10 ms·

What hubris to think that your system is so complex that other engineers couldn't understand it.

sidibe 4y ago
The hubris is thinking Tesla engineers (who are offered worse pay and wlb relative to Twitter) are coding masters of every domain. I won't even snipe at their own software here. It takes a long time to onboard to a big mature infrastructure that is serving hundreds of millions of users for people moving from a similar company, even longer if your day job is whatever Tesla engineers are doing. And that's onboarding, not pretending to be an expert which seems to be the role they're taking on.
- Nicksil 4y ago
  >The hubris is thinking Tesla engineers (who are offered worse pay and wlb relative to Twitter) are coding masters of every domain. I won't even snipe at their own software here. Who is thinking that?
  - hnfong 4y ago
    I think you think that the GP is thinking the Tesla engineers are thinking that :D
- MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
  On one hand, you can usually safely ignore 99% of code in a system that does the plumbing in a system and focus on the few key algorithms. It wouldn't be a stretch at all to take one of the self driving AI guys and have them evaluate say, an ML classifier used to flag spam/abuse content. That would be well inside their domain.
  - johnbcoughlin 4y ago
    > That would be well inside their domain. Would it?
    - Nicksil 4y ago
      >Would it? Would it not?
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Key algorithms to do…what, exactly? Why not just read the documentation on that instead of having people bring you a random sample of their code on paper?
    - naasking 4y ago
      Who said they're evaluating the code? Maybe they're evaluating the people by asking them questions about the code they've just written. That's a great way to find out who's full of shit.
      - saagarjha 4y ago
        Why the printouts then?
        naasking 4y ago
        So they can have the code on hand while interviewing them, ask about the code, why they made a certain choice, what other options were available, etc. Have you never had an interview with code printed out or otherwise provided for discussion?
        saagarjha 4y ago
        Usually we both have copies on our computers.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > It wouldn't be a stretch at all to take one of the self driving AI guys and have them evaluate say, an ML classifier used to flag spam/abuse content. Facebook has a years-old bug with their ML classifier used to flag spam/abuse content in Facebook Groups. Its exact behavior has morphed over time as they flailingly attempt to fix it, but for several straight months that behavior was "posting to a Group via the Graph API fails with 'unknown error' if it includes a dollar sign". This in an API used by tens of thousands of apps and many millions of users, at one of the richest (in both money and programmers) companies on the planet. ML is often a black box "computer says no" scenario with little meaningful ability to debug.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  You don't need to be a "coding master of every domain" to recognize shit code.
  - arrow7000 4y ago
    Is there any reason to suspect that there is shit code at Twitter? Or that that is in any way related to the problems that Twitter has or the "problems" that Elon said he wanted to fix?
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      There isn't any reason to expect that there isn't shit code, either. If you spend $44 billion dollars on something, you're going to want to look it over extremely well.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Pay and work life benefits are generally independent of technical competence. But I agree with the rest of your comment.
- onethought 4y ago
  Knowing enough to call bullshit is way lower than knowing enough to contribute meaningfully to a codebase. Even just having access to code while someone talks I can prove with much higher value questions on what they are saying… because even if I’m asking something dumb it prompts a deeper explanation.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Oh please, that's a ridiculous assessment of what was said. Coding giant distributed web apps is a very different domain than coding for cars. I wouldn't put much stock in Twitter engineers assessing self driving car code either.
- Nicksil 4y ago
  >Oh please, that's a ridiculous assessment of what was said. Coding giant distributed web apps is a very different domain than coding for cars. I wouldn't put much stock in Twitter engineers assessing self driving car code either. You don't need to be a part of any particular domain to effectively audit code.
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    - Nicksil 4y ago
      >Bullshit. I'm a web engineer, and I wouldn't be competent to audit code that runs Space X's rockets, nor would anyone I know in my career space. You're still missing the point. It isn't about knowing how rockets work or anything in particular. It's about being able to search for and recognize issues.
      - uoaei 4y ago
        I implore you to consider that auditing code is more than just big-O analyses.
        Nicksil 4y ago
        >I implore you to consider that auditing code is more than just big-O analyses. That isn't at all what I said nor implied.
        4y ago
newZWhoDis 4y ago
Also what hubris of the Twitter engineers, who seem to be in this thread, thinking anything they built was that special. Your video player somehow managed to be worse than Reddit, the perennial joke of web dev. Not to mention “something went wrong” again and again, maybe by the 4th reload would a linked tweet actually show up for me. I’m on 25 gig symmetrical fiber with <10ms to my local AWS hub, FWIW
- spoils19 4y ago
  Video player works fine for me, and I'm on 20 gig symmetrical fiber with 8ms to my local Azure hub. Maybe check your firewall settings?
- giantrobot 4y ago
  > Not to mention “something went wrong” again and again, maybe by the 4th reload would a linked tweet actually show up for me. That seems like a purpose-built feature to punish non-Twitter users to induce them to sign up for Twitter and/or use the Twitter app instead of the web UI. It's not a bug but a misfeature.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    No, that happens on the Twitter app too.
closeparen 4y ago
What hubris to think you can wander into a system as complex as a $44bn tech company and draw any meaningful conclusions about it at all in a weekend. I mean, in my world we have some regular "tech reviews" with our Sr. Directors/VPs at a pretty abstract slides-and-diagrams level, and even that takes weeks of prep leading up like 4+ hour presentations. For something with only a glancing relationship to code level reality. I have occasionally seen my work reflected in these reviews, and the game of telephone that produces them is quite lossy. Any competent engineer can come to understand most any part of the system, but it's going to take minimum several weeks to understand at a level where you can seriously challenge the domain experts about what's really going on in a little 0.01% corner of the engineering shop.

The hubris is thinking Tesla engineers (who are offered worse pay and wlb relative to Twitter) are coding masters of every domain. I won't even snipe at their own software here. It takes a long time to onboard to a big mature infrastructure that is serving hundreds of millions of users for people moving from a similar company, even longer if your day job is whatever Tesla engineers are doing. And that's onboarding, not pretending to be an expert which seems to be the role they're taking on.

Nicksil 4y ago
>The hubris is thinking Tesla engineers (who are offered worse pay and wlb relative to Twitter) are coding masters of every domain. I won't even snipe at their own software here. Who is thinking that?
- hnfong 4y ago
  I think you think that the GP is thinking the Tesla engineers are thinking that :D
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
On one hand, you can usually safely ignore 99% of code in a system that does the plumbing in a system and focus on the few key algorithms. It wouldn't be a stretch at all to take one of the self driving AI guys and have them evaluate say, an ML classifier used to flag spam/abuse content. That would be well inside their domain.
- johnbcoughlin 4y ago
  > That would be well inside their domain. Would it?
  - Nicksil 4y ago
    >Would it? Would it not?
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Key algorithms to do…what, exactly? Why not just read the documentation on that instead of having people bring you a random sample of their code on paper?
  - naasking 4y ago
    Who said they're evaluating the code? Maybe they're evaluating the people by asking them questions about the code they've just written. That's a great way to find out who's full of shit.
    - saagarjha 4y ago
      Why the printouts then?
      - naasking 4y ago
        So they can have the code on hand while interviewing them, ask about the code, why they made a certain choice, what other options were available, etc. Have you never had an interview with code printed out or otherwise provided for discussion?
        saagarjha 4y ago
        Usually we both have copies on our computers.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > It wouldn't be a stretch at all to take one of the self driving AI guys and have them evaluate say, an ML classifier used to flag spam/abuse content. Facebook has a years-old bug with their ML classifier used to flag spam/abuse content in Facebook Groups. Its exact behavior has morphed over time as they flailingly attempt to fix it, but for several straight months that behavior was "posting to a Group via the Graph API fails with 'unknown error' if it includes a dollar sign". This in an API used by tens of thousands of apps and many millions of users, at one of the richest (in both money and programmers) companies on the planet. ML is often a black box "computer says no" scenario with little meaningful ability to debug.
Turing_Machine 4y ago
You don't need to be a "coding master of every domain" to recognize shit code.
- arrow7000 4y ago
  Is there any reason to suspect that there is shit code at Twitter? Or that that is in any way related to the problems that Twitter has or the "problems" that Elon said he wanted to fix?
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    There isn't any reason to expect that there isn't shit code, either. If you spend $44 billion dollars on something, you're going to want to look it over extremely well.
saagarjha 4y ago
Pay and work life benefits are generally independent of technical competence. But I agree with the rest of your comment.
onethought 4y ago
Knowing enough to call bullshit is way lower than knowing enough to contribute meaningfully to a codebase. Even just having access to code while someone talks I can prove with much higher value questions on what they are saying… because even if I’m asking something dumb it prompts a deeper explanation.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Oh please, that's a ridiculous assessment of what was said. Coding giant distributed web apps is a very different domain than coding for cars. I wouldn't put much stock in Twitter engineers assessing self driving car code either.

Nicksil 4y ago
>Oh please, that's a ridiculous assessment of what was said. Coding giant distributed web apps is a very different domain than coding for cars. I wouldn't put much stock in Twitter engineers assessing self driving car code either. You don't need to be a part of any particular domain to effectively audit code.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  - Nicksil 4y ago
    >Bullshit. I'm a web engineer, and I wouldn't be competent to audit code that runs Space X's rockets, nor would anyone I know in my career space. You're still missing the point. It isn't about knowing how rockets work or anything in particular. It's about being able to search for and recognize issues.
    - uoaei 4y ago
      I implore you to consider that auditing code is more than just big-O analyses.
      - Nicksil 4y ago
        >I implore you to consider that auditing code is more than just big-O analyses. That isn't at all what I said nor implied.
        4y ago

newZWhoDis 4y ago

Also what hubris of the Twitter engineers, who seem to be in this thread, thinking anything they built was that special. Your video player somehow managed to be worse than Reddit, the perennial joke of web dev. Not to mention “something went wrong” again and again, maybe by the 4th reload would a linked tweet actually show up for me. I’m on 25 gig symmetrical fiber with <10ms to my local AWS hub, FWIW

spoils19 4y ago
Video player works fine for me, and I'm on 20 gig symmetrical fiber with 8ms to my local Azure hub. Maybe check your firewall settings?
giantrobot 4y ago
> Not to mention “something went wrong” again and again, maybe by the 4th reload would a linked tweet actually show up for me. That seems like a purpose-built feature to punish non-Twitter users to induce them to sign up for Twitter and/or use the Twitter app instead of the web UI. It's not a bug but a misfeature.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  No, that happens on the Twitter app too.

closeparen 4y ago

What hubris to think you can wander into a system as complex as a $44bn tech company and draw any meaningful conclusions about it at all in a weekend. I mean, in my world we have some regular "tech reviews" with our Sr. Directors/VPs at a pretty abstract slides-and-diagrams level, and even that takes weeks of prep leading up like 4+ hour presentations. For something with only a glancing relationship to code level reality. I have occasionally seen my work reflected in these reviews, and the game of telephone that produces them is quite lossy. Any competent engineer can come to understand most any part of the system, but it's going to take minimum several weeks to understand at a level where you can seriously challenge the domain experts about what's really going on in a little 0.01% corner of the engineering shop.