Joy Gao
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao
@joygao.bsky.social
3.5K followers 210 following 170 posts
software engineer at ClickHouse; prev: Figma, WePay long-form ✍️: https://expertofobsolescence.substack.com
expertofobsolescence.substack.com
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 8d
Just like how human are bad at writing correct concurrent code, we are also bad at solving concurrent problems in our lives (both leads to *panic*, lol)

So the advice of only introduce concurrency if you must applies as life advice too: solve one problem at a time, multitask only if you must.
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 8d
This is great and to-the-point.
xuanwo.io Xuanwo @xuanwo.io · 9d
For everyone interested in data infra, want to get a quick sense of how big data works, how data systems are designed, and what the tradeoffs are, start with this share from @xiangpeng.systems, really nice intro!

intro-data-system.xiangpeng.systems
joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 10d
Best of OSS -- when your customer find new ways optimize your Postgres ingestion pipeline.

github.com/PeerDB-io/pe...
add support for CTID bucketing with snapshotNumPartitionsOverride by jgao54 · Pull Request #3624 · PeerDB-io/peerdb
PeerDB supports parallel snapshotting to optimize initial load time. To do this there are two ways today: we compute the total row count in a table, bucket the data evenly by watermark column -- ...
github.com
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Reposted by Joy Gao
was.tl
Eric Wastl @was.tl · 16d
Hello, friends! After 10(!) years of #AdventOfCode, I've made some changes to preserve my sanity: there will be 12 days of puzzles each December (still starting Dec 1) and there is no longer a global leaderboard. Read more:
adventofcode.com/2025/about#f...
adventofcode.com/2025/about#f...
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 11d
Quite optimistic about this project and the great people behind it.
qianli.dev Qian Li @qianli.dev · 12d
I care more about helping developers build reliable systems than chasing vanity metrics such as GitHub stars. Still, seeing the DBOS Python repo reach 1K 🌟 makes me smile.

Thanks for building durable workflows with @dbos.dev. Full speed ahead - Java release coming soon!
Screenshot of https://github.com/dbos-inc
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 12d
LLM output much?
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 12d
Really great opportunity for those who want to learn more about sync engines / building real time applications.
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 13d
Encountered multiple issues on one roundtrip with BA:
- connection ticket not available for download
- failure to check-in (blank page) after filling out required personal details
- created BA account for inflight wifi, and then unable to login afterwards

Makes a lot of sense now wrt outsourcing.
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 13d
:(
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 15d
Now that we have all retreated from Monday’s world wide war rooms… anybody beat this chaos monkey on hard mode?
joygao.bsky.social Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 7
Netflix had it all wrong, don’t waste engineering resources to build your own chaos monkey infrastructure, just put production on AWS us-east-1 and you get chaos monkey for free.

Just kidding, just kidding…
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 21d
People are like programming languages, with personalities on a spectrum between strongly typed and weakly typed.

The strongly typed prefer routines, structures, and consistency; the weakly typed prefer and thrive in a dynamically changing environment.

Yes I am strongly typed 😆
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · 25d
open.substack.com/pub/theshado...
An Existential Guide to: Making Friends
Friends Friends What Glorious Friendly Friends!
open.substack.com
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 30
We are hiring an EM for the database integration team (ClickPipes) at ClickHouse!

job-boards.greenhouse.io/clickhouse/j...
Engineering Manager - Database Integrations
United States (remote)
job-boards.greenhouse.io
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 18
Great blogpost summarizing a paper that I now must read.
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 10
A secondary but equally important reason is there are few things that are table-stake — correctness, reliability, security.
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 10
One of my favourite things about working at ClickHouse (and storage systems in general) is we get to nerd out on performance optimizations constantly.
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Reposted by Joy Gao
filippo.abyssdomain.expert
Filippo Valsorda @filippo.abyssdomain.expert · Sep 10
Woke up this morning to find my gophers playing Go. Huh.
A plush purple gopher and a plush red gopher are playing Go on a wooden board. The purple gopher, on the left, has an open tin of white stones, one on its nose, with a few placed on the board. The red gopher on the right stands next to a tin full of black stones, with a few placed on the board. A large, black-and-white print of a city skyline hangs on the wall behind them. A copy of The Onion sits next to the board.
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 9
Engineering is hard, but really given its deterministic nature, I always find communication a harder skill to master.
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 9
Similarly, I think it's important to voice up (respectfully) when someone's communication style does not line up with yours. Often they are not aware of it.
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 9
I find it impossible to avoid these scenarios (because the surface area is so large), but what has helped me is to be aware that this difference exists, and when misunderstanding happens, respect the others' feedback and handle it based on their preferences.
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 9
Misunderstanding can and will happen, and often it's a *cultural* difference without anyone being on the right or wrong side.
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 9
When working on an international team, one thing I learned is that interpersonal communication and team culture is navigated very differently from when the entire team comes from a similar cultural background.
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Reposted by Joy Gao
muratdemirbas.bsky.social
Murat (Distributolog) @muratdemirbas.bsky.social · Sep 8
[new blog post]

Disaggregation: A New Architecture for Cloud Databases

muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/09/disa...
Disaggregation: A New Architecture for Cloud Databases
This short VLDB'25 paper  surveys disaggregation for cloud databases. It has several insightful points, and I found it worth summarizing.  T...
muratbuffalo.blogspot.com
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 8
Oooo, you get more chaos testing, *and* for a fraction of the cost of AWS. This is the way 🥇
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joygao.bsky.social
Joy Gao @joygao.bsky.social · Sep 7
Netflix had it all wrong, don’t waste engineering resources to build your own chaos monkey infrastructure, just put production on AWS us-east-1 and you get chaos monkey for free.

Just kidding, just kidding…
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