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> And, for the any employees still at Twitter, don’t underestimate the power of a pocket veto. This is something I've been repeating to some of my younger coll

> And, for the any employees still at Twitter, don’t underestimate the power of a pocket veto. This is something I've been repeating to some of my younger colleagues. Engineers aren't really fungible resources, to the extent that these projects require. Ask any manager how easy it is to swap "allocated resources", and they'll probably sigh heavily. People are afraid that if they don't follow their manager's every request, they will be fired. But remember that hiring is hard, and managers are loath to fire someone they've already spent so much effort finding, hiring, and onboarding. Finding someone else to do it can take weeks, months, or longer! Which in many cases risks killing the project altogether. Even if you're at the bottom of the chain, as the person who does the actual implementation, you have a lot of power on what gets prioritized. See also the oft-circulated OSS "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" http://svn.cacert.org/CAcert/CAcert_Inc/Board/oss/oss_sabotage.html http://svn.cacert.org/CAcert/CAcert_Inc/Board/oss/oss_sabota...

piva00 4y ago
I have successfully implemented pocket vetoing at the most immoral company I worked for, it was a brief stint (caused by the moral issues) where I could play around not delivering all the features management wanted to gouge their customers by playing with other priorities. You don't need to do it, you don't even have to explicitly say no, you can just always find (or create) work that's more important to do than breaking your own morals. The worse that can happen is someone else gets the hot potato.
antognini 4y ago
Reminds me a little of the story [1] about how in 2005 the execs at Google had a meeting to figure out what to call "Satellite View" in Google Maps. One faction did not like the name "Satellite View" because it was technically incorrect as many of the images had been taken from airplanes, not satellites. But the proposed alternatives like "Aerial photography" all sounded awkward. Right before the meeting ended Sergey Brin decided it would be called "Bird Mode." Later on when the engineering team was actually implementing it they thought Bird Mode sounded dumb and just called it Satellite View. And so it has been ever since. [1]: https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1099370126678253569 https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1099370126678253569
- tokai 4y ago
  What are planes but slow satellites on a suborbital trajectory?
  - ddalex 4y ago
    Plane needs to burn energy to stay up there, the sattelite just ... sits in a curvature of space time...
    - lovich 4y ago
      Going down the captain pedant conversation path here, but technically all satellites also need to burn energy to stay in orbit or will eventually fall. The only ones who don’t have achieved escape velocity
      - adastra22 4y ago
        No, they don’t. In the absence of drag, which only the lowest satellites have, they just stay up there forever. The fuel is needed for orbit changes and correcting drift due to gravitational instabilities.
        drdeca 4y ago
        Are any of them truly free of drag? Like, are there 0 molecules of atmosphere at some height, or just entirely negligible amounts of atmosphere for all practical purposes?
        denkmoon 4y ago
        None. In theory there are parts of space that are a true vacuum but not everywhere, and definitely not near planetary bodies. There's a reason our satellites need station-keeping fuel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-keeping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-keeping
        4y ago
notyourday 4y ago
> Engineers aren't really fungible resources, to the extent that these projects require. Ask any manager how easy it is to swap "allocated resources", and they'll probably sigh heavily. I'm hearing Meta, Stripe, Google, Netflix, Lyft and Uber are hiring like crazy for amazing salaries. Not only that but one basically just needs to sort of show up half the time and surf the net 99% of the time there. That was obviously sarcasm.
- CodeAndCuffs 4y ago
  Browsing some online code communities would lead someone to believe that faang and silicon valley companies are the only employers in our industry, and if your employed anywhere else you are probably on the verge of homelessness That is obviously not the case
ryandrake 4y ago
It depends on how junior the engineer is. My first job out of college, I was asked to write some code to cheat a benchmark, basically detect when a particular benchmark program was running and only then put the software into an alternate "fast path" that would result in better benchmark results. I agonized over this and didn't want to refuse. This was my first real job as a professional developer, and I didn't want to make waves. Eventually I got the nerve to tell my boss I was uncomfortable with the assignment, and he said "Oh, no problem at all! We keep our devs happy here." and assigned me onto another task. Joe, three cubicles down was more than happy to write the benchmark-cheating code.
- rtev 4y ago
  You did the right thing. If more people spoke up and stood up, the world would be a much happier place.
  - sebastiansm 4y ago
    Some people don’t need to stand up because they don’t see any bad or evil in his work.
- koyote 4y ago
  Just out of curiosity, why did the software not always use the 'fast path'?
  - Infinity315 4y ago
    Probably more than likely it's not generalizable to real world conditions. Benchmarks are meant to be reproducible, meaning perfectly predictable. CPUs have things called branch predictors which try to predict what the software is going to do and try to do the calculation ahead of time resulting in (hopefully, if it predicted right) faster execution time. If you know which 'branches' a benchmark goes down, you can make a program which can coax the branch predictor to always make the right guesses for a given benchmark. A program branches whenever you encounter some sort of conditional if-else statement.
  - 4y ago
zimpenfish 4y ago
> managers are loath to fire someone they've already spent so much effort finding, hiring, and onboarding Caveat: this applies to perms. It doesn't apply nearly as much to contractors (as my many experiences with saying "No, but..." to managers and being canned can attest.)
- killingtime74 4y ago
  They usually get 2-3x our salary though in Australia, with the downside you mentioned
yodsanklai 4y ago
> But remember that hiring is hard, and managers are loath to fire someone they've already spent so much effort finding, hiring, and onboarding. Finding someone else to do it can take weeks, months, or longer! Which in many cases risks killing the project altogether. Anecdata. One of my colleague got fired for not meeting expectations at his level for two consecutive halves. From what I've seen, he was competent and provided value to the project. Some companies have high turnover and are functioning with the idea that everyone is replaceable.
Waterluvian 4y ago
“Pocket veto” is a term I need to remember. One of my proudest moments was about seven years ago. I was two years into my career as a junior software engineer with no academic background in programming. I was by any measure an impostor and I worked very hard to learn and impress and earn the luck I was given with that job. A PM, one who I liked and wanted to impress all the time, came to me asking for help to get git commit history for each person on our wider team “to measure how productive everyone is being.” Despite being anxious about “what-ifs” like being blacklisted or some other concepts I knew nothing of, I gently explained why it would be a bad metric. I remember even saying, “some of the best engineering someone can do is to write negative lines of code.” I felt so wise despite being so green. He pressed the matter and I calmly said that I said my part and I’ll play no role in this. I asked around weeks later and apparently he approached nobody else and the issue was dropped. Maybe this is a mundane anecdote or I’m not telling it properly but I’m still so proud that I was even capable of seeing the ethical dilemma, let alone acting correctly on it. Those years were full of “I have no clue what normal looks like in this industry.” I feel somewhat confident in saying that experience emboldened me to do the right thing even if it was scary. Sometimes I worry that I fly too close to the sun with my attitude of “you won’t fire me.” But so far it’s worked.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  >some of the best engineering someone can do is to write negative lines of code Why didn't you teach him to find people who were writing negative lines of code?
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
    it's also a bad metric? cleanup is nice but # of lines is still not a good measure of good code or even good.. anything. i went a month or more without writing any code because i was just writing docs
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      You could use lines of docs too. These aren't bad metrics.

piva00 4y ago

I have successfully implemented pocket vetoing at the most immoral company I worked for, it was a brief stint (caused by the moral issues) where I could play around not delivering all the features management wanted to gouge their customers by playing with other priorities. You don't need to do it, you don't even have to explicitly say no, you can just always find (or create) work that's more important to do than breaking your own morals. The worse that can happen is someone else gets the hot potato.

antognini 4y ago

Reminds me a little of the story [1] about how in 2005 the execs at Google had a meeting to figure out what to call "Satellite View" in Google Maps. One faction did not like the name "Satellite View" because it was technically incorrect as many of the images had been taken from airplanes, not satellites. But the proposed alternatives like "Aerial photography" all sounded awkward. Right before the meeting ended Sergey Brin decided it would be called "Bird Mode." Later on when the engineering team was actually implementing it they thought Bird Mode sounded dumb and just called it Satellite View. And so it has been ever since. [1]: https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1099370126678253569 https://twitter.com/btaylor/status/1099370126678253569

tokai 4y ago
What are planes but slow satellites on a suborbital trajectory?
- ddalex 4y ago
  Plane needs to burn energy to stay up there, the sattelite just ... sits in a curvature of space time...
  - lovich 4y ago
    Going down the captain pedant conversation path here, but technically all satellites also need to burn energy to stay in orbit or will eventually fall. The only ones who don’t have achieved escape velocity
    - adastra22 4y ago
      No, they don’t. In the absence of drag, which only the lowest satellites have, they just stay up there forever. The fuel is needed for orbit changes and correcting drift due to gravitational instabilities.
      - drdeca 4y ago
        Are any of them truly free of drag? Like, are there 0 molecules of atmosphere at some height, or just entirely negligible amounts of atmosphere for all practical purposes?
        denkmoon 4y ago
        None. In theory there are parts of space that are a true vacuum but not everywhere, and definitely not near planetary bodies. There's a reason our satellites need station-keeping fuel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-keeping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_station-keeping
        4y ago

notyourday 4y ago

> Engineers aren't really fungible resources, to the extent that these projects require. Ask any manager how easy it is to swap "allocated resources", and they'll probably sigh heavily. I'm hearing Meta, Stripe, Google, Netflix, Lyft and Uber are hiring like crazy for amazing salaries. Not only that but one basically just needs to sort of show up half the time and surf the net 99% of the time there. That was obviously sarcasm.

CodeAndCuffs 4y ago
Browsing some online code communities would lead someone to believe that faang and silicon valley companies are the only employers in our industry, and if your employed anywhere else you are probably on the verge of homelessness That is obviously not the case

ryandrake 4y ago

It depends on how junior the engineer is. My first job out of college, I was asked to write some code to cheat a benchmark, basically detect when a particular benchmark program was running and only then put the software into an alternate "fast path" that would result in better benchmark results. I agonized over this and didn't want to refuse. This was my first real job as a professional developer, and I didn't want to make waves. Eventually I got the nerve to tell my boss I was uncomfortable with the assignment, and he said "Oh, no problem at all! We keep our devs happy here." and assigned me onto another task. Joe, three cubicles down was more than happy to write the benchmark-cheating code.

rtev 4y ago
You did the right thing. If more people spoke up and stood up, the world would be a much happier place.
- sebastiansm 4y ago
  Some people don’t need to stand up because they don’t see any bad or evil in his work.
koyote 4y ago
Just out of curiosity, why did the software not always use the 'fast path'?
- Infinity315 4y ago
  Probably more than likely it's not generalizable to real world conditions. Benchmarks are meant to be reproducible, meaning perfectly predictable. CPUs have things called branch predictors which try to predict what the software is going to do and try to do the calculation ahead of time resulting in (hopefully, if it predicted right) faster execution time. If you know which 'branches' a benchmark goes down, you can make a program which can coax the branch predictor to always make the right guesses for a given benchmark. A program branches whenever you encounter some sort of conditional if-else statement.
- 4y ago

zimpenfish 4y ago

> managers are loath to fire someone they've already spent so much effort finding, hiring, and onboarding Caveat: this applies to perms. It doesn't apply nearly as much to contractors (as my many experiences with saying "No, but..." to managers and being canned can attest.)

killingtime74 4y ago
They usually get 2-3x our salary though in Australia, with the downside you mentioned

yodsanklai 4y ago

> But remember that hiring is hard, and managers are loath to fire someone they've already spent so much effort finding, hiring, and onboarding. Finding someone else to do it can take weeks, months, or longer! Which in many cases risks killing the project altogether. Anecdata. One of my colleague got fired for not meeting expectations at his level for two consecutive halves. From what I've seen, he was competent and provided value to the project. Some companies have high turnover and are functioning with the idea that everyone is replaceable.

Waterluvian 4y ago

“Pocket veto” is a term I need to remember. One of my proudest moments was about seven years ago. I was two years into my career as a junior software engineer with no academic background in programming. I was by any measure an impostor and I worked very hard to learn and impress and earn the luck I was given with that job. A PM, one who I liked and wanted to impress all the time, came to me asking for help to get git commit history for each person on our wider team “to measure how productive everyone is being.” Despite being anxious about “what-ifs” like being blacklisted or some other concepts I knew nothing of, I gently explained why it would be a bad metric. I remember even saying, “some of the best engineering someone can do is to write negative lines of code.” I felt so wise despite being so green. He pressed the matter and I calmly said that I said my part and I’ll play no role in this. I asked around weeks later and apparently he approached nobody else and the issue was dropped. Maybe this is a mundane anecdote or I’m not telling it properly but I’m still so proud that I was even capable of seeing the ethical dilemma, let alone acting correctly on it. Those years were full of “I have no clue what normal looks like in this industry.” I feel somewhat confident in saying that experience emboldened me to do the right thing even if it was scary. Sometimes I worry that I fly too close to the sun with my attitude of “you won’t fire me.” But so far it’s worked.

charcircuit 4y ago
>some of the best engineering someone can do is to write negative lines of code Why didn't you teach him to find people who were writing negative lines of code?
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
  it's also a bad metric? cleanup is nice but # of lines is still not a good measure of good code or even good.. anything. i went a month or more without writing any code because i was just writing docs
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    You could use lines of docs too. These aren't bad metrics.