4 ms·

> Combined with employing more than 8000 people, this means that Atlassian is unprofitable In 1991, Microsoft had 8000 employees. It was producing DOS, Windows

by yobbo 4y ago

> Combined with employing more than 8000 people, this means that Atlassian is unprofitable In 1991, Microsoft had 8000 employees. It was producing DOS, Windows 3*, Office, OS/2, tools and compilers. Windows NT was in development. They did not use Jira. I think the main feature of these tools is to make people, who would otherwise be unproductive, feel and look productive. Maybe those people are managers that should never have managed software development. Idk. (https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/ms/microsoft_company.htm https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/ms/microsoft_company....)

Aachen 4y ago
They also built pyramids without excavators but that doesn't mean it's not helpful. Just because old systems could be built without specifically using jira, by itself, is not an argument. You could make the same argument that, clearly, we don't need Java or JavaScript because we also got by fine on Fortran and C in the past. Without doing an actual comparison, it's just as silly an argument as the claim that these tools' main function is to make you feel more productive than you are.
- yobbo 4y ago
  > They also built pyramids without excavators but that doesn't mean it's not helpful False analogy. The point here is that productivity in old Microsoft was far higher, and that the failing piece in modern development might not be the ticket system.
  - Aachen 4y ago
    > The point here is that productivity in old Microsoft was far higher That sounds virtually impossible to prove between unequal situations, and especially "far" makes it seem like an exaggeration / tall order (productivity between people isn't like wealth or popularity: some things change by multiple orders of magnitude, but how hard you can work doesn't, especially when averaged across thousands of employees), but to be fair I didn't read the whole fourteen thousand word source you added so I suppose I can't say for sure.
ramraj07 4y ago
The actual lines of code in an OS has balooned exponentially. Of course we can’t discount the abilities of the average software engineer in the 90s vs now. I’d guess back then you had to be fairly driven and smart to be employed there, which is not necessarily true anymore. If you have a pulse and can barely pass fizz buzz you’re employed with 200k salary, so yeah.
- zeusk 4y ago
  > If you have a pulse and can barely pass fizz buzz you’re employed with 200k salary, so yeah. Tell us you don't have any experience with hiring, without telling us you don't.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    I most definitely know more people than I would prefer who can only barely pass fizz buzz and make more than that. It is kinda interesting how dev compensation is in fact bimodal and the engineers (and the managers) in the second hump want to actively avoid any mention of the possibility that they’re under compensated.
- yobbo 4y ago
  > If you have a pulse and can barely pass fizz buzz you’re employed with 200k salary If this was true; it is not an "efficient market" we are observing, neither in SaaS or developer employment. These companies would be outcompeted. The underlying mechanism that enables this is probably SaaS/etc lock-in. Will be interesting to see what/how overturns whatever paradigm this is.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    Efficient market hypothesis doesn’t work here, honestly not sure if it works anywhere. See https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ https://danluu.com/nothing-works/
  - jokethrowaway 4y ago
    Every once and then they buy a startup to inject themselves with new blood and maintain their dominance. They also need to have decent leadershipt to make the right decisions (eg. I'm sure Ballmer would have killed M$). They can afford all those useless employees because software allow you to get lots of profit with little work.

by yobbo 4y ago

Aachen 4y ago

They also built pyramids without excavators but that doesn't mean it's not helpful. Just because old systems could be built without specifically using jira, by itself, is not an argument. You could make the same argument that, clearly, we don't need Java or JavaScript because we also got by fine on Fortran and C in the past. Without doing an actual comparison, it's just as silly an argument as the claim that these tools' main function is to make you feel more productive than you are.

yobbo 4y ago
> They also built pyramids without excavators but that doesn't mean it's not helpful False analogy. The point here is that productivity in old Microsoft was far higher, and that the failing piece in modern development might not be the ticket system.
- Aachen 4y ago
  > The point here is that productivity in old Microsoft was far higher That sounds virtually impossible to prove between unequal situations, and especially "far" makes it seem like an exaggeration / tall order (productivity between people isn't like wealth or popularity: some things change by multiple orders of magnitude, but how hard you can work doesn't, especially when averaged across thousands of employees), but to be fair I didn't read the whole fourteen thousand word source you added so I suppose I can't say for sure.

ramraj07 4y ago

The actual lines of code in an OS has balooned exponentially. Of course we can’t discount the abilities of the average software engineer in the 90s vs now. I’d guess back then you had to be fairly driven and smart to be employed there, which is not necessarily true anymore. If you have a pulse and can barely pass fizz buzz you’re employed with 200k salary, so yeah.

zeusk 4y ago
> If you have a pulse and can barely pass fizz buzz you’re employed with 200k salary, so yeah. Tell us you don't have any experience with hiring, without telling us you don't.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  I most definitely know more people than I would prefer who can only barely pass fizz buzz and make more than that. It is kinda interesting how dev compensation is in fact bimodal and the engineers (and the managers) in the second hump want to actively avoid any mention of the possibility that they’re under compensated.
yobbo 4y ago
> If you have a pulse and can barely pass fizz buzz you’re employed with 200k salary If this was true; it is not an "efficient market" we are observing, neither in SaaS or developer employment. These companies would be outcompeted. The underlying mechanism that enables this is probably SaaS/etc lock-in. Will be interesting to see what/how overturns whatever paradigm this is.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Efficient market hypothesis doesn’t work here, honestly not sure if it works anywhere. See https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ https://danluu.com/nothing-works/
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  Every once and then they buy a startup to inject themselves with new blood and maintain their dominance. They also need to have decent leadershipt to make the right decisions (eg. I'm sure Ballmer would have killed M$). They can afford all those useless employees because software allow you to get lots of profit with little work.