4 ms·

Based on my conversation with my FB friends, FB's major challenge to tapping into cloud business is their "moving fast and breaking things" culture, and their a

Based on my conversation with my FB friends, FB's major challenge to tapping into cloud business is their "moving fast and breaking things" culture, and their arguably cut-throat impact-oriented perf system. We have to admit that not all tasks in development are glorious. Someone has to be on call. Someone has to fix all the important bugs. Someone has to implement features that customers ask for, even though the features may not be glorious. I personally even enjoy bug fixing, as it is closest to scientific investigation. However, would I prioritize bug fix if I were in FB? Hell no. I would launch launch launch, and show impact impact and impact. Would that be good for cloud customers or the business? Of course not. Would that erode customer trust in the long run? Oh yeah. Sometime somewhere a nasty bug will show up in this type of culture.

JJMcJ 7y ago
Google has something similar and promotion is tied more to novelty than to keeping the lights on. That tends to promote product churn. Don't forget that Amazon is essentially a retailer, and their a certain amount of customer trust is essential.
- ttul 7y ago
  And Amazon has “customer obsession” as a core value. I just don’t see that at Facebook or Google.
  - kccqzy 7y ago
    Because most of the time, a Facebook user or a Google user doesn't pay at all. Only advertisers do. And that's why these two companies generally don't have a customer-obsession culture.
    - mcqueenjordan 7y ago
      There's a reason FB and Google call them users instead of customers. I remember an old joke... "there's only one other industry that calls its customers users."
holler 7y ago
How is that different than e.g. Amazon? They too have a vested interest in moving fast, innovating, etc... That's really how aws came to be anyways.
- jedberg 7y ago
  AWS rewards bug fixing. More specifically, they reward making customers happy with existing products, which often includes bug fixing.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - yibg 7y ago
    I would say aws even biased against rewrites and would prefer incremental improvements on the existing code base. Pretty polar opposite of google / fb.

JJMcJ 7y ago

Google has something similar and promotion is tied more to novelty than to keeping the lights on. That tends to promote product churn. Don't forget that Amazon is essentially a retailer, and their a certain amount of customer trust is essential.

ttul 7y ago
And Amazon has “customer obsession” as a core value. I just don’t see that at Facebook or Google.
- kccqzy 7y ago
  Because most of the time, a Facebook user or a Google user doesn't pay at all. Only advertisers do. And that's why these two companies generally don't have a customer-obsession culture.
  - mcqueenjordan 7y ago
    There's a reason FB and Google call them users instead of customers. I remember an old joke... "there's only one other industry that calls its customers users."

holler 7y ago

How is that different than e.g. Amazon? They too have a vested interest in moving fast, innovating, etc... That's really how aws came to be anyways.

jedberg 7y ago
AWS rewards bug fixing. More specifically, they reward making customers happy with existing products, which often includes bug fixing.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- yibg 7y ago
  I would say aws even biased against rewrites and would prefer incremental improvements on the existing code base. Pretty polar opposite of google / fb.