4 ms·

It's cheaper to develop high quality software, so let's all pay $500k+ a year to hire people capable of doing it for us, find a recruiting team good enough to f

It's cheaper to develop high quality software, so let's all pay $500k+ a year to hire people capable of doing it for us, find a recruiting team good enough to find them, build a culture they actually want to join, and then hire enough of them that they have time to do regular code reviews, write tests, refactor code, etc. High quality software takes a lot more than management telling everyone it's ok if they want to write high quality code.

m0zg 7y ago
False dichotomy. You don't need $500k engineers to write quality software. $150k/yr ones will do it just fine if you teach them how to do it and part ways with those who don't see the value in following basic quality standards.
- falsedan 7y ago
  I assume you need more than one dev to deliver the kind of project OP is thinking of, so that 500k is for a dev team
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Pretty sure the OP meant that only $500K+ per head FANG employees are capable of writing quality software. To be fair, you can't write any other software at FNG (don't know about A): you won't be allowed to check it in. Some people leave due to not being able to pass the readability review. But FANG employment is not a prerequisite. I have personally hired something like 20 engineers of varying seniority and within a month or two, they were cranking out impeccable work.
nickpsecurity 7y ago
When Cleanroom did it, it was anywhere from a little cheaper to a little more expensive. Praxis's process had lower defects with higher, upfront costs. The one quote I heard on price was about 50% more than other suppliers. Praxis and some Cleanroom suppliers issued warranties for their code at specific defect rates. So, I imagine it's not as hard as you suggest to have high quality software. Heck, I think companies saying their stuff is higher quality could get away with less quality than those warrantied products given current state of software market. http://infohost.nmt.edu/~al/cseet-paper.html http://infohost.nmt.edu/~al/cseet-paper.html http://www.anthonyhall.org/c_by_c_secure_system.pdf http://www.anthonyhall.org/c_by_c_secure_system.pdf

m0zg 7y ago

False dichotomy. You don't need $500k engineers to write quality software. $150k/yr ones will do it just fine if you teach them how to do it and part ways with those who don't see the value in following basic quality standards.

falsedan 7y ago
I assume you need more than one dev to deliver the kind of project OP is thinking of, so that 500k is for a dev team
- m0zg 7y ago
  Pretty sure the OP meant that only $500K+ per head FANG employees are capable of writing quality software. To be fair, you can't write any other software at FNG (don't know about A): you won't be allowed to check it in. Some people leave due to not being able to pass the readability review. But FANG employment is not a prerequisite. I have personally hired something like 20 engineers of varying seniority and within a month or two, they were cranking out impeccable work.

nickpsecurity 7y ago

When Cleanroom did it, it was anywhere from a little cheaper to a little more expensive. Praxis's process had lower defects with higher, upfront costs. The one quote I heard on price was about 50% more than other suppliers. Praxis and some Cleanroom suppliers issued warranties for their code at specific defect rates. So, I imagine it's not as hard as you suggest to have high quality software. Heck, I think companies saying their stuff is higher quality could get away with less quality than those warrantied products given current state of software market. http://infohost.nmt.edu/~al/cseet-paper.html http://infohost.nmt.edu/~al/cseet-paper.html http://www.anthonyhall.org/c_by_c_secure_system.pdf http://www.anthonyhall.org/c_by_c_secure_system.pdf