5 ms·

Sure, yes, if e.g. the customers' health or safety was at risk. But I don't think the average bug in a web app would damage a company's reputation significantl

by pg 18y ago

Sure, yes, if e.g. the customers' health or safety was at risk. But I don't think the average bug in a web app would damage a company's reputation significantly. GMail occasionally shows me a message saying "Oops, an error occurred." It doesn't make me think any less of Google.

potatolicious 18y ago
Imagine if, say, an Amazon customer service rep actually yelled, screamed, and abused a customer calling about his order. A single individual - one who is not even in a high position. But you bet your buttons that it'll be all over the internet within ours. Sure, it probably wouldn't even cause a blip to the stock price, but it's a huge amount of harm for a single person to cause. I once worked for a company where anybody can push changes to prod without much feedback whatsoever. Certain more senior guys watched the commit logs for any obvious shenanigans or idiocy, but generally changes were within customers' hands within a day or two (and this was a desktop app!). They suffered some horrifying stability problem for a while that necessitated some new policies. It was certainly liberating to work in that environment, but I can see why many places have safeties in place.
nostrademons 18y ago
You aren't a typical non-early-adopter user. I've had people make loud, public complaints about such trivial matters as a new logo being too tall, or a text box being too wide, or an optional WYSIWYG editor feature ruining the "text-only flavor of the community". These on websites far smaller than GMail. Look at some of the major Web2.0 kerfuffles in recent years. Off the top of my head, I can think of: - The HD/DVD mutiny on Digg - Public suicides on both JoelOnSoftware and Justin.TV - Reddit storing passwords in cleartext and them getting stolen off a laptop - Ariel Waldman and the Twitter harassment fiasco - The Flickr censorship debate here: http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/40074/page3/ http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/40074/page3/ Yeah, you could argue that those services are all still around, so obviously they haven't been hurt too much. How much management time was wasted in dealing with them? How many non-users decided not to become users because of something they heard 3rd-hand about how it's a terrible company? (And I don't think the solution is to never innovate. I can understand why a middle manager at a big company would think so, though - a PR disaster is by definition public and disastrous. In the short run, it always makes more sense to not mess with success, it's just that this doesn't lead to success in the long run.)
- pg 18y ago
  None of these were the kind of bug that comes from releasing code with insufficient testing. The only one that even involved code was the Reddit password problem, and that was more a design mistake than a bug.
  - neilk 18y ago
    A culture of testing is a lot more than just verifying functionality. Code reviews with experienced engineers would have caught that design flaw before it was released. Or made it a high priority to fix. I've dealt with the security teams at large companies. They end up implementing sometimes draconian policies, but it seems that programmers refuse to learn to write secure code any other way. I have to admit that, if you consider the large company as being a legitimate entity, they're doing legitimate work.
  - shiro 18y ago
    Privacy breach could harm a company a lot. Japan Network Security Association reported that, in 2007, total of 30 million personal information records are breached and estimated 22 billion dollars for damage/compensation in Japan. Most of these incidents caused by employees taking out the data, but there are some cases caused by sloppy web app. (I could find only Japanese version of the report: http://www.jnsa.org/result/2007/pol/incident/index.html http://www.jnsa.org/result/2007/pol/incident/index.html )
  - lacker 18y ago
    The kind of bug big companies are concerned about is the kind that causes google.com to be down for 15 minutes. That's a significant amount of revenue. Or the sort of bug that causes a release of an infrastructure component to be rolled back, causing more work for every project touched by that release. It isn't the famous sort of bug, these don't get picked up by the news, it's the sort of bug that nobody really notices but costs the organization a lot of money or work.
lutorm 18y ago
If gmail deleted all your mail it might, though.
neilk 18y ago
Well, what if this bug happened to allow content which was not-safe-for-children onto the front page of the most heavily trafficked web page in the world, widely promoted to Middle America as being G-rated? I speak purely hypothetically of course.
mixmax 18y ago
If the error was a security vulnerability in Lotus notes that resulted in all of GM's confidential email being uploaded to thepiratebay I think IBM's reputation would take a pretty serious hit. And this is an error that one unchecked programmer would be perfectly able to make if there were no checks in place.
andr 18y ago
The average billion dollar company is not in the web app business.

by pg 18y ago

potatolicious 18y ago

Imagine if, say, an Amazon customer service rep actually yelled, screamed, and abused a customer calling about his order. A single individual - one who is not even in a high position. But you bet your buttons that it'll be all over the internet within ours. Sure, it probably wouldn't even cause a blip to the stock price, but it's a huge amount of harm for a single person to cause. I once worked for a company where anybody can push changes to prod without much feedback whatsoever. Certain more senior guys watched the commit logs for any obvious shenanigans or idiocy, but generally changes were within customers' hands within a day or two (and this was a desktop app!). They suffered some horrifying stability problem for a while that necessitated some new policies. It was certainly liberating to work in that environment, but I can see why many places have safeties in place.

nostrademons 18y ago

You aren't a typical non-early-adopter user. I've had people make loud, public complaints about such trivial matters as a new logo being too tall, or a text box being too wide, or an optional WYSIWYG editor feature ruining the "text-only flavor of the community". These on websites far smaller than GMail. Look at some of the major Web2.0 kerfuffles in recent years. Off the top of my head, I can think of: - The HD/DVD mutiny on Digg - Public suicides on both JoelOnSoftware and Justin.TV - Reddit storing passwords in cleartext and them getting stolen off a laptop - Ariel Waldman and the Twitter harassment fiasco - The Flickr censorship debate here: http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/40074/page3/ http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/40074/page3/ Yeah, you could argue that those services are all still around, so obviously they haven't been hurt too much. How much management time was wasted in dealing with them? How many non-users decided not to become users because of something they heard 3rd-hand about how it's a terrible company? (And I don't think the solution is to never innovate. I can understand why a middle manager at a big company would think so, though - a PR disaster is by definition public and disastrous. In the short run, it always makes more sense to not mess with success, it's just that this doesn't lead to success in the long run.)

pg 18y ago
None of these were the kind of bug that comes from releasing code with insufficient testing. The only one that even involved code was the Reddit password problem, and that was more a design mistake than a bug.
- neilk 18y ago
  A culture of testing is a lot more than just verifying functionality. Code reviews with experienced engineers would have caught that design flaw before it was released. Or made it a high priority to fix. I've dealt with the security teams at large companies. They end up implementing sometimes draconian policies, but it seems that programmers refuse to learn to write secure code any other way. I have to admit that, if you consider the large company as being a legitimate entity, they're doing legitimate work.
- shiro 18y ago
  Privacy breach could harm a company a lot. Japan Network Security Association reported that, in 2007, total of 30 million personal information records are breached and estimated 22 billion dollars for damage/compensation in Japan. Most of these incidents caused by employees taking out the data, but there are some cases caused by sloppy web app. (I could find only Japanese version of the report: http://www.jnsa.org/result/2007/pol/incident/index.html http://www.jnsa.org/result/2007/pol/incident/index.html )
- lacker 18y ago
  The kind of bug big companies are concerned about is the kind that causes google.com to be down for 15 minutes. That's a significant amount of revenue. Or the sort of bug that causes a release of an infrastructure component to be rolled back, causing more work for every project touched by that release. It isn't the famous sort of bug, these don't get picked up by the news, it's the sort of bug that nobody really notices but costs the organization a lot of money or work.

lutorm 18y ago

If gmail deleted all your mail it might, though.

neilk 18y ago

Well, what if this bug happened to allow content which was not-safe-for-children onto the front page of the most heavily trafficked web page in the world, widely promoted to Middle America as being G-rated? I speak purely hypothetically of course.

mixmax 18y ago

If the error was a security vulnerability in Lotus notes that resulted in all of GM's confidential email being uploaded to thepiratebay I think IBM's reputation would take a pretty serious hit. And this is an error that one unchecked programmer would be perfectly able to make if there were no checks in place.

andr 18y ago

The average billion dollar company is not in the web app business.