Llamaindex · Toolchain · Hiring: remote llamaindex-tools engineer (full-time, long-term)

1.7K
LLr/llamaindex-tools·posted by nikic·2 hours agoExperience

Hiring: remote llamaindex-tools engineer (full-time, long-term)

Some background first. Our setup is llamaindex-tools plus three downstream services, seven figures of daily requests, peaking around nine in the evening.

The first thing was to collapse the variables. We were changing config and upgrading the version at the same time, and afterwards nobody could say which change caused what. We rolled back to moving one variable at a time, re-ran three times, and only then did the curve settle. Tedious, but not skippable.

Keep it and wait for an official fix44%
Switch to a third-party option now28%
Fork and maintain it ourselves17%
Write an adapter layer and wait11%

2946 votes total

604 comments

604 comments

· first 120 loaded
M
Ddev_zhouOP·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

431
Wwinter·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

4
Sswoole_leeOP·3 minutes agoedited

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

109
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

43
Rran_bo·2 days ago

This is not a llamaindex-tools problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

24
Hhuang_ke·just now

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

485
Sslow_query·12 minutes ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

54
Rran_bo·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

1
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

One counter-example: below llamaindex-tools 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

321
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

485
Rrase·2 days ago

This is not a llamaindex-tools problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

483
Cchen_devMod·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

306
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

483
Ttang_hao·2 days agoedited

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

18
Hhuang_ke·yesterday

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

470
Kkite·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

394
Mmike_xu·2 days agoedited

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

88
Kkernel_panicOP·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

293
Kkite·28 minutes ago

One counter-example: below llamaindex-tools 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

350
Aalice_dev·2 days agoedited

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

340
Bbob_chenOP·5 hours ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

271
Zzhu_zong·2 days ago

This is not a llamaindex-tools problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

29
Wwinter·3 minutes ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

327
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

317
Sslow_queryOP·1 hour ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

226
Kkernel_panicOP·2 hours ago

This is not a llamaindex-tools problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

224
Mmike_xuOP·2 days ago

I just read the llamaindex-tools source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

223
Aalice_dev·3 minutes ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

260
Oops_wang·just now

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

188
LlinlinOP·28 minutes ago

I just read the llamaindex-tools source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

52
Sswoole_lee·just now

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

76
Zzhu_zong·28 minutes ago

One counter-example: below llamaindex-tools 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

2
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

441
Bbob_chen·2 days agoLevel 6

I just read the llamaindex-tools source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

1
Rran_bo·5 hours ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

30
Wwinter·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

336
Nnikic·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

320
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

23
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

240
Kkite·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

225
Mmike_xu·28 minutes agoedited

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

219
Sswoole_lee·3 minutes ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

125
Kkite·1 hour ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

295
Mmike_xu·2 hours ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

194
Mmike_xu·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

483
Rran_bo·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

222
Ddev_zhou·3 minutes agoedited

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

185
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

197
Llinlin·5 hours ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

422
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

197
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

131
Rran_bo·5 hours agoedited

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

10
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

357
Hhuang_ke·28 minutes ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

34
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

401
Lli_ming·2 days agoLevel 6

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

61
Zzhou_yiMod·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

111
Ddev_zhou·2 days agoLevel 6

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

71
Bbob_chenMod·yesterdayLevel 6

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

2
Sswoole_lee·5 hours ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

14
Kkite·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

193
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

This is not a llamaindex-tools problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

19
Lli_ming·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

15
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

192
Rrase·2 hours ago

I just read the llamaindex-tools source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

175
Lli_mingOP·28 minutes ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

132
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

192
Wwinter·2 days agoedited

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

190
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

151
Rran_bo·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

132
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

I just read the llamaindex-tools source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

147
Nnikic·3 minutes ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

254
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

242
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

186
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

74
Nnikic·just now

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

132
Bbob_chen·2 days agoedited

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

124
Mmike_xu·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

118
Rran_bo·2 days ago

This is not a llamaindex-tools problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

112
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

I just read the llamaindex-tools source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

106
Bbob_chen·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

104
Nnikic·5 hours ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

100
Cchen_dev·1 hour ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

152
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

108
Cchen_dev·2 days agoedited

This is not a llamaindex-tools problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

68
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

93
Zzhu_zong·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

47
Zzhou_yiOP·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

105
Kkite·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

21
Sslow_query·2 days agoedited

One counter-example: below llamaindex-tools 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

68
Zzhu_zong·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

64
Kkite·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

111
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

5
Lli_ming·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

498
Sswoole_lee·12 minutes ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

460
Zzhu_zong·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

161
Sswoole_lee·3 minutes agoedited

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

62
Sswoole_lee·2 days agoedited

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

162
Llinlin·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

19
Llinlin·2 days agoedited

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

496
Zzhu_zongOP·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

2
Wwinter·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

52
LlinlinOP·2 days ago

One counter-example: below llamaindex-tools 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

63
Lli_ming·2 days agoedited

This is not a llamaindex-tools problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

44
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

One counter-example: below llamaindex-tools 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

26
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

17
Wwinter·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

44
Sswoole_lee·12 minutes agoedited

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

30
Llinlin·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

22
Kkite·1 hour ago

I just read the llamaindex-tools source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

11
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

43
Sslow_query·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

1
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

6
Sslow_query·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

4
Mmike_xu·1 hour ago

One counter-example: below llamaindex-tools 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

3
Zzhou_yi·5 hours ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

273
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

3
Kkernel_panic·2 days ago

One counter-example: below llamaindex-tools 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

1
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

1
Nnikic·2 days ago

I just read the llamaindex-tools source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

1

This is the post detail page /en/c/llamaindex-tools/post/p13. Posts and comments are generated deterministically from a seeded PRNG, so the same post always renders the same content and the link can be shared, reloaded and indexed. In production this page reads MySQL for the post, Redis for hot-post caching, and fetches the whole comment tree in a single query on the path column.

See the database schema →