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> Other tech people change the API for no reason and give work to 1000 more people to ,,upgrade to the newer system'' and stop maintaining the old system. This
by adamsb6 4y ago
> Other tech people change the API for no reason and give work to 1000 more people to ,,upgrade to the newer system'' and stop maintaining the old system.
This was a good 15% of what I used to do at Facebook. Adapting to the useless changes, that is, not making them.
It felt like if your changes weren't backwards incompatible then they were less visible, and therefore less impactful for your performance reviews. If you made them backwards incompatible you could boast about coordinating hundreds of engineers to transition to the new system. If the transition is seamless, all you have to brag about are improvements from the old system, and frequently there were none.