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He addesses this very point in his post: "As all organizations mature they tend to add PROCESS. These processes exist to insulate the companies from the mistak
by mtts 18y ago
He addesses this very point in his post:
"As all organizations mature they tend to add PROCESS. These processes exist to insulate the companies from the mistakes that occur after a company gets to a certain size and can no longer trust its employees to always do the right thing. Requiring code reviews, design specifications, black box & whitebox & unit testing, usability studies, threat models, etc are all the kinds of overhead that differentiate a mature software development shop from a “fly by the seat of your pants” startup. However once you’ve been through enough fire drills, some of those processes don’t sound as bad as they once did. This is why senior developers value them while junior developers don’t since the latter haven’t been around the block enough."
Sounds to me like he thinks Google is in need of some "process" (in fact, he specifically uses random breakage in Google apps to illustrate why this might be so).
I'm not saying he's right (wouldn't know, I've always worked for small companies where there was little need for a lot of "process") but the argument he puts forth is that everything at Google is not, in fact, going fine.
- evilneanderthal 18y agoIf you go by what the on-board shuttle group [1] is doing for NASA, more process is the key to a better functioning organization. But then, that's how software should be written when there's lives on the line, which doesn't exactly describe Google. Still, something to aspire to. [1] http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print
- cliff 18y agoSure, but there are plenty of downsides to this. I've always been fascinated by and impressed with NASA's software methodologies, but they are neither cheap nor fast. I'm not sure it's something to aspire to as much as one extreme on a continuum of code quality vs. code cost. I would suggest that it would not be in Google's nor in most companies' interest to do anything like this. Where a company falls on this line depends on their organization's size, purpose, and business model.
- evilneanderthal 18y agoWhat I was aiming at was the notion that creating maximally stable software that does exactly what it's designed to do is something to aspire to. Just my opinion, obviously. You could be right that the above is not in most companies' interest.