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Because, as mentioned, it’s a fantasy that someone can step in and understand the peculiarities of a new company(’s technology) without ramp up time. Edit: spe

Because, as mentioned, it’s a fantasy that someone can step in and understand the peculiarities of a new company(’s technology) without ramp up time. Edit: specified its specifically about the tech. The business side is a whole other thing.

scarface_74 3y ago
There are two things to ramp up on - the technology and the business. If they know the technology that’s one less thing to worry about.
- solarmist 3y ago
  And you can know 100% of the technologies they use; open the repo and still say, “what the hell were they thinking using X like Y!” “Why didn’t they use Y here” “Oh man, this looks like monkey patched code from 2 full versions ago, the right way to handle this now would be 1/3 the code, but oh they can’t update it because they’re mutating the data structure in order to Z… Fuck…” Edit: Eventually, you'll come to an understanding of why it's that way, but it takes time and often experimentation.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Everyone thinks what came before then was done stupidly. With maturity, you realize whatever they did worked well enough to get the company to a position where they were able to hire you. As Corey Quinn (a well known “cloud economist”) says, “legacy software is software that generates revenue”.
    - solarmist 3y ago
      That wasn't the point. You missed the context or something. Those were just examples of initial thoughts that come up when starting to understand a new codebase. My point was exactly the opposite and parallel to what you said. But even with experience it takes time to decode those decisions. The point is that it takes time to understand the whys of code that is counterintuitive at first. Even if you are a 100% match for the technology.
eulers_secret 3y ago
It depends on domain, and we have mostly webdevs in this thread. When I joined a kernel gfx driver team, the expected ramp time was ~6 months. My friend working on Mesa had a >1 year ramp time! If I open the source for a Django or React app, I can get to fixing bugs in a few days or less. It just depends.
- solarmist 3y ago
  Sure, it's most dependent on the age of the company/software. The older, or lower level the code, the more hacks and workaround that appear in a codebase.

scarface_74 3y ago

There are two things to ramp up on - the technology and the business. If they know the technology that’s one less thing to worry about.

solarmist 3y ago
And you can know 100% of the technologies they use; open the repo and still say, “what the hell were they thinking using X like Y!” “Why didn’t they use Y here” “Oh man, this looks like monkey patched code from 2 full versions ago, the right way to handle this now would be 1/3 the code, but oh they can’t update it because they’re mutating the data structure in order to Z… Fuck…” Edit: Eventually, you'll come to an understanding of why it's that way, but it takes time and often experimentation.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Everyone thinks what came before then was done stupidly. With maturity, you realize whatever they did worked well enough to get the company to a position where they were able to hire you. As Corey Quinn (a well known “cloud economist”) says, “legacy software is software that generates revenue”.
  - solarmist 3y ago
    That wasn't the point. You missed the context or something. Those were just examples of initial thoughts that come up when starting to understand a new codebase. My point was exactly the opposite and parallel to what you said. But even with experience it takes time to decode those decisions. The point is that it takes time to understand the whys of code that is counterintuitive at first. Even if you are a 100% match for the technology.

eulers_secret 3y ago

It depends on domain, and we have mostly webdevs in this thread. When I joined a kernel gfx driver team, the expected ramp time was ~6 months. My friend working on Mesa had a >1 year ramp time! If I open the source for a Django or React app, I can get to fixing bugs in a few days or less. It just depends.

solarmist 3y ago
Sure, it's most dependent on the age of the company/software. The older, or lower level the code, the more hacks and workaround that appear in a codebase.