5 ms·

Happens everywhere. In corp I've seen engineers go behind their manager's back to write something in their favourite language knowing it would've been rejected

Happens everywhere. In corp I've seen engineers go behind their manager's back to write something in their favourite language knowing it would've been rejected if discussion had happen beforehand.

reustle 9y ago
That sounds like a reasonable reason to fire someone
- WJW 9y ago
  That depends on how well it works. If it blows up and costs the company a million bucks you get fired, if it works extremely well then you are a maverick genius. "Ask for forgiveness, not permission", etc. Not saying that the extent to which it was apparently done at soundcloud should be acceptable though.
  - sgt101 9y ago
    The extent indicates anarchy which indicates poor leadership. The issue must have been with the management culture - flat hierarchies don't mean free for alls!
- sgt101 9y ago
  It depends on the outcome of the discussion - which depends on your capability as a manager. Sometimes this behavior is because the manager is an arse who can't run a reasonable process of team decision making, and the covert development is a reasonable appeal from someone who is disenfranchised in the decision making process and is making a very valuable point. The employee so doing is highly engaged and valuable and firing them is an act of self harm. In other cases this is an act of aggression by an unreasonable and arrogant individual who doesn't care about the team or the company and is simply doing what they want. You have to judge - call it wrong (either way) and you have a problem that will cost you dearly. But be aware there are two sides to this coin and you might be the one that needs to learn. My questions are always : is this part of a pattern (conflict, poor performance, bad behaviour?); why don't I want to sit with this person for 2 hours with a coffee and understand whats going on?; why didn't the coffee heart to heart work out?
elmar 9y ago
I think most of google sucesses outside search were done like that without the CEO having knowledge.
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  I was about to say the same, but it’s not exactly the same. You are free to build anything, but using existing stack. Not pickup new stack and rewrite something that’s not even broken. That said, probably more often than not, there’s an actual value in it.
  - elmar 9y ago
    I think reality is more serendipitous, ny view is that if you have hardworking creativy people working on side projects sometimes magic happens. For example: Android was a completely diferent tech stack from google.
    - din-9 9y ago
      Android was bought in though.
      - elmar 9y ago
        I heard in a lecture of Blitzscaling with Eric Schmidt that google founders got the Google Chrome and Android projects running inside google without him knowing the real breath and intentions of the projects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcRxFRgNpns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcRxFRgNpns
        sgroppino 9y ago
        The main difference could be that google has loads of cash to burn trying things out. I don't know their history 100% but suspect they were pretty strict with standards when they were a small start up.
- tanilama 9y ago
pjmlp 9y ago
And then they go and write a blog entry about how much productive they are now, instead of what was the actual business impact if any, to the company customers or revenue.
- bartread 9y ago
  ^^^This. And too often little consideration is given to impact further down the line. E.g., does this tie up your development teams in future doing non-value-adding work to fix breaking changes? What effect does this have on ongoing support costs? How easy is this skillset to hire for? How does this fit in with our roadmap? But it doesn't matter because I've bolstered my CV and by the time those things become really painful I'll be long gone. </cynicism>
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  I don't follow. If they are coding the right things, then a real increase in productivity means better business impact. If they are coding the wrong things, then language doesn't matter. How can a programming language choice hurt the business through some mechanism other than productivity? You could say that such a behavior is "indicative of poor choices" but that's begging the question.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    No it doesn't mean a business impact at all, unless it is proven by accounting. Programmer hourly rate * amount spent on doing such tasks = project money spent Now how has the project money spent impacted the overall project costs, compared with the solution that everyone else is using, including the training costs for the rest of team, setting up a new build infrastructure, possible extra tooling support, salary rates for new hires? Somehow I feel many coders would profit to learn a bit more about business and project management.
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      > No it doesn't mean a business impact at all, unless it is proven by accounting. You're not understanding me. I'm saying that if the work would have this good business impact with the original language, then doing the same thing with better productivity (with the same worker) is better. I'm not saying that improved productivity is guaranteed to mean business impact. Just that it either makes a good thing better, or it takes a bad thing and doesn't make it worse. If someone is doing the wrong work, their rate of production is not to blame. > Now how has the project money spent impacted the overall project costs, compared with the solution that everyone else is using, including the training costs for the rest of team, setting up a new build infrastructure, possible extra tooling support, salary rates for new hires? Other than 'salary rate', all of that falls under productivity. If all those costs are going up enough to drop productivity, then the entire premise goes out the window! The premise was secretly using a different language to increase productivity. Secretly using a different language to decrease productivity is so obviously a bad idea that it's not worth discussing.

Happens everywhere. In corp I've seen engineers go behind their manager's back to write something in their favourite language knowing it would've been rejected if discussion had happen beforehand.

reustle 9y ago

That sounds like a reasonable reason to fire someone

WJW 9y ago
That depends on how well it works. If it blows up and costs the company a million bucks you get fired, if it works extremely well then you are a maverick genius. "Ask for forgiveness, not permission", etc. Not saying that the extent to which it was apparently done at soundcloud should be acceptable though.
- sgt101 9y ago
  The extent indicates anarchy which indicates poor leadership. The issue must have been with the management culture - flat hierarchies don't mean free for alls!
sgt101 9y ago
It depends on the outcome of the discussion - which depends on your capability as a manager. Sometimes this behavior is because the manager is an arse who can't run a reasonable process of team decision making, and the covert development is a reasonable appeal from someone who is disenfranchised in the decision making process and is making a very valuable point. The employee so doing is highly engaged and valuable and firing them is an act of self harm. In other cases this is an act of aggression by an unreasonable and arrogant individual who doesn't care about the team or the company and is simply doing what they want. You have to judge - call it wrong (either way) and you have a problem that will cost you dearly. But be aware there are two sides to this coin and you might be the one that needs to learn. My questions are always : is this part of a pattern (conflict, poor performance, bad behaviour?); why don't I want to sit with this person for 2 hours with a coffee and understand whats going on?; why didn't the coffee heart to heart work out?

elmar 9y ago

I think most of google sucesses outside search were done like that without the CEO having knowledge.

dzhiurgis 9y ago
I was about to say the same, but it’s not exactly the same. You are free to build anything, but using existing stack. Not pickup new stack and rewrite something that’s not even broken. That said, probably more often than not, there’s an actual value in it.
- elmar 9y ago
  I think reality is more serendipitous, ny view is that if you have hardworking creativy people working on side projects sometimes magic happens. For example: Android was a completely diferent tech stack from google.
  - din-9 9y ago
    Android was bought in though.
    - elmar 9y ago
      I heard in a lecture of Blitzscaling with Eric Schmidt that google founders got the Google Chrome and Android projects running inside google without him knowing the real breath and intentions of the projects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcRxFRgNpns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcRxFRgNpns
      - sgroppino 9y ago
        The main difference could be that google has loads of cash to burn trying things out. I don't know their history 100% but suspect they were pretty strict with standards when they were a small start up.
tanilama 9y ago

pjmlp 9y ago

And then they go and write a blog entry about how much productive they are now, instead of what was the actual business impact if any, to the company customers or revenue.

bartread 9y ago
^^^This. And too often little consideration is given to impact further down the line. E.g., does this tie up your development teams in future doing non-value-adding work to fix breaking changes? What effect does this have on ongoing support costs? How easy is this skillset to hire for? How does this fit in with our roadmap? But it doesn't matter because I've bolstered my CV and by the time those things become really painful I'll be long gone. </cynicism>
Dylan16807 9y ago
I don't follow. If they are coding the right things, then a real increase in productivity means better business impact. If they are coding the wrong things, then language doesn't matter. How can a programming language choice hurt the business through some mechanism other than productivity? You could say that such a behavior is "indicative of poor choices" but that's begging the question.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  No it doesn't mean a business impact at all, unless it is proven by accounting. Programmer hourly rate * amount spent on doing such tasks = project money spent Now how has the project money spent impacted the overall project costs, compared with the solution that everyone else is using, including the training costs for the rest of team, setting up a new build infrastructure, possible extra tooling support, salary rates for new hires? Somehow I feel many coders would profit to learn a bit more about business and project management.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    > No it doesn't mean a business impact at all, unless it is proven by accounting. You're not understanding me. I'm saying that if the work would have this good business impact with the original language, then doing the same thing with better productivity (with the same worker) is better. I'm not saying that improved productivity is guaranteed to mean business impact. Just that it either makes a good thing better, or it takes a bad thing and doesn't make it worse. If someone is doing the wrong work, their rate of production is not to blame. > Now how has the project money spent impacted the overall project costs, compared with the solution that everyone else is using, including the training costs for the rest of team, setting up a new build infrastructure, possible extra tooling support, salary rates for new hires? Other than 'salary rate', all of that falls under productivity. If all those costs are going up enough to drop productivity, then the entire premise goes out the window! The premise was secretly using a different language to increase productivity. Secretly using a different language to decrease productivity is so obviously a bad idea that it's not worth discussing.