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hrktb

I don’t get it.

1 - there is a Mr.No guy but, the author only knows him by reputation

2 - there is a technical problem that seems to revolve around memory

3 - the author has an idea of a solution, she actually tries as people don’t believe her

4 - her solution works, but she is told the “No” guy said “no swap” once a long time ago

Her reaction: “Did I care what he supposedly said? No.”

Why doesn’t she go talk to him ? The “No” guy could have had another solution than raising swap. He could have recognized being wrong, allow swap and learn from it. He could continue say “No” but now the author has an actual experience of it, and not just hearsay and reputation.

It seems like nobody communicates correctly in that company, the author included, and it must hurt in so many places.

Edit: fixed author’s gender, thanks

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> It seems like nobody communicates correctly in that company, the author included, and it must hurt in so many places.

Depending on what you think of Google (or maybe Rackspace, but I think Google's more likely the source of that post), you might be surprised at what company you're talking about.

I think you're spot on but am curious if you'd write that if you knew where they worked.

Rachel's at Facebook

In 2011, a few months before the date of this post, she had quit google.

She left Facebook early this year, IIRC.

Early 2018

It probably was late 2018 then. I don't know the specific dates because I don't work there anymore. All I remember is that I left a couple of months after her (uncorrelated with her leaving) and I left early this year.

I see Google as a super huge organisation with smaller organisations within (I never worked there so that's just an image).

It would be less surprising to have these kind of disfunctionments within giant corps I think. As a consumer, Google's product strategy also mirrors that image (the number of messagings platform they released that ironically don't talk to each other is legendary by now)

In particular, a very small company with a lack of internal communication would fail very fast, so it's less likely IMO.

For the record, the author is a "she".

The way you deal with a "no" guy is to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

Put the responsibility on yourself to make the decision instead of passing it off to others.

These where my thoughts, "No" guy could have a good reason for no swap. no swap might have been a fix for some other issue OP is unaware of, which OP has now reverted. Don't know until you ask...

>no swap might have been a fix

The chances of that are astronomically low. From the article:

>I later found out that all of our older machines had swap enabled. It was just the ones which had been replaced or reinstalled which had been popping up without it, perhaps as part of a policy change. That means it was perfectly valid for us to run with swap on, since most of the machines we owned were using it.

Just an FYI, the poster is female.

you caught like half the male pronouns, there are still a bunch left, it actually makes it more confusing.

It makes it sort of like the sci-fi book Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. You have no idea what the gender of the protagonist is. Perhaps future gender-neutral speech will sound like this instead of choosing a third pronoun.

It’s crazier in languages where adjectives take genders as well. Japanese is blessed in this regard.

(I fixed the remaining bits)

Yes! I listened to a good bit of that audiobook, but it was such a pain having to puzzle out who was doing/saying things. I eventually gave up.

I mean... it was an interesting idea, writing a book that way because the characters sexes shouldn’t really matter. But in practice, it was a mess.

It was easier to follow in the written form.

This is my experience too. Dealing with "no men" is usually far easier in person.

1. The Mr. No guy was clearly well known for actions that involved no personal action but were publicly visible, e.g. commit messages.

2. Said problem was OOMs on machines with swapoff

3. Yup

4. It's pretty easy to get someone's measure from reputation if you have multiple independent sources - enough to fully distrust Mr. No's judgment. If this person is high enough in the chain that she's getting his orders second-hand, it also may not be very easy or fast to get his attention or a face-to-face meeting. So she made her change, publicly stated she was making it, and allowed him to countermand her (with a snarky "he can have my pager" to force him to justify his decision if he wanted to reverse the decision).

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