4 ms·

For $400k a year I’d be okay with it yeah

jiggawatts 4y ago
I'd do it for $300K! Anyone from Google want to check my post history and reach out to someone able and willing to do boring maintenance?
- fancl20 4y ago
  Part of the problem is when you are in that position it’s also easy to move to other interesting projects internally. Then the real choice is between doing boring maintenance or useful new things at same pay.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    Not everyone wants to chase the new shiny. There are many folks out there who enjoy the challenge of working in a legacy database. Blue sky folks see a rats nest of wires, maintenance engineers see cable porn in potentia.
  - layer8 4y ago
    Maintenance doesn’t need to be boring, and I also don’t see how you wouldn’t add interesting new features and improvements to existing products. The basic issue, it seems, is that the higher-ups simply don’t care about the products themselves, other than for them to serve as a profit center.
    - fancl20 4y ago
      Those projects have real difficulties to retain enough developers even to keep lights on. And even higher-ups want, they can’t force allocate developers (in Google’s current power structure) other than providing some incentives including promotion. The end result is a doom loop that if the team can’t retain enough staffing, developers will be overwhelmed by the boring maintenance work, which leads to more team transfers. They do use contractors to mitigate the issue but IMO it doesn’t work in every case.
ryanbrunner 4y ago
From what I've heard even their performance reviews heavily focus on bringing new products to market or working on exciting projects, so even if Google needs it there's a chance you're at the top of the list for layoffs anyway.
- bombcar 4y ago
  They need to create a subsidiary of Alphabet called Google Maintenance or something and explicitly it only does boring maintenance and promotes on a mechanized schedule.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    The traditional way of doing that was through outsourcing to a low-cost country where they paid pennies on the dollar relative to US wages.

I'd do it for $300K! Anyone from Google want to check my post history and reach out to someone able and willing to do boring maintenance?

fancl20 4y ago
Part of the problem is when you are in that position it’s also easy to move to other interesting projects internally. Then the real choice is between doing boring maintenance or useful new things at same pay.
- falcolas 4y ago
  Not everyone wants to chase the new shiny. There are many folks out there who enjoy the challenge of working in a legacy database. Blue sky folks see a rats nest of wires, maintenance engineers see cable porn in potentia.
- layer8 4y ago
  Maintenance doesn’t need to be boring, and I also don’t see how you wouldn’t add interesting new features and improvements to existing products. The basic issue, it seems, is that the higher-ups simply don’t care about the products themselves, other than for them to serve as a profit center.
  - fancl20 4y ago
    Those projects have real difficulties to retain enough developers even to keep lights on. And even higher-ups want, they can’t force allocate developers (in Google’s current power structure) other than providing some incentives including promotion. The end result is a doom loop that if the team can’t retain enough staffing, developers will be overwhelmed by the boring maintenance work, which leads to more team transfers. They do use contractors to mitigate the issue but IMO it doesn’t work in every case.

ryanbrunner 4y ago

From what I've heard even their performance reviews heavily focus on bringing new products to market or working on exciting projects, so even if Google needs it there's a chance you're at the top of the list for layoffs anyway.

bombcar 4y ago
They need to create a subsidiary of Alphabet called Google Maintenance or something and explicitly it only does boring maintenance and promotes on a mechanized schedule.
- ghaff 4y ago
  The traditional way of doing that was through outsourcing to a low-cost country where they paid pennies on the dollar relative to US wages.