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I don't disagree with most of what you're saying. The Nth engineer at a startup rarely looks with admiration at decisions made by the (N/10)th engineer – but it

I don't disagree with most of what you're saying. The Nth engineer at a startup rarely looks with admiration at decisions made by the (N/10)th engineer – but it was those decisions which helped the company grow to its current size. Likewise, I think most of us will be happy if the company 10x's again. Then some super-duper-senior engineer can look at the decisions we're making now – they're not perfect, but we're doing the best we can with our current knowledge and resources – and gripe about them. The circle of life goes on. FWIW, I don't believe Node was chosen specifically for its concurrency – it was just the language chosen for the entire stack by the company's founding engineers, and lives on in just this one service.

GordonS 7y ago
Gah, I can't believe you're still trying to justify this madness! In a parallel universe, a barely-competent engineer would have designed something more far more obvious, simpler, performant - all while using less hours, and not borderline-fraudulently wasting substantial amounts of your VC's money. If the company 10x's again, it won't be because of poor engineering, it'll be because of marketing and VC's who don't know how you're wasting their money. If the company 0.1x's, it'll likely be because of a security breach because of appalling design.
- acrispino 7y ago
  So, in your estimation, plaid's engineering is a bunch of less-than-half-competent madmen, who might as well be committing fraud, correct? Is that overly negative or just the right amount?
GordonS 7y ago
Ah, a serious question as an aside to my last (scathing) comment - does Plaid have architects? What about architecture and/or code reviews? I'd be very interested in reading about that.
- bjacokes 7y ago
  Your question feels pretty sarcastic, but I think it'd be great to write a post about our process for projects specs and reviews. We do have an old post on the blog about code reviews that you could read, but it's more focused on the cultural approach to making code reviews less intimidating for junior engineers, less about the details. While we don't have an "architect" title, a fair portion of our more recent hires have 10+ years of experience (I don't have exact numbers though), and we're working on the best way to coordinate efforts and improve our system-wide architecture. In general, I think it'd be great if more companies communicated their engineering practices and war stories externally – I'd love to read such posts myself! Unfortunately, it takes quite a bit of time to write a post (for engineers who are already stretched thin), and it seems that being honest about shortcomings at an early-stage company is an invitation for people to be personally disrespectful. It is what it is, but I imagine that's one reason we see such posts from only a small handful of startups, and the subject matter is often cherrypicked and sugarcoated. So anyway, thanks for engaging with our post all the same – and maybe we'll be back with a post on architecture reviews in 5 years when all the kinks are ironed out :)
todotask 7y ago
If I may add, Monzo bank which utilize Golang has interesting stack. https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-backend https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-bac...

GordonS 7y ago

Gah, I can't believe you're still trying to justify this madness! In a parallel universe, a barely-competent engineer would have designed something more far more obvious, simpler, performant - all while using less hours, and not borderline-fraudulently wasting substantial amounts of your VC's money. If the company 10x's again, it won't be because of poor engineering, it'll be because of marketing and VC's who don't know how you're wasting their money. If the company 0.1x's, it'll likely be because of a security breach because of appalling design.

acrispino 7y ago
So, in your estimation, plaid's engineering is a bunch of less-than-half-competent madmen, who might as well be committing fraud, correct? Is that overly negative or just the right amount?

GordonS 7y ago

Ah, a serious question as an aside to my last (scathing) comment - does Plaid have architects? What about architecture and/or code reviews? I'd be very interested in reading about that.

bjacokes 7y ago
Your question feels pretty sarcastic, but I think it'd be great to write a post about our process for projects specs and reviews. We do have an old post on the blog about code reviews that you could read, but it's more focused on the cultural approach to making code reviews less intimidating for junior engineers, less about the details. While we don't have an "architect" title, a fair portion of our more recent hires have 10+ years of experience (I don't have exact numbers though), and we're working on the best way to coordinate efforts and improve our system-wide architecture. In general, I think it'd be great if more companies communicated their engineering practices and war stories externally – I'd love to read such posts myself! Unfortunately, it takes quite a bit of time to write a post (for engineers who are already stretched thin), and it seems that being honest about shortcomings at an early-stage company is an invitation for people to be personally disrespectful. It is what it is, but I imagine that's one reason we see such posts from only a small handful of startups, and the subject matter is often cherrypicked and sugarcoated. So anyway, thanks for engaging with our post all the same – and maybe we'll be back with a post on architecture reviews in 5 years when all the kinks are ironed out :)

todotask 7y ago

If I may add, Monzo bank which utilize Golang has interesting stack. https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-backend https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-bac...