Vaibhav Verma

I work on backend systems, infra, and AI at @nectarsocialai. Agentic SWE enthusiast. ex-@scale_AI ex-@Cruise ex-@Etsy.

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@ShopifyEng @tobi @Shopify @burkelibbey Why was nix adoption so important? How do you train thousands of engineers to understand it?

Aren’t they going to get stuck wanting to install some new piece of software that’s isn’t nicely packaged in nix?

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@ClickHouseDB We've got a clickstack provided OTLP endpoint!

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

I'm at ClickHouse open house in SF today.

Excited to meet people behind a technology I deeply admire.

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@ClickHouseDB Eager to see whats coming down the pipe with ClickStack.

This slide shows up on our observability bill every month and we've been trying to get costs under control.

@ClickHouseDB

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@DJ_CURFEW Yes, 10x engineers can review their own agent's code faster than human code. But who reviews the 10x engineer's code before it goes out to prod?

Are you removing mandatory code reviews? Are you operating on a trust-based model where reviewers stamp changes?

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@shiyam_kashfiq @nectarsocialai We use three datastores - Postgres, Clickhouse, Turbopuffer.

The combination lets us handle ingestion at a large scale and support a wide variety of transactional, search and analytics use cases without the overhead of a sharded setup.

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

It's been super fun to ramp up to the engineering problems at @nectarsocialai .

Many problems around DB scaling, distributed systems, product development, and running agentic AI workloads at scale.

If you're tired of big tech chaos and want to build with a small, focused team, join us!

[Farah Uraizee @farahura]

3 yrs ago I quit @Meta to build @nectarsocialai with my sister.

last week we closed $30M with @MenloVentures @GVteam @trueventures. we ship for @LiquidDeath @figma @elfcosmetics @getgraza + 100s more.

here's the reality happening beneath our feet:
products are commoditizing. software is commoditizing. the only thing left is how you show up.

distribution is the new moat. relationships are the compounding asset. brand is the only signal a consumer still trusts.

you either touch every customer (you can't) or you build the system that does (you must).

ai slop ads are not the way to get there. agents that operate past human throughput to scale the relationships are.

that's the new go to market we're building at nectar.

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@lennysan @nectarsocialai is hiring Senior PMs in Palo Alto. The company is small and on a great trajectory. We build AI that helps brands understand their customers across social media platforms.

You would get the chance to work under @misbahuz

DM if interested

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@brianluidog What does the divergence look like?

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

We've been dealing with a high volume of on-call incidents at work 🥲 Growing pains at a small startup.

This page in the Google SRE book is 💰:
https://t.co/Sobjrr7Hhy

It breaks down why naive alert thresholds fail - error rates, sustained duration, etc. We've tried them all and struggled to cover a wide product surface area.

The multi-window burn rate approach feels like a big unlock. Going to implement it and see how it holds up in production. Wish us luck!

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@nabeelnectar @AMuhammad68250 @AnasUsman611947 @Nectar245946 Hi

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@nichochar @graphite i just started using it two weeks and I'm a big fan.

It's a big upgrade over GitHub UI. Super fast and makes stacked diffs approachable without rebase hell.

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@nimivashi15 Sanaa Cafe in SOMA?

[david friedberg @friedberg]

California started with the Gold Rush and might end with the Golden Exit.

it has been underreported how much wealth has left CA because of the asset seizure tax being proposed.

a private poll was conducted amongst affected individuals a few days ago and 80-90% surveyed said they have already left CA in 2025 or will leave in 2026 if the ballot measure looks likely to pass.

$2-2.5T of assets gone, representing about $20B of annual revenue for the state government. and likely hundreds of thousands of jobs now at risk.

less reported is the bigger exodus underway from folks who are NOT directly affected but worry (as they should) that this law will quickly transition from billionaires to everyone else...

the initiative actually gives CA legislators the right to take anyone's post-tax assets anytime in the future based on a majority vote. this isn't about billionaires. it's a new "tax system" that simply destroys private property rights in America.

all private property is now public property.
even after paying your taxes, it's not legally your property anymore. it's the government's, you're just borrowing it.
legislators will decide what you get to keep and temporarily use each year.

countless founders, CEOs, and other business leaders are actively looking to move their companies out of state. not just tech, not just AI, not just billionaires, but the core engine of California's prosperity since 1847 is unraveling.

and here is how this initiative risks unraveling America:
- ~10 states have explicit or implicit prohibitions against an asset seizure tax...
- individuals affected in CA (and other states trying to do the same) will move to these states that endow private property rights.
- CA already has a $20-30B annual budget deficit, an unfunded ~$1T pension liability for public employees/unions, and $500B of debt outstanding. the state can not afford to borrow much more and will launch more asset seizures to meet its obligations.
- asset seizures will first transition to "millionaires" and eventually to the entire middle class as more asset seizures drive more people to leave the state.
- the deficit, debt, and job loss will spiral. the Golden Exit.
- no US state has ever declared bankruptcy. in addition to CA, dozens of other states face similar fiscal crises - legislators promised future benefits that can't be paid or theft and waste have been allowed to run rampant and unabated for years.
- struggling states will eventually request federal government assistance, as they always have in times of fiscal crisis, effectively "federalizing state debt".
- states not in crisis will declare "enough is enough", individuals in those states will refuse to pay their federal taxes (why pay for other people's mistakes?), some states may try to secede from the Union, and a constitutional and civil crisis will erupt.

this may seem far-fetched but it is the obvious domino effect of selectively deleting private property rights for some people in some states.

i am not a billionaire and this CA bill does not affect me, but i care about the country and the state of CA. i want both to thrive. it's obvious that there are people in CA in desperate need of support and assistance, and inequities may exist that need to be rectified, but eliminating private property rights is the wrong path for everyone.

a few alternatives to consider first:
1) with a $350B annual budget, CA can cut programs that result in theft and little-to-no benefit for citizens. $50B per year is likely recoverable.
2) if more taxes are needed, tax loans against unrealized capital gains (very few objections will arise), eliminate tax-free rollover of certain appreciated assets (real estate industry will fight), create a step up in basis on inheritance (some will fight but most will support). likely $10Bs of incremental revenue can be realized.
3) restructure all public retirement programs from Defined Benefit to Defined Contribution. eliminating the unfunded retirement liabilities ($1T+) will be the release valve on the future the state so desperately needs.

we must address what ails us without dividing and destroying our state, our nation, our home.

ignore the rhetoric, these are the facts.

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@adamwathan Brave of you to share this and it is absolutely bewildering that the business is not growing during a time when the popularity of your software has grown to insane levels.

If any of your teammates are looking for a new role, please don't hesitate to DM

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@ibuildthecloud What systems do you think are necessary to replace or reduce engineers?

Which systems have led you to have this opinion?

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@stevesi @cremieuxrecueil Is your take that governments do not need to design the tax system to optimize for growth?

How do we bring prosperity to an entire society without overall economic growth?

[Vaibhav Verma @vwritescode]

@svembu Would you say that companies have a responsibility to encrypt or to avoid collecting excessive data from their customers to help with these promises too?