4 ms·

I wonder if this is a scalability thing? Is your competition the same organization size as you? How big of an organization do you think can manage doing this wi

I wonder if this is a scalability thing? Is your competition the same organization size as you? How big of an organization do you think can manage doing this without breaking things too often for it not to pay off?

anonzzzies 4y ago
I deliver to enterprises and usually (in the last years exclusively) on departmental level, so these are bespoke prod per client. If something goes wrong, it is one client, but the feature or bug fix was specifically for that client and they know it can happen. It doesn’t happen a lot though, as we don’t use the fancy new stuff that needs trans/compiling; just make a file edit for a feature and it’s done. So the possible breakage is limited to a small/tiny part of the entire software.
- dataflow 4y ago
  Thanks for the details! To clarify, I was asking about how big your organization (company) is compared to your competition, not how big your clients or the prod environments are. i.e. if you're just 1 person working in prod, I imagine that's a lot easier than 100+ people trying to avoid breaking it?
  - anonzzzies 4y ago
    Oww apologies, we are with 5 fulltime people now. So indeed small. But we used to have almost 1000 25 years ago and it worked then as well, because we had one team per client and that would be 3-10 people.
    - dataflow 4y ago
      Ahh thanks! Yeah, I think might explain it... I imagine your competitors probably have bigger (or more) teams working for each client, and that's why they're slower and have separate environments.
      - anonzzzies 4y ago
        Well, the competitors by far and large are modern kool-aid drinkers and it's our huge advantage they are; they need kubernetes (so cloud) hosting, massive compile times, tons of crap (something called Clickhouse which saves terabytes of data every day that no-one needs or ever looks at; but it sounds cool to 'require' petabytes of free space for 'metrics'). We need a LAMP server or Docker instance. anyone can run our stuff in 2 seconds, no compiling, no nothing. Give us SSH and you'll be up and running, with your 1000s of colleagues ready to use the product. Modern dev is a sad affair but we thrive in it because it is what it is.
geocar 4y ago
I think the real issue is this: Can management trust business continuance with "only" prod? If you are a programmer who also understands the business requirements, you know the answer, but everyone else has to guess and can only guess: If they really know what the business needs they have to trust that the programmer they hired built a program that does that, but you know, most management doesn't even know that much...

anonzzzies 4y ago

I deliver to enterprises and usually (in the last years exclusively) on departmental level, so these are bespoke prod per client. If something goes wrong, it is one client, but the feature or bug fix was specifically for that client and they know it can happen. It doesn’t happen a lot though, as we don’t use the fancy new stuff that needs trans/compiling; just make a file edit for a feature and it’s done. So the possible breakage is limited to a small/tiny part of the entire software.

dataflow 4y ago
Thanks for the details! To clarify, I was asking about how big your organization (company) is compared to your competition, not how big your clients or the prod environments are. i.e. if you're just 1 person working in prod, I imagine that's a lot easier than 100+ people trying to avoid breaking it?
- anonzzzies 4y ago
  Oww apologies, we are with 5 fulltime people now. So indeed small. But we used to have almost 1000 25 years ago and it worked then as well, because we had one team per client and that would be 3-10 people.
  - dataflow 4y ago
    Ahh thanks! Yeah, I think might explain it... I imagine your competitors probably have bigger (or more) teams working for each client, and that's why they're slower and have separate environments.
    - anonzzzies 4y ago
      Well, the competitors by far and large are modern kool-aid drinkers and it's our huge advantage they are; they need kubernetes (so cloud) hosting, massive compile times, tons of crap (something called Clickhouse which saves terabytes of data every day that no-one needs or ever looks at; but it sounds cool to 'require' petabytes of free space for 'metrics'). We need a LAMP server or Docker instance. anyone can run our stuff in 2 seconds, no compiling, no nothing. Give us SSH and you'll be up and running, with your 1000s of colleagues ready to use the product. Modern dev is a sad affair but we thrive in it because it is what it is.

geocar 4y ago

I think the real issue is this: Can management trust business continuance with "only" prod? If you are a programmer who also understands the business requirements, you know the answer, but everyone else has to guess and can only guess: If they really know what the business needs they have to trust that the programmer they hired built a program that does that, but you know, most management doesn't even know that much...