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I'd say once you take a peak behind the curtain at some of these FAANGS you see that their once greatest assets are becoming liabilities. The magic of "FAANG" g

I'd say once you take a peak behind the curtain at some of these FAANGS you see that their once greatest assets are becoming liabilities. The magic of "FAANG" goes away. The innovative systems they all built in 2007-2012 period are now aging.

herodoturtle 6y ago
An analogy, if I may share: On the one hand I agree with you, in that these liabilities you describe are much like the legacy systems I see in our local banking sector. On the other hand, these legacy systems just work. And adopting newer / more modern systems might definitely have advantages, but doing so creates a bunch of other liabilities - as I've seen take place in our new startup banks. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. Of course that's just in banking. I most certainly don't have the experience to comment on whether the same liability tradeoff would happen at FAANGs.
- crisper78 6y ago
  FAANG's often don't have paying customers, banks do. Its not being stuck between a rock and a hard place, you just need strong management that understands that changing whole systems is never a good idea without clear benefit, other than "technical debt" which is such a bad term for reliable software. Software doesn't age, im not sure how software engineers don't understand this, or maybe they do and want to write more s/w.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Software does age. Security ages, network protocols age, human related configs age (timezones, for example). And that's besides tribal knowledge that goes away as people leave or retire.
xorcist 6y ago
What great revolution do you suppose happened in the past decade that made these tools obsolete? To my eyes, we still develop software in plain text and the same languages are still dominant. It's still Linux and http.
- stgx 6y ago
  A lot has improved over the past decade.
- crisper78 6y ago
  so right, but it won't make you any money or get you any linkedin/twitter fans if you speak the truth. We have AI being tossed around like it isn't just database queries most of the time.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  The revolution was the Internet, bringing together a huge collaboration of open source devs vs the aging ivory tower in each proprietory company. It's not just Linux and http anymore. It's frameworks towering up to the heavens.
antoinealb 6y ago
I don't think I agree with you. Systems have been evolving, some are being deprecated, rewritten, etc. It might be true that the OSS world has been catching up so it is worth less to have a custom made solution. But the fact that systems are aging does not mean that those systems are becoming irrelevant.

herodoturtle 6y ago

An analogy, if I may share: On the one hand I agree with you, in that these liabilities you describe are much like the legacy systems I see in our local banking sector. On the other hand, these legacy systems just work. And adopting newer / more modern systems might definitely have advantages, but doing so creates a bunch of other liabilities - as I've seen take place in our new startup banks. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. Of course that's just in banking. I most certainly don't have the experience to comment on whether the same liability tradeoff would happen at FAANGs.

crisper78 6y ago
FAANG's often don't have paying customers, banks do. Its not being stuck between a rock and a hard place, you just need strong management that understands that changing whole systems is never a good idea without clear benefit, other than "technical debt" which is such a bad term for reliable software. Software doesn't age, im not sure how software engineers don't understand this, or maybe they do and want to write more s/w.
- oblio 6y ago
  Software does age. Security ages, network protocols age, human related configs age (timezones, for example). And that's besides tribal knowledge that goes away as people leave or retire.

xorcist 6y ago

What great revolution do you suppose happened in the past decade that made these tools obsolete? To my eyes, we still develop software in plain text and the same languages are still dominant. It's still Linux and http.

stgx 6y ago
A lot has improved over the past decade.
crisper78 6y ago
so right, but it won't make you any money or get you any linkedin/twitter fans if you speak the truth. We have AI being tossed around like it isn't just database queries most of the time.
alisonkisk 6y ago
The revolution was the Internet, bringing together a huge collaboration of open source devs vs the aging ivory tower in each proprietory company. It's not just Linux and http anymore. It's frameworks towering up to the heavens.

antoinealb 6y ago

I don't think I agree with you. Systems have been evolving, some are being deprecated, rewritten, etc. It might be true that the OSS world has been catching up so it is worth less to have a custom made solution. But the fact that systems are aging does not mean that those systems are becoming irrelevant.