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> These numbers grew as “dogfooding” population makeup became politically fraught As someone who doesn't know what's going on at Google, can you elaborate on t

> These numbers grew as “dogfooding” population makeup became politically fraught As someone who doesn't know what's going on at Google, can you elaborate on that? I know what dogfooding is, but what does the rest mean?

dmitrygr 4y ago
At least, in the android wear team, the higher-ups directly told us that the dogfooding population had to have certain percentages of certain sexes and skin colors. Unfortunately, engineering didn’t have enough people to fill each cell of that grid, so the limited number of development watches got allocated to many people outside of the team and outside of engineering, who, then proceeded to not use them (we kept track of dogfooding devices that were or were not used. People outside of our team rarely used the devices more than once a week) and/or file useless bug reports(a-la “connection seemed flaky last Tuesday, no I did not collect a bug report then, when it was happening”). As a result, we got fewer bug reports, and a lower percentage of them were usable. Predictably, quality suffered. The solution would’ve been simple: make more test devices, so that all the engineers, who actually file bug reports get one, and whoever else you want can get one to collect dust on their desk too. Didn’t happen. Similar situation played out an android proper. In 2012 in 2013, almost all android engineers were carrying a dogfood device. By 2019, they were almost impossible to obtain, except ...
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  Wow, that's an astonishingly short-sighted decision. Was there any pushback on it? And were you also blocked from redeploying the testing units away from those who didn't care?
  - dmitrygr 4y ago
    > Was there any pushback on it? Nobody was that stupid, no > And were you also blocked from redeploying the testing units away from those who didn't care? That was not really done. Chasing down people one by one to recall units they were barely using would have taken more time than our one tired & overworked dogfooding program admin had.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      Considering every testing unit given out increases the potential hazard of premature disclosure, that seems remarkable. I guess that is the natural outcome of treating hardware as an afterthought.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
dogfooding : internal testing using the would-be external product

dmitrygr 4y ago

At least, in the android wear team, the higher-ups directly told us that the dogfooding population had to have certain percentages of certain sexes and skin colors. Unfortunately, engineering didn’t have enough people to fill each cell of that grid, so the limited number of development watches got allocated to many people outside of the team and outside of engineering, who, then proceeded to not use them (we kept track of dogfooding devices that were or were not used. People outside of our team rarely used the devices more than once a week) and/or file useless bug reports(a-la “connection seemed flaky last Tuesday, no I did not collect a bug report then, when it was happening”). As a result, we got fewer bug reports, and a lower percentage of them were usable. Predictably, quality suffered. The solution would’ve been simple: make more test devices, so that all the engineers, who actually file bug reports get one, and whoever else you want can get one to collect dust on their desk too. Didn’t happen. Similar situation played out an android proper. In 2012 in 2013, almost all android engineers were carrying a dogfood device. By 2019, they were almost impossible to obtain, except ...

MichaelZuo 4y ago
Wow, that's an astonishingly short-sighted decision. Was there any pushback on it? And were you also blocked from redeploying the testing units away from those who didn't care?
- dmitrygr 4y ago
  > Was there any pushback on it? Nobody was that stupid, no > And were you also blocked from redeploying the testing units away from those who didn't care? That was not really done. Chasing down people one by one to recall units they were barely using would have taken more time than our one tired & overworked dogfooding program admin had.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    Considering every testing unit given out increases the potential hazard of premature disclosure, that seems remarkable. I guess that is the natural outcome of treating hardware as an afterthought.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

dogfooding : internal testing using the would-be external product