During Larry Ellison's recent interview with Ed Zander at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley, someone asked Larry Ellison what he thought was the most significant distruptive innovation that Oracle was paying attention to.
Larry Ellison said: "Flash".
Apparently, Oracle is taking flash very seriously. They already have a flash-based Oracle database product that is shipping.
And with the Sun acquisition, Oracle now owns MySQL.
SGI on their demo truck once were showing a database... or was it filesystem... system that know how to keep things in memory, HD or tape, depending on the data usage.
Yeah, I think that's their "nice" way of asking for someone with significant experience there. The problem is that you only want someone with significant experience, not just someone who is "unafraid" of it, because any worthy developer unversed in those projects would be scared to just jump in and start changing random things if the work is ever going to be used.
Both Linux and MySQL are huge, complex systems and if you want someone who can immediately start making usable changes to those systems, you should probably recruit on their respective mailing lists. Developers running in to huge things like Linux and MySQL ad-hoc and making changes causes lots of problems. See Debian's SSH-certificate problem from a year or so back for just one immediate example.
As with any complex platform, it takes a lot of tinkering and experience to know what flies and what doesn't. Those dudes should change their ad away from the cute thing to the serious thing unless they plan on allowing the hire time to figure these things out.
Can we please stop this nonsense about "cofounders" joining a company several months after it is founded? What's wrong with calling a spade a spade and saying "RethinkDB looking for 1st employee"?
Usually I'd 100% agree. But I think the RethinkDB guys are a special case.
They've gotten a huge amount done in the last few months -- in my "On Applying to YC" entry, they were the most notable exception to the "the teams that were moving the fastest at the beginning were also moving the fastest at the end".
But if you remove YC from the equation, RethinkDB probably wouldn't have incorporated yet. (Well, let's pretend that they wouldn't have, at least.) They're just a few months in. Really, I think it's exceedingly rare when "co-founding" teams all start on the same day. There's a period where the company comes together over a few months and the people that are there when it incorporates become codified as the "co-founders". In this case, the RethinkDB guys are early enough on that I think some of that DNA is still being laid down, and the term co-founder isn't completely off.
Is it a fetus or is it a baby? It doesn't matter, it's so early that you can call it what you'd like. I think it's fine that they're looking for co-founders. They could just say "hiring first employee," but sounds like they're looking for a person who will be more involved than that.
You're completely right when you say "nonsense". I'm the founder of StyleFeeder. I've worked for five startups before this. Being a founder is a unique experience characterized by a constant feeling of being angry all the time and being emotionally drained by your work. Don't get me wrong - I love what I do, the people I work with and the company is doing great, but it is fucking hard. And I feel that all the time as 'founder' whereas I never did as an 'employee.'
I've also had conversations with other founders who independently used the exact same language to describe how they feel about their companies.
My simple rule: if there's nothing there when you start, you're a founder.
That threw me off as well. The product idea (and even some code) is in place, the vision done, the roadmap well on it's way, and they've already identified they need to hire.
This is one of those times where I honestly wish I was at a time and place in my life where I could take the leap. RethinkDB does exactly the kind of low level, rethink-the-whole-stack systems development that I've been crazy about from the get-go. Best of luck folks!
I'm a pretty good engineer, and I think I'm better than I am, but I'm pretty sure I'm not smart enough for this gig. Seems like one of the few job descriptions that requires software/hacking skills as well as computer science skills.
RethinkDB seems to implement a functional btree on a log-structured storage. This would involve lots of copying, I wonder what is the performance impact of this (compared to a less pure implementation that copies the modified nodes every thousand updates or so).
Also, the most important feature for SSD storage (no random writes!) is fulfilled by Cassandra / BigTable implementations based on SSTables, I wonder how a btree-based implementation compares to them.
The founders are awesome =] This is a group that you'd want to work with, besides the cool technology challenges and perks of being early in a funded start up.
Certain infrastructure plays really get me wet. This along with push notifications is one of them. We need to start building the infrastructure for the future. If I knew anyone who was qualified for this specifically, I would tell them to drop whatever they are doing and go join the company. Best of luck with the co-founder search and the future.
As a storage engine, are they in any position to fix MySQL's deeply held assumptions that the user is generally not interested in validation or constraints? We should at least begin expecting correct answers if this is the infrastructure of the future.
Flash based storage is better than disk because there is no seek latency (the time for the head to find the location on the rotating platter where the data in interest are stored), which currently is the major bottleneck of databases. Also the transfer rate is faster than disks the prices are falling (not as fast as the prices of disk based-storage, but faster than RAM)
Today a gigabyte of NAND costs less than 1/3rd as much as a gigabyte of DRAM and the gap between the two is growing. ... By the end of 2012, when a gigabyte of NAND costs 1/19th as much as a gigabyte of DRAM, the optimum balance of flash/RAM will be very different.
I think the right person who sees this ad will jump on it. I like the fact this company is doing something systems oriented and not just another web app. Pretty cool to see Scott's startup and this out there. Good job YC. It looks like PG and crew are seeding some folks with potential to make a long term impact on the plumbing of our internetz.
[+] [-] eserorg|16 years ago|reply
Larry Ellison said: "Flash".
Apparently, Oracle is taking flash very seriously. They already have a flash-based Oracle database product that is shipping.
And with the Sun acquisition, Oracle now owns MySQL.
RethinkDB needs to move ahead fast.
[+] [-] praxxis|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcb|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falsestprophet|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookiecaper|16 years ago|reply
Both Linux and MySQL are huge, complex systems and if you want someone who can immediately start making usable changes to those systems, you should probably recruit on their respective mailing lists. Developers running in to huge things like Linux and MySQL ad-hoc and making changes causes lots of problems. See Debian's SSH-certificate problem from a year or so back for just one immediate example.
As with any complex platform, it takes a lot of tinkering and experience to know what flies and what doesn't. Those dudes should change their ad away from the cute thing to the serious thing unless they plan on allowing the hire time to figure these things out.
[+] [-] gcheong|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cperciva|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wheels|16 years ago|reply
They've gotten a huge amount done in the last few months -- in my "On Applying to YC" entry, they were the most notable exception to the "the teams that were moving the fastest at the beginning were also moving the fastest at the end".
But if you remove YC from the equation, RethinkDB probably wouldn't have incorporated yet. (Well, let's pretend that they wouldn't have, at least.) They're just a few months in. Really, I think it's exceedingly rare when "co-founding" teams all start on the same day. There's a period where the company comes together over a few months and the people that are there when it incorporates become codified as the "co-founders". In this case, the RethinkDB guys are early enough on that I think some of that DNA is still being laid down, and the term co-founder isn't completely off.
[+] [-] jmtame|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaidf|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whirlycott1|16 years ago|reply
I've also had conversations with other founders who independently used the exact same language to describe how they feel about their companies.
My simple rule: if there's nothing there when you start, you're a founder.
[+] [-] unknown|16 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kvs|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] numbchuckskills|16 years ago|reply
You're looking for an employee.
[+] [-] mustpax|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmtulloss|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ntoshev|16 years ago|reply
Also, the most important feature for SSD storage (no random writes!) is fulfilled by Cassandra / BigTable implementations based on SSTables, I wonder how a btree-based implementation compares to them.
[+] [-] jmtame|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasonlbaptiste|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prodigal_erik|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antirez|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ntoshev|16 years ago|reply
Today a gigabyte of NAND costs less than 1/3rd as much as a gigabyte of DRAM and the gap between the two is growing. ... By the end of 2012, when a gigabyte of NAND costs 1/19th as much as a gigabyte of DRAM, the optimum balance of flash/RAM will be very different.
http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-ram-flash%20pricing.html
[+] [-] ConceptDog|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavs|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raffi|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Maro|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Maro|16 years ago|reply