6 ms·

This is all great and fun, you know, for the cheeseburger network. I am not sure that companies like Microsoft or Apple would ever entertain an idea like this.

by niyazpk 16y ago

This is all great and fun, you know, for the cheeseburger network. I am not sure that companies like Microsoft or Apple would ever entertain an idea like this. There is nothing wrong with committing your code to the source control on the first day, but there is nothing to be proud of it either. I personally would like to get acquainted with my team-mates and stuff and go through some company policies before pushing stuff to the production. Please don't make my first day at the job more difficult than it should be. Also, not all code bases are easy to even learn where to modify. >>> The result will be happier, more empowered employees with an attitude of ownership and a focus on productivity. Again, why? What is wrong if you started committing code on the second day? This is just a different approach, not always a better approach. If it works for them, good. There are a lot of situations where this policy will lead to disastrous results. And I hope the title is just link-bait and not actually true. [EDIT: removed the words "more serious" from the second sentence. See comment from Scott below]

scottporad 16y ago
@niyazpk: I resent this comment: "I am not sure that more serious* companies...I mean with actual paying customers and such." Cheezburger has been a profitable business since inception. We have been profitable every single quarter, and never had a quarter with negative cash flows. Our revenues and profits are in the millions. Very, very few startups can make that claim. We operate three different lines of business: we sell advertising, we sell merchandise (at http://lolmart.com http://lolmart.com) and we publish printed materials such as books and greeting cards (http://amzn.to/buztLM http://amzn.to/buztLM). I assure you that having fun and LOL is a serious business. Scott
- niyazpk 16y ago
  I apologize. I've removed the offending words. My argument stays.
- silverbax88 16y ago
  If you are having people check in code on the first day, are you really serious, or just making up silly rules that will blow up when you are actually a company, not just "profitable from inception" (Man, have I heard THAT one before)
  - silverbax88 16y ago
    Not only that, if any of my managers or hiring personnel ever bring an idea this dumb to me, I will fire them on the spot. Wow. I can't believe how angry something this utterly nonsensical makes me, but at least I know it's being done by other companies, not by mine.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - lemming 16y ago
      A little over the top, no? I agree that having developers commit to production code day 1 isn't right for all companies, but having systems sufficiently automated that you can set up a dev workstation and actually commit code in, say, 90 minutes should definitely be a goal for all companies.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - lrm242 16y ago
    The company behind the Cheezburger network is very real (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/pet-holdings-inc http://www.crunchbase.com/company/pet-holdings-inc). They run some very popular content sites. For example, I Can has Cheezburger is being visited by 3.6 million people per month. Their network as a whole is being visited by 12.1 million people per month, according to Quantcast (http://www.quantcast.com/p-75z9nhQwNH4Ek http://www.quantcast.com/p-75z9nhQwNH4Ek). How exactly is this business not "real" ? Now, to the point at hand. Having a new hire show up on the first day, get their work station setup, and complete a round trip of checking out code, fixing something real, and getting it back into the repository is a very real milestone. You might take it as being flippant or process-ignorant, but by getting that new-hire through that hurdle on day one can be seen as a major accomplishment. It may not be right for some businesses, but if you instead got your new hires to submit a change for review rather than for integration into a production build you'd achieve the same effect.
- inboulder 16y ago
  "Cheezburger has been a profitable business since inception. We have been profitable every single quarter, and never had a quarter with negative cash flows. " Oh come on now, how could you have negative cash flow? Your whole business model is based around publishing content on the web you didn't create, (and 99% of the time probably don't even own the rights to), this is not exactly an expensive business to run.
  - zavulon 16y ago
    Trust me, it's VERY easy to have negative cash flow, for any business
    - inboulder 16y ago
      Sorry, don't get me wrong, I understand it's easy to burn through cash. My point is: I'm not sure why Cheezburger thinks it's impressive to set up Wordpress blogs of other people's images without breaking the bank.
      - zacharycohn 16y ago
        I don't know if they're flouting it as "impressive" so much as "This is a fact that is not true for many other start ups."
      - webwright 16y ago
        You don't think it's impressive? Go do it. I believe these guys are profitable with a headcount of 20-30 people (many of whom are content moderators). They've presumably built an ad-sales machine that works, a moderation machine that works, and build some fairly sophisticated custom software as well as the business analytics software behind it to measure/improve their sites. They've also built a "market testing" machine where they launch speculative blogs and measure their success/viability. These guys have a GREAT growth curve and healthy margins- rare in the content world. Heck, look at Reddit. Great company, soaring page views, barely profitable. I'm sure you're similarly unimpressed with Yelp? Threadless? Digg? Reddit?
- butterfi 16y ago
  I didn't read niyazpk's comment as a slur against your business model, but as an observation that assumes Cheez code is simpler to write and maintain then other code bases. I can see Cheez's approach working for a web based environment, but for something more involved, say Photoshop, this would probably be a disaster.
  - mseebach 16y ago
    You could also see it as a goal focused towards the quality and maintainability of the codebase, properly defined and communicated tasks, CI- and QA-processes etc. that make it possible. There's nothing inherently different between a website and "real" software that makes being agile (which this is really about) more possible on websites.
  - MartinCron 16y ago
    The fact that the Cheezburger Network code and development environment is as inviting and straightforward to new developers is not an accident. Without constant care and refactoring, even the most mundane-seeming software systems can develop into unmaintainable cruftballs.
apl 16y ago
Thanks for pointing that out. It's wonderful that their codebases can be enhanced by adding another case to a switch-statement, but that's far from what you'll encounter with complex projects. It works for web 2.0 PHP/Rails stuff. It doesn't translate to much else. [EDIT: My tone struck me as a bit too condescending, sorry about that. Still: Rushing new developers into their first commit doesn't work for many projects!]
- jeffbarr 16y ago
  I think they are really testing the ability for a new developer to get a build machine set up and running so that they can check out, modify, test, and check in code. This is as much of a test of Cheeseburger as it is of the new hire (or their bladder). In the past I have worked at or consulted for places where doing so was a black art that could easily occupy a week or more of a new hire's time. Most small companies had a single "expert" and the rest of the developers would copy code, libraries, and settings from one machine to another in cargo-cult fashion.
  - brentc4m 16y ago
    Nail on the head, here. I'd say it isn't a test of the new hire at all. Having this rule in place requires their code and tools to be in order and easy to set up at all times. That alone is priceless company-wide, however it makes the new hire feel on the first day.
- JoachimSchipper 16y ago
  > that's far from what you'll encounter with complex projects I don't think that's true. Even complex projects have some simple bugs. The example given was making the software produce a nicer error message if the output was out of bounds; you can do that kind of work for almost any program. It's not like they assigned a random bug...
  - eru 16y ago
    Or even jut fix a typo in a comment or error message.
Splines 16y ago
I'm in a test org in MS and we try to get new hires to check in test code sometime their first week. As others have said here, it's a multi-purpose task: Get the new hire up to speed on how to work with our internal tools, work out any kinks that they would run into anyway, and give them a feeling of having accomplished something for the team. The actual quality of their check-in shouldn't be terribly important, as what they're checking in is usually something very simple. Doing it all in a single day is aggressive, but doable. I suppose you'd find holes in the new-hire documentation pretty quickly.
rryyan 16y ago
He mentions that the task is a small, specific code change (I imagine planned in advance), and that another developer sits with the new hire for the whole day. I didn't get the impression that it's a "trial by fire" kind of scenario. Overall, it strikes me as a nice idea; I know I would appreciate having a first day like this.
- Tyr42 16y ago
  I would love to have a first day like this. I know that it took me several frustrating days to get a hello world up and running on my last project. Getting the existing code base to compile and go on the first day is very nice.
Locke1689 16y ago
This is all great and fun, you know, for the cheeseburger network. I am not sure that companies like Microsoft or Apple would ever entertain an idea like this. For someone with pretty grandios claims about Microsoft it seems like you definitely didn't double check your statements. One of the most helpful things that anyone did for me when I started at Microsoft was when my office mate helped me get setup on the network, pull the source code, find the target area, and "check-in" (not a real check-in, the MS final check-in process is complex) a trivial patch with a full recompile.

by niyazpk 16y ago

scottporad 16y ago

@niyazpk: I resent this comment: "I am not sure that more serious* companies...I mean with actual paying customers and such." Cheezburger has been a profitable business since inception. We have been profitable every single quarter, and never had a quarter with negative cash flows. Our revenues and profits are in the millions. Very, very few startups can make that claim. We operate three different lines of business: we sell advertising, we sell merchandise (at http://lolmart.com http://lolmart.com) and we publish printed materials such as books and greeting cards (http://amzn.to/buztLM http://amzn.to/buztLM). I assure you that having fun and LOL is a serious business. Scott

niyazpk 16y ago
I apologize. I've removed the offending words. My argument stays.
silverbax88 16y ago
If you are having people check in code on the first day, are you really serious, or just making up silly rules that will blow up when you are actually a company, not just "profitable from inception" (Man, have I heard THAT one before)
- silverbax88 16y ago
  Not only that, if any of my managers or hiring personnel ever bring an idea this dumb to me, I will fire them on the spot. Wow. I can't believe how angry something this utterly nonsensical makes me, but at least I know it's being done by other companies, not by mine.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - lemming 16y ago
    A little over the top, no? I agree that having developers commit to production code day 1 isn't right for all companies, but having systems sufficiently automated that you can set up a dev workstation and actually commit code in, say, 90 minutes should definitely be a goal for all companies.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- lrm242 16y ago
  The company behind the Cheezburger network is very real (http://www.crunchbase.com/company/pet-holdings-inc http://www.crunchbase.com/company/pet-holdings-inc). They run some very popular content sites. For example, I Can has Cheezburger is being visited by 3.6 million people per month. Their network as a whole is being visited by 12.1 million people per month, according to Quantcast (http://www.quantcast.com/p-75z9nhQwNH4Ek http://www.quantcast.com/p-75z9nhQwNH4Ek). How exactly is this business not "real" ? Now, to the point at hand. Having a new hire show up on the first day, get their work station setup, and complete a round trip of checking out code, fixing something real, and getting it back into the repository is a very real milestone. You might take it as being flippant or process-ignorant, but by getting that new-hire through that hurdle on day one can be seen as a major accomplishment. It may not be right for some businesses, but if you instead got your new hires to submit a change for review rather than for integration into a production build you'd achieve the same effect.
inboulder 16y ago
"Cheezburger has been a profitable business since inception. We have been profitable every single quarter, and never had a quarter with negative cash flows. " Oh come on now, how could you have negative cash flow? Your whole business model is based around publishing content on the web you didn't create, (and 99% of the time probably don't even own the rights to), this is not exactly an expensive business to run.
- zavulon 16y ago
  Trust me, it's VERY easy to have negative cash flow, for any business
  - inboulder 16y ago
    Sorry, don't get me wrong, I understand it's easy to burn through cash. My point is: I'm not sure why Cheezburger thinks it's impressive to set up Wordpress blogs of other people's images without breaking the bank.
    - zacharycohn 16y ago
      I don't know if they're flouting it as "impressive" so much as "This is a fact that is not true for many other start ups."
    - webwright 16y ago
      You don't think it's impressive? Go do it. I believe these guys are profitable with a headcount of 20-30 people (many of whom are content moderators). They've presumably built an ad-sales machine that works, a moderation machine that works, and build some fairly sophisticated custom software as well as the business analytics software behind it to measure/improve their sites. They've also built a "market testing" machine where they launch speculative blogs and measure their success/viability. These guys have a GREAT growth curve and healthy margins- rare in the content world. Heck, look at Reddit. Great company, soaring page views, barely profitable. I'm sure you're similarly unimpressed with Yelp? Threadless? Digg? Reddit?
butterfi 16y ago
I didn't read niyazpk's comment as a slur against your business model, but as an observation that assumes Cheez code is simpler to write and maintain then other code bases. I can see Cheez's approach working for a web based environment, but for something more involved, say Photoshop, this would probably be a disaster.
- mseebach 16y ago
  You could also see it as a goal focused towards the quality and maintainability of the codebase, properly defined and communicated tasks, CI- and QA-processes etc. that make it possible. There's nothing inherently different between a website and "real" software that makes being agile (which this is really about) more possible on websites.
- MartinCron 16y ago
  The fact that the Cheezburger Network code and development environment is as inviting and straightforward to new developers is not an accident. Without constant care and refactoring, even the most mundane-seeming software systems can develop into unmaintainable cruftballs.

apl 16y ago

Thanks for pointing that out. It's wonderful that their codebases can be enhanced by adding another case to a switch-statement, but that's far from what you'll encounter with complex projects. It works for web 2.0 PHP/Rails stuff. It doesn't translate to much else. [EDIT: My tone struck me as a bit too condescending, sorry about that. Still: Rushing new developers into their first commit doesn't work for many projects!]

jeffbarr 16y ago
I think they are really testing the ability for a new developer to get a build machine set up and running so that they can check out, modify, test, and check in code. This is as much of a test of Cheeseburger as it is of the new hire (or their bladder). In the past I have worked at or consulted for places where doing so was a black art that could easily occupy a week or more of a new hire's time. Most small companies had a single "expert" and the rest of the developers would copy code, libraries, and settings from one machine to another in cargo-cult fashion.
- brentc4m 16y ago
  Nail on the head, here. I'd say it isn't a test of the new hire at all. Having this rule in place requires their code and tools to be in order and easy to set up at all times. That alone is priceless company-wide, however it makes the new hire feel on the first day.
JoachimSchipper 16y ago
> that's far from what you'll encounter with complex projects I don't think that's true. Even complex projects have some simple bugs. The example given was making the software produce a nicer error message if the output was out of bounds; you can do that kind of work for almost any program. It's not like they assigned a random bug...
- eru 16y ago
  Or even jut fix a typo in a comment or error message.

Splines 16y ago

I'm in a test org in MS and we try to get new hires to check in test code sometime their first week. As others have said here, it's a multi-purpose task: Get the new hire up to speed on how to work with our internal tools, work out any kinks that they would run into anyway, and give them a feeling of having accomplished something for the team. The actual quality of their check-in shouldn't be terribly important, as what they're checking in is usually something very simple. Doing it all in a single day is aggressive, but doable. I suppose you'd find holes in the new-hire documentation pretty quickly.

rryyan 16y ago

He mentions that the task is a small, specific code change (I imagine planned in advance), and that another developer sits with the new hire for the whole day. I didn't get the impression that it's a "trial by fire" kind of scenario. Overall, it strikes me as a nice idea; I know I would appreciate having a first day like this.

Tyr42 16y ago
I would love to have a first day like this. I know that it took me several frustrating days to get a hello world up and running on my last project. Getting the existing code base to compile and go on the first day is very nice.

Locke1689 16y ago

This is all great and fun, you know, for the cheeseburger network. I am not sure that companies like Microsoft or Apple would ever entertain an idea like this. For someone with pretty grandios claims about Microsoft it seems like you definitely didn't double check your statements. One of the most helpful things that anyone did for me when I started at Microsoft was when my office mate helped me get setup on the network, pull the source code, find the target area, and "check-in" (not a real check-in, the MS final check-in process is complex) a trivial patch with a full recompile.