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BC Bryan Cantrill Bryan Cantrill Systems engineer who spent fourteen years at Sun Microsystems, where he helped create DTrace and co-founded the Fishworks storage project, then served as VP of...

“I kind of came to the conclusion that tech needs a lot more of a hospitality mindset. … The thing that's interesting about hospitality is that everybody has a choice with kind of every transaction. You're not locked in, really. And as a result, you kind of have to earn it back every time. And entities that do a poor job earning it back, people leave.”

Oxide and Friends · Hands-On Engineering Podcasts · October 2026

“I kind of came to the conclusion that tech needs a lot more of a hospitality mindset. … The thing that's interesting about hospitality is that everybody has a choice with kind of every transaction. You're not locked in, really. And as a result, you kind of have to earn it back every time. And entities that do a poor job earning it back, people leave.” — Bryan Cantrill, Oxide and Friends

Context

Cantrill recommending Danny Meyer's Setting the Table on Oxide and Friends' annual books episode. He says the restaurateur's lessons apply far beyond restaurants, and that the hospitality industry gets looked down on.

Transcript

Oxide and Friends Around 18:42 into the episode
Bryan Cantrill

…about that. Um, that had a lot of just like up the fairway for me. I mean, you've got kind of like corporate malpractice, hard tech, you know, funding disaster. I mean, it's just like there was all sorts of things and some terrific leaders and technologists as well. So that was, that was good.

Adam Leventhal

Nice.

Bryan Cantrill

The, uh, so I, I've got a couple. Do you want to, or do you want to kick it off? Why don't you kick it off? All right. So I will kick it off with disappointed that my children had not taken my advice to listen to my own podcast. Episode, I guess, an understanding thing. I decided to read a book that I'd gotten for one of them on Christmas morning, which was Setting the Table by Danny Meyer. And have you read this? You know, Danny Meyer, Shake Shack guy, the restaurateur, Danny Meyer's a restaurant. Setting the Table is, I think, his first book is definitely a widely read book in hospitality. And, but I think it's got lessons far beyond it. And I had, I really enjoyed this book. And it's short, very readable. I kind of came to the conclusion that like tech needs a lot more of a hospitality mindset. That the, you know, the hospitality industry kind of gets denigrated. And this book was a little bit about getting it to stand on its own two feet. And it was really good. It was, it was very well written. And I think it really, you know, he talks about the kind of the three-legged stool of employees and customers and investors and kind of…

Adam Leventhal

has your son also read this book now or still?

Bryan Cantrill

You know, unclear. I think that he, I definitely have his copy right now. So like it would be, he would be, I think I got him a second copy. I um I also got him a book on football that he's much more interested in. So, you know, it'd be uh, we'll get there on that one. He will enjoy this when he…

Adam Leventhal

Nice.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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