Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31613004

Points: 81

# Comments: 77

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30366555

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27899954

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Hey there! We're Balena, a startup laser focused on a single goal: enabling every developer to succeed on the new frontier of Edge/IoT computing and building fleets of devices that work as reliably as servers in a datacenter. In the process of creating this bridge, we've built many tools and services, from cloud services (balenaCloud) to desktop utilities (balenaEtcher), to operating systems (balenaOS), single-board computers (balenaFin), and much much more.

Engineers at Balena have the ability to work on issues and features from inception to deployment, from talking to users to solving architectural riddles to learning new technologies as needed. Engineers are empowered to take on a user problem and chase down its solution to any part of the stack, working alone or coordinating other engineers in service of improving users' lives, without regard for internal silos or barriers.

Full description here: https://apply.workable.com/balena/j/8BF6036D98/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22893839

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

https://insideevs.com/news/383171/porsche-taycan-delivery-de...

Balena is laser focused on a single goal: to enable mainstream developers to succeed on the new frontier of Edge/IoT computing in building fleets of devices that work as reliably as servers in a datacenter. In the process of creating this bridge, we've had to build many and varying tools and services, from cloud services (balenaCloud) to desktop utilities (balenaEtcher), to operating systems (balenaOS), single-board computers (balenaFin), and much much more.

The role of product engineer at Balena is for a truly full stack engineer, ranging from talking to users to solving architectural riddles to learning new technologies as needed. Product engineers are empowered to take on a user problem and chase down its solution to any part of the stack, working alone or coordinating other engineers in service of improving users' lives, without regard for internal silos or barriers.

The ideal product engineer has a wide variety of background experience and isn't afraid to learn to use more technologies when needed, but also is comfortable deferring to experts within the team when their particular skills are required.

If you think this role is for you, please let us know of a problem you see in one or more of our products, and how you would improve it. All who submit a non-trivial answer to this challenge are guaranteed to have an interview with a member of our leadership team.

Drop us a line at producteng@balena.io with a CV and your answer to the question, as well as any other relevant info that makes you particularly suitable for the role. We appreciate non-standard backgrounds and encourage you to focus your material on the substance and not on formalities. We look forward to speaking with you!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21203646

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

All these flaws you talk about on other cars are not accidents. Everyone is running up against the same fundamental tradeoffs, and only one company has done the insane optimization of everything to get to the other side. It's not a matter of just deciding to do so. The nio example you mention for instance, Tesla famously was initially planning to use the lotus Elise body for the roadster, but ultimately had to redesign essentially every part to get to production, since the weight changes invalidated all the assumptions of the original.

Yes, they're not the best at every single thing. But producing the safest car ever for a newcomer is pretty nuts. Producing the most efficient electric car ever is pretty nuts. Producing the best OTA story ever is nuts. Producing the most advanced driver assist feature is pretty nuts. Doing all these things together requires explanation. It can't just be "oh, the others just made bad choices".

[1]: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/06/auto-industry-expert-in...

[1]: https://insideevs.com/news/356489/tesla-model-3-safety/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20625228

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

The pricing model is along the lines of "essentials is for people looking for a better OTA solution whereas microservices is for people who consider their devices mini-servers". So it's more a difference of perspective of the customer that allows us to group features and give more to the one crowd without alienating the other crowd with high prices. Not sure if that makes sense.

Having built a similar bespoke stack in the past, Balena would have been a steal! It gives you the development, provisioning, build & deployment, configuration, management, and even remote debugging workflows out of the box. On top of that, it's built to require web/cloud developer skills, not embedded skills.

To do that, we have created several companies worth of infrastructure, from a cross-architecture container build system, to a bespoke OS supporting many device types, customized docker engine for embedded use cases, container deltas for bandwidth saving, etc. Even simple things like "how do I make sure my device gets DNS in an arbitrary home network" are incredibly tricky, and balenaOS gets it right almost always.

Which brings me to my next point. We are fanatical about support. We take responsibility for our customers succeeding, which means we constantly find and improve sources of friction. Using Balena gets you that backup team, but most importantly gets you hooked up to the flow of improvements we make all the time. Cloud companies charge $15 per server per month for various devops type services. We do very similar things but for devices that are smaller, more diverse, in tougher conditions, with less reliable networking, and ask for just $1 per device per month.

In other words, when I was in the shoes of our customers, producing even a fraction of the value and piece of mind that Balena provides in house took a lot of work, which was money, and that's not accounting for the time and risk of not getting there in the end. If I found myself in that situation again, knowing Balena and not using it would essentially be negligent. Our most fanatical customers are those who have tried to build something like it themselves, because infrastructure is so easy to underestimate.