The right place at the right time
A software engineer reflects on career timing, from 1990s skepticism to founding Oxide, advising to follow passion over conventional wisdom.
Bryan Cantrill — Systems software engineer and CTO/co-founder of Oxide Computer Company, writing and speaking about operating systems, hardware–software interfaces, and infrastructure.
15 articles from this blog
A software engineer reflects on career timing, from 1990s skepticism to founding Oxide, advising to follow passion over conventional wisdom.
A critique of tech companies like Oracle and Broadcom that show disdain for customers, contrasting with a philosophy of loving and innovating for customers.
A critique of overusing AI to generate LinkedIn content, arguing it damages authenticity and readability.
Explores the extreme challenges of developing large-scale systems software, using Oxide's software update project as a case study.
Oxide announces a $100M Series B funding round to advance its vision of co-designed hardware and software for on-premises cloud computing.
Reflection on the end of the USENIX Annual Technical Conference, analyzing its shift from industry to academia and the rise of open source systems software.
Oxide shares a four-year retrospective on their unique, uniform compensation model and its impact on hiring and company culture.
An analysis of Intel's strategic failures under Pat Gelsinger, focusing on its history of killing innovative projects like Tofino programmable switches.
A history of the dtrace.conf conference, from its origins as a small 2008 meetup to its evolution into a recurring event for the DTrace community.
A reflection on two decades of blogging, focusing on its adoption at Sun Microsystems and its role in fostering technical transparency and open source collaboration.
Analyzes Paul Graham's 'Founder Mode' concept, exploring how founders maintain vision and avoid management pitfalls through writing-intensive culture.
How a company's 'Demo Friday' culture fosters collaboration, peer recognition, and deep technical learning across hardware and software teams.
Examines the shift from cloud price cuts to server life extensions, and the economic and software challenges of owning vs. renting compute infrastructure.
Analyzes IBM's punch card role in the Holocaust to draw parallels with modern AI risks and corporate ethics in technology.
Oxide announces the first commercial cloud computer, a rack-scale system co-designed in hardware and software, available for purchase.