Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

How many quarters after Q1 2016 till Marissa Mayer is unemployed?
	1 or fewer
	2
	4
	Her job is guaranteed; what are you even talking about?

Day Man: Jul 30, 2007; Champion of the Sun!

Master of karate and friendship...
for everyone!

Nobody who isn't a software janitor or mechanical/electrical janitor cares about your loving titles. Go have your slap fight in a thread about job titles.

# ? Apr 4, 2016 22:22

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 1, 2024 16:57

Emacs Headroom: Aug 2, 2003

Marenghi posted:

I wouldn't say all software jockeys aren't engineers. I've worked alongside software engineers who've developed the code for embedded systems as part of multidiscipline teams. That's definitely closer to engineering than writing a fart app.

One of my previous jobs involved working with a firmware team on an embedded health-tech device (similar to a fitbit). Jesus was their code terrible. It was a massive effort to get them to use Git, let alone think about writing unit tests or do pull requests with any sort of code review. Instead it was a lot of "oh I guess this doesn't work because I stayed up until 2 AM writing this so it's bad, LOL". Total nightmare trying to actually use the device for scientific studies...

# ? Apr 5, 2016 00:41

Rhesus Pieces: Jun 27, 2005

Day Man posted:

Nobody who isn't a software janitor or mechanical/electrical janitor cares about your loving titles. Go have your slap fight in a thread about job titles.

It's amazing how every thread about the software industry or IT is guaranteed to devolve into a dumb status-obsessed brawl over whose undergrad degree was harder.

In topical news, a Nest employee on the Nest subreddit says the company is circling the drain:

quote:

As a Nest engineer, I won't say any numbers that aren't public, but this company is already on deathwatch. Once that happens, most people will quickly have shiny paperweights because it's a constant firefight keeping these systems up. We have $340M in revenue, not profit, against a ~$500M budget. No new products since the purchase, and sales/growth numbers are dire. Our budget deal expires soon, and all the good engineers on my teams have discreetly indicated they are going to flee once their golden handcuffs unlock (many have already left despite sacrificing a lot of money to do so).

Tony and his goons demand crazy timelines so much that "crunch time" has basically lost meaning. Just when your labor bears fruit, they swoop in, 180 the specs you just delivered on, then have the gall to call your team "incompetent" for not reading their mind and delivering on these brand-new specs. I waste most of my time in pointless meetings, or defending my teams so they don't flip their desks and walk out. People fall asleep in corners and cry in the bathrooms, health and marriages are suffering. Already the churn is insane, close to half the company if not more. Skilled engineers can tell the environment is toxic, so we're filling vacancies with mostly sub-par talent.

Tony, you can't hide anything from engineers. We know how many units are actually being sold, how many subscriptions lapse, how many fail or get returned. We know about that time-bomb flaw you ignored so people will have to upgrade. We can see the data in those executive dashboards you think we don't know about. But go ahead, keep trashing us in public. We dare you to tell everyone just how much of that $340M was due to a simple Dropcam rebrand, and not the thermostats and smoke alarms. Good luck shipping that critical new project after restarting it for the umpteenth time.

Ah, that feels better. Now off to the other 4 meetings I have today.

Honestly, who the gently caress actually needed a fancy thermostat that connected to the internet to begin with? Not enough people apparently!

# ? Apr 5, 2016 01:02

Emacs Headroom: Aug 2, 2003

Rhesus Pieces posted:

Honestly, who the gently caress actually needed a fancy thermostat that connected to the internet to begin with? Not enough people apparently!

What will Google / Alphabet do? Divest like with the creepy robot dog company?

# ? Apr 5, 2016 01:55

Hodgepodge: Jan 29, 2006; Can't post for 208 days!

Aliquid posted:

i have a friend who makes $200k/yr as a "client support engineer" so it's probably time to dehumanize yourself and face to ~~bloodshed~~ viscera redistribution engineering.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 02:11

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Probably just close it down as a failed purchase. (I have no inside information.) If it's really broken, probably cheaper to just shut it down.

Related news: DropCam founder says Next management sucks. (Next bought DropCam.)

e: Wow, the Nest acquisition looks bad.
https://www.theinformation.com/inside-tony-fadells-struggle-to-build-nest

quote:

At a November all-hands meeting for engineers at Nest�s Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters, co-founder Matt Rogers said he was �losing sleep� over an exodus of staffers�roughly 70 in about six to 12 months, out of its workforce of roughly 1,000.

Tony Fadell, the company�s CEO, interrupted, pointing out that many of those departing employees had come from either Google, which acquired Nest in early 2014, or from Dropcam, maker of connected security cameras that Nest bought in mid-2014. Mr. Fadell went on to urge employees who have a problem with the way Nest is run to step up, rather than take on a �victim mentality.� Victims are �not long for the world,� he added, according to a recording of the meeting made available to The Information.

http://recode.net/2016/04/01/nest-vp-shige-honjo-departs/

quote:

Nest generated about $340 million in sales last year, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. That�s an impressive figure for a company in the very nascent market of Internet-connected devices.

But it�s below the initial expectations Google had set for Nest when it bought the startup in 2014 for a whopping $3.2 billion. The company�s sales performance may face even deeper scrutiny inside Google�s new parent company, Alphabet, where Nest now sits, as the hardware maker faces its most critical year ever.

Nest�s plight is a far cry from two years ago, when it was brought on as one of Google�s biggest acquisitions as a vehicle to compete with Apple in the growing smart-home market. Google also brought on CEO Tony Fadell, a former Apple exec, to inject Google with Apple�s hardware sensibility. But now its future is up in the air, as it�s clearly fallen short of those lofty expectations.

In late 2013, as Fadell negotiated the sale to the search giant, the two parties settled on two provisions. Fadell ensured that he would have an operating budget from Google; in return, Google created a significant retention clause to ensure that Nest�s key executives and engineers stayed aboard.

That budget was set for three years, according to multiple sources familiar with the deal. Unless Alphabet agrees to continue funding Nest, that budget runs out at the end of this year. Several sources said that initial budget was around $500 million annually.

To keep employees from leaving after the acquisition, Google created a vesting schedule that prevents Nest�s executives from cashing out their shares before a certain date � that date could come as soon as this year. In addition, according to sources, as part of the acquisition, Nest and Google agreed on a sales target for the company: $300 million annually.

Two years later, Nest still could not hit that target alone � it did it only after adding sales from Dropcam, which Nest acquired for $555 million six months after joining Google.

But that acquisition, as events over the past week have shown, did not go smoothly. Several Dropcam staffers, including its two founders, left. And its former CEO, Greg Duffy, has (twice) voiced his discontent with Fadell, setting off a wave of unseemly attention on Nest.

As bad as it looks for Nest now, it could be worse by the year�s end.

Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Apr 5, 2016

# ? Apr 5, 2016 02:17

Emacs Headroom: Aug 2, 2003

Being in a hardware start-up is terrifying. It's difficult to make the thing, way harder to ship the thing, the market is way more fickle, and your up-front costs (loving injection molding? fabrication?) are massive.

And if anything is broke, your loop for fixing it is slow and might throw off your shipping schedule.

And if you make anything good, Apple is just going to put a few million into making something just like it but better and will eat your lunch within 2 years.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 04:21

Konstantin: Jun 20, 2005; And the Lord said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

It's even worse if you have a successful Kickstarter, since that commits you to a hard deadline, plus you have to fulfill all your Kickstarter orders before you get any new revenue from selling the thing. It's like a loan that becomes due at the worst possible time.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 06:22

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

Aliquid posted:

i have a friend who makes $200k/yr as a "client support engineer" so it's probably time to dehumanize yourself and face to bloodshed

Yeah, my official title is "Second Line Support Engineer". I'm a computer janitor.

This is actually a growing issue in the tech world, as I see it. It is incredibly difficult to get comparable salary expectations because the same position is under a couple dozen different idiosyncratic titles across the industry.

Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Apr 5, 2016

# ? Apr 5, 2016 07:15

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

If you're actually writing code like working on the new version of Microsoft Office or something, it seems to me that you're a software engineer.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 07:17

The Dipshit: Dec 21, 2005; by FactsAreUseless

Josh Lyman posted:

How do I get THAT job?

I thought it was a cute term for "escort".

# ? Apr 5, 2016 11:00

Harik: Sep 9, 2001; From the hard streets of Moscow
First dog to touch the stars; Plaster Town Cop

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Probably just close it down as a failed purchase. (I have no inside information.) If it's really broken, probably cheaper to just shut it down.

Related news: DropCam founder says Next management sucks. (Next bought DropCam.)

e: Wow, the Nest acquisition looks bad.
https://www.theinformation.com/inside-tony-fadells-struggle-to-build-nest

http://recode.net/2016/04/01/nest-vp-shige-honjo-departs/

It's better than that, when it goes away your $200 thermostat will simply turn off like all the other products Nest doesn't want anymore. Not "lose server-based functionality", hard-brick.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 12:00

shrike82: Jun 11, 2005

lol

Arsenic Lupin posted:

Nest is a footstep into smart-house technology, and they can use the expertise to go bigger. I'm betting that Google voice search steps into the Alexa/Siri "cloud-backed app as a universal controller" space any day. Google also has a massive boner for save-the-earth products.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 12:05

silence_kit: Jul 14, 2011; by the sex ghost

Ha, I wonder if my predictions in this thread will turn out to be wrong. I claimed earlier in this thread that increasing government spending for science projects may not necessarily be a good idea.

Watch as in the next 8 years, President Trump will pass legislation increasing DoD funding, and a marginal graduate student science project which wouldn't have gotten funded in a more conservative funding climate becomes the next steam engine/radio/internet.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 13:12

Pump it up! Do it!: Oct 3, 2012

I'm getting a lot of facebook ads for this new idiotic start-up! https://airdine.com/ in which you are supposed to start a restaurant in your home and invite home strangers!

# ? Apr 5, 2016 13:20

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

loving LOL. These startups are high tech reversions to the Gilded Age world of rooming houses, shift workers, and a complete lack of government regulation.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 13:37

clockworx: Oct 15, 2005; The Internet Whore made me buy this account

Emacs Headroom posted:

Being in a hardware start-up is terrifying. It's difficult to make the thing, way harder to ship the thing, the market is way more fickle, and your up-front costs (loving injection molding? fabrication?) are massive.

And if anything is broke, your loop for fixing it is slow and might throw off your shipping schedule.

And if you make anything good, Apple is just going to put a few million into making something just like it but better and will eat your lunch within 2 years.

Even better is when your devices are already out in the field and you push out a firmware update that bricks them, like what happened with Wink Hub.

http://status.winkapp.com/incidents/4c47cdvgl6b4

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/47362/20150420/bricked-quirky-wink-smart-home-hub-heres-how-to-fix-it.htm

# ? Apr 5, 2016 14:54

bacon!: Dec 10, 2003; The fierce urgency of now

Lord Tywin posted:

I'm getting a lot of facebook ads for this new idiotic start-up! https://airdine.com/ in which you are supposed to start a restaurant in your home and invite home strangers!

Complaints about "gig economy" aside, I know a lot of yuppie type accomplished amateur chefs that love to do this kind of stuff, and these kinds of sites (airdine is like the 9th competitor in this space) give them a way to collect payments, etc, more easily. I am not sure what is going to happen when someone gets salmonella or something though.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 15:12

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Josh Lyman posted:

If you're actually writing code like working on the new version of Microsoft Office or something, it seems to me that you're a software engineer.

I built my Microsoft Office out of Java and it collapsed during a windstorm, killing hundreds.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 15:26

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Can the admins filter "software engineer" to "H1B replacement candidate"? Thanks in advance.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 15:26

Lyesh: Apr 9, 2003

bacon! posted:

Complaints about "gig economy" aside, I know a lot of yuppie type accomplished amateur chefs that love to do this kind of stuff, and these kinds of sites (airdine is like the 9th competitor in this space) give them a way to collect payments, etc, more easily. I am not sure what is going to happen when someone gets salmonella or something though.

If health inspectors weren't so hilariously underfunded, this sounds like an amazing bounty for them.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 15:27

Space Gopher: Jul 31, 2006; BLITHERING IDIOT AND HARDCORE DURIAN APOLOGIST. LET ME TELL YOU WHY THIS SHIT DON'T STINK EVEN THOUGH WE ALL KNOW IT DOES BECAUSE I'M SUPER CULTURED.

Rhesus Pieces posted:

It's amazing how every thread about the software industry or IT is guaranteed to devolve into a dumb status-obsessed brawl over whose undergrad degree was harder.

In topical news, a Nest employee on the Nest subreddit says the company is circling the drain:

Honestly, who the gently caress actually needed a fancy thermostat that connected to the internet to begin with? Not enough people apparently!

The funny thing is, the Nest thermostat is a genuinely useful device with a lot of potential for social good. Home heating and cooling eats up a tremendous amount of energy, and adding a bit of intelligence to the mix can make a big impact on that consumption. It'd be even better if the Nest technology was available in a cheap beige box that could be installed en masse, but even as it is, it's a good thing.

It just goes to show that if you put anything - even a good, useful product - into the hands of Silicon Valley manchild leadership, they'll find a way to gently caress it up.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 15:38

1337JiveTurkey: Feb 17, 2005

Citizen Tayne posted:

Can the admins filter "software engineer" to "H1B replacement candidate"? Thanks in advance.

According to the NCEES it's "PM who knows just enough about what the rest of the team does to be dangerous plus enough thermo and fluid dynamics to give them delusions of grandeur"

# ? Apr 5, 2016 15:39

blugu64: Jul 17, 2006; Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

The nest is an absolutely terrible thermostat. I had one, and it would never follow the schedule you set if you left it in its 'learning' mode. Even with that mode disabled it seems to only keep the house about 5 degrees on the wrong side of whatever you set.

One you disable that mode it becomes just a overpriced regular thermostat with wifi. Don't even get me started on their smoke detectors.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 15:51

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Lyesh posted:

If health inspectors weren't so hilariously underfunded, this sounds like an amazing bounty for them.

Yeah. You can't sell jam at a farmer's market without having a certified-by-health-inspectors clean kitchen, so serving total strangers your homemade mayonnaise is obviously going to work out well.

I sure the heck was wrong about Nest. See thread title.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 15:54

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

Uh, hello folks, I'm the Senior Forums Quality Assurance Engineer in charge of this fun space, and I am going to graduate people to bespoke term-limited vacations if I see more college major/qualification dick-waving in this thread. M'kay?

# ? Apr 5, 2016 16:23

FilthyImp: Sep 30, 2002; Anime Deviant

blugu64 posted:

The nest is an absolutely terrible thermostat. I had one, and it would never follow the schedule you set if you left it in its 'learning' mode. Even with that mode disabled it seems to only keep the house about 5 degrees on the wrong side of whatever you set.

Glad I haven't been in the position to buy one yet. I admit, the idea of turning on the AC from my watch while my car Autodrives its way back from the store was very sci-fi awesome.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 18:17

H.P. Hovercraft: Jan 12, 2004; one thing a computer can do that most humans can't is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse; Slippery Tilde

blugu64 posted:

One you disable that mode it becomes just a overpriced regular thermostat with wifi. Don't even get me started on their smoke detectors.

make sure not to wave your arms near it in the event of a fire

# ? Apr 5, 2016 18:27

Lyesh: Apr 9, 2003

Space Gopher posted:

The funny thing is, the Nest thermostat is a genuinely useful device with a lot of potential for social good. Home heating and cooling eats up a tremendous amount of energy, and adding a bit of intelligence to the mix can make a big impact on that consumption. It'd be even better if the Nest technology was available in a cheap beige box that could be installed en masse, but even as it is, it's a good thing.

It just goes to show that if you put anything - even a good, useful product - into the hands of Silicon Valley manchild leadership, they'll find a way to gently caress it up.

It's frustrating because it doesn't have the thing that I'd most want in a product like that. Something that says "ya know, keeping the house at 70 degrees instead of 68 costs you $5 per day." As far as I know, this data is possible to get.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 18:37

Rhesus Pieces: Jun 27, 2005

Lord Tywin posted:

I'm getting a lot of facebook ads for this new idiotic start-up! https://airdine.com/ in which you are supposed to start a restaurant in your home and invite home strangers!

This can't be real. It's like someone took the slam-dunk hypothetical argument people make against Airbnb and actually implemented it with the laziest name possible.

Unregulated food service, what can possibly go wrong?

# ? Apr 5, 2016 18:53

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Lord Tywin posted:

I'm getting a lot of facebook ads for this new idiotic start-up! https://airdine.com/ in which you are supposed to start a restaurant in your home and invite home strangers!

There have been a bunch of these, I just read an article the other day about how many have struggled/shuttered.
fake edit:

quote:

The first EWSAs [Eating With Strangers Apps] started making headlines in the early 2010s. There were articles from both the food and tech world about companies like GrubWithUs, Kitchenly, Grouper, EatWith, HomeDine, Leftover Swap, and many others.

http://www.eater.com/2016/3/31/11293260/airbnb-for-food-apps-eatwith-feastly

# ? Apr 5, 2016 19:14

Subjunctive: Sep 12, 2006; ✨sparkle and shine✨

"Leftover Swap". Jesus, they can't even name things competently.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 19:15

Mozi: Apr 4, 2004; Forms change so fast
Time is moving past
Memory is smoke
Gonna get wider when I die; Nap Ghost

Any VCs out there interested in 'ScrapShare'? From my compost to your mouth!

# ? Apr 5, 2016 19:17

clockworx: Oct 15, 2005; The Internet Whore made me buy this account

Subjunctive posted:

"Leftover Swap". Jesus, they can't even name things competently.

HAVE: 50 boxes of expired Mac and Cheese
WANT: 10 lbs of Fresh lobster tail

# ? Apr 5, 2016 20:00

Arcteryx Anarchist: Sep 15, 2007; Fun Shoe

Lyesh posted:

It's frustrating because it doesn't have the thing that I'd most want in a product like that. Something that says "ya know, keeping the house at 70 degrees instead of 68 costs you $5 per day." As far as I know, this data is possible to get.

I feel like the supposed auto-learn feature is basically vaporware or is too opaque to make sense. It just feels like a wifi-enabled thermostat with nice packaging and some nice features.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 20:20

pangstrom: Jan 25, 2003; Wedge Regret

Yeah I have heard good things about Nest but FOR ME that auto-learn thing was always a "well I would be turning THAT off" feature.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 20:30

Pump it up! Do it!: Oct 3, 2012

Cicero posted:

There have been a bunch of these, I just read an article the other day about how many have struggled/shuttered.
fake edit:

http://www.eater.com/2016/3/31/11293260/airbnb-for-food-apps-eatwith-feastly

Huh, I figured it was an lovely idea but apparently they haven't done much research at all but maybe they think it will be different in Sweden. I also tried the app and they only had like 20 "restaurants" in the entirety of Sweden so it doesn't seem like the greatest success.

Pump it up! Do it! fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Apr 5, 2016

# ? Apr 5, 2016 20:35

Mr. Nemo: Feb 4, 2016; I wish I had a sister like my big strong Daddy

Cicero posted:

There have been a bunch of these, I just read an article the other day about how many have struggled/shuttered.
fake edit:

http://www.eater.com/2016/3/31/11293260/airbnb-for-food-apps-eatwith-feastly

And this one:

https://www.cookapp.com/

Successful in Argentina, currently trying to expand, well, everywhere. Just look at the extremely misleading location list.

This kind of thing has the same drawbacks as Uber, where there is no guarantee of the quality of the products. But I've seen "secret restaurants" operate through this thing. With waiters and all.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 20:35

Dubstep Jesus: Jun 27, 2012; by exmarx

pangstrom posted:

Yeah I have heard good things about Nest but FOR ME that auto-learn thing was always a "well I would be turning THAT off" feature.

I wonder if it's even that much more efficient than just setting the timer on a thermostat.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 21:07

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 1, 2024 16:57

Arsenic Lupin: Apr 12, 2012; This particularly rapid💨 unintelligible 😖patter💁 isn't generally heard🧏‍♂️, and if it is🤔, it doesn't matter💁.

Mr. Nemo posted:

This kind of thing has the same drawbacks as Uber, where there is no guarantee of the quality of the products. But I've seen "secret restaurants" operate through this thing. With waiters and all.

Pop-up restaurant parties are a thing, where professional chefs rent a space and make a meal for a night or maybe two, then vanish into the wind. But they're food-certified and know what to do and not do, and it's word-of-mouth, not apps.

# ? Apr 5, 2016 21:35

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

«‹›1517 »