CaitieM

December 19, 2017

2017 a Year in Review

2017 was a year of change, personal and professional.  I started the year in San Francisco, working at Twitter as an Individual Contributor, and in a long term relationship.  I ended the year in Seattle, working at Microsoft Research as a Lead, sans that long term relationship, and a brand new home owner.   Change can be terrifying, especially when you are comfortable, when you are content.  Nothing was terribly wrong, but I got the nagging feeling that perhaps nothing was going terribly right either.  I was no longer content with being content.  So in 2017 I began to change some things up to make space for new opportunities.   That…

September 7, 2017

Resources for Getting Started with Distributed Systems

I’m often asked how to get started with Distributed Systems, so this post documents my path and some of the resources I found most helpful.  It is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list. It is worth noting that I am not classically trained in Distributed Systems.  I am mostly self taught via independent study and on the job experience.  I do have a B.S. in Computer Science from Cornell, but focused mostly on graphics and security in my specialization classes.  My love of Distributed Systems and education in it came once I entered industry.  The moral of this story is that understanding distributed systems doesn’t require academic…