4 ms·

I wonder this about a lot of "tier 1" software, whenever I get easy to access critical business logic breaking bugs in Amazon, eBay, etc... I just find it utte

I wonder this about a lot of "tier 1" software, whenever I get easy to access critical business logic breaking bugs in Amazon, eBay, etc... I just find it utterly unacceptable. I'd drag my developers over hot coal if they somehow released what I see from these trillion dollars companies. I wasn't able to "add to cart" with my Amazon app for instance and things like YouTube and Instagram constantly crash when I'm adding new content. And many banking apps totally freak out when I use a password manager. This is pretty core operation. It's really amazing. I really don't know how the valley operates sometime. I'd imagine they supposedly have entire departments and dozens of people who are supposed to make sure this stuff works. Sometimes I find it so unbelievable that I try multiple devices to take the possibility that it's just me out and it's invariably reproducible on all. Maybe nobody at the company uses Android or maybe nobody uses their own product? (Maybe people who work at, say, Facebook don't actually like using it...thats understandable, but also unacceptable) I really don't know how it happens. Maybe their tests are 100% automated and no human checks it? I don't know.

aflag 6y ago
Maybe their quality control can be improved, but you give no insight in QA practices they are obviously skipping. Unless you're counting "dragging developers over hot coal" as your advice. In which case, I have serious doubts the system you're comparing them with is actually of better quality.
- RandoHolmes 6y ago
  It's a problem with many developers. They think that because there can be a root cause analysis, they didn't fuck up. But there are times when something simply shouldn't be, definitionally. As in, if X happens, it doesn't matter what the root cause analysis is, something is wrong. To give a real life example, if you're driving drunk, the events and reasons leading up to the act don't really matter. They're not without value, but they're not important for determining that someone fucked up. This is what the poster you're responding to is saying. That the problems are so goddamned egregious that they simply shouldn't be. It's not up to the aforementioned poster to fix the problems, it's up to the companies in question wanting to be better.
  - aflag 6y ago
    Fair point, but that's obviously not true. All evidence we have points to both amazon and google following excelent software development practices. They are even drivers of good practices in certain parts. So, we'd need stronger evidence to show that they are not doing their due diligence before releasing new versions. I'd say that releasing software without tests, code review and incremental rollout would be akin to drunk driving. However, I believe they do all of that and more. Moreover, I don't know about the many developers you have experience with, but if the developer considers the behaviour to be a bug, I have a hard time believing they don't consider the behaviour to be a failure (ie. someone made a mistake somewhere). Though, I can definitely see people shifting the responsability to someone else, specially if there's a blame culture in place. Obviously, that's easier to do once you know the root cause. However, a company will be better off by putting solid QA practices in place and measuring "fuck ups" as a decrease in productivity instead of measuring it as the number of times each developer break production.
    - simion314 6y ago
      Maybe the issue they are doing too much dev and less contact with real users. You can unit test all your code but you can't cover all possible real data, so you need to accept user feedback. Sometime ago in one of our products there was an issue with RTL languages, as a developer it was first time I hit this concept, I got the report, I informed myself, I fixed the issue,the ticket was closed,the user was happy. In this case it is clear the developer assumed that they can always find someone picture, the assumption is wrong but probably all the TDD and good dev practices won't catch this issue until someone listens to the user reports.
      - aflag 6y ago
        Google does offer a feedback button in the knowledge panel. However, I assume they are unlikely to take any actions unless there's at least a certain amount of agreeing feedback.
        simion314 6y ago
Fatalist_ma 6y ago
I think the main reason is that they can afford to not care. There is no pressure. They can afford to be inefficient because they know that as long as the core features work, customers will not leave.
- sukilot 6y ago
  Maybe the reason they are trillion dollars companies because they care about more important things than obscure or unprofitable bugs and berating their staff.
  - smaryjerry 6y ago
    True. Apple has bugs that have been posted on their forums for like 10 years that haven’t gone away and rack up hundreds and sometimes thousands of comments. They don’t care. In some cases they block further comments without ever fixing the bug. They figure something that only affects 1 percent of people Of whom only half of them will actually get annoyed, they don’t need to fix at all. It really adds up though when you have hundreds of bugs.
  - sildur 6y ago
    Because they care about filling their pockets and mostly nothing else, that’s the reason.
- reportgunner 6y ago
  Seconded, I think they don't want an internet where there is 0 pictures available of some known figure and that's why they don't take such a case into consideration.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

aflag 6y ago

Maybe their quality control can be improved, but you give no insight in QA practices they are obviously skipping. Unless you're counting "dragging developers over hot coal" as your advice. In which case, I have serious doubts the system you're comparing them with is actually of better quality.

RandoHolmes 6y ago
It's a problem with many developers. They think that because there can be a root cause analysis, they didn't fuck up. But there are times when something simply shouldn't be, definitionally. As in, if X happens, it doesn't matter what the root cause analysis is, something is wrong. To give a real life example, if you're driving drunk, the events and reasons leading up to the act don't really matter. They're not without value, but they're not important for determining that someone fucked up. This is what the poster you're responding to is saying. That the problems are so goddamned egregious that they simply shouldn't be. It's not up to the aforementioned poster to fix the problems, it's up to the companies in question wanting to be better.
- aflag 6y ago
  Fair point, but that's obviously not true. All evidence we have points to both amazon and google following excelent software development practices. They are even drivers of good practices in certain parts. So, we'd need stronger evidence to show that they are not doing their due diligence before releasing new versions. I'd say that releasing software without tests, code review and incremental rollout would be akin to drunk driving. However, I believe they do all of that and more. Moreover, I don't know about the many developers you have experience with, but if the developer considers the behaviour to be a bug, I have a hard time believing they don't consider the behaviour to be a failure (ie. someone made a mistake somewhere). Though, I can definitely see people shifting the responsability to someone else, specially if there's a blame culture in place. Obviously, that's easier to do once you know the root cause. However, a company will be better off by putting solid QA practices in place and measuring "fuck ups" as a decrease in productivity instead of measuring it as the number of times each developer break production.
  - simion314 6y ago
    Maybe the issue they are doing too much dev and less contact with real users. You can unit test all your code but you can't cover all possible real data, so you need to accept user feedback. Sometime ago in one of our products there was an issue with RTL languages, as a developer it was first time I hit this concept, I got the report, I informed myself, I fixed the issue,the ticket was closed,the user was happy. In this case it is clear the developer assumed that they can always find someone picture, the assumption is wrong but probably all the TDD and good dev practices won't catch this issue until someone listens to the user reports.
    - aflag 6y ago
      Google does offer a feedback button in the knowledge panel. However, I assume they are unlikely to take any actions unless there's at least a certain amount of agreeing feedback.
      - simion314 6y ago

Fatalist_ma 6y ago

I think the main reason is that they can afford to not care. There is no pressure. They can afford to be inefficient because they know that as long as the core features work, customers will not leave.

sukilot 6y ago
Maybe the reason they are trillion dollars companies because they care about more important things than obscure or unprofitable bugs and berating their staff.
- smaryjerry 6y ago
  True. Apple has bugs that have been posted on their forums for like 10 years that haven’t gone away and rack up hundreds and sometimes thousands of comments. They don’t care. In some cases they block further comments without ever fixing the bug. They figure something that only affects 1 percent of people Of whom only half of them will actually get annoyed, they don’t need to fix at all. It really adds up though when you have hundreds of bugs.
- sildur 6y ago
  Because they care about filling their pockets and mostly nothing else, that’s the reason.
reportgunner 6y ago
Seconded, I think they don't want an internet where there is 0 pictures available of some known figure and that's why they don't take such a case into consideration.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]