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Let’s go on this tangent, why is Reddit’s frontend so sluggish and lacking quality of life improvements that should be in place by now? Surely they are hiring

Let’s go on this tangent, why is Reddit’s frontend so sluggish and lacking quality of life improvements that should be in place by now? Surely they are hiring world-class devs, so what’s holding them back?

rrdharan 7y ago
> surely they are hiring world-class devs What makes you think that? Reddit seems like a place where the kind of experienced and talented people needed to turn it around could make a lot more money (via stock grants in addition to salary) and frankly have a lot more impact, at any of FAANG. I've not seen anything to indicate that Reddit is hiring, or trying to hire, "world-class devs".
- d23 7y ago
  Well first, don't just blame the engineers. The company has to actually prioritize making a functional product. Ultimately, reddit made no attempt to lean into the the thing that might attract world-class people to come there: a passion for the product. Or, at most, any attempts made were surface level. Some of the best engineers I've worked with are at reddit. They just happen to be outnumbered, and some have golden handcuffs on.
fbthrowaway42 7y ago
> Surely they are hiring world-class devs, so what’s holding them back? Facebook Engineering has a notorious "not invented by me" culture, it's not unique there but a lot of our "world-class" engineers are just acting economically rationally and hole-digging on some new bespoke framework or tool to cement their position in the company. You end up with a massive amount of churn and over-engineered vanity projects, and it's manifesting downstream in basically every product we've turned out for the last five years. That's why the applications bloated and terrible. The joke inside the company is that it used to be "move fast and break things" but now it's "breakfast, vest and move things around". It's really an engineering culture of decadence and waste these days.
dpau 7y ago
It's by design. Reddit doesn't want you using the website. They want you to download the app. As numerous annoying popups and notifications will tell you when visiting the website (especially on mobile).
- Zenbit_UX 7y ago
  This. Their UX is hostile to browsers, I suppose they make more money due to ads being harder to block in app vs in browser and much more data can be mined as well. I recommend everyone the old.reddit.com experience while it's still available. There's browser plug-ins that force the subdomain everywhere on reddit
- jug 7y ago
  Yeah they sure are driving me to the app. The Apollo app that is.
underwater 7y ago
There are some brain-dead behaviours on Reddit's site. They do a JS render-then-fetch, which is the worst way to load data. They also seem to stick the data fetch inside a requestAnimationFrame, which means it only runs for foregrounded tabs. This is basic stuff. I don't see how this could be an accident.
angel_j 7y ago
Angular

rrdharan 7y ago

> surely they are hiring world-class devs What makes you think that? Reddit seems like a place where the kind of experienced and talented people needed to turn it around could make a lot more money (via stock grants in addition to salary) and frankly have a lot more impact, at any of FAANG. I've not seen anything to indicate that Reddit is hiring, or trying to hire, "world-class devs".

d23 7y ago
Well first, don't just blame the engineers. The company has to actually prioritize making a functional product. Ultimately, reddit made no attempt to lean into the the thing that might attract world-class people to come there: a passion for the product. Or, at most, any attempts made were surface level. Some of the best engineers I've worked with are at reddit. They just happen to be outnumbered, and some have golden handcuffs on.

fbthrowaway42 7y ago

> Surely they are hiring world-class devs, so what’s holding them back? Facebook Engineering has a notorious "not invented by me" culture, it's not unique there but a lot of our "world-class" engineers are just acting economically rationally and hole-digging on some new bespoke framework or tool to cement their position in the company. You end up with a massive amount of churn and over-engineered vanity projects, and it's manifesting downstream in basically every product we've turned out for the last five years. That's why the applications bloated and terrible. The joke inside the company is that it used to be "move fast and break things" but now it's "breakfast, vest and move things around". It's really an engineering culture of decadence and waste these days.

dpau 7y ago

It's by design. Reddit doesn't want you using the website. They want you to download the app. As numerous annoying popups and notifications will tell you when visiting the website (especially on mobile).

Zenbit_UX 7y ago
This. Their UX is hostile to browsers, I suppose they make more money due to ads being harder to block in app vs in browser and much more data can be mined as well. I recommend everyone the old.reddit.com experience while it's still available. There's browser plug-ins that force the subdomain everywhere on reddit
jug 7y ago
Yeah they sure are driving me to the app. The Apollo app that is.

underwater 7y ago

There are some brain-dead behaviours on Reddit's site. They do a JS render-then-fetch, which is the worst way to load data. They also seem to stick the data fetch inside a requestAnimationFrame, which means it only runs for foregrounded tabs. This is basic stuff. I don't see how this could be an accident.

angel_j 7y ago

Angular