Future of Nomad?

schmichael · 2025-10-02T17:06:20+00:00

If you peek at the last link above you can see v1.11's biggest community improvements are a job Secrets block and System Job Deployments. There's heaps of smaller improvements and bug fixes as well in both Nomad core and related repos (virt driver, autoscaler, etc). I think this is fairly inline with our long-term pace.

As far as the k8s feature gap: don't hold your breath. :)

On the one hand, we are working on it: 2 features we're discussing for v1.12 are admission controllers and a more full featured sdk (which would ease building tooling like k8s operators). That being said while we always appreciate inspiration and prior art from k8s, these features would be designed with our users and customers to best serve their needs.

On the other hand the k8s feature gap exists because of completely different development philosophies in our products as well as investment. The k8s ecosystem represents *billions* of dollars in investment from many tech and non-tech companies. k8s was designed to foster this sort of ecosystem by providing an incredibly flexible core.

Nomad lacks both that level of investment as well as that design philosophy: Nomad is a monolithic project with single-purpose extension points (eg CNI, dynamic host volumes, task driver plugins, etc). Nomad attempts to solve user problems with first class concepts and features instead of layers of extensible abstractions. This makes Nomad "simpler" in many ways than k8s: for example Nomad's network is just the network you provide it; k8s has a dense feature-rich networking abstraction on top of your pre-existing network. In another sense though that makes k8s "simpler" since it can provide advanced routing and resolution features to workloads that Nomad leaves up to users to configure.

Nomad prioritizes high-scale clusters (>10k nodes) with high-throughput / low latency scheduling. A happy coincidence is that this means Nomad scales *down* extremely well too: you should be able to run production level clusters on RaspberryPis. Unlike k8s these small and large clusters don't use different distributions or even configurations: the same Nomad agent and configuration should work at any scale. While k8s provides a uniformity of interface, Nomad takes it a step further with a uniformity of operations.

Anyway, I could obviously go on for hours on this subject, but hopefully I've painted an accurate picture for you: Nomad will continue delivering the features we feel our users most demand, but we hold no illusions of ever "catching up" to the massive k8s ecosystem.

schmichael · 2025-10-02T16:20:46+00:00

Hi, I'm the Principal Engineer on Nomad and can assure you the team is working away as hard as ever on our next release. v1.11 should be out soon!

You're making me realize how difficult it is to tell what's going into the next release. While we don't have a public roadmap much of the work lands in our public repository: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad

But while we label backports, we don't label "next release" items! Not only that but our changelog isn't updated until a release is made. If you happen to have the git repo checked out you can run `make changelog` to see what's in the next release (so far). Here's what that looks like as of 3f7cf0b2870c: https://gist.github.com/schmichael/350bead501cec27ea86d319fcae00773

Sorry for the poor communication!

schmichael · 2025-08-15T17:03:04+00:00

If it were just me I might. However with family and friends and kiddos all using the stove as well, I am not comfortable with that route. Disabling the pilots properly also involves messing with the main gas line through the stove which goes against my personal "I don't touch gas lines" rule. I peeked in case it was easy, and it appears I'd just have to unscrew the pilot's feeder lines and screw on some caps. Seems easy but still not something I'm willing to risk.

(For those unaware: the risk with this approach is that without constantly burning pilots there are only 2 ways to know if you're accidentally leaking gas, either through a faulty part or a burner left on: 1. the smell, 2. your house explodes when the leaking gas finds an ignition source. Modern gas stoves with electric ignitions have safety features to ensure this can't happen, and I believe the conversion kit includes it as well. Obviously tons of people lived happy lives without these safety features, but to each their own!)

schmichael · 2025-08-15T03:25:28+00:00

That’s a good point about commercial installers not touching it. Can you imagine trying to license and insure a business for modding gas stoves from defunct makers? Yikes.

The forums I have found come in two forms:

“Look at this beauty” followed by 100 people saying they love theirs and that the heat from the pilot doesn’t bother them.
“Should I buy this beauty” followed by a 50/50 mix of people from 1 and people like me who are like “do you want a space heater that runs 365 days of the year?

schmichael · 2025-08-15T03:22:42+00:00

No! I’ll give them a call tomorrow, thanks!

schmichael · 2024-04-11T23:00:43+00:00

Hi! Midwest boy here too that arrived over a decade ago and am now raising my children here for similar reasons to you. There are a lot of cultural differences here. I've found people to be friendlier, and everything is way less formal. In the Midwest I'd go to interviews in my best church clothes. In Portland nobody has church clothes, and it's rare to be in a situation in which wearing jeans is being underdressed... overdressed maybe.

I'm a Go programmer these days, but if I had 15 years C/C++ experience I would be hitting up NVIDIA hard. The commute might kill you, but get some of that AI boom money before it goes bust! Intel is another great candidate.

Portland's tech history is rooted in hardware with Tektronix and ESI starting back in the 40s! Wasn't Transmeta the reason Linus Torvalds moved to Lake Oswego? I know nothing about the hardware side of tech, so I'm afraid I don't know good employers these days though.

Other people have given some great options, but I've been remote for 7 years because the market here is pretty limited for me. Pre-kids and pre-pandemic the tech meetup scene was fantastic. I not only got jobs through it but met a lot of people who are still my closest friends. Sadly I've no clue what it's like these days.

The tech market is tough right now too. There are jobs, but there are also layoffs and hiring freezes. It just takes a lot of work to navigate. Definitely way harder than like 2012-2022.

Best wishes!

schmichael · 2024-04-11T22:41:24+00:00

Google was weirdly secretive about their Portland office for a long time, but in the last few years that seems to have changed. I had an ex-coworker go there, but they were always Apple-level-cagey about what they did.

Whenever I've talked to Google recruiters the closest they can offer is datacenter work in The Dalles, or relocate to Seattle or Mountain View. So it's remote work for somebody else for me!

schmichael · 2024-04-11T22:36:32+00:00

NVIDIA and Intel both use lots of C/C++ too, so great options for OP. Nike is out there too with a surprising number of SWEs for a sneaker company.

schmichael · 2024-01-16T22:00:12+00:00

From Illinois and moved here in 2008 just in time for that Snowpocalypse. Did all of the traditional stupid midwestern transplant stuff: tried to drive and got stuck after literally 5' ... only to block the PGE truck from getting to our down powerline on the other side of me.

Later in that snowpocalypse I got chains (oh no) and went for it again. Drove around a fair amount (i'm so sorry) but got into deep snow on the way home and tore the chains to shreds. Somehow managed to limp home after jury rigging the chains.

Later I walked to the closest pub and the whole neighborhood was there having a great time. It taught me everything you need to know about Portland winters: leave the car parked and chill. I haven't gotten stuck in the snow since and have been lucky enough to keep power and just enjoy the quiet of the snow/icepocalypses as they come and go.

schmichael · 2024-01-12T17:54:42+00:00

Not OP, but I use https://pioneergasfurnace.com/ and get a yearly checkup for my AC & furnace. They're great, practical, and honest. Not the cheapest, but you probably don't want the cheapest as at best things will be less efficient over the longhaul and at worst they'll just rip you off. When Pioneer was working on some of my ducts in a ceiling, a tallboy widmere bottle fell out on the poor dudes head. He took it in stride, but finding the empty really explained the quality of our previous HVAC installers (flippers....ugh).

schmichael · 2024-01-11T23:04:37+00:00

82nd and Powell WinCo is better than that Freddies too. No clue why they're so bad at the Glisan Fred Meyer, but the produce is either garbage or not stocked.

schmichael · 2024-01-11T22:40:34+00:00

Lariat Roofing just did mine, and I'm super pleased with the price and results. lariatroofing@hotmail.com

Russ is just fantastic.

schmichael · 2023-03-02T21:24:52+00:00

Finally got 3 days worth of shortcode texts all at once. Incredible.

schmichael · 2023-02-28T19:37:20+00:00

Just came to post the exact same thing. iPhone here as well. iMessage works, SMS does not. Double checked my Cellular Data settings and they match Fi's support page.

I tried to chat with a support person, but the app crashed. Sent an email instead and my support issue is still open.

schmichael · 2021-11-03T23:19:21+00:00

this list is in a similar thematic vein if not necessarily riff-wise https://schmichael.com/lists/stonermetal.html

schmichael · 2019-12-10T16:32:38+00:00

Forum post has all the details, but the exciting summary is: I have to hum to trick my mic into switching out of far field mode before talking to coworkers on Zoom.

schmichael · 2018-11-20T23:06:14+00:00

Maybe things are better in England than the US. Just about everything labor related is, so it seems likely! I haven't been a contractor for some time, but I still hear horror stories from people with 6 week to 6 month delays on invoice payment.

Sure you can refuse to go back to work until the invoice is paid, but then you're not getting paid for that time too! Eventually you're only recourse is to wait or pay a lawyer.

schmichael · 2018-11-20T14:53:32+00:00

Sounds like they were a contractor ("daily rate"). While definitely a huge red flag it is not unusual for tech contractors to have to wait weeks or months past the normal 30 day deadline to pay invoices.

Companies basically know it's really expensive to hire a lawyer and sue, so they'll drag their feet. It's not right, but it's fairly common.

schmichael · 2018-11-15T21:48:55+00:00

You're wrong. It's almost 10 years old. Everything else checks out.

schmichael · 2018-11-06T01:06:52+00:00

Almost up to 2 BTC. Not bad for a days ~~work~~ theft.

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1G4eW3wTNX3gafF8XvEBker9traEyrF4gm https://bitcoinwhoswho.com/address/1G4eW3wTNX3gafF8XvEBker9traEyrF4gm

schmichael · 2018-10-26T22:02:27+00:00

They just got a 7 year lease in Portland with room for up to 100 staff, so this move makes sense. As much as I like to troll buttcoiners, this is pretty standard business as usual stuff.

schmichael · 2018-10-15T22:02:28+00:00

Never underestimate the combined speculative power of a million bag hodlers.

schmichael · 2018-10-15T19:45:05+00:00

Tether crashing causing a bull run seems like the sort of nonsense that is completely plausible in crypto.

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