5 ms·

My takeaway -- even the highest regarded engineering orgs are still shitshows behind the scenes.

by psing 5y ago

whalesalad 5y ago
In my personal experience, the more the org gives off the impression that it is hot shit, the worse it usually is.
- lumost 5y ago
  The more the org values external appearance, the more the org justifies projects based on external appearances.
- twic 5y ago
  Sometimes i think about trying to get a job at Netflix just so i can find out what it's really like.
  - ryanianian 5y ago
    I had 6+ years at a FAANG. It was awful. I would never go back. I happily took a 20% pay cut to go elsewhere. This said, I learned a lot (both good and bad) and it has been a good reference point for my career. So I recommend all engineers to strongly consider a FAANG while they're young and can tolerate a bit of burnout. Learn how the big companies do it, pay attention to what's good and what's bad, and keep that perspective with you in your career. But be honest with yourself ahead of time about what would make you leave and follow through with that. "Golden handcuffs" of high pay is a real thing.
    - notyourwork 5y ago
      Not all teams in FAANGs result in burn out or require careful through about joining. I've been at one of them for 6 years and still find my work life balance to be sane. In fact I enjoy what I'm doing quite a bit because of the business space I'm working in and the quality of peers.
      - silicon2401 5y ago
        what do you consider sane work life balance? I consider anything over 40h excessive
        notyourwork 5y ago
        Yes. Aside from on-call week when I carry a pager 24-7 for the week but I don't work outside business hours unless paged.
        silicon2401 5y ago
        Yes what? I asked "what do you consider sane work hours?" lol.
        notyourwork 5y ago
        Because it was obvious, we know what full time is defined as. Anything more than 40h is more than a full time job.
        jefftk 5y ago
        Another data point: I've never felt pressured to work more than 40 hours a week, and have probably averaged quite close to that over my FAANG career. Recently, with pandemic/WFH/less-to-do-outside-work, I started working some on evenings/weekends, and my manager asked me to stop because he doesn't want to have that kind of team culture.
        notyourwork 5y ago
        +1 It can create a really toxic work culture. If I do work more its because I'm interested in a problem that I don't want to let sit till next week or the following day. In general, I try to do this discretely by not pinging people outside working hours or trying to give impression I'm working late. Working late for me is usually working through code or a design at a time when I'm caught in it and don't want to let it sit until I solve it. If this happens I'll start late next day or reduce hours following week and I make sure I call this out during standup so my team knows why I'm signing off early. It can become a snowball when one teammate sees another working and feels compelled to do same. Kudos to your manager for calling this out.
    - enterdev 5y ago
      what was wrong with it?
  - notyourwork 5y ago
    It likely depends on the team and area of company. Any company of reasonable size will have a distribution similar to bell curve of teams ranging from excellent to complete shit shows. Most fall somewhere in the middle with diverse pros/cons depending on the tech stack, connectedness to customer and where their software falls in its lifecycle from shiny new to dusty needs replaced. You get lucky rarely with an awesome team and usually fall in middle with some gripes. If you get into a shit show head for the door as fast as you can or stick around to learn a thing or two about what NOT to do.
    - structural 5y ago
      Yeah, but if you're not already in the job, the distribution of "teams that are currently hiring external candidates" can be quite skewed towards the worse side of things, and if you don't know this going in, you'll have a very bad time at most large organizations. A successful strategy is quite frequently to treat your first team at a company as just the second phase of an interview to get into one of the better teams in the company. Depends on the company, to be sure, but I've definitely seen many instances of "we're a good team, we know it, we'll happily poach good engineers from any team we like". It helps that the good engineers are going to be unhappy with their current team and looking to make the switch, anyways. If you don't switch teams within your first year or so, it usually means you a) got very lucky at random, b) got into a good team because you knew someone internally with good info and were able to short-circuit the process, or c) you failed to network/interview well enough internally to move up, and you should probably either be okay with a dumpster fire or move to another company.
  - HowardStark 5y ago
    Funny, that was my first thought as well. Recently read their engineering blog post from 2012 on the API gateway + UI system [1] and thought it was really cool and made a lot of sense (in their specific, truly massive use case). From recent memory, I can't recall Netflix really reinventing the wheel a-la-OP/Uber. [1] https://netflixtechblog.com/embracing-the-differences-inside-the-netflix-api-redesign-15fd8b3dc49d https://netflixtechblog.com/embracing-the-differences-inside...
    - tomnipotent 5y ago
      > I can't recall Netflix really reinventing the wheel Netflix has many private and public projects that have alternatives that could have been adopted. I'm glad they didn't, because Netflix releases quality product and I'm super appreciative of their contributions. https://github.com/netflix https://github.com/netflix
- tshaddox 5y ago
  It took me a second to correctly analyze the sentiment of “hot shit.” I realized it means “really good,” as opposed to, for example, “steaming pile of shit” which means the opposite.
  - fration 5y ago
    It also generally has the connotation of someone having an inflated opinion of themselves.
  - ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
    You'll enjoy this exploration on this precise topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifNEgwGACEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifNEgwGACEQ
    - samuli 5y ago
      Here's a link to the original video from the actual standup comedian in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igh9iO5BxBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igh9iO5BxBo
  - robocat 5y ago
    The expression “shit hot” is a superlatively good thing. I don’t ever recall hearing “hot shit”, although perhaps it is a US term or a modern usage. Urban dictionary defines both.
    - lamontcg 5y ago
      "Hot shit" is a US term, and it is old and was around in the 80s at least.
      - reaperducer 5y ago
        Longer than that. I saw it in a book from the 1950's. I expect it's a variation of "hot stuff" which I've heard in songs from the 1930's.
  - deleted 5y ago
- cghendrix 5y ago
  What about Netflix?
- screye 5y ago
  Yep, In my experience : Very high standards = Slow shipping = Boring You can bet that working on the Google Ads teams is far more 'boring' than Stadia or Glasses. Similarly, at my FANGAM company, the most boring teams are also the most stable.
  - toast0 5y ago
    > Very high standards = Slow shipping = Boring I don't think this is quite right. Slow shipping is tied to coordination more than standards (although if the standards are enforced by testing from another team, there's your coordination). If the standards are self enforced, you can still ship frequently, but maybe not a lot of big releases. Small teams and decoupled work where possible helps. I can only quibble about boring though. The code changes may not be exciting, but the environment can be. Some external event that spikes traffic can test your high standards, and may need remediations (in which case, I hope you can ship fast). Of course, boring is actually nice.
cobaltoxide 5y ago
Are you referring to Uber as "highest regarded engineering org"? :grimmace:
sdljfjafsd 5y ago
IMO, I would not put Uber engineering in the "highly regarded" bucket.
protonimitate 5y ago
I've personally never thought of Uber engineering as the pinnacle of contemporary engineering teams, is that a common sentiment for others? I know they're popular, but I thought it was mostly due to the pay scale / name recognition, not technical quality.
thesausageking 5y ago
Uber's engineering isn't well regarded. They have a reputation for over-engineering everything and having a misogynistic, cowboy culture.

My takeaway -- even the highest regarded engineering orgs are still shitshows behind the scenes.

by psing 5y ago

My takeaway -- even the highest regarded engineering orgs are still shitshows behind the scenes.

whalesalad 5y ago

In my personal experience, the more the org gives off the impression that it is hot shit, the worse it usually is.

lumost 5y ago
The more the org values external appearance, the more the org justifies projects based on external appearances.
twic 5y ago
Sometimes i think about trying to get a job at Netflix just so i can find out what it's really like.
- ryanianian 5y ago
  I had 6+ years at a FAANG. It was awful. I would never go back. I happily took a 20% pay cut to go elsewhere. This said, I learned a lot (both good and bad) and it has been a good reference point for my career. So I recommend all engineers to strongly consider a FAANG while they're young and can tolerate a bit of burnout. Learn how the big companies do it, pay attention to what's good and what's bad, and keep that perspective with you in your career. But be honest with yourself ahead of time about what would make you leave and follow through with that. "Golden handcuffs" of high pay is a real thing.
  - notyourwork 5y ago
    Not all teams in FAANGs result in burn out or require careful through about joining. I've been at one of them for 6 years and still find my work life balance to be sane. In fact I enjoy what I'm doing quite a bit because of the business space I'm working in and the quality of peers.
    - silicon2401 5y ago
      what do you consider sane work life balance? I consider anything over 40h excessive
      - notyourwork 5y ago
        Yes. Aside from on-call week when I carry a pager 24-7 for the week but I don't work outside business hours unless paged.
        silicon2401 5y ago
        Yes what? I asked "what do you consider sane work hours?" lol.
        notyourwork 5y ago
        Because it was obvious, we know what full time is defined as. Anything more than 40h is more than a full time job.
      - jefftk 5y ago
        Another data point: I've never felt pressured to work more than 40 hours a week, and have probably averaged quite close to that over my FAANG career. Recently, with pandemic/WFH/less-to-do-outside-work, I started working some on evenings/weekends, and my manager asked me to stop because he doesn't want to have that kind of team culture.
        notyourwork 5y ago
        +1 It can create a really toxic work culture. If I do work more its because I'm interested in a problem that I don't want to let sit till next week or the following day. In general, I try to do this discretely by not pinging people outside working hours or trying to give impression I'm working late. Working late for me is usually working through code or a design at a time when I'm caught in it and don't want to let it sit until I solve it. If this happens I'll start late next day or reduce hours following week and I make sure I call this out during standup so my team knows why I'm signing off early. It can become a snowball when one teammate sees another working and feels compelled to do same. Kudos to your manager for calling this out.
  - enterdev 5y ago
    what was wrong with it?
- notyourwork 5y ago
  It likely depends on the team and area of company. Any company of reasonable size will have a distribution similar to bell curve of teams ranging from excellent to complete shit shows. Most fall somewhere in the middle with diverse pros/cons depending on the tech stack, connectedness to customer and where their software falls in its lifecycle from shiny new to dusty needs replaced. You get lucky rarely with an awesome team and usually fall in middle with some gripes. If you get into a shit show head for the door as fast as you can or stick around to learn a thing or two about what NOT to do.
  - structural 5y ago
    Yeah, but if you're not already in the job, the distribution of "teams that are currently hiring external candidates" can be quite skewed towards the worse side of things, and if you don't know this going in, you'll have a very bad time at most large organizations. A successful strategy is quite frequently to treat your first team at a company as just the second phase of an interview to get into one of the better teams in the company. Depends on the company, to be sure, but I've definitely seen many instances of "we're a good team, we know it, we'll happily poach good engineers from any team we like". It helps that the good engineers are going to be unhappy with their current team and looking to make the switch, anyways. If you don't switch teams within your first year or so, it usually means you a) got very lucky at random, b) got into a good team because you knew someone internally with good info and were able to short-circuit the process, or c) you failed to network/interview well enough internally to move up, and you should probably either be okay with a dumpster fire or move to another company.
- HowardStark 5y ago
  Funny, that was my first thought as well. Recently read their engineering blog post from 2012 on the API gateway + UI system [1] and thought it was really cool and made a lot of sense (in their specific, truly massive use case). From recent memory, I can't recall Netflix really reinventing the wheel a-la-OP/Uber. [1] https://netflixtechblog.com/embracing-the-differences-inside-the-netflix-api-redesign-15fd8b3dc49d https://netflixtechblog.com/embracing-the-differences-inside...
  - tomnipotent 5y ago
    > I can't recall Netflix really reinventing the wheel Netflix has many private and public projects that have alternatives that could have been adopted. I'm glad they didn't, because Netflix releases quality product and I'm super appreciative of their contributions. https://github.com/netflix https://github.com/netflix
tshaddox 5y ago
It took me a second to correctly analyze the sentiment of “hot shit.” I realized it means “really good,” as opposed to, for example, “steaming pile of shit” which means the opposite.
- fration 5y ago
  It also generally has the connotation of someone having an inflated opinion of themselves.
- ChicagoBoy11 5y ago
  You'll enjoy this exploration on this precise topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifNEgwGACEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifNEgwGACEQ
  - samuli 5y ago
    Here's a link to the original video from the actual standup comedian in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igh9iO5BxBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igh9iO5BxBo
- robocat 5y ago
  The expression “shit hot” is a superlatively good thing. I don’t ever recall hearing “hot shit”, although perhaps it is a US term or a modern usage. Urban dictionary defines both.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    "Hot shit" is a US term, and it is old and was around in the 80s at least.
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      Longer than that. I saw it in a book from the 1950's. I expect it's a variation of "hot stuff" which I've heard in songs from the 1930's.
- deleted 5y ago
cghendrix 5y ago
What about Netflix?
screye 5y ago
Yep, In my experience : Very high standards = Slow shipping = Boring You can bet that working on the Google Ads teams is far more 'boring' than Stadia or Glasses. Similarly, at my FANGAM company, the most boring teams are also the most stable.
- toast0 5y ago
  > Very high standards = Slow shipping = Boring I don't think this is quite right. Slow shipping is tied to coordination more than standards (although if the standards are enforced by testing from another team, there's your coordination). If the standards are self enforced, you can still ship frequently, but maybe not a lot of big releases. Small teams and decoupled work where possible helps. I can only quibble about boring though. The code changes may not be exciting, but the environment can be. Some external event that spikes traffic can test your high standards, and may need remediations (in which case, I hope you can ship fast). Of course, boring is actually nice.

cobaltoxide 5y ago

Are you referring to Uber as "highest regarded engineering org"? :grimmace:

sdljfjafsd 5y ago

IMO, I would not put Uber engineering in the "highly regarded" bucket.

protonimitate 5y ago

I've personally never thought of Uber engineering as the pinnacle of contemporary engineering teams, is that a common sentiment for others? I know they're popular, but I thought it was mostly due to the pay scale / name recognition, not technical quality.

thesausageking 5y ago

Uber's engineering isn't well regarded. They have a reputation for over-engineering everything and having a misogynistic, cowboy culture.