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I interviewed at Fast last year as an experienced startup engineer. I was given the "describe a production incident you were involved in" question. I detailed

I interviewed at Fast last year as an experienced startup engineer. I was given the "describe a production incident you were involved in" question. I detailed a case where a recent deploy I had done had resulted in elevated error rates for some of our clients and how I had solved it with a quick follow up push to prod. The interviewer asked why it wasn't caught in staging and I mentioned that it could have been but as a small company we have to make velocity vs bug tradeoffs and in general it feels like we are currently at a sweet spot. The interviewer was unwilling to explore that space at all, or the concept that different companies might want to land in different places. Later I was given feedback that I did exceptionally well in the technical interviews but the company didn't want any cowboys on their team. All of that is probably just a long way of confirming the other anecdotes in this thread that from the outside fast seemed somewhere between delivery hostile and overly cautious.

omarfarooq 5y ago
What exactly is meant by "cowboy" here?
- nicd 5y ago
  Someone who plays it "fast and loose" in terms of engineering (for example, deploying straight to prod). As parent mentions- this isn't necessarily a bad thing depending on the context (but "cowboy" here has a negative connotation).
  - strikelaserclaw 5y ago
    oof, i described myself as a cowboy at a interview i did last year to a higher up, no wonder i didn't get the job even though i did well on their technical exams. I always took cowboy coder to mean someone who had independence and resilience to get things done even if the environment isn't conducive towards that.
- orzig 5y ago
  Not OP but in tech cowboy often means "taking unacceptable risks to increase velocity". In this case, shipping code without integration tests in Staging. whether that risk was 'unacceptable' is the difference of opinion at issue. Fun fact: The 2011 article Cowboys and Pit Crews (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cowboys-and-pit-crews https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cowboys-and-pit-cre...) points out that modern cowboys actually spend a lot of time on communication and checklists.
forgingahead 5y ago
This is hilarious - velocity vs. bug tradeoffs is a key balancing act that every startup does, and you were totally right in what you were doing, also with your point that other companies may choose differently and that's also totally fine. But to be deemed as a cowboy - utterly hilarious, given where they ended up. Pretty cowboy with the investor money instead I reckon?

omarfarooq 5y ago

What exactly is meant by "cowboy" here?

nicd 5y ago
Someone who plays it "fast and loose" in terms of engineering (for example, deploying straight to prod). As parent mentions- this isn't necessarily a bad thing depending on the context (but "cowboy" here has a negative connotation).
- strikelaserclaw 5y ago
  oof, i described myself as a cowboy at a interview i did last year to a higher up, no wonder i didn't get the job even though i did well on their technical exams. I always took cowboy coder to mean someone who had independence and resilience to get things done even if the environment isn't conducive towards that.
orzig 5y ago
Not OP but in tech cowboy often means "taking unacceptable risks to increase velocity". In this case, shipping code without integration tests in Staging. whether that risk was 'unacceptable' is the difference of opinion at issue. Fun fact: The 2011 article Cowboys and Pit Crews (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cowboys-and-pit-crews https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cowboys-and-pit-cre...) points out that modern cowboys actually spend a lot of time on communication and checklists.

forgingahead 5y ago

This is hilarious - velocity vs. bug tradeoffs is a key balancing act that every startup does, and you were totally right in what you were doing, also with your point that other companies may choose differently and that's also totally fine. But to be deemed as a cowboy - utterly hilarious, given where they ended up. Pretty cowboy with the investor money instead I reckon?