn anything. I you know, I actually did know a guy I knew a guy who I actually did know a guy who did this who I was I'm thinking about people who made money that I know I knew one of I I believe one of Yahoo's like first employees, but not because he was like crazy sharp or anything. Because he like they they wanted to hire a web surfer and he was like a pothead who was like this like this sounds like the level of work that I'm a So, he gets a job as like a web surfer one at Yahoo, but as like employee number like single digit. He gets the equity grant as part of like joining the company. Never gets another equity grant, but makes a king's ransom because he's very early at Yahoo. Never promoted above like web server rank one or whatever and was complaining to everybody about how much his job sucked. Everyone was like, you surf the web for a living. Like you've somehow managed to like win this insane lottery where you're getting paid to do like very close to nothing. And he like at when it started, he owned like all of Yahoo in terms of like surfing. Cuz the way Yahoo worked, you you may be wondering what the hell I'm even talking about. Yahoo was a curated directory of links. Like this is again where I sound like a pre-Google. Very much pre-Google. This is like pre-Google This is not just pretty Google. This is like pre-Lycos, pre-Hotbot, pre-Altavista. This is This is like basically pre the ability to search the internet. You would have these curated directory of links. And someone needs to go like find this content. And it was like this guy, Yahoo employee number six or whatever he was. And so he originally like owned the entire directory, but he's like not very good and not very energetic and was like, you know, stoned all the time. So they kind of like carved It's a Finally he I I believe at the end, before he finally quit, he owned only like snowboarding in northern California. That's what it was his like responsibility to It's like, this is a job? And So that is the kind of person who was And you would like to think that that he found something that was actually meaningful to him, but clearly it was not the work or work for that matter. Right. Um You said earlier there were these ratings was superlative excellent and >> something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I noticed you didn't mention there's there's a bad rating or something. >> Right. There was a Yeah, no, there were there was not Basically not. Sun did not um the the idea of like a PIP or the whole like rank and yank, which is what Intel famously did. Um the Rank and yank? The rank and yank. Is that Is that just stack ranking and firing people? >> was It was their name for stack ranking. Yeah. It was It was It was rank and yank. Um yeah, stack rank Stack ranking is organizational cancer. It is It is very, very, very bad news. When you especially if you are going to terminate a bottom end percent, that is um that's death. I I I really think that is just a a wall-to-wall terrible idea because you incentivize people to have dead weight on their teams um that they can that Oh, is that Oh, so they have fodder to >> someone to throw into the wood chipper. Oh, wait, so you think that a manager strategically keeping around >> Oh, I know so. I mean that definitely happened at Sun, for sure. Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean there were people that were like, why are they still here? Like they don't They don't know what they seem to be doing anything. And someone kind of took me aside and was like, "Yeah, that person is in your best interest because like do you know what that person's rating is? It is always like good." Like they they get a good so you can be an excellent or a superlative. And I'm again, I'm like, "Does this make sense to you? Like why are we okay?" So you know all sorts of perverse incentives. All sorts of perverse incentives with with stack ranking. Was that stack ranking fundamentally you that stack ranking teaches you that your team are adversaries. And that's a bad idea. That is and it's just not the way I want to operate. Like they the my big belief is that that teams do extraordinary things. And that everybody should want to be serving the team. It is it is the team that wins or loses. The team that succeeds. And I I think that stack ranking really operates very much contrary to that. You mentioned that Sun I mean the stock stock price went down by 98% Yeah, yeah. Trading below our cash at one point. >> I mean was there not some management at some point saying, "Hey, we got to it's time to Oh, we did I mean mass layoffs >> no. Sun did I mean Sun resisted layoffs for a little while. Scott was kind of famously did not McNealy famously did not want to lay people off but that was which was a mistake. He waited too long for that. Um but no, once the layoff started I mean I think at one point I counted the the number of layoffs that had the rounds layoffs was like 35 layoffs. 35 rounds of layoffs over like eight years. That's I mean it's more than four a year. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, it was it was brutal. That's that's insane. >> And well, you get these like small layoffs, big layoffs. I mean this is actually before the Warn Act, I think. Um but you would get We actually I mean this is dark. But we you could you could There was an API effectively to the well, well, this is like before the era of rest APIs, but there was a way to get the employee directory programmatically. And so, we would run what we called the obits, and the obits would run every day and would tell you who was no longer at the company. And so, you would see these small layoffs that were not actually like you you would see, you know, a group that was like or you would see and then you would see like, "Oh my god, like that's 1,500 people or that's 3,000 in today's obits." Was the company aware that you had that access to that data? That seems like Sun you Sun's strength and weakness was that no one was truly in charge. So, I mean, I think it would not have been I would not have been surprising. But, I mean, Sun to its credit was a pretty transparent company. So, I don't think that we would have I think that we weren't violating any kind of policy. We were accessing a we were accessing the org tool, which was the tool they had to show you kind of organizational layout. So, we weren't doing anything untoward, but it was a way for us to know like what's happening in the company as the Sun had was layoff after layoff after layoff after layoff after layoff. That I mean, 35 layoffs that's almost yeah, that's crazy. I um >> But, that was everybody, too. Again, that was not like oh like the it is hard to express the period from the dot-com bust when you know, kind of pets.com craters in in the spring of 2000 that kind of ran on on momentum until the end of 2000. And at the end of 2000, the dot-com bubble truly truly burst for everybody for Sun included. And then and 9/11 did not help, right? So, what was and the economy was tech was basically dead for five years. And and Y Combinator is formed kind of at that Y Combinator is I think 2006. I see. And starts to form and I think in part because I think you know, you have to take Graham's perspective on this, but but the I mean there was a there was a capital deficit at that point. There were like people that could solve interesting things and there was like no way to start a company to go do it. Um so the it was really really bleak here for many many years. I see. Slightly off topic, but I I was stalking your Twitter and I saw that Paul Graham had blocked you. Do you know is Oh, Paul Graham blocked me. He didn't block me. I think he Yeah, that was a point of pride. I I did feel like I felt like I'd really arrived when Paul Graham blocked me. Yeah, Paul Graham blocked me. Yeah, I definitely feel like I'm I'm on the right side of history on that one. Um Well, what do you think that was for? Uh no, I know what that was for. Um that was for um I think that uh Paul Graham was uh defending some of the worst behavior of Richard Stallman. And the worst behavior of Richard Stallman does not age very well. It's truly truly uh some pretty gross kind of behavior. Uh and he was defending that and I was attacking him for it and he was blocking me for that. So like, all right. Uh I'll take that. Um Yeah, I mean Paul Graham is complicated for me. He uh there were there are a couple of people like this in Silicon Valley that are complicated in that there are uh says some things that I really strongly agree with and some things that I really strongly disagree with. Um often in the same sentence. So often and you're just like like my brain's getting zapped. Like, okay, this is like wrong but also not wrong and uh so Um yeah, he's he's he's he's a complicated one. There are a couple of people like that. I understand that Sun Microsystems was eventually acquired by Oracle. Yes, invaded. Yeah. And uh I just want to know why was it so controversial at the time? There's even a Wikipedia page that says the acquisition of Sun Microsystems and there's it's almost like an obituary and there's a lot of top level engineers who Um well, it was it was traumatic. Um there's actually a really interesting SEC filing because it's a public company that IBM and HP were both jockeying to try to buy Sun. And each was trying to sabotage the other and each was trying to get the kind of because they almost wanted to buy Sun punitively. They were both competitors with Sun. Um and while they were kind of screwing with one another, Oracle swept in and bought the company. Um so um Oracle that happened really quickly. Um the actual acquisition itself was not really controversial. It took a while to close. Um what what I mean to to the contrary, I mean there's nothing like really controversial about Oracle because Oracle is what it is. Um Oracle is just there's not a lot of depth to Oracle. Um Oracle is just an octopus that knows how to feed itself and the um the Sun was very much not that way. Sun was there was a there was a level I wouldn't call purism, but there was Sun was always endeavoring to do the right thing by its customers. Sun was endeavoring to to solve hard interesting technical problems that had commercial relevance and it gave its engineers us tremendous freedom to go do so. And and it tended to do attract people that wanted to to do that that wanted to do that was wanted to be bold and it was it was a great place for that reason because it rewarded that kind of technical boldness. So that's why you know and if I had Spark and Java and and Solaris and all the technologies that I worked on, you know, all these things came out of Sun. There were so many of these like seminal technologies that came out of Sun because of of that kind of that passion and independence. Oracle doesn't have any of that. Oracle's just like Oracle it truly is is focused on really on on one thing, namely its own profitability which is like I thought what when the acquisition happened I'm like well this will be interesting cuz we'll get someone with like great business savvy maybe. One of the things that was frustrating me about Sun is that Sun um on terms of business execution, Sun fell down a bunch of times. And I thought we would have someone in Oracle that would be just better at the execution of a commercial enterprise. Uh as it turns out, I was really overestimating Oracle. Um Oracle really is about um being able to to get effectively a monopoly, a natural monopoly over its own customers, asphyxiating competition, and then raising the rent on its customers. Like that is really what Oracle wanted to go do. Um and it's not a company I wanted to work for. I see. Because I had there's a talk that you gave that where you really uh I mean, you know, I didn't even Yeah, I know you're talking about The the talk is crazy. >> the Lisa talk from 2011. Yeah, before you even got to talking about it, you said, "I'm going to try and make it through this slide without crying." Oh, that was on the the the Sun side. >> Yeah, yeah. And then I think you were talking about Oracle and you said that they screw customers and lie. I guess you explained the screw customers part, but what's the lie part of of Oracle? >> Yeah. Oracle is um has made many promises to its own customers that it does not keep. Oracle does not has not earned the trust of its customers. If you ask customers, "Do you trust Oracle?" the answer to that will be no. And I would kind of let that speak for itself. Um the yeah, the the making that slide without crying bit was not about Oracle, that was about very much about Sun. Um and that was the and the the I Scott McNealy's epitaph for Sun. Kick butt, had fun, didn't she? Loved her customers, changed computing forever. >> Yeah, you said that. Yeah, yeah. >> Yeah, that was the bit that And like it still chokes me up a little bit just because it it's true. It was true. And we um when we started Oxide, we like adopted that as our own mission because that that's It's what we wanted to go do at Oxide. Um and I thought it was a very uh concise distillation of that. And that was just not Oracle. Oracle's not interested in that. Um When when a lot of the top engineers it seems like there was a an exodus where >> exodus, yeah, yeah. where people confiding with each other like were you talking to other high-level engineers saying, "Hey, we got to get out of here." Oh, yo, yeah. I mean, it's not even like I mean, you're just like you're in a burning building. Are people confiding with one another they should leave the burning building? It's like, "No, actually people are just like running for their lives." I mean, you're just not like, "Oh, what do you think of the burning building? Like do you think the building is burning? What do you" Uh and no, I mean, it was pretty clear. And there were actually the real true jockeying came from those engineers before it actually closed. There were going to be some engineers that would be laid off before it closed. But as the acquisition closed, in other words, there were some people that were still employees that were not going to be Oracle employees. Uh Aqua laid off? Like they wouldn't There wouldn't be a existing company. >> They just That's right. So so that they would they would lose their job. Okay, okay. >> But they would get like a pretty rich severance package. So you had like an absolute line at the trough for how can I get laid off? You [laughter] like I I lay me off first. Um this was not me. This was not us. We were I I I was I mean, in I mean, at least to the credit of the like the people lining up at the trough, at least they knew what was going to happen. Uh [snorts] and there were still people to this day that are a little resentful. People are like, "That guy uh That guy got laid off and I I mean, I quit because I could not work there in good conscience after 45 days. That guy got laid off and got a year of salary or whatever it was." Um but we No, I um I was not that. I was We were at this Fishworks group in San Francisco and I was really optimistic that I'm really optimistic, somewhat optimistic um that we could combine the best of both companies or what I perceived to be the best of both companies. And as turns out, that's not the case. So. What did you see cuz you left really quick? So what did you see then? >> Oh, it was really clear to me that that this was a very very different company. I mean, Oracle gave me like I had decided like I can't work here anymore and the time between I had decided that and I actually left, which was only like 30 days, more a little longer than that, maybe 45 days. Oracle gave me like four other reasons to be like, oh my god, I just can't I can't stomach working here. I mean, I and I mean, it was a bunch of things. One, it was Sun for all of its faults and there were many many faults of Sun, Sun had the trust of its customers. Our customers actually were rooting for us at Sun. Our customers wanted us to prevail. Why? Because they actually they they trusted us and they even when it wasn't in our own best interests. Like we would we would be straight with our customers and I think that that was we did not lie to our customers, right? And that was something that our customers found very very appealing. That was not Oracle. Oracle does not have the trust of its customers and I realized something very important about myself. I can't work for a company that has that kind of profound distrust. I mean, in terms of what we're talking about meaning, that so eroded my own sense of meaning. I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed to work there and I had never felt that. I've never, you know, for Sun, I was embarrassed from time to time, but never ashamed and with Oracle, I was ashamed. Uh you mentioned people were were eager to get themselves laid off. How do you even How do you even do that? Just like say >> your manager, look, there's a list, put me on it. Yeah, oh, there is a list? Okay, who else is on it? Like I want to be on it. I mean, just like all the ways that you I mean, it's not like you don't fill out a web form. I mean, you're obviously like it, you know, you're you're a courtier kind of whispering about trying to figure out like what's the scuttlebutt, who's going to get laid off. >> Uh I thought you'd have to like really, you know, underperform and like >> No, no, no, no, no one said no, no. I I think that they were no, it was all about like hey, I I'm I I have no value to Oracle. Could you I mean it was much more like [laughter] Oracle's not interested in what I'm doing, right? And then you get like Oracle is interested you got to god damn it. Um [snorts] Uh so okay, so I I get why you left Oracle and and obviously Sun was acquired. And so I the next place you worked at was Joyent. And I understand that this company competed with AWS. That's right, yeah. And uh I listened to some of the conversation you already had and yeah, interesting quote. You said Bezos is the apex predator of capitalism. Yeah. What makes you say that? Very they're just Amazon was Amazon at its height was such so relentless on execution. And what made Bezos really, really good is that in and I would say like and when I say it's height, I mean they Amazon hits the mother lode. And they they they hit the mother lode not because they're lucky. But they they there there was like luck involved, you know, they they allow S3 to be developed, right? They develop EC2. Then they they realize what they're on to. And they're on cloud computing before anyone has figured it out. And the the the the those reinvents in like from 2010 to say 2015 were relentless. Every reinvent was a price cut. It was price cut and it was a bunch of new services. And if you're a customer, you're like this is awesome. I love this. This is great. Like why would I not I mean so it was so that's what I mean by the apex predator because he was on something that was wildly profitable. He pulled off a just an absolute move of moves in that Amazon did not break out their revenue. So it's just like Amazon. It's like you got the dot com side, you have AWS. They're not breaking out any of that. They're just like literally like this is how much Amazon's making. Analysts would ask in the call, they're just like, "Yeah, we're not talking about that." Which apparently you can get away with as a public company. Um and so, they actually created this idea, especially with the relentless price cuts. People are like, "Oh, the cloud's a terrible business." Like no one no one should get into the cloud because it's a terrible business. And so, people didn't. And meanwhile, like what we knew because we did compete with Amazon, we did have a public cloud, and we knew it's like, "No, the actually the margins on this thing are great." Like this is actually a great business. And Amazon And Amazon was executing very, very, very, very well. And they did extraordinarily well in the in in those years. And I mean, they are still obviously it's a it's a it's a very profitable company, but they have Amazon has it is not what it was in in those years. Um I'm not sure when the last price cut was announced at re:Invent, but it's been a while. Um it is not that that's not what you get at re:Invent. You don't get the the kind of the new services that you can't live without. Um so, it's it's a different company. AWS was was early, and they already had, I guess, a dominant market share. >> Yeah. Why would Jeff Bezos continue to just like ruthlessly keep going and keep going? And because instead of milking it, Because he is not merely a predator. He is an apex predator in capitalism. This is what makes him so good. He's like, "I'm not going to No, like I'm going to I'm going to press my advantage." Like I'm I'm going to make it so no one can compete with me. And I'm going to make it so no one wants to get into this business. And I'm going to do it Honestly, like the right way. I'm going to do it by like giving a great product at a reasonable price. It's like, "Damn, yeah, that's that's good. That's like that's how That's a win-win." That's a win-win, and it was like essential for innovation during that era of companies that were cloud-born. And it I mean, it was really I it was very, very hard to compete with Amazon. I'll tell you that. You had to you had to really like find a lane. And we know we we found lanes where we could go compete with Amazon, but it was uh it was it was brutal. They There were There execution was extraordinary. At this company, I I saw that you you started out as a VP and then you transitioned to CTO at some point. And >> Yeah. What's the difference in the roles? >> Was it That's a great question. I actually gave a talk on this with Joyent's CTO at the time on the contrast between VP of engineering and CTO. Um and you know, I'm not sure how much I how much I buy the difference now. I mean, I think both in both capacities you're serving as an engineering leader. Um and I I think that you know, I guess you can argue that a CTO is more outward-looking for sure. Chief Travel Officer is kind of the the the the pejorative for it. You're on the road talking to customers a lot. Um you are um a VP of engineering may be more focused on some of of the necessary like mechanics that you have in an engineering organization. Um for me personally, I mean, they brought me in as a VP of engineering because they frankly already had a CTO. So like I again, it's just like the the the grade I was at uh at Sun, I didn't particularly care. What I did care about is when the, you know, the CTO had left and then another CTO that we had the CTO who had been a founder of the company. And when he left, uh so there was kind of like the the the empty CTO position. I didn't care What I did care was that we didn't hire externally for that because I So that I did care about a lot about. Like, look, if there's going to be a CTO, I'm happy to be VP of engineering in perpetuity. But like I would rather like if there's going to be a CTO, I would like us to not hire externally for that, please. Or let me be involved in that anyway. But um yeah, I was later the CTO. And why not hire externally? I just didn't want to deal with like having to bring in I didn't need That's not what we needed at that time. What what we needed um at at that time especially, well, we had we got rid of the CEO um and we we really were um we we needed really a terrific CEO, which we which we later got. So. And so then you started Oxide. Started Oxide in 2019. Yeah. >> And what's the story behind you starting your own company? Well, I knew again I I kind of had in my I my mind that like I want to start a company. And the thing that I knew is I want to start a company with Steve. Steve and I had worked together at that point. Steve was the when I went to Joyent I not talked to Steve prior to going to Joyent. And I was going to Joyent in part because I was running away from Oracle and it was a it I it was kind of allow me to to hire folks and so on. But the I didn't talk to Steve until after I came to Joyent. And I'm like this guy is amazing. And Steve and I just worked very closely together. Steve came up on the go to market side on the sales side. And I knew I'm like I definitely want to start a company with this guy. I and and he fortunately he felt the same. So we we both felt like all right, whatever we do next we do it together. Um And so now it's like all right, well now what? Now we got to figure out what we want to go do. And we had these long walks in the city cuz we're working in San Francisco and we had so many bad ideas. I mean it was just it was just basically one bad idea after another. So then we're trying to come up with ideas that like were a better match for the kinds of things that people would fund. And we recommend people not do this. It's understandable. I did it. I don't I understand. But we're we're trying to like come up with things that people would fund. And coming up with things that were just like not in our heart. You know what I mean? Like this is like okay, I can do this but like really? I mean it'd be fun to do it with Steve but just doesn't feel like that's not going to I want to do something that is like that is this next long chapter of my career. And so as we're kind of struggling with that and I was trying to figure out like okay, we actually need to start talking to venture capitalists at some point. We need to like start like get this ball rolling and understand like I and I had always known venture capitalists and I got lunch with them over the years but had not really like you know kind of gone deep. And I know the venture capitalists associated with with Joyent for sure. Um and so I got uh I was reminding myself of the email address of one VC in particular. Actually very famous VC. And but it's someone I had known since early early early in his career. And he and I just gotten lunch periodically through our careers from when he was first in venture and I was in insuring and we it's like and he had kind of become uh become pretty famous. And I was just want to remind myself of the email address. And the last email he had sent to me was just maybe you know 18 months prior was like, "Hey Brian, really enjoy getting lunch with you today. I just want to remind you I will fund literally anything you put in front of me." I'm thinking like, "Wow." And I was like, "Steve, you know, I'm reminding myself of this email of this guy's email address. He said he will fund literally anything we put in front of him." So like, what what we should just go big. We should do we should do the thing that is in our heart." And Steve's like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "We should build the computer that we want to build. We should build a rack-scale machine." And he's like, "You got to be amazing." Like, "Do you think we can get that funded?" And I'm like, I yeah I get yeah I think so. And you know that was very much in our heart. That was what we had lived that he had lived that Steve had been at at Dell prior to Joyent. Um he'd been at at Dell for a decade. I'd been at obviously at Sun for for 14 years. We and then together at Joyent for another decade. And this is we this was truly in our marrow. Um and we felt like, "Okay, like we can go." And we as we started talking to VCs about this about building and we again envisioned rack-scale design. We wanted to do our our our own board design, do our own switch, do our DC bus bar business line, do all of our own software, do build the machine that we ourselves wish we could have had at Samsung. After Samsung acquired Join. And what was very catalyzing actually was going to, you know, you were what would have been Facebook at the time before they renamed it. And going to their open compute going to the open compute summit and and looking at like Tioga Pass. And you're like, what is this? Like Tioga Pass like I mean it was like I would liken it to discovering Unix as an undergrad when I'd been living with DOS and be like, what is this? And you go look at Tioga Pass you're like, this is a like this is what a computer can be? Like this is gorgeous. This is amazing. We got to go build this for the enterprise market. And we what we discovered is this was very contrarian. Um but things that are contrarian are attractive to ventures. So we would get this into where people would actually be pretty interested in it. Um and I I mean you don't have to tell you how the story ends, but we went back we had actually talked to a bunch of venture capitalists before I went back to that same VC that sent me the email. And I get maybe 45 seconds into describing the problem we want to go solve at Oxide. He's like, Brian, Brian, Brian, stop, stop, stop. If you are talking about starting a computer company, I want nothing to do with it. And I'm like, you know, it's funny. You sent me an email years ago that said you would fund literally anything I would put in front of you. And he said, doesn't sound like me. I'm like, well, I've got I've got okay. What do you want me to do with that one? I'm like, you sent me the email. It's like, are you is your admin writing all of your emails? Are you like, I don't I don't you have your kid write the email? I I don't know what to do with that one. Like you did send me the email. Are you calling me a liar? I mean, and I'm like, all right, fine. And he's like, fine. And I we were over the phone. I go to hang up on him. And of course like VCs this is just like it it it's in the animal brain, right? If you you go to hang up on a VC, they'll be like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's like, oh, okay. He's like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait." So, I'm like, "Fine, got it." I I I I I I He's like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait." "I'm not going to invest." And I'm like, "I know you're not going to invest." And I knew the reason I knew he wasn't going to invest is he's had some big zeros in this department. And when a VC has had zeros in something that looks close to what you're doing, they're like, "I want nothing to do that again." Like, "Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope." Was in a bad relationship with one of those. Don't want to do that again. And in part in their defense, it's often because like, "Actually, I understand this problem a lot better. And now I understand all the headwinds. And now I can I mean, in some ways like you need VCs to be and they need themselves to be like naive at some level. Optimistic is a be a better way of phrasing it. Where they can like envision the world as it could be as opposed to getting all mired in the way the world is. You got to be kind of blind to the odds to a certain degree. And I knew that he was not blind to the odds cuz he'd had two big zeros. And so, I knew that he was going to be like and one zero that like looked a lot like a like Oxide. And so, he's like, "Look, I'm not going to find that." I'm like, again, I knew that. "But I do want to help you." Like, "Okay, it's great." And I always tell people like when you are VCs will ask this a lot, especially a VC that's like where you're not a fit for them. You're not a portfolio fit for them, you're not a thesis fit, whatever it is, you're not a stage fit. If they like you, they'll be like, "Look, I'm not going to invest, but how can I help?" And you always want to have an answer to that question of how you can help. And I had an I I knew how he could help. I had a very concrete idea. It's like, "One of those zeros, um I want to talk to them. I want to talk to the I want to talk to the founders. I want to understand everything that went wrong." And I did. He he's like, "Okay, that I can do." He made the intro and it was really, really interesting. And like the the mistake that they that that company had made and again, had a thesis that looked like Oxide, but they they didn't raise a lot of ca- they they raised kind of arguably too little capital. They got something working that's smaller than we built at Oxide. Minimum viable product at Oxide is a wreck. It's big. Took us 3 years, 3 plus years to develop. They developed something a little bit faster, but it was much smaller. It was basically it you could view it as like Nitro circa like 2013. Nitro from the Enron acquisition at AWS. Uh it does a lot of a lot of really important offload for AWS. So you could view it as like very early Nitro. But it didn't really have a market, but they had a customer. And they got a customer. And they're like great. And the customer is happy. And they wanted to use it in particular on their on their active directory servers. Great. We have product market fit. Raised a bunch of money. Hired a huge go-to-market team. Problem is that customer, huge bank, only wanted to run it on like their six active directory servers. So they were going to buy like quantity six. And this is one of the world's largest banks. You're like uh-oh. So you're like, how many world's largest banks are there? Like, well, there are like a couple of others, but like are we going to sell like, you know, two dozen of these things? Like we got to and they by the time they realized that they had a lot of mouths to feed on the on the go-to-market side and uh they in the that wasn't a zero. It they were acquired, but they were acquired in a way that left the founder extremely bitter. Um and really felt um like he like the VCs had pumped too much capital in them at the wrong time. Had gotten him to do the wrong thing. And was then trapped at the acquiring company and was really not happy about it. He was also the one So I was describing what we were doing at Oxide. He's like, that is a suicide mission. And I just remember writing down a little notebook. I'm just like writing down suicide mission. Kind of underlining it like, okay, we're on a suicide mission. That's fun. When I think of rack scale compute, especially these days, I I think of racks of GPUs Yeah, right. more than CPUs. >> Yeah. Is that something that you're building? >> Yeah, right. Yeah, a very reasonable question. And when we set out, we're like, we I mean, again, set out in 2019, the GP GPU is was around obviously and important, but that's not what we were focused on. We were really focused on general purpose compute. General purpose compute, general purpose storage, general purpose networking. And our belief had always been like, that's what we actually want there there is so much to go build there and go differentiate there. And of course along the way people are like, what about an accelerator? Like what about an accelerator or GPU? And the problem is that the way we want to build systems, we want to really build systems from first principles, where we have components that have that have transparency at that hardware software interface, and we want to write that lowest layer of software. We are the company I mean ultimately we're building a hardware software co-design product, and in order to be able to do that, you need to be able to write very low-level software. The problem is that's really not compatible with Nvidia. Nvidia is a pretty proprietary company. Executes well, but a very proprietary company. And what that meant is there are effectively two doors for Oxide. One is labeled compete with Nvidia, and the other is labeled partner with Nvidia. And I didn't want to do either of those things. Have not wanted to do either of those things. Because certainly I don't want to compete with Nvidia. Um and I think that that's getting more plausible now, um but we can't partner because we just have a very different view of how systems should be built, and Nvidia wants to like their view is like, we should own the whole stack. Like forget you, whoever you are. Um so like okay, that's fine. We're going to be we're going to focus on general purpose CPU. We got plenty to do over here. The good thing that's been interesting and a bit surprising is that because the GPU landscape is so so cluttered I mean that that you've got this very aggressive the very executing well executing company in terms of Nvidia. You've got a lot of competitors around it. Um it's it's a little it's gory, right? Over there. To get And meanwhile on the general purpose CPU side it's like, HP, Dell, Supermicro are the same companies that are are doing the same kind of junk, honestly, that they have been doing and so we are by our lonesomes in terms of a hardware software product over there. So over and over and over again, we have had people come to Oxide that we think like no, no, we're not a fit for you because you like you do a lot of GPU you've got a ton of GPUs like you company famously have a lot of GPUs. They're no, we do have a lot of GPUs. We also have a lot of CPU as it turns out because the certainly the emergent AI workloads not just AI workloads because it's special but certainly AI workloads but high performance computing workloads. There's a lot of general purpose CPU that's attached to the special purpose compute. You know, when you're sitting there on chat GPT and it's surfing the web, you got the little spinny saying it's surfing the web. That is not a GPU that's surfing the web. That is a CPU that's surfing the web. And the the CPU is really, really important. So for us, we are more focused than ever on the general purpose CPU and there's a there is a ton to go do there fortunately to get this product to be where we believe it can be and I think we will do an accelerator at some point but you know, I've been kind of saying it's like 18 months away for a while or 18 months that we would really start thinking about it and you know, I again I'm I know we'll do it in the limit but boy, not in the foreseeable future. We've got a lot to go do as it is. I think coming to the end I I want to ask you some career reflections >> it. Kind of just all over the place type of questions. You you wrote a tweet a while ago. I thought it was really interesting idea which was you you said it would be interesting to have a conference called in retrospect where presenters revisit talks that they've given prior and describe how their her thinking has evolved since and I I pulled a bunch of stuff that you've I guess written or said in the past so I'm curious if your perspective has evolved since then so we'll go through each of those. Sure. So first one which is actually really famous as when I saw it I kind of did a double take. So, in in 1996, as a new grad, there's this this there I don't even know what you used Usenet was. I had to do research, actually. But there's a guy who he writes this long technical response. >> David S. Miller. Yes, and a part of it, too, it's it's not nice, either. It just I saw this a line in there, it says, "Linux is lightweight, Solaris is a pig." Which Solaris was what I guess the Sun was. >> Yeah. Yes. >> And then he writes this long thing and you reply with just a few words. You say, "Yeah, have you ever kissed a girl?" >> Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to know the context behind it. And then also, knowing what you know now >> Oh, definitely in the regret department, if that's what that's asking. Like, yeah, I've got very few regrets in my career, but like you can put that one like pretty firmly in the regret column. >> [laughter] >> Uh yeah, no, that that was that was and also had no idea that this was going to live in perpetuity. That I mean, if you could have told me in I think 1997 is maybe when I posted Maybe it wasn't even Was it '96 Was it '96 or '97? Certainly like I'm I'm like 22. Like I'm I'm very young. If you had told me like, "Oh, by the way, 30 years in the future, you're going to be asked about this." I'd be like, "What the hell?" Like no, no, trust me, it's like the world gets weird, you're going to be asked about this. The So, it was actually a Okay, this is I'm not defending it. I just want to be sure that I want to be clear that like it was a mistake. The I it was actually a reference to a Saturday Night Live sketch. So, there's an SNL sketch that is from an era of Saturday Night Live that is just like you can't even find the video, but they have So, the um they William Shatner is guest starring on Saturday Night Live. And the skit is that William Shatner is at a a Trekkie convention. And the Trekkies are asking him all of these questions. And they're asking him questions and of course like you should like you know in episode you know this season in this episode you know what what was the combination on the safe? He's like what? I don't know that. [clears throat] I don't know I don't I don't know that. No why why would I know that? Like I don't that's not even and he's like these two people are kind of arguing themselves and they're asking him questions that are like this that are all about like the the kind of the canon of Star Trek. And then he's like, "Hey, can I just say something? Get a life people. You You Have you ever kissed a girl?" That was the that was where they you know they do a 30 going to John Lovitz when like Vulcaneers John Lovitz you know that was like lost to history. Why am I doing this? And kind of like looks down at himself and so like it was actually like an obscure Saturday Night Live reference which again like I'm not that doesn't make it any better. Um the uh yeah it was that was that's definitely in the in the regret department. What did he say back to that or I Oh he had a whole lot to say back back that and I actually did have a longer post kind of taking apart what he had said about the about like all right like a lot of what you've said here is actually wrong and so like really going through kind of point by point. I think you know I've actually never I've never met him never talked to him about that. He's a very talented guy. I think he actually I actually did read I think it was in um the with the rebel book um about Linux the remember him reading that he's like, "Yeah, I kind of like was shooting my mouth off in a sudden engineer kind of put me in my put me back in my place." And I'm like, "Man, if that is his read on it he's being very generous to me." So I'd like to believe that maybe he and I both regretted a little bit. We were both like a little you know a little young and excitable um but yeah that was definitely that was a life lesson. I would say that history forgot about that though. So on another tweet >> Yeah sorry. Yeah here we go. This is [laughter] great. This is we're this is like the cleanse. Yeah. Okay, this is in 2022 you wrote a tweet, you said, "If you're tempted to blame a team for a startup's failure, please don't. Success is often due to a great team, but failure is almost always due to bad leadership." I I wrote that. That's a good one. [laughter] That's a good one. I don't remember writing that. That's it. I agree I agree with that guy. He's He's on to something. >> I guess the question is what was something something that day on the internet. There was some weather on the internet that I'm sub-tweeting Paul Graham there somewhere, I think. That must have been it. But, um I'm curious, do you think that's true for for Sun? Because Sun ultimately failed. >> So, okay, I don't agree that Sun failed. I don't agree that Sun failed. Because Sun, again, Sun is founded in 1983 and is invaded in in 2008. 2009. That's a good run. That's a really good run. Sun was a public company. Sun was in the Fortune 200. Lots of people like kids went to college because their their parents were able to work for Sun. And you got, you know, So, I I don't view I do not view Sun as a failure. Sun is like Sun did not, I mean, arguably did not or not maybe inarguably did not succeed to the scope of its own ambition, but Sun to me is not a failure. Sun is a success. Was its collapse at the end uh I guess changeable in hindsight with different leadership? >> so. I think that there were I mean, this is a classic power game of like why did Sun ultimately not not survive as an independent entity. Um and why is that? I think there were a bunch of reasons. I think that the I think that there's a degree to which Sun got very strung out on the very high margins during the dot-com boom and never quite like got off of that. Never like they we embraced x86 too late. Um we um we kind of thought of ourselves I mean, the the company itself became fractured. The layoffs didn't help. I mean, I think we at Fishworks, when we were developing a storage appliance, I felt that we could have been an example of an exemplar of what the kinds of products I felt Sun could develop and an independent Sun could develop, but it was going to be there's a lot of like stuff that needed to be changed for that. And you needed leadership that really was very, very interested in that. Um and it's like that just wasn't what like that that's not what we had. Um and in hindsight, it was probably time for a change. So then it was And you know, it's like it it the kind of the way a forest fire in a normal healthy forest fire is kind of a part of the life cycle of a forest. And you need that to have kind of to have to have rebirth. And I think that that it's I mean, ultimately, I think that that um Sun had succeeded, but had also run its course. And it was it was time for >> I see. had its time. It had its time. Absolutely had its time. Um okay. And that next past take of yours >> Yeah. you wrote in 2022. Um perhaps this shouldn't have been surprising, but Musk has absolutely no idea what he's doing. And this is about the takeover of Twitter and I actually don't even know what's going on Twitter cuz it's private at this point. >> me. I'll I'll I will thank you to not refer to SpaceX that way. Oh, right. It has been acquired by XAI and then XAI has been rolled into SpaceX. So like we're now I guess Gwynne Shotwell now runs runs Twitter. So I guess do do you still agree that it's it's run poorly and >> Oh god, yes. Yes. Yeah. I I agree that I mean, because it Yeah, definitely. It's so I mean, yeah yes. Yes. I mean, yes. I I like I literally feel dirty being specific about that. But when I mean, when there's a lot of there's rampant bad behavior on Twitter. Um community notes, yes. Community notes, great. Everything else pretty much a tire fire. What's your number one thing that is tirefire? Um the number one thing of tire tirefire is that they they they're Oh, we'll tell you this. The reason that we at Oxide don't engage on Twitter, I can't have an Oxide tweet that is sitting next to some of the tweets that I've seen. Oh, you you see Okay. >> it's like the level of racism, the bluntly. It I mean crazy racism, crazy crazy racism, crazy anti-semitism, crazy and crazy and the anti-Islam like just crazy hate. Crazy levels. The kinds of things that you literally could not say and then like oh well it's free speech. It's like it's not free speech. It's like it's it's so deeply offensive and and reflected it's like it's so deeply offensive that I don't want my content to be anywhere near it. I don't want someone to be looking at that and looking at my content. I'm sorry. I I'm just not going to do that. And you live through a bunch of booms and busts and honestly I don't even know exactly if we're in a boom or a bust right now. It's [laughter] There's I mean AI's going crazy and there's all these layoffs. Crazy. But what what advice would you give given your experience through the booms and busts for people who are in today's market? Yeah. And I would say that some of this I do think is endemic. I mean when I first moved out here I'm like oh this is great. My my grandfather was a petroleum engineer and so I kind of grew up with stories of like plants that were going to be built and then shut down or pipelines that were going to be built and then shut down. Like everything tracking the price of oil, right? Very oil the oil patch is very boom and bust. And I'm like oh this is great I'm in software like I'm immune from booms and busts. I remember to thinking this. Like you know you're just like [laughter] and of course looking back at it now you're like oh my god. No no we are they are a bit endemic and they're endemic for reasons that are are somewhat endearing in that like we get so optimistic that we kind of get ahead of ourselves from an optimism perspective. We also get ahead of ourselves from a pessimism perspective. And the And what I would say is like you got to be really careful about listening to other people. People will tell you that this is going to be the future or that thing is dead and you got to be like just be your own judge. I had people tell me that operating systems are done in 1996. I'm really glad I didn't listen to them. Really glad I didn't listen to them. We people tell us you can't start a computer company in 2019. I'm really glad we didn't listen to them. They you I VC firms that say we only fund SaaS. Those VC firms are like well it's like SaaS is struggling right now. Um but I would also say similarly like if SaaS is in your heart as an example where people are like right now people are like SaaS is going to be the the GenAI you the LLM assisted coding is going to really put a squeeze on these SaaS companies. And I think there's like definitely truth to that. But if one's heart is in that you should ignore the ignore the pessimism so or or or treat the pessimism and the optimism with a grain of salt. Be your own judge and be be true to what you want to do. Don't do the things that like well I'm doing this because it's like a hot space. It's like you should do this because I think it's and I'm there are plenty of people for good reason. I mean these things are amazing. I mean the the the the where we are with respect to these LLMs is just bonkers and I you could easily see how it would be very find a great deal of intrinsic appeal to that. But that's the reason that you should be going into these systems is because you think like no no this is this is to to quote Steve Jobs this is the dent I want to kick in the universe. I notice your career almost everything's driven from fulfillment and intrinsic motivation. Is there time in your career that you look at and you say that's the happiest time of my career? Mhm. Yeah. That's a great question. We ask this at Oxide. We ask you when have you been happiest and why? Um for exactly that reason. And I would say that like there it's not the it's not necessarily an era. Um it is it is the it is times that I've been happy. I mean bluntly like I'm pretty happy right now. Oxide's great. Right? And the we have the moments for me and this is an important kind of question for me to reflect on as we're starting Oxide and this is actually due to a friend of mine who um would had been in a startup and he and I were taking a walk in San Francisco as kind of Stephen and I are talking about bad ideas and he was like you really need to answer for yourself why do you want to do this? What what is drawing you to start a company? And cuz it wasn't financial return for me and people should not start a company for financial return. That's just not a good that's not good life advice. Um but what what was drawing me? I'm like well the thing that's drawing me actually is that the moments that have been the happiest have been working on an incredible team. And being on a team that where everyone individually is like I don't think we can pull this off. Like this is actually too difficult to pull off. And then everybody works together, complements one another, and you pull it off. Man, that is a that feeling is extraordinary. And the times that I'd have that I'd had it with E-Tris. I I had had it at Fishworks. I'd had it at Joyent a couple of times with El Ax, with Triton. Um that those times have been like oh that that's what's amazing to me. And so I mean in many ways like the bedrock of Oxide is like what if we found a company around part of the reason we were appealing the larger problem was appealing to us is like we're going to be able to attract an extraordinary team. And we have a team that is it is so uplifting to be on a team. I've always said that the the organizational model for for Oxide is a heist movie. You know, you've got your safe cracker, you've got your getaway driver, your demolitions expert, right? And I think heist movies are great because of that. And like because it's the it's the group coming together, everyone's [snorts] skill sets kind of coming in at exactly the right moment. And man, I love that. I I I love that so much and and Steve loves it. I mean, that's that's part of like our shared bond is he and I are both very, very team oriented and we built a company around that. And Isaac is extraordinary. I It is It is truly, truly extraordinary. It's why we've been able to pull off what we've been able to pull off with the small team that we've got. I think people are kind of shocked at how small a team that that we've got given we've been able to pull off. You know, when you look back on your whole career, is there a particular top regret that you have? >> [laughter] >> I mean, I made an extraordinarily bad hire at Joyent. I think the worst hire in human history. Many people in Silicon Valley will say like, "Well, that can't be the worst hire in human history because I feel I have made the worst hire in human history." And as I tell people like, "Look, I'm happy to give up the give up the crown, but you should know that my guy presented himself under an assumed name and just got off parole for violent felonies from San Quentin. And it's not what made him a bad employee." And usually people are like, "No, no, no, I think you've made the worst hire of all time." I'm like, "Thank you. Thank you very much." Um that was a bad experience. It was also very eye-opening because everything I was doing about hiring was wrong. And we after we rectified that situation and got him out, we stripped hiring to the studs and really rethought hiring from the from the very first principles. That hiring process, a very writing-intensive process, one that really gets to intrinsic motivation, it it became the hiring process at Oxide. And there was a moment where I'm like, "Oh my god, like this extraordinary team at Oxide very much I think related absolutely to the hiring process that we have. This hiring process that I built because I made the worst hiring hire time. I needed that guy. So, you don't regret I don't regret it. I don't I don't regret it. In fact, I'm even like e- to kind of go back into the time machine and remove it, I think Oxide I don't think No, if Oxide makes it. Because I would have continued to hire the way I was hiring, which was naively. It was hiring not rigorously. It was not selecting people based on their values. So, no, I absolutely needed it. So, I think and I view that way of a lot of things that have maybe not gone the right way, but all of those failures were really, really important. And it's very hard to go back and and and you don't want to take those away. I mean, if I go to the time machine, maybe I would take away the the Usenet post and maybe that would I don't know, maybe that wouldn't have any long-lasting consequences, but boy, that's about it. Awesome. And then last question is uh if you can go back to the beginning of your career knowing everything you know now, what advice would you give yourself? Jesus, don't it up. Don't it up. I I I I I would just think because like I feel like so lucky. So, I I've I've been so lucky in so many regards. I've been in the right place at the right time so many different times over, and I've trusted my gut when sometimes that was not the thing that when that was kind of a the contrarian thing to do. I I mean, I would be scared to give myself advice because I would be worried that I would somehow tamper with what I feel has been an extraordinarily lucky career where I have I I've been able to do so much with so many extraordinary people. I've I've I've been blessed with so many incredible colleagues, and I that has been so essential for everything that I've done, and I wouldn't want to do anything to endanger that. So, I'd be going back to my past self, I'd be like, I got nothing to say. Like, just Yeah, I don't want to screw anything up. Like, I just because I I feel that I feel really, really lucky. And it wasn't always because of the because again, it's like I I made mistakes along the way, but the mistakes became load-bearing and important and I wouldn't want to I wouldn't want to not make those mistakes. Those mistakes were really important. Well, doesn't get better than that and thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it. >> Absolutely, thank you for the thoughtful questions. Really great conversation and thanks for doing the the hall of shame here on the on the past tweets. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. >> [laughter] >> Awesome. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the podcast. It's a passion project of mine that I really enjoyed building. Another passion project that I've been working on kind of in secret is building an ergonomic keyboard that I wish existed and I finally have a prototype. So I'd love to show you what we've built. It's ultra low profile and ergonomic and I couldn't find anything like it on the market. So that's why we built it. I'll put a link to the keyboard in the description. You can take a look and learn more about the project there. We could definitely use your support. Also, if you have any feedback from me about the show, I'd love to hear it. Comments on YouTube have led to guests coming on like Ilya Grigorik and David Fowler. I wasn't aware of them until someone dropped a comment. Also, feedback in the comments helped me learn to reduce the number of cliffhangers in the intros. So your comments definitely make a difference. Please keep letting me know what you'd like to see more of in the show and I'll see you in the next episode.