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I think this article is basically right, but I want to provide a personal perspective on this: This is why I have found that I prefer working on a widely used

I think this article is basically right, but I want to provide a personal perspective on this: This is why I have found that I prefer working on a widely used product at one of these big companies. I find the most enjoyment in thinking through how to make products work acceptably for huge numbers of users, or how to pick the needles I need out of enormous data sets, or how to structure a codebase such that hundreds of people can contribute to it every day. I have found it very demoralizing in my career when I've been told not to think of user or data or codebase scaling considerations because YAGNI. I've lost a number of debates against just-get-it-done ethos, and mostly I think I was right to lose; I was wrong, YAGNI was right. But the rightness of YAGNI for those products didn't make me enjoy the work any more. So I think the article is right that most companies don't have these scaling problems, but for me, I want to work for the ones that do. I think this is probably a common sentiment.

vinay_ys 7y ago
I feel the same way. I have always sought to work for such start-ups that are about to take off and do high-scale; where leverage is important. Leverage provided by code-bases where certain changes to the code makes others working on the same code base 10X more productive; leverage provided by org designs where changes to the org-design can make all the roles 10X more productive. Looking for these leverage enhancing opportunities and making it happen is a very satisfying and unique experience. But there's always YAGNI of some kind in any situation and I'm good with the kind of YAGNI that these scaling situations have.
draw_down 7y ago
Yeah. Since working at a place that does have to think about problems in these terms, I find such YAGNI stuff much less compelling. Guess what, some of us actually are gonna need it. And if you don’t begin with the future in mind, starting out with something “simple” can result in some very not-simple situations down the line.

vinay_ys 7y ago

I feel the same way. I have always sought to work for such start-ups that are about to take off and do high-scale; where leverage is important. Leverage provided by code-bases where certain changes to the code makes others working on the same code base 10X more productive; leverage provided by org designs where changes to the org-design can make all the roles 10X more productive. Looking for these leverage enhancing opportunities and making it happen is a very satisfying and unique experience. But there's always YAGNI of some kind in any situation and I'm good with the kind of YAGNI that these scaling situations have.

draw_down 7y ago

Yeah. Since working at a place that does have to think about problems in these terms, I find such YAGNI stuff much less compelling. Guess what, some of us actually are gonna need it. And if you don’t begin with the future in mind, starting out with something “simple” can result in some very not-simple situations down the line.