|
Hippie Hedgehog posted:How long have you been in business? Do you expect such a "culture" can prevail long-term, or will there be pain once the company grows to the point that it has to enforce stricter practices? Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) companies don't get to 300 engineers overnight. This means you can evolve and iterate towards processes that work and make sense for your company at the time and set yourselves up for success in the future. More pessimistically: odds are your company is never going to get to that size so don't put yourself at even more of a disadvantage by working on things prematurely.
|
#
?
Dec 16, 2019 22:40
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 23:05 |
|
|
Hippie Hedgehog posted:How long have you been in business? Do you expect such a "culture" can prevail long-term, or will there be pain once the company grows to the point that it has to enforce stricter practices? I don’t think we’re growing the engineering headcount much in the next couple of years. I’d say we need 50% more to really deliver new stuff at the pace we want but I don’t make those decisions. Honestly it is really nice to work this way, assuming you have people you trust. All the teams are focussed on product outcomes not any contractual stuff or box checking, and the freedom teams are given is pretty great as an engineer or product person. We struggle sometimes with consistency across teams, but that’s been accepted to some degree as the cost of having the so much autonomy in the teams.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2019 02:08
|
|
|
Hippie Hedgehog posted:How long have you been in business? Do you expect such a "culture" can prevail long-term, or will there be pain once the company grows to the point that it has to enforce stricter practices? Hippie Hedgehog posted:I wouldn't call that a culture, I'd call that lax engineering practices. The domain of the work is a much bigger determinant of appropriate strictness than team size. Medical devices ought to be strict, fart apps can afford to be lax. Body count of dev team irrelevant.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2019 02:35
|
|
|
JawnV6 posted:Weird thread here where you're presuming size correlates to strictness. Big thing? GOTTA be strict. Small team? GOTTA be lax. I agree that domain will force certain standards to be more important than others but I disagree that body count is irrelevant. As your headcount grows, along with different teams all moving at different paces, the ability to ensure standards for performance, best practices, internal libraries, intra-team mobility and hiring are more and more important.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2019 16:32
|
|
|
Or to put it more succinctly, bigger organizations need stricter processes to hit a given level of quality.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2019 16:36
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:Or to put it more succinctly, bigger organizations need stricter processes to hit a given level of quality. This is what I was getting at. By assuming that Destroyenator's employer is managing to deliver quality software, I deduced that they couldn't possibly be a very large organization. I suppose it's entirely possible, particularly in the world of Silicon Valley startups, to grow a business too fast under such a culture, and hit a limit where the work on fixing bugs takes too much time from getting new features to market, crashing and burning the whole business. But as was pointed out, hopefully the organization will evolve and adapt as it grows. JawnV6 posted:The domain of the work is a much bigger determinant of appropriate strictness than team size. Medical devices ought to be strict, fart apps can afford to be lax. Body count of dev team irrelevant. I know what you're getting at but I don't necessarily agree. Fart apps aside, if you're Microsoft, making Microsoft Word, your code is not going to control dosage in an X-ray machine, but you'd still drat well be diligent about your software architecture choices or you're eventually going to have bloated, slow and buggy software that you won't be able to charge money for.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2019 20:26
|
|
|
Doh004 posted:I agree that domain will force certain standards to be more important than others but I disagree that body count is irrelevant. As your headcount grows, along with different teams all moving at different paces, the ability to ensure standards for performance, best practices, internal libraries, intra-team mobility and hiring are more and more important. Hippie Hedgehog posted:I know what you're getting at but I don't necessarily agree. Fart apps aside, if you're Microsoft, making Microsoft Word, your code is not going to control dosage in an X-ray machine, but you'd still drat well be diligent about your software architecture choices or you're eventually going to have bloated, slow and buggy software that you won't be able to charge money for. And swapping in a mission-critical business app developed over a few decades for "fart app" doesn't strike me as knowing what I'm "getting at". It seems like deliberately yanking the goalposts as far as the umbrella term "app" will allow. But sure, let's start from your disingenuous BS example: Within Microsoft, do you think the "best practices code review" standards are exactly the same between the Word core team and some xbox live legacy webapp? Or do the disparate audiences of "a huge portion of b2b customers critical to revenue" and "one rando kid per day checking gamerscore" allow for some differentiation of their relative strictness and process?
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2019 20:58
|
|
|
JawnV6 posted:Let's say we're making an IoT appcessory and associated web service. Web service has been around for a while, the embedded folks are new. The two "software" teams don't need to share more than a swagger doc. Y'all are just insisting that because there's 20 folks around instead of 10 that some grand aligned process will spring into place and it's just not true. They can keep separate cadence, release schedules, code review standards, etc. What "best practices" are you expecting them to share? What intra-team mobility is important? No, no, I said 300 engineers, not 30. JawnV6 posted:But sure, let's start from your disingenuous BS example: Oh sure, if you start insulting me surely I'll be inclined to let you convince me about whatever it is we're trying to prove. My example may be terrible but that's no need to take that tone. All I was saying was, my experience is that it's very hard to make anything of quality in a large organization unless there is some (at least semi-) structured way of ensuring product quality.
|
|
#
?
Dec 19, 2019 22:12
|
|
|
I've only been working as a dev for 5 years and i have my dream job at a custom software shop, but I'm getting a bit burned out on day to da6 coding. Any advice on a career change or direction for someone like me? Just thinking about it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2019 19:22
|
|
|
Nothing wrong with plumbing
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2019 19:36
|
|
|
I'm pretty much stuck as a code monkey (even as a tech lead or team lead) unless i want to go into management, right? I really don't want to do that. But I want to make more money and do something different-ish.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2019 20:04
|
|
|
Look into TAM or SA roles at AWS. Bunch of folks here can speak about it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2019 20:06
|
|
|
Getting into a different stack might help, too.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2019 20:11
|
|
|
Or plumbing, you can make similar money.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2019 20:22
|
|
|
Could you do consulting
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2019 21:03
|
|
|
Get a job at a place that pays well and allows IC advancement.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2019 22:04
|
|
|
asur posted:Get a job at a place that pays well and allows IC advancement. Or just a place that pays well.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2019 23:15
|
|
|
Hippie Hedgehog posted:Oh sure, if you start insulting me surely I'll be inclined to let you convince me about whatever it is we're trying to prove. Forget 10 vs. 300 for a sec though. WeWork had 8,000 SWE's. Do you think they had a rigid and strict process, or did their audience and domain somehow affect it more than organizational size?
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2019 23:23
|
|
|
JawnV6 posted:WeWork had 8,000 SWE's.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2019 07:19
|
|
|
someone has to make the upskirt tracking ai
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2019 07:25
|
|
|
Keetron posted:Wait, I thought WeWork was a real estate company? What do they need that many SWE's for? they bought a lot of other companies that made software products (meetup, etc.) also they were/are a dumpster fire
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2019 15:35
|
|
|
Keetron posted:Wait, I thought WeWork was a real estate company? What do they need that many SWE's for? Off-topic, but this is my biggest problem with WeWork's business model: they got a shitton of investment to rapidly expand, but they didn't actually purchase any real estate, just leased office space. Meant that their entire model was in razor thin margins for subleasing office space rather than buying/building and being tenant + landlord.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2019 21:30
|
|
|
JawnV6 posted:There's no personal insult, although given that you quoted and responded to text for someone else I don't hold your posting in the highest regard. That was a dry description of the bad faith you're employing to whiz right past the point, but I'm sure if you double down and act like you're the aggrieved one here it'll work out! You appear to be attempting to use WeWork as an example of a company that doesn't need strict process despite their size because of their problem domain. Such arguments work better if you don't pick a company known mostly for being a gigantic disaster as an example.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2019 21:39
|
|
|
kayakyakr posted:Off-topic, but this is my biggest problem with WeWork's business model: they got a shitton of investment to rapidly expand, but they didn't actually purchase any real estate, just leased office space. Meant that their entire model was in razor thin margins for subleasing office space rather than buying/building and being tenant + landlord.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2019 04:16
|
|
|
Yup. Which means that their business model, to make thr CEO lots of money before failing, worked perfectly 
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2019 08:49
|
|
|
Vulture Culture posted:Leased it from their CEO* Ah jeeze, I didn't realize that was part of it. Clever pyramid scheme right there.
|
|
#
?
Dec 22, 2019 16:49
|
|
|
The CEO also registered the trademark for ‘We’ and then licensed it back to the company.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2019 06:16
|
|
|
And, IIRC, got caught doing that and gave back the money the company spent licensing its name from him (no admission of impropriety)
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2019 16:36
|
|
|
The news tells me the company might go bankrupt in the next few weeks. I wonder how much of his 1B net worth will remain and subsequently spend on legal defense fees.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2019 19:33
|
|
|
The Fool posted:The CEO also registered the trademark for ‘We’ and then licensed it back to the company. This was my favourite tidbit from the whole thing. It's just so blatant and shameless.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2019 22:30
|
|
|
And people invested in that. Apparently I need to start a bullshit company.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2019 22:40
|
|
|
It's way easier to get rich by selling bullshit than by selling actual goods/services, that's for drat sure. Both require sales work but only the latter requires you have something worth buying.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2019 22:55
|
|
|
taqueso posted:And people invested in that. Apparently I need to start a bullshit company. Well look at Uber and Netflix, still unprofitable and still valued at billions and billions of dollars. Although I feel like that's through deliberate action/strategy rather than incompetence, but still it'll end the same way.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2019 23:07
|
|
|
Maybe if the netflix creator decided they would personally own all the videos and lease them to netflix. And use netflix money to fund their creation.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2019 23:12
|
|
|
WeWork is like Theranos. It's something that just seems like it should work, like its time has come. I totally get why everyone invested.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2019 23:13
|
|
|
a hot gujju bhabhi posted:Well look at Uber and Netflix, still unprofitable and still valued at billions and billions of dollars. Although I feel like that's through deliberate action/strategy rather than incompetence, but still it'll end the same way. Recessionwatch 2020... although Netflix could probably cut many teams to the bone and bring profitability very quickly, at least for the short and medium term.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2019 23:16
|
|
|
lifg posted:WeWork is like Theranos. It's something that just seems like it should work, like its time has come. I totally get why everyone invested. To be fair I honestly think it could have worked and when I first heard about it it seemed like an excellent idea. So yeah, absent any other information I can also see why people invested. BUT the thing that stuns me is these details, like the CEO selling his own trademark to the company, weren't secret at all and that's where I'm surprised that they got any investors. You'd think they would look at that poo poo and run a thousand miles in the opposite direction rather than continuing to pour millions into the company.
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2019 23:22
|
|
|
I think most people are willing to give up due diligence when "everyone is in on it" which means of course someone must have double checked everything right?
|
|
#
?
Dec 26, 2019 23:28
|
|
|
lifg posted:WeWork is like Theranos. It's something that just seems like it should work, like its time has come. I totally get why everyone invested. When you strip away the bullshit, WeWork is something whose time came 20 years ago, and there’s already several large and modestly profitable companies in that space. WeWork’s differentiating factor was that because they were burning VC money they could provide a nicer offering without charging more.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2019 00:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 23:05 |
|
|
a hot gujju bhabhi posted:You'd think they would look at that poo poo and run a thousand miles in the opposite direction rather than continuing to pour millions into the company. The guy who writes the funny, chatty Bloomberg pieces discussed this at length. When doing private rounds, WeWork could present itself to investors basically however it liked. When it was getting ready to sell its stock as a public company, it was required to disclose different information that made it look like the house of cards it clearly was.
|
|
#
?
Dec 27, 2019 02:20
|
|