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On Fri­day of last week, a new post I wrote for my employer (Nasuni) went up — “Encryp­tion Keys, User Data and Sub­poe­nas”. In that post, I got to out­line, in clear “non slip­pery” lan­guage how my employer man­ages encryp­tion keys, what data they have access to, etc. One of my favorite quotes:

If a cus­tomer has pro­vided their own encryp­tion key(s) — Nasuni, or the cloud provider, do not have those keys, and can not pro­vide them as part of a sub­poena or other legal process. We can not decrypt or access your data. We can not sup­ply a key which we do not have. This is not pol­icy or trust level pro­tec­tion: It’s impossible.

We offer auto-generated and escrowed keys as a con­ve­nience to the user — the ben­e­fits of hav­ing this fea­ture out­weigh the cost. A user or com­pany who knows noth­ing about encryp­tion keys and key escrow can still have strong data secu­rity and instan­ta­neous dis­as­ter recov­ery, they can install a Filer in min­utes and imme­di­ately be up and running.

Not only was I able to work with the team to get this post up — for those of you won­der­ing how many lay­ers of approval, legal cleans­ing or other “typ­i­cal fil­ter­ing” it went through — the answer is “none” (or close to it). We value hon­esty and being forth­right above just about every­thing else, and so posts like this — or ones in the past on “5 Weak­nesses of Cloud Stor­age Gate­ways”, “Cloud Stor­age Isn’t Cheap: How the Price of Cloud Stor­age Com­pares to Tra­di­tional Stor­age”, “What’s the Cost of a GB in the Cloud?” which are bru­tally hon­est and frankly, would prob­a­bly never see the light of day in larger com­pa­nies are actu­ally encour­aged, not dis­cour­aged. Does that mean that every lit­tle thing that could be con­tro­ver­sial goes up? Obvi­ously not, but we, as a team, have no prob­lems  being hon­est with our­selves, our users and doing what we feel is the Right Thing.

It’s one of those posts that makes me exceed­ingly proud to be part of a team that con­tin­u­ally sur­prises me. Hence the actual sub­ject of this post. I’m one of those lucky peo­ple who get to do some­thing I really do love — actu­ally, mul­ti­ple things — with a team that sur­prises me on a daily basis. Of course we’re a VC backed startup which means we’re smaller and more inti­mate then most com­pa­nies many peo­ple work for, and in turn means our inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships are that much more ampli­fied and inten­si­fied. You don’t get into bed with a startup unless you know and trust the peo­ple (or at least a few of them peo­ple) involved — trust is an fun­da­men­tally crit­i­cal com­po­nent — it’s akin to get­ting married.

I know — you’ve prob­a­bly heard stuff like this before echo­ing from the west coast / sil­i­con val­ley area — about how star­tups are mag­i­cal lands of uni­corns and fairies and how you’re going to get a bajil­lion dol­lars data min­ing the social rela­tion­ships of some poor floor wax­ing guy in south dakota — but these “fam­i­lies” — these star­tups where you can have these solid rela­tion­ships with those you work with, and do mul­ti­ple things exist well out­side the sil­i­con val­ley echo cham­ber (for exam­ple, we’re Mass­a­chu­setts based). You just have to look.

Sure, there’s a lot of hype in tech about star­tups and get­ting rich quick — but hav­ing worked through the dot-com bub­ble, I’ve found that I value the team (the fam­ily) and the project much more than chas­ing down the lat­est IPO. The fact is, despite being at a startup that could fail at any moment (and many do) I feel more secure in my role, and with my pay­check than I would filed away in a cube at Mega­Corp. I feel more secure in that I am not just another cog in a machine, and that it is within my power to change the face and direc­tion of the com­pany every sin­gle day.

Con­sid­er­ing I’ve worked mainly for star­tups since I was 18 (some of which got acquired into much big­ger com­pa­nies) I have a bit of con­fir­ma­tion bias, admit­tedly. Sure, I could also find poten­tially even more free­dom and go free­lance, and build rela­tion­ships that way, and sure — there’s tons of peo­ple very happy work­ing for mas­sive com­pa­nies, but right now, despite hav­ing one kid, and another on the way — I’m just not that type of per­son. I thrive on being able to go into work and find a new chal­lenge every day, I thrive on try­ing on dif­fer­ent roles, branch­ing out into new things. Star­tups — espe­cially ones where you trust those you work with, and those peo­ple sup­port you and work with you are an excel­lent place to do these things.

For exam­ple — for some time now I’ve been lead­ing the User Inter­face project for the prod­uct — we have an embed­ded web-based UI that allows for the man­age­ment and admin­is­tra­tion of the device we sell (a data protection/storage device). Over two years ago, I was pri­mar­ily focused on con­cur­rency and par­al­lel pro­gram­ming (fast is bet­ter) on a dif­fer­ent team (this is when I was most active on mul­ti­pro­cess­ing) — now I’m writ­ing a web appli­ca­tion and a lot of middleware/management stuff on a device that has a much smaller amount of RAM and cores in most deploy­ments. Before that, I was work­ing on what is now called the HCP (Hitachi Con­tent Plat­form) which is a ultra-large, highly scal­able and dis­trib­uted stor­age sys­tem (object store) which could be con­strued as a par­ent of the cur­rent cloud stor­age sys­tems (it was orig­i­nally built by Archivas).

Before that? I was doing work for Allaire/Macromedia on the Cold­Fu­sion and Flex teams.

You see, these star­tups, each in turn, has allowed me an amount of free­dom to go places and learn things I don’t think I would have oth­er­wise had the oppor­tu­nity to do. Sure, it’s not all roses — there are hard times, lay­offs, and some­times out­right fail­ures. You know this (or you bet­ter know this) going into it.

I men­tion all this because as I was sit­ting here sip­ping my morn­ing cup of cof­fee (only allowed one a day) — I was read­ing yet another visual design site and updat­ing my list of books on my Ama­zon wish list and in look­ing at it, it struck me how much I, as a per­son and I, as an employee have changed due to the oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges given to me. I get, on one hand, to learn UI/UX (and drool at the skills of some­one like Idan Gazit). I get to think about dis­trib­uted stor­age sys­tems, CAP the­o­rem, blocks ver­sus files/objects, and the “cloud” every day — but then I get to sit down and work on images, CSS, user inter­face, expe­ri­ence and think about what analo­gies and abstrac­tions work best for our users.

In less than two years, I went from “oh hai con­cur­rency” to debat­ing shades of blue and typog­ra­phy with Greg New­man. How awe­some is that? That’s not to say that the UI I’m leading/building/hacking on is a solo effort — it’s not, we’re a team, nor is to to say it’s per­fect (I’m still learn­ing). It’s just to show that a lot can change, and when you have a team you trust, man­age­ment you trust and you work for a small, agile com­pany you really can do just about any­thing. Our UI has clunky ele­ments, and things we should clean up — but that is part of what’s so great — I have the oppor­tu­nity to do that. I can walk into my boss’ office tomor­row and sim­ply ask him “do you mind if I change X to Y, and here’s why”, and if it’s a sound tech­ni­cal argu­ment, about two min­utes later I’ll be doing it.

And that change will show up on every one of our cus­tomer and trial users boxes in pretty rapid suc­ces­sion. Did I men­tion I’ve also got­ten to learn I enjoy writ­ing a lot more than I thought I did before, and also — mar­ket­ing is actu­ally pretty damned inter­est­ing, and not such a filthy word as most hack­ers and pro­gram­mers think (The joke is that I’m some sort of weird programming/marketing hybrid — not sure if it’s an insult or not)? Yeah, I’ve got­ten to do writ­ing, UI/UX, learn web pro­gram­ming, and help out in mar­ket­ing (and even sales and mar­ket strat­egy to a much lesser extent). It’s a rocket sled fly­ing through a for­est of cool things to do and be a part of.

Inter­est­ingly, as an aside — this change of roles/changing of focus has also changed my focus and con­tri­bu­tions in the Python Com­mu­nity — being part of the PSF Board, spin­ning up sprints/outreach, work­ing on explain­ing what the PSF is, men­tor­ship — tak­ing on PyCon man­age­ment — all of these things reflect a change in what my life is focused on, and it’s pretty awesome.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. - Confucius

Find the right team — the team you trust, that knows what they’re doing and where they’re going (and that trusts you). Accept that you will prob­a­bly fail — mean­ing, you will run out of money, or not get trac­tion (and run out of money) but build that fam­ily, that team and have blast try­ing your best and just accept­ing all the new chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties that come up. Find peo­ple who won’t not chal­lenge you — who won’t ask you to adapt to new times and tech­nol­ogy. Accept that you’re no safer at Mega­Corp because they lit­er­ally only view you as a human resource and not as an individual.

Most of all — Find some­thing you love doing, and do it with awe­some people.

FWIW, here are some good design reads since I’m on the topic (feel free to men­tion ones you love):

• Design For Hack­ers: Why you don’t user Gara­mond on the web
• Design for Hack­ers: Why Monet Never Used Black, & Why You Shouldn’t Either
• Clean up your mess: A guide to visual design for Everyone
• Design­ing for the web
• The web is all about typography

On Friday of last week, a new post I wrote for my employer (Nasuni) went up - "Encryption Keys, User Data and Subpoenas". In that post, I got to outline, in clear "non slippery" language how my employer manages encryption keys, what data they have access to, etc. One of my favorite quotes: If a customer has provided their own encryption key(s) - Nasuni, or the cloud provider, do not have those keys, and can not provide them as part of a subpoena or other legal process. We can not decrypt or access your data. We can not supply a key which we do not have. This is not policy or trust level protection: It’s impossible. We offer auto-generated and escrowed keys as a convenience to the user - the benefits of having this feature outweigh the cost. A user or company who knows nothing about encryption keys and key escrow can still have strong data security and instantaneous disaster recovery, they can install a Filer in minutes and immediately be up and running. Not only was I able to work with the team to get this post up - for those of you wondering how many layers of approval, legal cleansing or other "typical filtering" it went through - the answer is "none" (or close to it). We value honesty and being forthright above just about everything else, and so posts like this - or ones in the past on "5 Weaknesses of Cloud Storage Gateways", "Cloud Storage Isn’t Cheap: How the Price of Cloud Storage Compares to Traditional Storage", "What’s the Cost of a GB in the Cloud?" which are brutally honest and frankly, would probably never see the light of day in larger companies are actually encouraged, not discouraged. Does that mean that every little thing that could be controversial goes up? Obviously not, but we, as a team, have no problems  being honest with ourselves, our users and doing what we feel is the Right Thing. It's one of those posts that makes me exceedingly proud to be part of a team that continually surprises me. Hence the actual subject of this post. I'm one of those lucky people who get to do something I really do love - actually, multiple things - with a team that surprises me on a daily basis. Of course we're a VC backed startup which means we're smaller and more intimate then most companies many people work for, and in turn means our interpersonal relationships are that much more amplified and intensified. You don't get into bed with a startup unless you know and trust the people (or at least a few of them people) involved - trust is an fundamentally critical component - it's akin to getting married. I know - you've probably heard stuff like this before echoing from the west coast / silicon valley area - about how startups are magical lands of unicorns and fairies and how you're going to get a bajillion dollars data mining the social relationships of some poor floor waxing guy in south dakota - but these "families" - these startups where you can have these solid relationships with those you work with, and do multiple things exist well outside the silicon valley echo chamber (for example, we're Massachusetts based). You just have to look. Sure, there's a lot of hype in tech about startups and getting rich quick - but having worked through the dot-com bubble, I've found that I value the team (the family) and the project much more than chasing down the latest IPO. The fact is, despite being at a startup that could fail at any moment (and many do) I feel more secure in my role, and with my paycheck than I would filed away in a cube at MegaCorp. I feel more secure in that I am not just another cog in a machine, and that it is within my power to change the face and direction of the company every single day. Considering I've worked mainly for startups since I was 18 (some of which got acquired into much bigger companies) I have a bit of confirmation bias, admittedly. Sure, I could also find potentially even more freedom and go freelance, and build relationships that way, and sure - there's tons of people very happy working for massive companies, but right now, despite having one kid, and another on the way - I'm just not that type of person. I thrive on being able to go into work and find a new challenge every day, I thrive on trying on different roles, branching out into new things. Startups - especially ones where you trust those you work with, and those people support you and work with you are an excellent place to do these things. For example - for some time now I've been leading the User Interface project for the product - we have an embedded web-based UI that allows for the management and administration of the device we sell (a data protection/storage device). Over two years ago, I was primarily focused on concurrency and parallel programming (fast is better) on a different team (this is when I was most active on multiprocessing) - now I'm writing a web application and a lot of middleware/management stuff on a device that has a much smaller amount of RAM and cores in most deployments. Before that, I was working on what is now called the HCP (Hitachi Content Platform) which is a ultra-large, highly scalable and distributed storage system (object store) which could be construed as a parent of the current cloud storage systems (it was originally built by Archivas). Before that? I was doing work for Allaire/Macromedia on the ColdFusion and Flex teams. You see, these startups, each in turn, has allowed me an amount of freedom to go places and learn things I don't think I would have otherwise had the opportunity to do. Sure, it's not all roses - there are hard times, layoffs, and sometimes outright failures. You know this (or you better know this) going into it. I mention all this because as I was sitting here sipping my morning cup of coffee (only allowed one a day) - I was reading yet another visual design site and updating my list of books on my Amazon wish list and in looking at it, it struck me how much I, as a person and I, as an employee have changed due to the opportunities and challenges given to me. I get, on one hand, to learn UI/UX (and drool at the skills of someone like Idan Gazit). I get to think about distributed storage systems, CAP theorem, blocks versus files/objects, and the "cloud" every day - but then I get to sit down and work on images, CSS, user interface, experience and think about what analogies and abstractions work best for our users. In less than two years, I went from "oh hai concurrency" to debating shades of blue and typography with Greg Newman. How awesome is that? That's not to say that the UI I'm leading/building/hacking on is a solo effort - it's not, we're a team, nor is to to say it's perfect (I'm still learning). It's just to show that a lot can change, and when you have a team you trust, management you trust and you work for a small, agile company you really can do just about anything. Our UI has clunky elements, and things we should clean up - but that is part of what's so great - I have the opportunity to do that. I can walk into my boss' office tomorrow and simply ask him "do you mind if I change X to Y, and here's why", and if it's a sound technical argument, about two minutes later I'll be doing it. And that change will show up on every one of our customer and trial users boxes in pretty rapid succession. Did I mention I've also gotten to learn I enjoy writing a lot more than I thought I did before, and also - marketing is actually pretty damned interesting, and not such a filthy word as most hackers and programmers think (The joke is that I'm some sort of weird programming/marketing hybrid - not sure if it's an insult or not)? Yeah, I've gotten to do writing, UI/UX, learn web programming, and help out in marketing (and even sales and market strategy to a much lesser extent). It's a rocket sled flying through a forest of cool things to do and be a part of. Interestingly, as an aside - this change of roles/changing of focus has also changed my focus and contributions in the Python Community - being part of the PSF Board, spinning up sprints/outreach, working on explaining what the PSF is, mentorship - taking on PyCon management - all of these things reflect a change in what my life is focused on, and it's pretty awesome. Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. - Confucius Find the right team - the team you trust, that knows what they're doing and where they're going (and that trusts you). Accept that you will probably fail - meaning, you will run out of money, or not get traction (and run out of money) but build that family, that team and have blast trying your best and just accepting all the new challenges and opportunities that come up. Find people who won't not challenge you - who won't ask you to adapt to new times and technology. Accept that you're no safer at MegaCorp because they literally only view you as a human resource and not as an individual. Most of all - Find something you love doing, and do it with awesome people. FWIW, here are some good design reads since I'm on the topic (feel free to mention ones you love): Design For Hackers: Why you don't user Garamond on the web Design for Hackers: Why Monet Never Used Black, & Why You Shouldn’t Either Clean up your mess: A guide to visual design for Everyone Designing for the web The web is all about typography