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Whenever I read about the EU's struggles to compete with american tech companies (also SAP vs Salesforce), I think of Steve Yegge's rant on AWS, quote: > So on
by amadeuspagel 6y ago
Whenever I read about the EU's struggles to compete with american tech companies (also SAP vs Salesforce), I think of Steve Yegge's rant on AWS, quote:
> So one day Jeff Bezos issued a mandate. He's doing that all the time, of course, and people scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet whenever it happens. But on one occasion -- back around 2002 I think, plus or minus a year -- he issued a mandate that was so out there, so huge and eye-bulgingly ponderous, that it made all of his other mandates look like unsolicited peer bonuses.
> His Big Mandate went something along these lines:
> All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.
> Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.
> There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team's data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network.
> It doesn't matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols -- doesn't matter. Bezos doesn't care.
> All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.
> Anyone who doesn't do this will be fired.
Emphasis mine. Good luck trying that in europe. Full rant: https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611 https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
- brazzy 6y agoYou're seriously claiming that the EU cannot compete with US companies because you can't credibly threaten to fire people to show that you're serious about a policy decision?
- DangitBobby 6y agoI think they're claiming that it's important to have a real, credible, well communicated threat of consequences for not following the mandate.
- durnygbur 6y agoNo one would bother, because: 1. In Europe salaries are not worth personal sacrifices 2. No compay aims for IPO, few are public Maybe, if you'd hire only desperate people from Spain, Italy, Poland, Greece, and Romania, AND they all had a mortgage... then squeeze like this would work.
- nix23 6y ago>In Europe salaries are not worth personal sacrifices That's exactly it!!
- brazzy 6y agoWhat kind of shit company culture do people have where you need threats to implement a simple, clear-cut technical decision?
- AdrianB1 6y agoAll. I worked with many top tier companies and policy adherence is null without reinforcement; this is the reality, without motivation everyone ignores policies and decisions.
- brazzy 6y agoThere are many other forms of motivation and reinforcement other than explicit threats of firing pople, and most of them are less aggravating. In fact I very much doubt Amazon actually does that constantly, and I also doubt that it was the key reinforcement in this specific case, even if it wasn't simply an exaggeration. Refusing to do what you're told will in fact get you fired in most European companies as well. I actually witnessed that happening not too long ago. So what's even the argument here?
- DangitBobby 6y agoSome use the carrot, some use the stick, and some use both.
- 6y ago
- imtringued 6y agoNot sure what you are talking about. If people don't do their job you can just fire them. The only difference is that in e.g. Germany it will result in the employment contract expiring in a few weeks instead of the same day. I don't really see why people make a big deal out of a few weeks as if it is equivalent to waiting until the end of the universe.
- rasz 6y agoSounds like European banking, full interoperability.