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The personal/political aspect aside, I can think of multiple projects that could have benefited from an approach like this. I'm often astonished by the ineffic

The personal/political aspect aside, I can think of multiple projects that could have benefited from an approach like this. I'm often astonished by the inefficiency of project delivery, particularly in large companies. Teams spending months building sub-systems from scratch, where there is an off the shelf(sometimes open source) tool that will do the same job and better. Man years of work going into chasing trends like "serverless" or "microservices" for no real reason, when a monolith running on a server, could be delivered in a fraction of the time and probably do a better job than what ended up being built. I'm convinced that paying two teams to work on the same project would often cost less than paying for the huge teams and cost overruns I've seen.

mark-r 6y ago
Interesting theory. If you pay 2 teams A and B to work on the same project, and B finishes in half the time it would have taken A, you really didn't spend anything extra did you?
- outsomnia 6y ago
  ... until you find they finished first by cutting corners and delivering something that is only capable of passing the scant unit tests. Then the "zero knowledge" psychopathic management style doesn't seem so smart.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    It isn't a zero knowledge style. It is an experimental, or knowledge-acquiring style. To employ that approach most effectively it makes sense to have competing teams with purposefully different styles.
    - outsomnia 6y ago
      > experimental, or knowledge-acquiring style No knowledge is going to be acquired that way. It's a manager who has decided understanding the nature of the work is beneath him, when he can deploy someone else's money to wind up some insects that will run around doing the work for him and watch them struggle against each other. Literally zero knowledge, before, during and after. When whatever result appears they will not analyze the meaning of what happened beyond punishing some insects and rewarding others.
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    > until you find they finished first by cutting corners and ... Or until they accidentally burnt down the office building. You're right, doesn't seem so smart
periya 6y ago
I disagree, such an approach completely desensitizes the human aspect of work and treats the people working as commodities that are expendable. Engineering is hard, teams might need to go through multiple iterations/generations to get the desired results. A better investment would be to develop the right engineering culture rather than Team A vs Team B duking it out.
- kashif 6y ago
  you are out of touch with reality. people are expendable, not pleasant but true - get a grip :) Also, try describing the "right engineering culture"
  - ShowMeWhere 6y ago
    Funny how people keep flagging these comments for speaking the truth about working in big tech. People seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. The rosy dreams will never mesh with reality
  - piva00 6y ago
    It only is that way because we make that way. There's no law in the Universe dictating that people are spendable, it's part of a system, a myth we created and live on. Don't get too cocky against someone that has a more humane view of what's valuable to be human. Get a grip that reality has very many shades of grey.
p0nce 6y ago
Suffering is the commodity engineers are providing.
joe_91 6y ago
Why not just find the best people for the job who can understand the needs of the project they're working on and execute correctly? Running two teams against each other just screams of waste/bad management in my opinion.

mark-r 6y ago

Interesting theory. If you pay 2 teams A and B to work on the same project, and B finishes in half the time it would have taken A, you really didn't spend anything extra did you?

outsomnia 6y ago
... until you find they finished first by cutting corners and delivering something that is only capable of passing the scant unit tests. Then the "zero knowledge" psychopathic management style doesn't seem so smart.
- roenxi 6y ago
  It isn't a zero knowledge style. It is an experimental, or knowledge-acquiring style. To employ that approach most effectively it makes sense to have competing teams with purposefully different styles.
  - outsomnia 6y ago
    > experimental, or knowledge-acquiring style No knowledge is going to be acquired that way. It's a manager who has decided understanding the nature of the work is beneath him, when he can deploy someone else's money to wind up some insects that will run around doing the work for him and watch them struggle against each other. Literally zero knowledge, before, during and after. When whatever result appears they will not analyze the meaning of what happened beyond punishing some insects and rewarding others.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  > until you find they finished first by cutting corners and ... Or until they accidentally burnt down the office building. You're right, doesn't seem so smart

periya 6y ago

I disagree, such an approach completely desensitizes the human aspect of work and treats the people working as commodities that are expendable. Engineering is hard, teams might need to go through multiple iterations/generations to get the desired results. A better investment would be to develop the right engineering culture rather than Team A vs Team B duking it out.

kashif 6y ago
you are out of touch with reality. people are expendable, not pleasant but true - get a grip :) Also, try describing the "right engineering culture"
- ShowMeWhere 6y ago
  Funny how people keep flagging these comments for speaking the truth about working in big tech. People seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. The rosy dreams will never mesh with reality
- piva00 6y ago
  It only is that way because we make that way. There's no law in the Universe dictating that people are spendable, it's part of a system, a myth we created and live on. Don't get too cocky against someone that has a more humane view of what's valuable to be human. Get a grip that reality has very many shades of grey.

p0nce 6y ago

Suffering is the commodity engineers are providing.

joe_91 6y ago

Why not just find the best people for the job who can understand the needs of the project they're working on and execute correctly? Running two teams against each other just screams of waste/bad management in my opinion.