5 ms·

That’s twice in as many months. They may need some better QA here although to be fair it does seem mostly people with an older SDK version based on the comments

That’s twice in as many months. They may need some better QA here although to be fair it does seem mostly people with an older SDK version based on the comments. But still. I guess they need to cotton onto whatever server side change happened and roll it back. At least this time you can disable the SDK (at least one app developer has a kill switch for the SDK) unlike the last issue that happened during code initialisation you couldn’t skip.

cesarb 6y ago
> I guess they need to cotton onto whatever server side change happened and roll it back. "A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable." -- Leslie Lamport, 1987 (https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/distributed-system.txt https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/distributed-system.tx...)
notacoward 6y ago
> They may need some better QA There's no such thing as QA at Facebook. Really. Developers are supposedly responsible for all testing of their own code, but all of the pressure is to "move fast" so that goes about as well as you'd expect.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  I’ve had the same basic bug crop up 3x in the last two years while using the API - posts to Groups with dollar amounts just… fail. “An unknown error occurred.” The first two times it took months to fix. It’s happening again currently, too. Clear there are GAPING holes in their test suites.
- markmark 6y ago
  Looks like it's going pretty well, Facebook is currently worth 700 billion dollars. Or is that not what you meant?
  - jfb 6y ago
    There are multiple dimensions you can use to measure success. Market capitalization is certainly one of them, but it is at best only tenuously related to engineering quality.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    Close a great venture capital round, suddenly you've got a big pile of money in the bank and your company's valuation is really high. That means you're successful! Make a lot of money selling lifetime subscriptions, then have nowhere to go for cash next year: look at all that money! I'm very successful now! If all you're measuring and optimizing for is "valuation" or "revenue" you're not automatically going to get a good product or happy customers...
- KaiserPro 6y ago
  There is, it just depends on the part of the company you're in. If you have a team run by idiots, then you won't have QA. If you have a team run by adults, then there is plenty of QA. I mean its total shite that this wasn't caught. I'd expect much better, especially as this is the second time in n months. But then perhaps working for a company run by a dick who can't listen is getting to people.
  - notacoward 6y ago
    I work there (in infra). I have yet to interact with a team that has dedicated QA. Checked the internal jobs board; no relevant term is listed among titles, areas of work, talent profiles, or skills, anywhere in the company including WhatsApp or Oculus. This is consistent with the "developers are fully responsible for their own code" ethos we're all taught in bootcamp - same reason we all get to do oncall. I'm personally familiar with many real adults up to senior director level, so "if you have a team run by adults" is definitely not true. Given your characterization of MZ (whether or not it's accurate), I'd say you clearly don't have any actual knowledge of the situation and shouldn't be presenting your guesses as fact.
    - KaiserPro 6y ago
      >Checked the internal jobs board; no relevant term is listed among titles Engineer in test. QA engineering lead. (https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/?q=QA https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/?q=QA) You must have leet scuba skills with searching skills like that. AR/VR, Oculus, portal and workplace all have dedicated QA engineering teams. I'm sure there are more. > Given your characterization of MZ if it was only zuck. Zuck has two faults: he's not able to articulate any single thought inside of 15 minutes and he consistently throws out integrity products that would have stopped bad PR. Its not just me, you should look at the micropulse. confidence in leadership has taken a good battering recently. The whole juneteenth buisness, we had an entire _day_ of people telling us the problem. Senior management then sat next to them and said in reverent tones: "thank you so much [[dabs a tear]] for telling us your lived experience" posts a selfie and then does fuck all else. Or, having revved up the company to generate hundreds of ideas to tackle abuse on FB platform, do shit all with them, not even acknowledge they exist.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> to be fair it does seem mostly people with an older SDK version based on the comments. No, I don’t think there’s any “to be fair” in that, unless those SDKs have been officially EOL’d. Even then it shouldn't take down the whole app, Facebook should just break. That this only happens with some SDKs certainly makes the problem less severe than last time, but only relatively.

cesarb 6y ago

> I guess they need to cotton onto whatever server side change happened and roll it back. "A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable." -- Leslie Lamport, 1987 (https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/distributed-system.txt https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/distributed-system.tx...)

notacoward 6y ago

> They may need some better QA There's no such thing as QA at Facebook. Really. Developers are supposedly responsible for all testing of their own code, but all of the pressure is to "move fast" so that goes about as well as you'd expect.

ceejayoz 6y ago
I’ve had the same basic bug crop up 3x in the last two years while using the API - posts to Groups with dollar amounts just… fail. “An unknown error occurred.” The first two times it took months to fix. It’s happening again currently, too. Clear there are GAPING holes in their test suites.
markmark 6y ago
Looks like it's going pretty well, Facebook is currently worth 700 billion dollars. Or is that not what you meant?
- jfb 6y ago
  There are multiple dimensions you can use to measure success. Market capitalization is certainly one of them, but it is at best only tenuously related to engineering quality.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Close a great venture capital round, suddenly you've got a big pile of money in the bank and your company's valuation is really high. That means you're successful! Make a lot of money selling lifetime subscriptions, then have nowhere to go for cash next year: look at all that money! I'm very successful now! If all you're measuring and optimizing for is "valuation" or "revenue" you're not automatically going to get a good product or happy customers...
KaiserPro 6y ago
There is, it just depends on the part of the company you're in. If you have a team run by idiots, then you won't have QA. If you have a team run by adults, then there is plenty of QA. I mean its total shite that this wasn't caught. I'd expect much better, especially as this is the second time in n months. But then perhaps working for a company run by a dick who can't listen is getting to people.
- notacoward 6y ago
  I work there (in infra). I have yet to interact with a team that has dedicated QA. Checked the internal jobs board; no relevant term is listed among titles, areas of work, talent profiles, or skills, anywhere in the company including WhatsApp or Oculus. This is consistent with the "developers are fully responsible for their own code" ethos we're all taught in bootcamp - same reason we all get to do oncall. I'm personally familiar with many real adults up to senior director level, so "if you have a team run by adults" is definitely not true. Given your characterization of MZ (whether or not it's accurate), I'd say you clearly don't have any actual knowledge of the situation and shouldn't be presenting your guesses as fact.
  - KaiserPro 6y ago
    >Checked the internal jobs board; no relevant term is listed among titles Engineer in test. QA engineering lead. (https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/?q=QA https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/?q=QA) You must have leet scuba skills with searching skills like that. AR/VR, Oculus, portal and workplace all have dedicated QA engineering teams. I'm sure there are more. > Given your characterization of MZ if it was only zuck. Zuck has two faults: he's not able to articulate any single thought inside of 15 minutes and he consistently throws out integrity products that would have stopped bad PR. Its not just me, you should look at the micropulse. confidence in leadership has taken a good battering recently. The whole juneteenth buisness, we had an entire _day_ of people telling us the problem. Senior management then sat next to them and said in reverent tones: "thank you so much [[dabs a tear]] for telling us your lived experience" posts a selfie and then does fuck all else. Or, having revved up the company to generate hundreds of ideas to tackle abuse on FB platform, do shit all with them, not even acknowledge they exist.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

> to be fair it does seem mostly people with an older SDK version based on the comments. No, I don’t think there’s any “to be fair” in that, unless those SDKs have been officially EOL’d. Even then it shouldn't take down the whole app, Facebook should just break. That this only happens with some SDKs certainly makes the problem less severe than last time, but only relatively.