Yaniv Aknin

I like bits, tokens and people. Principal Engineer @attio.

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@FundJudah @tom_sadeh @YoavRavidHe לגמרי.

אני מבין שלכתוב שרשורי הפרכה זה הרבה עבודה, ובכלל בזה שיש א-סימטריה במאמץ בין ייצור שטויות להפרכתן, אבל בגלל שבגאלאווי עסקינן אני חושב שאם @tom_sadeh או @kn_owled_ge יכתבו את השרשור יהיה מאוד מעניין לקרוא (ולרטווט באהבה :).

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@lorgandon Nothing concrete I can share publicly about what we're building, but I'll reach out privately.
More broadly, we launched a podcast about AI Native Software as a problem space, the first episode just went live -
https://t.co/QhlAnm9blV

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

I'm not too active on Twitter/X anymore, but thought this is notable enough I just have to share.
We've taken on a beautiful problem space at Tessl, and I can't wait to show the world what we're working on here.

[Guy Podjarny @guypod]

I’m excited to introduce my new company, @tessl_io!

We’re reimagining software development for the AI era, and helping shape a new software development paradigm we call AI Native Software Development.

The AI tools we use for development today are novel and powerful, and we should all invest in embracing them - but they are only the beginning. They optimize dev workflows created before the LLM revolution, bolting on AI at various spots.
To tap the true potential of AI-powered dev, we need to rethink these workflows from first principles, assuming AI is built in. This is what we mean by AI Native development.

(thread for more)

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@patio11 What are your tips for being a senior new hire? "The new employee handbook at the VP+ level".

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@allspaw @AdaptiveCLabs Yep, this helps put everything in perspective.

re. Google, it says "opnions my own" right there on the profile 😅 It did help *me* understand your Spotify talk better, so thanks again!

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

Hi @allspaw! I saw you recommend diagramming during incident debrief, but not sure if the focus is "diagram relevant systems" or "diagram the flow of the incident" (cf diagram in your thesis).

Did you mean the latter? If yes, any tips for making good incident diagrams? Thanks!

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@allspaw Yes, thanks!

I thought perhaps you're specifically recommending cognitive process tracing for all incidents. Now I understand you recommend diagramming in general as a way to help elicit knowledge (+1 to that), not necessarily CPT or any other particular kind of diagram.

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@bookatmac @patio11 Sure, but "what if I fail to reach L6 and only ever stay at L5" is part of what I include in my "better expected value" intuitive claim.

Megacorp L5s in the bay earn their keep nicely (https://t.co/9XfnGpMpIw has sane median numbers, esp for big companies and lower levels).

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@patio11 I also think the bigcorp crew has higher expected value: higher probability of success, but lower 95th percentile return.

That said, with L8s pulling $1m/y, you can retire quite quickly - anything >$75k/y yields diminishing happiness returns, passive $75k very doable at SWR 3%.

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@patio11 As usual, I read Patrick advice about the startup world and feel they apply to senior levels at bigcorp. An L7/E7/L67 engineer looking to become L8/E8/Partner faces many similar challenges to those of a startup founder (and if they want to make DE/E9, 2nd time founder).

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

When you long-press an Android notification, I wish that in addition to "disable notifications" there'd be an "uninstall this app" option, with easily accessible stats for the developer about how often each is chosen.

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

Totally unrelated: for the past two weeks I had spurious cases where I felt my laptop heating up and battery usage shot through the roof. I installed an applet to show me CPU usage+temperature in real-time, and the problem went away.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If a child trips over in a playground and no adult is around to hear them, does it even hurt?

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

My @SREcon keynote video is out, very grateful to @EmilStolarsky and @msuriar who invited me to speak.

As I said during the talk, I'd love to hear others' thoughts about what SRE is - or should be.

https://t.co/aV8C9sRJRl

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@gwenshap Agreed!

But I'd also say - this is exactly why investment in getting more/better information can be crucial. spend 5 engineers on measurement, and it makes you steer 50 other engineers better.

NB: you can also measure how much to invest in measurement, i.e., information value.

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@devonzuegel Reads a lot like "when art critics get together they talk about content, style, trend and meaning, but when painters get together they talk about where can you get the best turpentine" (probably by Picasso).

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

I'm bummed out I can't attend Jen Wohlner's "SRE & Product Management: How to Level up Your Team (and Career!) by Thinking like a Product Manager" at #SREcon. The title alone is insightful. https://t.co/TdQCAS0Hc0.

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

Important to think about what you want to use SLOs for.

[ed: first thing I tell new teams I work with: what decisions are you trying to make, start with the decision, everything else must follow]

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@nldesai about SLOs at #SREcon: it's fine to use imprecise-but-good-enough tools, but we need to remember to take into account that our observation is simplified, and possibly too simplified and leading us astray.

[ed: resist using known-bad data, refine your measurements]

[Yaniv Aknin @aknin]

@nldesai continued to show a great slide about ways in which we often fail to create good SLOs: things like assuming your API surface (200s/500s) is the only important thing in your service, that all requests are equally important, etc.

[ed: I didn't take a photo fast enough ☹️]