7 ms·

I think this is both obsolete and subtly wrong. Big corps want products with global impact. When a product is new, it's evaluated for its potential. When it's b

by bla3 4y ago

I think this is both obsolete and subtly wrong. Big corps want products with global impact. When a product is new, it's evaluated for its potential. When it's been around for a while, it's evaluated on how well its growth is matching the estimated impact. Eventually, growth has stopped. If the product lands at an active base of a billion users or so, it's a success and people definitely can make a career out of maintaining and improving it. And to make working on new stuff a bit less incentivized, promotions to higher levels need to see at least some realized growth and not just getting v0 out these days as far as I know.

wslh 4y ago
We can analyze another course of action from companies such as Microsoft. Not saying that is better or worse but showing an alternative in big corporations. Microsoft launched similar initiatives every time for decades even failing at prior tries. In the UI front they "play" with Silverlight, WFP, Windows Forms, MFC and a lot more. Try and retry. I also think that these issues are worse when you are dealing with hardware: do they open the codebase to continue playing with the devices? I am on the European side of not only repairing youself but opening "dead" code or somethink like that. It is just an idea.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Microsoft is suffering form the reality that Azure is the OS that matters, WinDev seems to be getting new devs without much background on how Windows used to be, and wiht constrained resources versus anything Azure. Also note that DevTools is no longer .NET only, rather any language that has tier 1 support on Azure.
lumost 4y ago
Problem with promoting on potential is that it’s rife for nepotism and poor judgement. People want to get promoted, managers want their people promoted. Inflating impact can quickly become the name of the game.
throwaw12 4y ago
> I think this is both obsolete and subtly wrong Maybe you are right, not sure. But this is my impression from working at Big tech. New thing is easy to measure, compare these: "launched X in region Y" vs "prevented possible incident X from happening" (your manager would ask, how do you know if that incident will happen? maybe you spent too much time for over optimizing the solution?)
mrbungie 4y ago
Focusing on individual product growth is just one strategy an organization may follow. And it's a strategy that if followed blindly will eventually make said organization be seen as unreliable to customers. I wouldn't pay Google for any services right now. I prefer products and services that last more than mere single digit years (looking at you Stadia).
phpisthebest 4y ago
google will never get a new service to a billion users right now They have the netflix problem (or does nexflix have the Google problem) they have killed off soo many projects that no one want to invest their time into new ones unless they reach the multi-year stage, and they can not reach the multi-year stage unless they get millions of users... It is a catch 22, and neither company seems to want to address or even acknowledge is a problem for them
- toyg 4y ago
  I don't think Netflix has a particular problem; maintaining series for more than a couple of seasons has always been hard in broadcasting. It's easier to spot now because people have complete visibility: instead of caring about a couple of series in key time slots, they can know care about all series, so it's more noticeable that most series die a sad death. Addressing off-ramps in a nicer way would be an innovation. The problem is that production costs are so high, that keeping a losing franchise running is extremely expensive. On the other hand, Google plays in a field where maintenance costs are a rounding error. You can basically freeze a product and keep it running forever for pennies, and these products get embedded in our daily lives, which is why killing it looks so bad - I can always pick up a new series with zero effort, whereas migrating off a productive service takes time and effort.
  - esprehn 4y ago
    Netflix is different from traditional broadcasting in that they always order an entire season. That makes the cancellations more dramatic because instead of a pilot or few episodes like in the past they instead keep performing a Firefly on their viewers over and over again.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    The joke I've heard is "six seasons and a movie" that goes back to broadcast TV series. Something about contracts running six years, so costs balloon after that, and a one-time movie is much easier to schedule a group of actors for. I've long wondered why Netflix doesn't do it more often. I'm sore about the cancellation of "Santa Clarita Diet" and I think it could easily be wrapped up in a movie.
AlbertCory 4y ago
This sounds like a B-school idea, not one based on observed reality. > promotions to higher levels need to see at least some realized growth and not just getting v0 out these days as far as I know I don't think that's very far.
- kajecounterhack 4y ago
  Yeah, when your cycles are 6 months long that’s about as long as you need to maintain anything, if that. Even 1 quarter might be enough. The effort to promote “Landings not launches” was not particularly successful :/
autokad 4y ago
all the incentives for promotion or getting a high rating is on creating a new product that has cross team impact. Even if your new product improves your team / current product, No - that doesnt have cross team impact, no promotion / high rating for you. There are exceptions, but those are outliers, not the norm. so as an individual, you have to do what's best for you - that means don't take your chances at improving an existing product, make something new and force other teams to use it.

by bla3 4y ago

wslh 4y ago

We can analyze another course of action from companies such as Microsoft. Not saying that is better or worse but showing an alternative in big corporations. Microsoft launched similar initiatives every time for decades even failing at prior tries. In the UI front they "play" with Silverlight, WFP, Windows Forms, MFC and a lot more. Try and retry. I also think that these issues are worse when you are dealing with hardware: do they open the codebase to continue playing with the devices? I am on the European side of not only repairing youself but opening "dead" code or somethink like that. It is just an idea.

pjmlp 4y ago
Microsoft is suffering form the reality that Azure is the OS that matters, WinDev seems to be getting new devs without much background on how Windows used to be, and wiht constrained resources versus anything Azure. Also note that DevTools is no longer .NET only, rather any language that has tier 1 support on Azure.

lumost 4y ago

Problem with promoting on potential is that it’s rife for nepotism and poor judgement. People want to get promoted, managers want their people promoted. Inflating impact can quickly become the name of the game.

throwaw12 4y ago

> I think this is both obsolete and subtly wrong Maybe you are right, not sure. But this is my impression from working at Big tech. New thing is easy to measure, compare these: "launched X in region Y" vs "prevented possible incident X from happening" (your manager would ask, how do you know if that incident will happen? maybe you spent too much time for over optimizing the solution?)

mrbungie 4y ago

Focusing on individual product growth is just one strategy an organization may follow. And it's a strategy that if followed blindly will eventually make said organization be seen as unreliable to customers. I wouldn't pay Google for any services right now. I prefer products and services that last more than mere single digit years (looking at you Stadia).

phpisthebest 4y ago

google will never get a new service to a billion users right now They have the netflix problem (or does nexflix have the Google problem) they have killed off soo many projects that no one want to invest their time into new ones unless they reach the multi-year stage, and they can not reach the multi-year stage unless they get millions of users... It is a catch 22, and neither company seems to want to address or even acknowledge is a problem for them

toyg 4y ago
I don't think Netflix has a particular problem; maintaining series for more than a couple of seasons has always been hard in broadcasting. It's easier to spot now because people have complete visibility: instead of caring about a couple of series in key time slots, they can know care about all series, so it's more noticeable that most series die a sad death. Addressing off-ramps in a nicer way would be an innovation. The problem is that production costs are so high, that keeping a losing franchise running is extremely expensive. On the other hand, Google plays in a field where maintenance costs are a rounding error. You can basically freeze a product and keep it running forever for pennies, and these products get embedded in our daily lives, which is why killing it looks so bad - I can always pick up a new series with zero effort, whereas migrating off a productive service takes time and effort.
- esprehn 4y ago
  Netflix is different from traditional broadcasting in that they always order an entire season. That makes the cancellations more dramatic because instead of a pilot or few episodes like in the past they instead keep performing a Firefly on their viewers over and over again.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  The joke I've heard is "six seasons and a movie" that goes back to broadcast TV series. Something about contracts running six years, so costs balloon after that, and a one-time movie is much easier to schedule a group of actors for. I've long wondered why Netflix doesn't do it more often. I'm sore about the cancellation of "Santa Clarita Diet" and I think it could easily be wrapped up in a movie.

AlbertCory 4y ago

This sounds like a B-school idea, not one based on observed reality. > promotions to higher levels need to see at least some realized growth and not just getting v0 out these days as far as I know I don't think that's very far.

kajecounterhack 4y ago
Yeah, when your cycles are 6 months long that’s about as long as you need to maintain anything, if that. Even 1 quarter might be enough. The effort to promote “Landings not launches” was not particularly successful :/

autokad 4y ago

all the incentives for promotion or getting a high rating is on creating a new product that has cross team impact. Even if your new product improves your team / current product, No - that doesnt have cross team impact, no promotion / high rating for you. There are exceptions, but those are outliers, not the norm. so as an individual, you have to do what's best for you - that means don't take your chances at improving an existing product, make something new and force other teams to use it.