4 ms·

I disagree about the nature of the problem. You can’t give sole ownership of a project people depend on to just one person - a bus factor of 1 is unacceptable

I disagree about the nature of the problem. You can’t give sole ownership of a project people depend on to just one person - a bus factor of 1 is unacceptable in most circumstances. Busses happen, people leave, etc. Some things are also too big for one person. And when you give it to a team of proud capable developers, you will get ego wars, blame throwing, etc. with probability that increases quickly with team size. And that’s with capable, proud, responsible, cooperative people. But not all your people will be like that all the time - some will be burnet our, some have no passion and just try to do the minimum to not get fired. Some are sociopaths who actively try to shift work to others and only pride themselves on work they managed to avoid. Mom and pop software shops can afford non-replaceable-cogs, Google can’t (and afaik didn’t even in the old days when they were run by engineers and not MBAs). And this whole discussion of copying corps was in the context of mono Vs multi repo.... (For the record, VueJS and Evan You are awesome)

ratww 7y ago
Giving ownership to a single person doesn't imply a bus factor of one. As long as someone can take over, it's not a problem. I've had this happen lots of times in my career, and most of the time dealing with such projects was faster than onboarding in a company-owned repo by at least an order of magnitude. I really mean it: minutes instead of days to be productive. In my experience most engineers have the best intentions and want to do the best work possible, until you force them into working in a bad environment where he's treated like... a cog in the machine with zero ability to influence his own productivity, happiness or even the quality of his code. The biggest reason large companies "can't afford" those things is because they're hell bent on turning engineerings into replaceable cogs, out of ideology.
- beagle3 7y ago
  > In my experience most engineers have the best intentions and want to do the best work possible I agree, most of them do - but I've also been in a place that highers the best of the best, and despite the best intentions, some people cannot put their ego aside and the overall result is between less-than-ideal and downright-horrible
  - ratww 7y ago
    > ...until you force them into working in a bad environment where he's treated like... a cog in the machine with zero ability to influence his own productivity, happiness or even the quality of his code.
    - beagle3 7y ago
      I disagree (unless your "bad environment" gets tautologically redefined to mean any place where people with good intentions don't get good results.... which you might). I was working in a place that employed incredibly smart and capable but highly opinionated people, and did not treat them as cogs, and did let them influence their productivity, happiness, and quality of the code. However, there was a major philosophical disagreement between the "functional programming" camp and the "object oriented" camp (with a minor "procedural programming" camp), and designs occasionally became "I am smarter than you" contests, the overall system being extremely incoherent because every side wss able to influence their own productivity. It worked, because they were smart. It was not a bad environment for any single person. But it would have been a much better place for everyone if there was a benevolent dictator (but nevertheless, dictator) who enforced one way or the other - the randomly reached middle ground has all of the deficiencies of all approaches, and none of the benefits.
      - ratww 7y ago
        If "it worked" and "was not a bad environment", I really don't see the issue here (unless your "it worked" gets redefined to mean "it didn't work"... which you might). Sounds like a nice and intellectually stimulating environment, and that they had best intentions. Honestly, someone wanting a dictator has bigger ego problems than those people.
        beagle3 7y ago
        Very long onboarding, impedance mismatches everywhere, tons of unneeded glue logic. Lots of consternation. It worked in the sense that it wasn’t a failure like a significant number of software projects. It could have worked significantly better if the people involved didn’t feel they needed to show off. And my model for A dictator is Linus Thorvald, Guiro van Rossum, Andreas Rumpf; if you can’t appreciate the management model and abilities that a benevolent dictator brings, we will just have to agree to disagree.

ratww 7y ago

Giving ownership to a single person doesn't imply a bus factor of one. As long as someone can take over, it's not a problem. I've had this happen lots of times in my career, and most of the time dealing with such projects was faster than onboarding in a company-owned repo by at least an order of magnitude. I really mean it: minutes instead of days to be productive. In my experience most engineers have the best intentions and want to do the best work possible, until you force them into working in a bad environment where he's treated like... a cog in the machine with zero ability to influence his own productivity, happiness or even the quality of his code. The biggest reason large companies "can't afford" those things is because they're hell bent on turning engineerings into replaceable cogs, out of ideology.

beagle3 7y ago
> In my experience most engineers have the best intentions and want to do the best work possible I agree, most of them do - but I've also been in a place that highers the best of the best, and despite the best intentions, some people cannot put their ego aside and the overall result is between less-than-ideal and downright-horrible
- ratww 7y ago
  > ...until you force them into working in a bad environment where he's treated like... a cog in the machine with zero ability to influence his own productivity, happiness or even the quality of his code.
  - beagle3 7y ago
    I disagree (unless your "bad environment" gets tautologically redefined to mean any place where people with good intentions don't get good results.... which you might). I was working in a place that employed incredibly smart and capable but highly opinionated people, and did not treat them as cogs, and did let them influence their productivity, happiness, and quality of the code. However, there was a major philosophical disagreement between the "functional programming" camp and the "object oriented" camp (with a minor "procedural programming" camp), and designs occasionally became "I am smarter than you" contests, the overall system being extremely incoherent because every side wss able to influence their own productivity. It worked, because they were smart. It was not a bad environment for any single person. But it would have been a much better place for everyone if there was a benevolent dictator (but nevertheless, dictator) who enforced one way or the other - the randomly reached middle ground has all of the deficiencies of all approaches, and none of the benefits.
    - ratww 7y ago
      If "it worked" and "was not a bad environment", I really don't see the issue here (unless your "it worked" gets redefined to mean "it didn't work"... which you might). Sounds like a nice and intellectually stimulating environment, and that they had best intentions. Honestly, someone wanting a dictator has bigger ego problems than those people.
      - beagle3 7y ago
        Very long onboarding, impedance mismatches everywhere, tons of unneeded glue logic. Lots of consternation. It worked in the sense that it wasn’t a failure like a significant number of software projects. It could have worked significantly better if the people involved didn’t feel they needed to show off. And my model for A dictator is Linus Thorvald, Guiro van Rossum, Andreas Rumpf; if you can’t appreciate the management model and abilities that a benevolent dictator brings, we will just have to agree to disagree.