hox

That, and it would be an FBI van, not an NSA van. But the point holds.

True in some regards, but it’s also incredibly easy to learn how to do things the wrong way, if you have no one to learn from.

Make the changes on a non-active replica database (assuming your database supports replication), then promote the replica to be primary. If you don’t have replicas, the concept of “zero downtime” is really at risk as your primary database becomes a single point of failure.

Twilio | Software Engineering | San Francisco, CA | Onsite or Remote | Full Time

The Messaging Channels team is responsible for building the future of the Twilio Messaging API to embrace new forms of communication, starting with Chat applications (such as Messenger, iMessage, RCS) and digital assistants (such as Alexa).

This unique opportunity will offer engineers direct and highly visible impact towards one of the largest products at Twilio. The Channels team requires high velocity iterations and experiments with a keen eye towards operational stability of existing infrastructure, building microservice-based products in Scala / Java in a highly distributed cloud environment.

https://boards.greenhouse.io/twilio/jobs/875610

You've never been to a grocery store? Avocados are by no means exotic...

Dynamodb experienced a severe outage in us-east in September of 2015, dropping the service to three nines of uptime on just the single event. During the incident there was little-to-no knowledge of when service would be restored, so companies that relied on the service were flying blind.

Such an outage can sometimes be mitigated when operations are internal to a company; but with DynamoDB, one has to build internal failover or implement a complex cross-region replication scheme. The complexity and reliability starts to reduce the attractiveness of the hosted service in general.

Conpletely agreed; using DynamoDB for primary storage suffers from needing to design data models around the underlying technology. This is true for secondary keys as well, and is even constrained by the odd pricing model that DynamoDB follows.

I've been happy using DynamoDB as a large-scale caching layer, but even that only fits very specific use case criteria.

The biggest issue faced with DynamoDB from my perspective has been the problem with any hosted service - that is, the operational stability is in the hands of others entrusted with operating a massive multi-tenant system, and any outage cannot follow your own operational recovery mechanisms unless you plan for failover yourself. And the moment you plan for failover, you need to evaluate why you don't just handle the primary system as well.

you should play dwarf fortress.

Why would you even ask this? Please don't contribute to the ageism debate. My hunch is the programmer was qualified for the job.

Twilio | San Francisco, US | Full Time | Onsite | Messaging software engineers & managers & all the stuff

The Twilio platform enables companies to integrate communications directly into their applications via simple cloud API’s and with on-demand global reach. Twilio is therefore challenged with abstracting away a world of complexity so that our customers can go global without concern for managing a global communications network, carrier integrations and relationships throughout the world.

The Programmable SMS team is hiring engineers and managers to help build the future of asynchronous communication. In addition to helping bridge the complexities of SMS and MMS communication to a simple API, you will also have a vital role in empowering our customers to build messaging solutions beyond the SMS platform.

https://boards.greenhouse.io/twilio/jobs/146183#.WBj6h5MrKRs or https://boards.greenhouse.io/twilio/jobs/147129#.WBj7n5MrKRs

"Sliding into management" might sound like it's an easy path, but it's an entirely different profession. Only those who are interested and have the ability should ever consider this route.

Which means the employee has to realize income tax on the stock immediately under an 81-b or after vesting, correct? That would be an annoying and surprising tax bill, if the employees are mostly familiar with ISOs or NSOs.

This is just from angel list. So essentially just early stage startup salary ranges, presumably?

But in a lot of cases, it is. I prefer a high-functioning communicator with decent programming skills over a top-notch programmer who can't communicate.

Why is that a poor use-case? While the discussion is about "white privilege", the same thought pattern holds true for all bias, be it based in race, age, religion, sexual identification, etc.

> For all the talk about white privilege, I never hear the solutions to it. What is OP supposed to do: not get the job? Not feed his family? How is he supposed to prove that he is aware of his "white privilege"?

Of course he should take the job. The point of this discussion isn't to punish one group in favor of another; its to raise awareness that there is an underlying disadvantage for some types of people that has impacted their ability to get as far as you have.

The goal is to change your frame of mind ever so slightly, so that when you are faced with two identical resumes, one from a 25 year old white male and one from a 35-year old black woman, you don't immediately choose the white male due to "culture fit." You may take the time to stop your colleagues from belittling a marginalized employee rather than ignoring it. You may actively push to create programs that bring underprivileged groups into your organization rather than scare them away.

It's about using the position that you gained through your own hard work to help others who through no fault of their own have to work harder for the same success.

Do you seriously think most of this is based in straight-up hatred of white males? Every time I read something like was in the article, I view it as representative of what the author feels every day. God forbid we feel that way for 5 seconds before we throw it away.

This is just misguided, plain and simple. I am white, male, heterosexual, and from a middle class family, and I absolutely know that my background gives me privilege. It doesn't matter if I earned it or not; I had and still have an advantage over other classes of people, and that is where the hostility is directed.

Instead of taking it personally, use this advantage to eliminate as much privilege as possible. Don't shy away from "leadership," but instead embrace it and make diversity a major focus of your leadership style.

Calling out the underrepresented as "bigots" for being upset is just plain cowardice.

As a hiring manager who has hired from boot camps, I view boot camps simply as an organized medium to encourage career change into tech. They are not unlike undergraduate computer science programs - neither program is required to start a career in tech, but some people need organization and a clear path to get there.

Sometimes a little guidance and networking enables an individual to excel where they might otherwise find themselves lost. Boot camps can provide this stability, as long as the program isn't misguided.

In the end, it's down to the individual to make their career. I would never hire blind from a boot camp.

Don't doubt yourself. There are a lot of great companies hiring Java developers; you don't have to worry yourself about the standard YCombinator group.

Wow. Really? Why is stability a concern? Much of engineering is making solid decisions and fucking sticking with them rather than changing to the latest toolset because that's what hacker news says is the best today. Are you trying to build a product and company, or a blog post?

> A key ingredient here is diversity

And all of the employees are white men. Yep.

And what evidence is there that this advice is sound? The company hasn't been around for the same length of time that the author says is usually when he gets bored. This is just his rambling train of thoughts on the matter, and what is important to him.

dynamo db is affected in the entire region, however, not just a single AZ.

I'd argue that "unlimited users" not really being unlimited is a pretty big detail that matters.

As long as you get the right hiring manager it shouldn't matter. I agree that it is a valid concern of yours, and rightfully so in this hiring climate. But fair hiring managers do exist, and they build some of the best teams around.

I work at Twilio, and we put a lot of effort into providing a hiring experience that removes as many biases as possible. The end result is a solid, diverse workforce that understands that we all come from different walks of life and have different employment expectations. Other companies, such as Stripe, also seem to have similar initiatives in their hiring practices.

It's a concern, but some of us are actively fighting it.

Just hook up a human PIR to that thing. Only $4-5.

Twilio Client (https://www.twilio.com/webrtc) does this through just JavaScript and webrtc, using Twilio as the bridge. granted you need to wire up to the JavaScript, but it's fairly simple.

As for STUN/TURN being painful, Twilio recently released a STUN/TURN service platform: https://www.twilio.com/stun-turn. At least makes things somewhat simpler.

They do. They have lots of documents and guidance on best practice for security. As for code, they started the SELinux project. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux