Tissa
Jan 12, 2026 - Nov 9, 2026
21
Decisions
0
Active Todos
19
Patterns
Categories
Decisions (21)
Google 1.17.1 follow-up issues go into 1.18.1 - but nobody works the weekend for them
On Friday 11/6 Tissa sent three issues found in 1.17.1, including the multipath dracut module breaking boot in the hotfix images, and asked that they be addressed in 1.18.1. Peter forwarded them to Justin and Nathan: make sure these get touched in 1.18.1, but not something folks should work the weekend for. When Justin confirmed he had passed it on, Peter checked: including not this weekend?
Sensitive Decision
Google contract - sign what gets us paid and commits us to nothing we cannot do; strike and candidate images; renegotiate a bigger contract immediately
Kelly and Bjorn were negotiating the Google GDC CVE terms. Peter judged the added obligation a material add but in line with current practice, and told them to ask Google to strike and candidate images: CIQ can always deliver a patched package that remediates, but may not have an image available; images keep coming on the regular train as today. He left the wording to Kelly and Bjorn and set the objective: get something signed that does not kill us so we get paid, then renegotiate a bigger contract immediately.
Hold the finished Google 1.18.1 deliverable until the contract signs - release it the moment they sign
On Nov 5 Google GDC put its CIQ purchase order on hold for internal review of the CVE terms while still asking for new work. Peter had 1.18.1 finished and ready to ship. He told Kelly and Bjorn CIQ had NOT given Google the final deliverable and he would sit on it until he heard back from Tissa, and emailed Tissa that the 18.1 work was done but a pause on signing is a pause on payment for work done months ago, which is not a way he can run a company. On Nov 6, when Google confirmed the contract was moving, he told Nathan and Justin: We can give 1.18.1 to Google. They are signing.
GDC targeted-CVE builds - what fits the existing build machinery ships Monday, everything else is quoted work, slips are attributed to the customer constraint, and a rough estimate is enough
Across 10/30 to 11/2 Peter applied one rule to Tissa asks for 1.16/1.17/1.18 kernels. Default: last week build plus CVE 9999, available Monday because it fits existing machinery. A March-kernel branch with only 9999 is a new branch with no build path or testing, so it gets an ETA, not a commitment. 1.18 by Monday holds only if CIQ can keep rebasing on upstream. He pressed Google to decide that day and asked why they would want one new CVE but not the 37 old ones. On 10/31 he directed that any date change on the sheet state it is caused by Google not wanting the latest driver, and that communicated dates be reinforced. On 11/2 he refused a two-day turnaround by email (dates stay 11/16, one could be pulled in and the other slid) and told Nathan and Justin the message is weeks not days, about 3 weeks, and a swag is sufficient - no more planning effort than that.
GDC new ask after landing Anthropic - write down what we believe, parrot it back, give an ETA assuming funded, and use it to win the added 300K without slowing the base contract
On 10/29-10/30 Tissa came back with a larger ask after Google landed a big opportunity (Anthropic). Peter directed Nathan and Justin: before spending any time, write down what CIQ believes is true and send it to Tissa to validate - (1) what is delivered Monday, (2) the additional ask parroted back to confirm version and build, (3) when CIQ could have it assuming it is funded. Tissa is working to get CIQ about 300K more, taking GDC toward 1M plus royalties next year, and this must not slow signature of the existing contract. Peter relayed Tissa request that CIQ engineers stop saying that is not in the contract and say we will talk to Pete instead. On 10/30 he asked for the CIQ ETA column filled, including future releases, to talk through any gap between desire and capability.
GDC full kernel with IBT off is not just sign the kmod - say no unless it fits, do not reopen the contract, Peter and Kelly own the Tissa conversation
On 10/29, with the GDC contract about to be signed, Google asked for a 6.18 full kernel with IBT off for the following week. Peter framed it in #google-partnership-governance: the ask pushes CIQ from just sign our kmod into supporting kernel development, which CIQ told Google it must staff up for and is still hiring for; it falls back into the CIQ needs to do the live patching work bucket and cannot be delivered in a couple of days. If Justin path works, fine; otherwise the answer is no. He told Nathan he did not need to manage the contract, stopped the engineering thread (Let us spend no more time on this and Kelly and I will talk to Tissa), and refused to change the order of anything or reopen any question while the contract was being signed. He emailed and then called Tissa; Tissa dropped the full-kernel requirement, and Peter confirmed in writing the plan is the minimal kernel with IBT disabled for next week, with Kelly, Nathan and Justin on the thread.
Peter personally drives NVIDIA to commit, to Google, that it will support CIQ-built RLC on NVIDIA hardware
At the 10/22 GDC roadmap meeting Google disclosed NVIDIA had put in writing that Google must reproduce NVIDIA-hardware bugs on RHEL before NVIDIA will look at them. Peter took it on personally: called Scott Hara (NVIDIA) that evening - NVIDIA engineering to align, a three-way NDA, and a statement to Google that NVIDIA will work with both CIQ and Google; emailed Tissa (Google) and shaped Google question to include joint support given CIQ custom kernel work for Google; forwarded to Scott asking for a positive written response; asked Greg to be ready to make the case to NVIDIA. In the same meeting he told Google CIQ can support their roadmap for the next year line item by line item, in response to Google assembling its own senior kernel team.
Vera Rubin to Google - commit to a bounded duration (at most 3 weeks after node access), not a date, and invite Google to supply its own hardware
Replying to Tissa request for Vera Rubin timelines, Peter wrote that NVIDIA has committed lab time but cannot confirm when; once CIQ has a node it needs at most 3 weeks to validate Rocky, ensure full functionality and performance, and fix issues; CIQ will update as soon as it has visibility; and if Google has a node it could provide, CIQ would happily do the 3 weeks on that instead.
GDC term sheet - balance the background-IP clause so it never reads as claiming Google shared code, and approve the live-patch quote as written
At the GDC Terms Sync, Bjorn set the main position: accept Google other changes (easy out, setup fees ending at 1.8M) in the spirit of partnership, and make it non-negotiable that the minimal kernel and CLK/FIPS 6.18 work are CIQ background IP, for the avoidance of doubt. Peter added the guardrail that Google will share live-patching code and Tissa will never agree that is CIQ IP, so the line must not read that way; he accepted Bjorn narrower wording, and Kelly added a counterweight that code shared by Google is Google IP. On the live-patch quote, Peter dismissed Nathan scoping comment (the cost is standing up kernel-signing infrastructure, not which kernel), deleted the comment, and approved the quote to ship.
Google live patching - set the near-zero-cost kernel flags now, nothing else before commercials, and treat the Tissa call as listen-not-commit
Before the 9/30 live-patch call with Tissa, Peter told Nathan and Justin it was not a commit meeting but a listen-to-them meeting, with the contract worked through later. In the follow-up mpdm, Kelly asked if he was agreeing to do this part now before commercials; Peter said no, then corrected within seconds that he did not mind setting those flags now because it costs almost nothing. Nathan confirmed about 30 minutes to stage plus a few hours testing, riding on a normal kernel rather than a special one. Afterward Peter told Kelly and Bjorn that Alyssa and Tissa were clearly allies on getting this across the line.
Attack the live-patching gap through Google co-development as a paid deliverable while keeping the req open - buy the timeline, do not just wait for the hire
In the 2026-08-25 Exec Product Prioritization session Peter named kernel live patching as his single biggest capability gap, and said he does not need more heads beyond the requisitions already open to deliver the top of the board - with live patching the exception. Rather than waiting on that hire, he took a 5:15pm sync with Tissa Senevirathne at Google the same day, scoped specifically to whether Google can accelerate the live-patching timeline and whether it can be added as another paid deliverable to the existing engagement. He described the approach to Chris Baek and Bjorn Hovland as throwing co-development options at the wall to see what sticks. The Rex requisition stays open, so this is an additional path rather than a substitute for the hire.
Price the Google live-kernel-patching ask at 2 HC for 3.5 months plus 1 ongoing, and take the honest slower timeline back to Tissa rather than fit their October date
Tissa asked for a quote on live kernel patching as paid work in addition to the existing monthly full-kernel contract: evaluate whether an incoming CVE patch can be delivered as a live patch, deliver it that way when it can, and still roll it into the next monthly drop. Volume unpredictable - might be 70 percent of a months patches, might be zero. Google wants something working by October so they can test before a January go-live. Peter opened the request to Nathan and Justin with a pre-commitment that removes the usual objection - assume we get headcount to cover this work - then interrogated the shape rather than the number: 2 engineers for 3-4 months and less ongoing, or 2 forever? He landed on 2 HC for 3.5 months and 1 ongoing after that. He then did the arithmetic out loud against Googles date - lets assume a month to hire, and 4 after that to have something, as the reasonable case - concluded I think that gets it to them too late and they will say no, and chose to go back with it anyway: but lemme go back to tissa with that and see where it lands. He closed with lets go fishing and see what we can catch. He also flagged that Tissa appeared unaware of internal discussion on the topic - Tissa seemed in the dark - and asked whether that discussion had ever reached Google.
Override your own teams stated intent to delete the RL 8.6 source tree, and apologize to Google directly rather than defend the position
Tissa Senevirathne emailed Kelly Hall on Jul 30 saying CIQ had informed Google it wanted to delete the RL 8.6 OS and kernel source tree, and asked that it be preserved for contractual traceability and auditability. Peter replied to Tissa the next morning without consulting his team first: I do not know why my team informed you they wanted to delete that tree. I apologize. There is little cost associated with us keeping it live. I hope it was presented as a discussion, not as CIQ is doing this. I will dig in with them to understand what was motivating that, but your request is more than reasonable. In parallel he told Nathan in DM: we cannot shut this down right now, it does not cost us to leave it up except for a few dollars, and pressed for the reason - but why would we need to delete it? I do not want to do anything at all to rock the boat with them right now unless we need to. He named the underlying stake: I want to make sure we have the actual contracts completely signed in blood, and pushed back on the suspected motive - I do not want to do anything that they are nervous about right now, especially if the reason is that its existence makes our metrics look bad.
Release the Google 6.18 build; hold the line on future deliverables until Google resolves the LTS question
On 7/22 Peter lifted his own 7/21 hold on the Google/GDC 6.18 image. He connected with Bjorn first, then told Justin Haynes in #google-partnership-governance and in DM to Kelly Hall: give Google the build. He emailed Tissa Senevirathne at Google the same morning confirming the release, restating a firm stance that the LTS work has already been provided to Google, and stripping Mahdu and Alyssa off the thread. He paired the release with an explicit condition: future deliverables are held until Google sorts out the LTS commitment.
Committed CVE categorization + kpatch estimates to Google by Monday
After Tissa agreed no one can answer Madhus blanket questions, committed CIQ to deliver a CVE-type classification table with kpatch coverage estimates by Monday. Reshaping an unanswerable request into a structured, defensible answer by category.
FIPS 6.18 Option 2 Engineering Kickoff
After Manu at Google did not respond to the relationship reset email sent Sunday, Peter escalated the FIPS proposal to Tissa via Kelly. Tissa authorized CIQ to proceed. Peter then directed Nathan to begin engineering work on Option 2 (faster timing path) while awaiting the Atsec contract. Engineering was held in reserve until external confirmations landed to avoid thrashing.
Unified Google Proposal — Present Combined GDC/GCE to Rohan
Aligned Kelly and Bjorn on presenting a unified GDC/GCE proposal to Rohan (Google senior director) instead of negotiating separately. Reframing from pro-serve/ticket model to value-driven partnership with a large fixed annual fee ($8-9M).
Google Partnership Strategy - Build Rapport with Tissa
Decided to shift the Google contract renegotiation strategy from confrontational to collaborative. Peter will personally meet with Tissa (Google) to build rapport and empathy, framing CIQ's financial pain as a shared problem to solve together. Greg will be excluded from this meeting to ensure a non-antagonistic conversation.
Google Scope Change - Hold the Line on Commercial Terms
Decided to personally join the Monday lunch meeting with Tissa to lead negotiation on Google scope change. Google was trying to bundle Rocky 8 and 9 into one version (reducing from 8 to 5 versions) and push release next format without updated commercial terms.
Google Scope Change - Hold the Line on Commercial Terms
Google is pushing scope changes that bundle 8 versions into a 5-version contract, omit EOL dates, and include undefined dev streams. This creates scope creep risk and jeopardizes the Extended LTS revenue stream (~$300k/year per product). Decision to personally attend the Monday meeting with Tissa (with Max) to hold the line. Greg will NOT attend to preserve escalation path.
Related Patterns (19)
Executive Sponsorship for Strategic Partnerships
Strategic cross-company initiatives and major client partnerships require executive-level accountability to move at the right pace and ensure proper prioritization.
Protect Engineering Capacity
When external demands threaten to overload engineering capacity, protect capacity by either requiring the demand to come with additional resources, or forcing hard prioritization choices upstream.
Lead by Example with New Tools
When championing new tools or processes, personally use them and share results rather than just advocating. Learning by doing and demonstrating value through example is more effective than mandates.
Small Circle for Sensitive Operations
When executing sensitive strategic operations, keep the circle of informed people as small as possible to prevent leaks that could accelerate hostile action or undermine the initiative.
Protect Engineering Focus Through Process
When faced with requests that would disrupt engineering focus (from sales, governance, product, or other stakeholders), establish processes that protect engineering ability to innovate while still satisfying legitimate concerns. Prefer systematic solutions over ad-hoc responses.
Reclassify to Route - Decide Who Owns It, Then Give a Criterion Not a Verdict
When a question arrives at Peter framed in one domain, he often does not answer it in that framing. He reclassifies it into the domain that actually governs the outcome, which relocates ownership to whoever owns that lane, and then hands down a decision criterion rather than a verdict. The reclassification IS the decision - it determines who decides. He does this rather than adjudicating on the merits himself, even when he was explicitly cc-ed and even when a direct report challenges him on the substance.
Purpose Is the Decision Procedure
When someone asks how a process, board, tool or artifact should handle their specific case, Peter refuses to answer on the askers terms. He re-derives the answer from what the artifact is for, states that purpose as the only decision procedure, and lets the answer fall out. Anything found to be serving a second purpose is deleted rather than debated. Tools and views are explicitly subordinate to definitions. He will accept that the askers real problem is simply not solved by this artifact rather than widen the artifact to cover it.
Route Non-Differentiating FTE Classes to Partners
When CIQ would otherwise need to staff a function whose work does not differentiate the company — compliance bureaucracy, audit/cert paperwork, ongoing regulatory attestation, etc. — Peter routes the load to a partner who already owns adjacent capability rather than adding the FTE class internally. Org-shape decision dressed as a partnership decision.
Demonstrate the Standard, Then Collect It
When a new leadership expectation has to land across multiple orgs, Peter does not write a spec. He runs a live exemplar in public with the strongest performer first, says openly that the ordering was deliberate, keeps the form of the deliverable open so the ask stays about the thinking rather than the artifact, lets the delta be self-evident to the people who will have to close it, and then collects the same from everyone else on a named rotation. He prefers showing imperfect work now over polished work later.
Decide on the Precedent, Not the Case
When a request arrives framed as a one-off, Peter does not evaluate the one-off. He evaluates the rule that granting it would write, and answers that instead. Peter generalized this himself on 2026-08-11: it is always about understanding precedent - whether it is a comp change or anything that structurally affects the company. It is therefore NOT a compensation pattern; the domain of the presenting request is incidental. The tell that this pattern is live is that the stated reason for the answer refers to future cases rather than to the merits of the present one.
Redesign Conditions Over Policing Symptoms
When a direct report names a vulnerability and proposes surveillance-style verification mechanisms (breathalyzers, daily check-ins, monitoring rituals), Peter accepts the disclosure but pushes back on the surveillance model. Treats the verification proposal as a signal that the underlying environment needs redesign — and offers to change the conditions that produced the vulnerability rather than instrument the symptom. Costs Peter optionality (e.g., committing to broker work-hour expectations directly with the partner/spouse) — the asymmetry signals genuine retention vs transactional.
Metrics Must Follow Strategy
When shifting team priorities or strategic direction, the communication alone will not drive behavior change. Engineers may acknowledge the new direction but continue existing behavior patterns without clear, explicit metrics holding them accountable.
Name It Without Staffing It
Applies when a structural change is directionally clear but the specific person, budget or reporting line is not settled. Peter names the structure - the role, the reorg, the governance reform, the ladder - and deliberately does not attach a name, a req or a commitment to it. The 2026-05-21 observation states the economics plainly: cost of naming is near-zero, cost of premature commitment is high, and he consistently chooses naming. The 2026-08-24 observation adds the sequencing reason: once a specific person is attached to a framework, the framework stops being the subject. Mined from 6 independent observations between 2026-01-12 and 2026-08-24.
Different Diagnosis, Different Remedy
Applies when a directive or a problem spans several people or cases that superficially look alike. Peter refuses a uniform answer and sorts by diagnosis first, then applies the remedy that diagnosis calls for. The 2026-08-28 observation states the consequence for recording his decisions: when he gives a directive spanning several cases, the decision is almost never any single remedy - it is the rule that produces DIFFERENT remedies, and four cases with four different answers under one rule means the rule is the decision. The 2026-04-17 observation confirms he holds this as an explicit framework rather than an instinct. Related to Three-Lever Talent Management but distinct: that pattern runs hire, develop and exit in parallel, this one is about diagnosis determining which lever a given case gets. Mined from 6 independent observations between 2026-02-03 and 2026-08-28.
Switch Instrument, Not Intensity
Applies when a message, rule or ask has already failed through the channel Peter is currently using - repeated advocacy that has not landed, coaching that produced defensiveness rather than improvement, exhortation that did not change behaviour, or a rule that keeps losing case by case. His response is never to restate the same thing more forcefully. He changes the instrument and usually names the switch out loud. Mined from 7 independent observations between 2026-01-06 and 2026-08-21.
Time Over Cost
Peter treats elapsed time as the scarce quantity and money as the abundant one, and will spend cash to buy schedule, clarity or optionality. Notable because he named it himself as a transferable principle on 2026-05-21 and coached the lens explicitly to a direct report, which is rare - most of his patterns are inferred rather than stated. It generalises past procurement: he will pay to convert an ambiguous dispute into a binary one, remove cost as a variable entirely when a priority has executive visibility, and reason about a commitment in terms of lead time rather than budget. Mined from 5 independent observations between 2026-02-01 and 2026-09-11.
Promise Only What Is Inside CIQ Control
Applies when someone asks CIQ to commit to an outcome whose delivery depends partly on something CIQ does not own - a lead time, a third-party publisher, a customer-provided environment, an unsigned contract. Peter does not accept or refuse the request as posed. He isolates the specific component that sits outside CIQ delivery chain, refuses that component by name, and substitutes an adjacent commitment CIQ can actually keep - then often adds a harder problem worth solving in its place, so the counterparty gets more engagement rather than less.
Measure, Commit Publicly, Then Execute
A three-beat escalation arc Peter runs when he needs a commitment from a peer or the CEO that private pressure has not produced. Beat one: measure the thing and get a number. Beat two: state the commitment in a venue where the people who matter are watching. Beat three: execute against it. The 2026-04-15 observation names the sequence explicitly and notes he does not skip steps, because each beat builds the legitimacy of the next. The venue choice is treated as a decision in its own right, separate from what the message says. Mined from 8 independent observations between 2025-12-29 and 2026-08-28. NOTE: scope this to the venue-and-sequence mechanism specifically - forcing function is a phrase that appears loosely across many unrelated decisions and should not be taken as a match on its own.
Install the Criterion Before the Argument
Applies to a contested question that has not been argued yet - a meeting about to start, a test about to run, an escalation just received, a proposal about to be written. Peter moves first to fix the criterion, the boundary or the posture, before anyone argues the substance. The consistent effect, named explicitly in the 2026-07-29 observation, is that the other party cannot win by being more persuasive on the merits, because the merits are no longer the axis. Distinct from Reclassify to Route in mechanism: that pattern reassigns who owns a question, this one controls WHEN the criterion lands relative to the debate. The two frequently co-occur. Mined from 7 independent observations between 2026-01-20 and 2026-08-31.