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Robinhood is nothing like Reddit. It has a much bigger valuation, more resources, strict regulations to follow, and the responsibility of safely handling money

Robinhood is nothing like Reddit. It has a much bigger valuation, more resources, strict regulations to follow, and the responsibility of safely handling money for millions of people. This should be fixed within days even if it means redesigning the entire system. The last blog post blamed overloaded DNS so it doesn't seem like a major architectural problem, which is why it's surprising that they're down again.

SkyPuncher 7y ago
Also, Reddit can afford to queue and buffer like crazy. Nearly every write-action on Reddit appears to hit a queue. If your vote or comment doesn't go up for 30 seconds, that's not a problem. If your trade takes 30 seconds, that could be a huge deal.
swsieber 7y ago
> strict regulations to follow, and the responsibility of safely handling money for millions of people. This should be fixed within days even if it means redesigning the entire system Somehow, in my mind, the responsibility of safely handling money of millions and redesigning the entire system don't really mix. Ditto for strict regulations and redesigning the entire system.
- thfuran 7y ago
  I know it's not the same regulations but I'm pretty sure the next FDA auditor would have a heart attack if we slipped "rewrote the whole product" into one of our patch notes at work.
yibg 7y ago
Being in a regulated environment with lots of peoples money should make it harder and take longer to redesign and implement anything. I don’t see a complete redesign of a non-trivial part of a trading platform happening in a week.
- manigandham 7y ago
  That’s before outages, priority now is to restore service ASAP, whatever it takes.
  - yibg 7y ago
    Your literal quote was "This should be fixed within days even if it means redesigning the entire system". And my position is, being a regulated financial service, it's probably not reasonable to redesign (and build, test, deploy etc) a system in days.
tengbretson 7y ago
> This should be fixed within days even if it means redesigning the entire system. Please tell me you do not manage a team of software developers.
- manigandham 7y ago
  "redesigning the entire system" was an exaggeration. They have a serious problem if that's really what they need to do. Rolling out fixes fast, even if they require intensive changes, is completely reasonable and expected in many industries though. They should have the talent and procedures to get it done. This isn't some startup web app, it's a multi-billion dollar broker managing millions in client funds. It's bordering on incompetent to have 3 outages in 2 weeks. EDIT: What exactly is everyone disagreeing with?
  - DevKoala 7y ago
    > Rolling out fixes fast, even if they require intensive changes, is completely reasonable and expected in many industries though. This is a financial trading platform. Do you understand the risks of potentially introducing a different bug?
    - manigandham 7y ago
      I understand the risks need to be weighed against restoring service for their users who might be losing money and avoiding regulatory fines. Changing a single line can introduce a different bug. Use proper QA and testing to catch as many as possible as with any development. My emphasis is on getting things fixed quickly. They need to do whatever it takes to get systems online asap. Not sure what's so controversial about that.
      - blackflame7000 7y ago
        Because move fast and break things doesn't work in finance.

SkyPuncher 7y ago

Also, Reddit can afford to queue and buffer like crazy. Nearly every write-action on Reddit appears to hit a queue. If your vote or comment doesn't go up for 30 seconds, that's not a problem. If your trade takes 30 seconds, that could be a huge deal.

swsieber 7y ago

> strict regulations to follow, and the responsibility of safely handling money for millions of people. This should be fixed within days even if it means redesigning the entire system Somehow, in my mind, the responsibility of safely handling money of millions and redesigning the entire system don't really mix. Ditto for strict regulations and redesigning the entire system.

thfuran 7y ago
I know it's not the same regulations but I'm pretty sure the next FDA auditor would have a heart attack if we slipped "rewrote the whole product" into one of our patch notes at work.

yibg 7y ago

Being in a regulated environment with lots of peoples money should make it harder and take longer to redesign and implement anything. I don’t see a complete redesign of a non-trivial part of a trading platform happening in a week.

manigandham 7y ago
That’s before outages, priority now is to restore service ASAP, whatever it takes.
- yibg 7y ago
  Your literal quote was "This should be fixed within days even if it means redesigning the entire system". And my position is, being a regulated financial service, it's probably not reasonable to redesign (and build, test, deploy etc) a system in days.

tengbretson 7y ago

> This should be fixed within days even if it means redesigning the entire system. Please tell me you do not manage a team of software developers.

manigandham 7y ago
"redesigning the entire system" was an exaggeration. They have a serious problem if that's really what they need to do. Rolling out fixes fast, even if they require intensive changes, is completely reasonable and expected in many industries though. They should have the talent and procedures to get it done. This isn't some startup web app, it's a multi-billion dollar broker managing millions in client funds. It's bordering on incompetent to have 3 outages in 2 weeks. EDIT: What exactly is everyone disagreeing with?
- DevKoala 7y ago
  > Rolling out fixes fast, even if they require intensive changes, is completely reasonable and expected in many industries though. This is a financial trading platform. Do you understand the risks of potentially introducing a different bug?
  - manigandham 7y ago
    I understand the risks need to be weighed against restoring service for their users who might be losing money and avoiding regulatory fines. Changing a single line can introduce a different bug. Use proper QA and testing to catch as many as possible as with any development. My emphasis is on getting things fixed quickly. They need to do whatever it takes to get systems online asap. Not sure what's so controversial about that.
    - blackflame7000 7y ago
      Because move fast and break things doesn't work in finance.