3 ms·

The "dead sea effect" is an interesting new concept I learned from that post.

ubermonkey 5y ago
Yeah, me too. I worked at a place in the 90s that was absolutely going in that direction, but I had no word for the phenomenon. They were an all Vax/VMS shop in the mid-90s, and they paid developers criminally low wages even for the era. I was hired in an analyst/project management role at a considerably higher salary, which of course made my group unpopular with the dev rank and file. Turnover was insane -- like, 40% a year in the dev & IT department. Those that stayed were, generally speaking, those that either couldn't conceive of seeking another job, or were unable to do so. This is not a recipe for a functional or high-achieving group even without that by-that-point religious adherence to the party line on (a) the long-term viability of VMS and Digital generally or (b) the wisdom of insisting that damn near everything be built from scratch, even the database system.
- WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
  > the wisdom of insisting that damn near everything be built from scratch, even the database system. NIH is literally software cancer. We've done it dozens of times and it hasn't worked once...
  - ubermonkey 5y ago
    It also drives the Dead Sea thing, because to do anything effective in such an environment you have to learn all sorts of esoteric and only-useful-here tech (sometimes even languages!), which takes time you could be using to learn marketable skills.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
It's what I think Amazon/AWS is going through now. When they were in "fun growth" mode their obnoxious Bezosisms didn't really matter, but they are settling into an enterprise/utility/long term company. Their raising the bar and stack ranking and forced attrition and blame culture and backstabbing and sacrificial hires won't work. Instead, they produce a dead sea effect where you aren't getting good people, you're either getting sociopaths or people that don't have options to go elsewhere and not be organizationally abused. Because if you're good, you can go elsewhere. Other FAANG, etc. Did you see all the outages in AWS in December? Utilities have long-standing employees because they do long-term support and know the systems. Amazon's hiring does not reward or structure itself that way. It's for churning people. If you get a creepy impression from the hiring (and Amazon hiring should DEFINITELY do that)... well... I would say most people that go there are doing it for the resume and they are out within two years. The people I knew who went there were exactly that. Then they cashed out to better jobs.

Yeah, me too. I worked at a place in the 90s that was absolutely going in that direction, but I had no word for the phenomenon. They were an all Vax/VMS shop in the mid-90s, and they paid developers criminally low wages even for the era. I was hired in an analyst/project management role at a considerably higher salary, which of course made my group unpopular with the dev rank and file. Turnover was insane -- like, 40% a year in the dev & IT department. Those that stayed were, generally speaking, those that either couldn't conceive of seeking another job, or were unable to do so. This is not a recipe for a functional or high-achieving group even without that by-that-point religious adherence to the party line on (a) the long-term viability of VMS and Digital generally or (b) the wisdom of insisting that damn near everything be built from scratch, even the database system.

WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
> the wisdom of insisting that damn near everything be built from scratch, even the database system. NIH is literally software cancer. We've done it dozens of times and it hasn't worked once...
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  It also drives the Dead Sea thing, because to do anything effective in such an environment you have to learn all sorts of esoteric and only-useful-here tech (sometimes even languages!), which takes time you could be using to learn marketable skills.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

It's what I think Amazon/AWS is going through now. When they were in "fun growth" mode their obnoxious Bezosisms didn't really matter, but they are settling into an enterprise/utility/long term company. Their raising the bar and stack ranking and forced attrition and blame culture and backstabbing and sacrificial hires won't work. Instead, they produce a dead sea effect where you aren't getting good people, you're either getting sociopaths or people that don't have options to go elsewhere and not be organizationally abused. Because if you're good, you can go elsewhere. Other FAANG, etc. Did you see all the outages in AWS in December? Utilities have long-standing employees because they do long-term support and know the systems. Amazon's hiring does not reward or structure itself that way. It's for churning people. If you get a creepy impression from the hiring (and Amazon hiring should DEFINITELY do that)... well... I would say most people that go there are doing it for the resume and they are out within two years. The people I knew who went there were exactly that. Then they cashed out to better jobs.