Joy Gao
@joygao.bsky.social
software engineer at ClickHouse; prev: Figma, WePay
long-form ✍️: https://expertofobsolescence.substack.com
long-form ✍️: https://expertofobsolescence.substack.com
Reposted by Joy Gao
One thing I'm excited about with The Consensus is giving you a hub to find interesting 1) jobs and 2) events going on in systems programming.
February 3, 2026 at 12:18 AM
One thing I'm excited about with The Consensus is giving you a hub to find interesting 1) jobs and 2) events going on in systems programming.
I will be speaking at the Monster Scale Summit this year to talk about ClickPipes. Hope to see you there! 😊
January 19, 2026 at 10:24 PM
I will be speaking at the Monster Scale Summit this year to talk about ClickPipes. Hope to see you there! 😊
Reposted by Joy Gao
If you're curious what it takes to run #AdventOfCode every year, I have a talk called Advent of Code: Behind the Scenes that you might enjoy: youtu.be/uZ8DcbhojOw
Keynote: Advent of Code, Behind the Scenes - Eric Wastl
YouTube video by CppNorth
youtu.be
December 3, 2025 at 11:10 AM
If you're curious what it takes to run #AdventOfCode every year, I have a talk called Advent of Code: Behind the Scenes that you might enjoy: youtu.be/uZ8DcbhojOw
Reposted by Joy Gao
"eBPF is becoming the strategic platform of choice for infrastructure teams"
This line from latest eBPF Foundation report written by Andrew Green is going to be doing a lot of work in the next decade.
ebpf.foundation/new-state-of...
This line from latest eBPF Foundation report written by Andrew Green is going to be doing a lot of work in the next decade.
ebpf.foundation/new-state-of...
New “State of eBPF” Report Explores How Modern Infrastructure Teams Are Building on Kernel-Level Programmability – eBPF
New eBPF Foundation research shows that eBPF has become the strategic platform of choice for infrastructure teams across networking, security, observability, FinOps, and AI/LLM workloads. The eBPF…
ebpf.foundation
December 3, 2025 at 3:00 PM
"eBPF is becoming the strategic platform of choice for infrastructure teams"
This line from latest eBPF Foundation report written by Andrew Green is going to be doing a lot of work in the next decade.
ebpf.foundation/new-state-of...
This line from latest eBPF Foundation report written by Andrew Green is going to be doing a lot of work in the next decade.
ebpf.foundation/new-state-of...
Happy advent of code month!
December 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Happy advent of code month!
Nobody:
Me: (in k8s land) if a replicaSet contains only one pod, is it still a *replica* set?
Me: (in k8s land) if a replicaSet contains only one pod, is it still a *replica* set?
November 19, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Nobody:
Me: (in k8s land) if a replicaSet contains only one pod, is it still a *replica* set?
Me: (in k8s land) if a replicaSet contains only one pod, is it still a *replica* set?
This is so cliche but it is also so true — every time I grow in life/career is when I find myself in a situation I’m not ready/comfortable with.
I love routine, but have to keep reminding myself to break it from time to time.
I love routine, but have to keep reminding myself to break it from time to time.
November 14, 2025 at 7:57 PM
This is so cliche but it is also so true — every time I grow in life/career is when I find myself in a situation I’m not ready/comfortable with.
I love routine, but have to keep reminding myself to break it from time to time.
I love routine, but have to keep reminding myself to break it from time to time.
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.
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.
October 30, 2025 at 6:09 AM
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.
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.
This is great and to-the-point.
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
intro-data-system.xiangpeng.systems
October 30, 2025 at 2:54 AM
This is great and to-the-point.
Best of OSS -- when your customer find new ways optimize your Postgres ingestion pipeline.
github.com/PeerDB-io/pe...
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
October 28, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Best of OSS -- when your customer find new ways optimize your Postgres ingestion pipeline.
github.com/PeerDB-io/pe...
github.com/PeerDB-io/pe...
Reposted by Joy Gao
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...
adventofcode.com/2025/about#f...
adventofcode.com/2025/about#f...
October 22, 2025 at 2:32 AM
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...
adventofcode.com/2025/about#f...
adventofcode.com/2025/about#f...
Quite optimistic about this project and the great people behind it.
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!
Thanks for building durable workflows with @dbos.dev. Full speed ahead - Java release coming soon!
October 26, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Quite optimistic about this project and the great people behind it.
Really great opportunity for those who want to learn more about sync engines / building real time applications.
October 25, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Really great opportunity for those who want to learn more about sync engines / building real time applications.
Now that we have all retreated from Monday’s world wide war rooms… anybody beat this chaos monkey on hard mode?
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…
Just kidding, just kidding…
October 22, 2025 at 11:29 PM
Now that we have all retreated from Monday’s world wide war rooms… anybody beat this chaos monkey on hard mode?
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 😆
The strongly typed prefer routines, structures, and consistency; the weakly typed prefer and thrive in a dynamically changing environment.
Yes I am strongly typed 😆
October 17, 2025 at 6:00 AM
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 😆
The strongly typed prefer routines, structures, and consistency; the weakly typed prefer and thrive in a dynamically changing environment.
Yes I am strongly typed 😆
We are hiring an EM for the database integration team (ClickPipes) at ClickHouse!
job-boards.greenhouse.io/clickhouse/j...
job-boards.greenhouse.io/clickhouse/j...
Engineering Manager - Database Integrations
United States (remote)
job-boards.greenhouse.io
September 30, 2025 at 11:01 PM
We are hiring an EM for the database integration team (ClickPipes) at ClickHouse!
job-boards.greenhouse.io/clickhouse/j...
job-boards.greenhouse.io/clickhouse/j...
Great blogpost summarizing a paper that I now must read.
[new blog post]
Supporting our AI overlords: Redesigning data systems to be Agent-first
muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/09/supp...
Supporting our AI overlords: Redesigning data systems to be Agent-first
muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/09/supp...
Supporting our AI overlords: Redesigning data systems to be Agent-first
This Berkeley systems group paper opens with the thesis that LLM agents will soon dominate data system workloads. These agents, acting on b...
muratbuffalo.blogspot.com
September 18, 2025 at 7:09 AM
Great blogpost summarizing a paper that I now must read.
One of my favourite things about working at ClickHouse (and storage systems in general) is we get to nerd out on performance optimizations constantly.
September 10, 2025 at 7:47 PM
One of my favourite things about working at ClickHouse (and storage systems in general) is we get to nerd out on performance optimizations constantly.
Reposted by Joy Gao
Woke up this morning to find my gophers playing Go. Huh.
September 10, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Woke up this morning to find my gophers playing Go. Huh.
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.
September 9, 2025 at 3:49 AM
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.
Reposted by Joy Gao
[new blog post]
Disaggregation: A New Architecture for Cloud Databases
muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/09/disa...
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
September 8, 2025 at 9:26 PM
[new blog post]
Disaggregation: A New Architecture for Cloud Databases
muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/09/disa...
Disaggregation: A New Architecture for Cloud Databases
muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2025/09/disa...
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…
Just kidding, just kidding…
September 7, 2025 at 10:32 PM
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…
Just kidding, just kidding…
Underrated comment 😂
it’s like if Haskell and Rocq had a baby but the baby dressed like Go
August 30, 2025 at 4:24 AM
Underrated comment 😂