wip 7-years-at-uber
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Motiejus Jakštys
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---
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title: "7 Years at Uber"
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date: 2023-02-10T01:54:23+02:00
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slug: 7-years-at-uber
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---
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This month turned 7 years since I joined Uber. Since it will be the last (a bit
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more on it in the next paragraph), I though it's good to write a retrospective
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on how it looked like.
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On 2022-09-07 it was announced that Uber engineering site will be shut down on
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2023-06-30. Whoever is willing to relocate are welcome to do so. The rest will
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be laid off. The "easiest" offices for relocation are where our organization
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is: Aarhus, Amsterdam, Seattle, New York, Sunnyvale and San Francisco. In my
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case, I have a good life in Vilnius and want to keep it that way. So my days
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are numbered.
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Note that this started *before* the "layoffs of 2023" in the industry. Given
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the conditions (9 months notice!), it does seem like a strategic move, not a
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cost-saving one.
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Chronological summary of my employment and projects at Uber:
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- 2016-02-01: joined in Amsterdam, Marketplace Topology team.
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- 2016-10-30: moved to Vilnius, Lithuania. Joined "Foundatoins Platform" team
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(probably it had a different name back then).
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- 2017-2018: worked on an internal project in infrastructure. Not much to say
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about it, it is gone now.
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- 2019-2021: worked on interesting and important infrastructure work: OS, host
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access, user+groups NSS module and distribution layer. An exploratory
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personal project with the same theme is [turbonss][turbonss].
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- 2022-2023: bootstrapping arm64 for compute. [I wrote a bit about this]({{<
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ref "log/2022/how-uber-uses-zig" >}}). There were many past-2022-April
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developments, and I am working on an official Uber engineering blog about
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this. Should come out in a couple of weeks.
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What was so noteworthy?
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-----------------------
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I met and worked with many amazing people. If I were to single out *one*, that
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would be Dan Heller, who hired me in Amsterdam, and who I've been working on
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and off ever since. Among other things (a book!), he wrote [10
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tenets](https://medium.com/@daniel.heller/ten-principles-for-growth-69015e08c35b),
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which I regularly use and recommend to others. I am not putting a second name
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here, because where do I stop?
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I used to do 2-3 yearly 5-12 day US trips. At the beginning almost exclusively
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San Francisco. After ~5'th trip or so I started to look for things to do during
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the weekends and (quite by accident!) found likeminded individuals who are
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willing to join for crazy drives/flights/weekend trips with me. And oh the fun
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we had together during those short stunts.
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{{<img src="_/2023/7-years-new-mexico.jpg"
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alt="A selfie of two male individuals with two parked cars and a desert in the background."
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caption="One of the best weekend trips with Rick boone (right) and Bob Nugman (not in the picture) in New Mexico just before a hike in the desert."
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class="half right"
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>}}
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The engineering culture is very strong, I learned many valuable lessons: both
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from anecdotes and actual experience of:
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- Built something that nobody needs. I spent my sweat, blood and tears doing
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it. I had a small child at a time, and, unfortunately, sometimes my
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priorities were not chosen wisely. I am older now and hopefully wiser.
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- Built something the organization really needs: an [NSS][nss] module with a
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distribution layer. I saw the steady uptick in use. The edge cases, scaling
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problems, lots of customer support (and documentation improvements). Lessons
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of ossification, client-side metrics, privy of my dependencies.
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- Tried the corporate promotion lottery. 3 times! The third time was
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successful. I originally thought it was a lottery (when I "lost" it). Turns
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out it does not matter how much competence I show, or work I do, on a project
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that does not matter as much for the rest of the organization. I got my
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promotion for NSS and host access, things that others actually needed and
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valued.
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- We did [Crane][crane], god damn it. A 5-year org-wide project that completely
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changed how we do infrastructure. Lots of technical and organizational
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complexities. We had very strong leaders, a clear vision and stamina to keep
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going. Crane was finished[^1] on the week of this blog post.
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- Onboarded a new novel technology (zig) and established a relationship between
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Uber and the Zig Software Foundation. Zig is currently on critical path at
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Uber, *probably* the second most-invoked compiler after Go. I am proud of
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that and hope it will serve as a beachhead for the conservatives. If the
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previous sentence does not make sense, look up ["crossing the chasm
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beachhead"][ddg]. Thanks to my weekend drive during the previous business
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trip (probably my last with Uber), I met Andrew Kelley in his home town
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Portland. We had lunch in the food court and went for an exactly 2-hour hike.
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Besides learning and onboarding new technology, I feel very much part of the
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community.
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{{<img src="_/2023/7-years-portland.jpg"
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alt="Three people eating in a busy foot court outside."
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caption="My last business trip in Portland. From the left: Andrew Kelley, Rick Boone and my manager Rolandas Tamašauskas."
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hint="photo"
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>}}
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The end is near
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---------------
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There is much, much more to cover than the above, I had a great time. Great
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people, experiences and organizational awareness. I even did 5 trips as a
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driver during working hours, and this was encouraged by my manager and the
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team. I am still having a good time, but, given the expiry date, it is
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different: the office is shrinking, colleagues either leave the company or
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relocate to Amsterdam or the US.
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I will take the summer off. I may do some consulting in Autumn. So if you want
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to talk build systems, systems programming or arm64, [contact me]({{< ref
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"contact" >}}).
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[^1]: The last host in the "legacy stack" was decommissioned.
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[nss]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_Service_Switch
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[ddg]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=crossing+the+chasm+beachhead
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[turbonss]: https://git.jakstys.lt/motiejus/turbonss
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[crane]: https://www.uber.com/en-ES/blog/crane-ubers-next-gen-infrastructure-stack/
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