4 ms·

10Gen CEO Dwight Merriman Still Writes His Own Code

53 points by diegogomes 15y ago

diegogomes 15y ago
It's good to know this kind of stuff, since we're heavy users of mongodb here...
- cienrak 15y ago
  Would it bother you if he had shifted into a management role? Or just less inspiring.
  - alnayyir 15y ago
    It would mean you can't take anything he says in a presentation too seriously because he doesn't touch the actual code. Then he would have to designate the CTO or somebody in some sort of leadership-but-still-touching-the-code role to actually talk about what's available/functional. It inspires confidence when the CEO knows EXACTLY how the product works.
omarqureshi 15y ago
For a CEO, it's impressive how much in touch he is with MongoDB, its functionality and what it is capable of. You should see him talk, he really knows what he is on about.
- nestlequ1k 15y ago
  Agreed, if you are able to make it to any of the Mongo events, don't miss seeing Dwight talk (particularly about MongoDB internals). He's an even better lecturer than my favorite college professor.
meghan 15y ago
Thought this ohloh graph might be interesting: http://www.ohloh.net/p/mongodb/analyses/latest http://www.ohloh.net/p/mongodb/analyses/latest ~30% of the commits on mongodb are Dwight.
- diegogomes 15y ago
  #cool. very impressive!
nosh 15y ago
In case you are curious: https://github.com/dwight https://github.com/dwight
bborud 15y ago
cool :-) (I'm a VP at a large company and I write code as well)
- latch 15y ago
  I was an AVP at a large company...it had 6+ CEOs....hundreds of directors + managing directors...thousands of VPs...thousands of AVPs. Point is, large companies throw titles around like candy. Also, I hate to burst your bubble, but programming at a large company is very different than programming at a start up (especially one on of the rarer technology-focused startups like 10gen).
  - bborud 15y ago
    wow, I just love it how you managed to make that many assumptions about me in just a couple of sentences.
smackfu 15y ago
That does not seem like a plan that will scale well. I think this kind of thing inevitably ends up like the Zuckerberg anecdote, where the CEO eventually has no time to code because being CEO is a full time job, but he still does it to prove he can.
- bborud 15y ago
  If 10gen make it big: perhaps. And then again, perhaps not. The fact that this guy spent 10 years as the CTO of a company and was still capable of producing a piece of quality software like MongoDB says that this guy is isn't quite like other people. Very few people who make it into the executive ranks (and stay there for a decade or more) manage to stay sharp enough to actually write a coherent piece of code. Much less a piece of code worth building a company on. However such people do exist. Years ago I had the pleasure of working with a fellow who was nearing retirement age. We worked on a project together and he was learning a new programming language. As the weeks passed I slowly learned that he used to be an executive, but found this work boring after some years and wanted to return to the floor as an engineer. I also learned that he worked on software for the Apollo program. I have no doubt that if 10gen become very successful he might have to dial back his level of direct involvement. But if he is the brains behind MongoDB, it would only be natural that he stayed involved in the project. As an investor I'd see this as a plus. If nothing else then because it proves the CEO does have some brains and is less likely to be a business dullard.
- VBprogrammer 15y ago
  I'm not sure what that anecdote was trying to say. I think the majority of the 2 hours would be getting to grips with the codebase, given that he probably hasn't had time to look at it in years. I've never seen anything to suggest that Zuckerberg is an incompetent programmer. Similarly, if you took one of the engineers and showed them the commercial agreements and reporting that Zuck would be instantly familiar with I'm sure they'd take a long time to get grips with it.
- cliftonk 15y ago
  It usually means that you're spending most of your 9-5 sending/receiving email, on the phone and in meetings. Then you go home and look at the commit log to see what's changed, check the issue tracker and push some commits yourself.
cliftonk 15y ago
I'm curious if there's anyone around that codes more than Chris Wanstrath [1] (Github's CEO). He's a beast. And someone we should all look up to. [1] https://github.com/defunkt https://github.com/defunkt
slyall 15y ago
I knew a company where the CEO was a coder, wrote much of the original code and sometimes coded. The smallish company had ISO 9000 and an anal change control procedure for Network and System changes. By contrast the programming team had little/no change control or testing. One day the CEO made a change to the code and blew away the customer database (or at least a substantial proportion of the data in it). Everybody just shrugged their shoulders, restored from the overnight backup and wrote off that days data/work.
patrickod 15y ago
Writing code every as a CEO now and again is a nice thing to say but it isn't a scalable approach if you want to maintain that code properly. You can't just expect your C(E|T)O to drop everything that they're doing when an unexpected bug pops up. Great for the morale, but bad for the code.
- quanticle 15y ago
  Why not? Of course you can't have the CTO drop everything when there's an unexpected bug, but I do think there is value in coding, even for "upper" management. Even looking in on the code from time to time can give you a snapshot of where the product is at and in which direction it is evolving. If that direction is different from what you expected, you can ask the programmers why they chose to use the approach they did. I think the most important thing is that the CTO does not place his or her code above the code of the individual maintenance programmer. The worst thing he or she can do is somehow mark his or her code as "untouchable". Untouchable code is bad code, regardless of how well it works or how well it's written. It doesn't adapt to changing requirements like the rest of the application, and the rest of the application has to go out of its way to accommodate it. However, as long as he or she makes it perfectly clear that his or her code is just as subject to change and modification as everyone else's, I don't see why the CEO/CTO can't get their hands dirty now and again.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Why wouldn't someone else fix the bug?
Bartlet 15y ago
Chris Wanstrath, CEO of GitHub, still writes meaningful amounts of code as well.
latch 15y ago
Their CTO, Eliot, seems to spend the vast majority of his time coding. I'd say it's the result of a technology-focused company versus, what seems more common these days, as a 'product' company.

53 points by diegogomes 15y ago

diegogomes 15y ago

It's good to know this kind of stuff, since we're heavy users of mongodb here...

cienrak 15y ago
Would it bother you if he had shifted into a management role? Or just less inspiring.
- alnayyir 15y ago
  It would mean you can't take anything he says in a presentation too seriously because he doesn't touch the actual code. Then he would have to designate the CTO or somebody in some sort of leadership-but-still-touching-the-code role to actually talk about what's available/functional. It inspires confidence when the CEO knows EXACTLY how the product works.

omarqureshi 15y ago

For a CEO, it's impressive how much in touch he is with MongoDB, its functionality and what it is capable of. You should see him talk, he really knows what he is on about.

nestlequ1k 15y ago
Agreed, if you are able to make it to any of the Mongo events, don't miss seeing Dwight talk (particularly about MongoDB internals). He's an even better lecturer than my favorite college professor.

meghan 15y ago

Thought this ohloh graph might be interesting: http://www.ohloh.net/p/mongodb/analyses/latest http://www.ohloh.net/p/mongodb/analyses/latest ~30% of the commits on mongodb are Dwight.

diegogomes 15y ago
#cool. very impressive!

nosh 15y ago

In case you are curious: https://github.com/dwight https://github.com/dwight

bborud 15y ago

cool :-) (I'm a VP at a large company and I write code as well)

latch 15y ago
I was an AVP at a large company...it had 6+ CEOs....hundreds of directors + managing directors...thousands of VPs...thousands of AVPs. Point is, large companies throw titles around like candy. Also, I hate to burst your bubble, but programming at a large company is very different than programming at a start up (especially one on of the rarer technology-focused startups like 10gen).
- bborud 15y ago
  wow, I just love it how you managed to make that many assumptions about me in just a couple of sentences.

smackfu 15y ago

That does not seem like a plan that will scale well. I think this kind of thing inevitably ends up like the Zuckerberg anecdote, where the CEO eventually has no time to code because being CEO is a full time job, but he still does it to prove he can.

bborud 15y ago
If 10gen make it big: perhaps. And then again, perhaps not. The fact that this guy spent 10 years as the CTO of a company and was still capable of producing a piece of quality software like MongoDB says that this guy is isn't quite like other people. Very few people who make it into the executive ranks (and stay there for a decade or more) manage to stay sharp enough to actually write a coherent piece of code. Much less a piece of code worth building a company on. However such people do exist. Years ago I had the pleasure of working with a fellow who was nearing retirement age. We worked on a project together and he was learning a new programming language. As the weeks passed I slowly learned that he used to be an executive, but found this work boring after some years and wanted to return to the floor as an engineer. I also learned that he worked on software for the Apollo program. I have no doubt that if 10gen become very successful he might have to dial back his level of direct involvement. But if he is the brains behind MongoDB, it would only be natural that he stayed involved in the project. As an investor I'd see this as a plus. If nothing else then because it proves the CEO does have some brains and is less likely to be a business dullard.
VBprogrammer 15y ago
I'm not sure what that anecdote was trying to say. I think the majority of the 2 hours would be getting to grips with the codebase, given that he probably hasn't had time to look at it in years. I've never seen anything to suggest that Zuckerberg is an incompetent programmer. Similarly, if you took one of the engineers and showed them the commercial agreements and reporting that Zuck would be instantly familiar with I'm sure they'd take a long time to get grips with it.
cliftonk 15y ago
It usually means that you're spending most of your 9-5 sending/receiving email, on the phone and in meetings. Then you go home and look at the commit log to see what's changed, check the issue tracker and push some commits yourself.

cliftonk 15y ago

I'm curious if there's anyone around that codes more than Chris Wanstrath [1] (Github's CEO). He's a beast. And someone we should all look up to. [1] https://github.com/defunkt https://github.com/defunkt

slyall 15y ago

I knew a company where the CEO was a coder, wrote much of the original code and sometimes coded. The smallish company had ISO 9000 and an anal change control procedure for Network and System changes. By contrast the programming team had little/no change control or testing. One day the CEO made a change to the code and blew away the customer database (or at least a substantial proportion of the data in it). Everybody just shrugged their shoulders, restored from the overnight backup and wrote off that days data/work.

patrickod 15y ago

Writing code every as a CEO now and again is a nice thing to say but it isn't a scalable approach if you want to maintain that code properly. You can't just expect your C(E|T)O to drop everything that they're doing when an unexpected bug pops up. Great for the morale, but bad for the code.

quanticle 15y ago
Why not? Of course you can't have the CTO drop everything when there's an unexpected bug, but I do think there is value in coding, even for "upper" management. Even looking in on the code from time to time can give you a snapshot of where the product is at and in which direction it is evolving. If that direction is different from what you expected, you can ask the programmers why they chose to use the approach they did. I think the most important thing is that the CTO does not place his or her code above the code of the individual maintenance programmer. The worst thing he or she can do is somehow mark his or her code as "untouchable". Untouchable code is bad code, regardless of how well it works or how well it's written. It doesn't adapt to changing requirements like the rest of the application, and the rest of the application has to go out of its way to accommodate it. However, as long as he or she makes it perfectly clear that his or her code is just as subject to change and modification as everyone else's, I don't see why the CEO/CTO can't get their hands dirty now and again.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Why wouldn't someone else fix the bug?

Bartlet 15y ago

Chris Wanstrath, CEO of GitHub, still writes meaningful amounts of code as well.

latch 15y ago

Their CTO, Eliot, seems to spend the vast majority of his time coding. I'd say it's the result of a technology-focused company versus, what seems more common these days, as a 'product' company.