6 ms·
I love Hacker News, where a random person can tell a company their $2 billion plan on infrastructure is "a really bad move" with authority
by xux 10y ago
I love Hacker News, where a random person can tell a company their $2 billion plan on infrastructure is "a really bad move" with authority
- ben174 10y agoTo be fair, that company is run by these same 'random persons' that are commenting here.
- visakanv 10y agoThat doesn't mean anything, though. "Some people who do X also do Y" does not imply that "people who do Y are qualified to comment on X." For example: Elon Musk is a Twitter user. I too am a Twitter user. So's Kylie Jenner, Donald Trump, and random spambots. Using the same service does not mean they're equally qualified to speak with authority about the same things.
- agilo 10y agoBeing a 'random person' or a Twitter user should have no bearing on the merit of one's arguments.
- brianwawok 10y agoThat was the point
- ben174 10y agoCorrect. That's why I said "to be fair". I'm saying the playing field is quite level, so we shouldn't judge a comment on whether we recognize their username, but rather on quality of content.
- visakanv 10y ago> we shouldn't judge a comment on whether we recognize their username, but rather on quality of content Ah right, I think I see the nature of our disagreement / misunderstanding. I totally agree with you on the general principle that quality of content should be allowed to stand on its own. However, I believe that there are things that are context-specific things that the men and women in the arena will face. And these are things that those of us in the stands, however thoughtful and discerning, will never be able to appreciate them, because we simply do not know. (For a great read about this, check out Daniel Ellsberg's message to Henry Kissinger, on the reality of having access to top secret information: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsber...) So for example. It seems obvious to me that the top comment is sensible and correct. Snap's CTO or whoever else made that decision is surely very familiar with the costs of being dependent on something like Google. So if they decide to do it anyway, I'm of the opinion that they're quite likely to have done it because of concerns that I am not able to appreciate, because I am not in their context. Of course, there's a non-zero chance that Snap is making stupid decisions. But I think it's far likelier that they're making decisions that SEEM stupid to a 3rd party, but make perfect sense once you appreciate their context. I could be wrong about this, of course.
- hluska 10y agoI don't think you're wrong, but I'd like to point out something. Armchairing decisions like this is a wonderful learning tool. Not only does it give people the opportunity to mentally work through issues that most of us will never face in our careers, but it's a wonderful opportunity to practice diplomatic, yet persuasive writing. You're right, we don't know everything that has gone into a decision, but that's part of the value of an exercise like this. Being able to debate about something, remain civil and deal with specific arguments is an incredibly valuable skill that only gets more valuable as you age.
- return0 10y agoIf both x and y are true for a person then he is definitely qualified.
- bogomipz 10y agoA "random person"? How about a HN reader who is taking part in a discussion? They offered their view and why they believe that. Nowhere did they they claim "authority." Unlike your snide commentary they are actually contributing to the conversation.
- noelwelsh 10y agoThis. If opinions aren't welcome on HN the whole site is pointless.
- the_duke 10y agoYes, the OP does claim authority, by stating his opinion as a plain fact, without knowing anything about it other than the publicly available information, and at the same time labeling a company that has raised 2.6 billion and has 100+ employees as complete idiots. Good discussion would have ensued after a statement like "I wonder why they don't build out their own infrastructure because at this scale it is usually cheaper to...". I could imagine that with this big a deal, they could get rate reductions that get the cost down to a comparable level to building out your own datacenters (at least 2) and hiring qualified ops people. It might very well be a bad move, but you really can't say unless you know more.
- pythonaut_16 10y agoWould it be better for everyone to preface their comments with "This is only my opinion but..."? Making a statement in a comment implies speaking your opinion, unless you start making strong claims to fact or citing sources. We don't need the extra linguistic clutter of framing every statement as a matter of opinion.
- bogomipz 10y agoThe OP states in their second sentence: >"This sounds like a really bad move on their part and they ..." That's hardly a "factual" statement. >"Good discussion would have ensued after a statement like "I wonder why they don't build" Do we really need to preface our comments with personal opinion disclaimers? When someone says "it sounds like", it seems pretty clear that they are admitting they don't know all the details, so how can what follows that phrase imply authority? That's absurd.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- deepnotderp 10y agoPretty sure HN readers work at these companies...
- partiallypro 10y agoand HN includes investors and people in financial services...
- late2part 10y agoThat random person is right. One can run a DC at scale of 50 racks at least 20% cheaper than GCP. That's $80M a year to hire 20 smart people at $2M a year and 200 reasonably smart people at $200k per year. Snap will vanish like their pictures.
- chrissnell 10y agoI think you're very conservative on that estimate. We run an infrastructure on dedicated leased hardware (Rackspace). Our infrastructure costs are a fraction of what the equivalent public cloud footprint costs. With technologies like Kubernetes and CoreOS, our private cloud practically runs itself. We focus on apps and the developer pipeline, much like we would do if we were on GCP/GKE. We have approximately 60 dedicated servers. We're almost at the scale where it makes sense to leave leased baremetal for colocation. For a company like Snap, it's hard to believe that they couldn't save a few hundred million by building their own footprint in leased datacenter space. The days of needing massive ops teams to run on owned and colocated hardware are long gone.
- late2part 10y agoAgreed. I've become immured to paint the least rosy picture that makes the point.
- charlesdm 10y agoFor a company that has always been handed (basically free) money at obscene valuations, why would you assume they care about two billion? Maybe it's just as simple as that? It's an excellent argument as to why I will not be purchasing this stock.
- hamandcheese 10y agoThat's assuming that: - GCP will always have a margin that high - Snapchat is paying the advertised rate - They can find the requisite talent in a reasonable timeframe
- 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- puranjay 10y agoAssuming that large companies can't be wrong is the reason why we have Enron and Bear Stearns
- argonaut 10y agoCompletely wrong way to think about it. In fact, those companies are cases of fraud and lying, and we generally do not assume companies lie. When Google releases their quarterly earnings, we assume the numbers are correct, unless there is evidence to believe it's fraudulent.
- knorby 10y agoBear Stearns didn't fail due to fraud, it failed due to not adequately tracking and assessing the risk of its assets. It is worth noting that there have been serious allegations made a few weeks ago against Snap that they are lying on the S-1.
- polishTar 10y agoLarge companies aren't always right, but they're not always wrong either. Snap has competent engineering execs that have built a very strong company. I would have a hard time believing that they haven't put way more thought into this than OP.
- rifung 10y agoI don't think anyone is assuming they can't be wrong. I think it's more that the post said this was a bad move "with authority" when you don't have all the information unless you actually were involved with that decision. It might be a bad move still but we don't have all the information necessary so it's strange to just assume we know better.
- partiallypro 10y agoWe'll learn when they have to report quarterly earnings what their cash burn is, then we random people can tell them how dumb they were in hindsight.
- free2rhyme214 10y agoI love this comment :)
- samuelbrin 10y agoThis made me smile. During a very trying time. Can you please make similarly awesome comments/observations on political forums?
- Beltiras 10y agoDifference is that a comment that simply states "bad move" is voted down in short order. This comment makes a cogent point about scales and infrastructure. This might be valuable. I love Hacker News too, just without the snark.
- joeyspn 10y agoOn HN nobody knows if you're a dog, or if you run infrastructure at Facebook...
- sheraz 10y agoLOL. So. Very. True.
- vincnetas 10y agoOr a dog running infrastructure on FB ;)
- andybak 10y agoThat's unfair. From what I can tell all the canines are on the mobile app development team.
- bostand 10y agoThe android app team consist probably mostly of whales. (observation based on the fluidity of their app)
- lallysingh 10y agom.facebook.com man, it's been my happy place for fb for a few years now.
- richardboegli 10y agombasic.facebook.com if you really feel that need for speed :)
- orbitur 10y agoI... like the iOS Facebook app. Especially as a fellow iOS dev, there's a few UI things I'd like to reverse engineer. Seems like every year they introduce something useful or cool-looking and I think, "Wait, how did they pull that off?"
- 10y ago
- StreamBright 10y agoHere we value good arguments more than authority, I guess.
- hluska 10y agoYou comment would be stronger if you removed the snark and actually refuted the parent's points. If you want to refute the points refute them, but this kind of comment adds nothing to the discussion. The parent made some good points about scale and infrastructure. I've worked with infrastructure on many projects and I can't come up with a coherent argument why any of the parent's points are wrong. Can you?
- shaldengeki 10y agoI think asking him to refute points gets to the heart of the issue -- in an environment where nobody has enough information to speak authoritatively on a subject, the people who are willing to do so anyways are advantaged. (Think about the qualifications or knowledge that one would have to have to make an informed assessment of this.) This is bad for productive discussion. I agree that empty snark is usually unproductive, but in this case, I think there's a useful point being made. Still, always best to rephrase into non-snark. :)
- rampage101 10y agoI read his point as praise of comment actually.