> From the inside, is Oxide a place where a fresh grad can actually be useful? Or is the "complexity floor" of hardware/software co-design so high that you really just need a few decades of experience to be effective?

I believe Bryan spoke about this publicly on podcast episodes in the past but the answer really is no and yes. Generally, the things we're working on at Oxide require a both depth and breadth of knowledge in various areas of the stack that early career folks don't yet possess. We also have limited bandwidth to assist early career folks because of our small company size. I know this sounds like gate keeping, but mostly everyone at Oxide wants to support early career folks. Unfortunately, the general consensus has been that we just don't have the bandwidth for it and it would be a disservice to a candidate to hire them and not support them the way they would need to be supported. That being said, we're getting bigger and will likely have more bandwidth to change this stance as time passes. If you see a role you'd be a good fit for I do recommend applying. The application process itself is valuable for the applicant.

Disclaimer: I work at Oxide.

To be honest there's really no secret sauce in there. It's primarily how to get started with agents, when to abandon your context and start anew, and advice on models, monitoring cost, and prompting. This is not to diminish the value of the information as it's good information written by great colleagues. I just wanted to note that most of the information can be obtained from the official AI provider documentation and blog posts from AI boosters like Thorsten Ball.

There are things in life that have high risks of harm if misused yet people still use them because there are great benefits when carefully used. Being aware of the risks is the key to using something that can be harmful, safely.

Here's what I can knowingly share. We sell full-rack and half-rack SKUs today coming in at 1024/16TiB and 2048/32TiB of CPU cores and RAM respectively. Disk varies depending on the drive size. On top of the cost of the rack you'll pay an annual percentage for support and that's it. No software licensing or other weird fees.

We'll ultimately ship a next-generation rack to take advantage of changing constraints (e.g., physical form factor, power requirements) and we'll provide a mechanism for upgrading to that generation of rack as well. Likely, in the form of multi-rack connectivity to move workloads or perhaps even financial incentives to purchase the latest and greatest.

I don't work on the hardware side at Oxide so I don't have further details to share. Great question!

Selling a customer a contract for on-premises computing and giving them a fake metal box and SaaS is borderline unethical depending on the terms of said contract. I understand the sentiment of that point though. There are many reasons a customer chooses to own instead of rent. Legal requirements, financial incentives, and even control over performance to name a few.

On-premises computing was so good that the cloud providers packaged it up and sold it back to people at a premium that could only ever be rented. The finances of that model don't make sense to many businesses as they look to reignite their on-premises computing with the modernity of the cloud providers. That's where Oxide shines in my opinion- being able to have on-premises computing that combines the efficiencies of the hyper scalers with an API-driven approach to managing resources. We take that a step further by building hardware and software in-house for additional benefits such as power efficiency, control over the networking stack, additional telemetry, etc.

No hiring process will ever be perfect but at least, as the experience mentioned previously touched on, the candidate is left with an artifact that they can then use in future applications. Candidates walk away having learned something about themselves. Open roles are also limited, applying for such roles is also optional, and it's up to each candidate to decide how much time and effort they wish to put into the materials.

We're humans here at Oxide too, and we're doing the best we can to ensure the hiring process is fair and humane as well.

I'm not impressed with Apple as of late.

I'm actively aware of the regression towards the mean and discuss that with my peers frequently. It helps me prevent atrophy of my skills while reaping the benefits of AI. Put another way, there are people out there using AI to punch well above their weight while not actually being a good fighter in the first place. If you're a good fighter are you going to let an inexperienced fighter step into the rings that you're meant to step into?

Those that blindly post @grok please help or use AI for everything will likely experience some level of atrophy in their critical thinking skills. I would advise those people to think about this and adjust course.

I'm on a iPhone 13 Pro Max right now that's still doing well but starting to show battery capacity age. Plus, it's the only non-USB-C device I own so I'd be happy to get rid of it.