6 ms·

Hey all, I lead the team that runs this site. We moved our site to a different infrastructure that doesn't support the automatic generation of RSS feeds. I'm

by kinlan 3y ago

Hey all, I lead the team that runs this site. We moved our site to a different infrastructure that doesn't support the automatic generation of RSS feeds. I'm painfully aware that this isn't the best solution right now. I needed our team to hit a deadline for migrating all the content to the new system, and then manage cleanup of known missing functionality after. We are working on making sure this lands asap. Paul

hliyan 3y ago
Nice touch in the HN bio! > RSS is alive https://paul.kinlan.me/index.xml https://paul.kinlan.me/index.xml
- kinlan 3y ago
  Heh. Very apropos (it's been in there for a while).
lapcat 3y ago
> We moved our site to a different infrastructure that doesn't support the automatic generation of RSS feeds. I had been wondering why https://developer.chrome.com/feeds https://developer.chrome.com/feeds suddenly died. > I needed our team to hit a deadline Why?
- kinlan 3y ago
  There's lots of reasons some of which I can't go into details about, but there are some that I can: There is a freeze to the new infrastructure's product features until after the new year and we needed to get this in before then (we can land feed support without a product feature change) The people I have working on the older infrastructure will be on new projects for our team in the new year.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    Were the deadlines, feature freezes, and project reshuffling imposed on you from above, or were they your decisions? In a blog post two months ago you said, "I've taken the decision..." https://web.dev/blog/webdev-migration https://web.dev/blog/webdev-migration There was clearly someone in Google management who decided that RSS could be broken. Why is this important? Well, for example, it seems that the RSS feed was already broken when this important announcement was posted: "Resuming the transition to Manifest V3" https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3 https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to...
    - listmaking 3y ago
      Not the GP but I think that blog post https://web.dev/blog/webdev-migration https://web.dev/blog/webdev-migration you linked explains it pretty clearly? • The people working on web.dev decided to migrate to a common Google site platform, so that they could focus on content rather than maintaining an ad-hoc infrastructure, • That platform happens not to support RSS (yet), so they've done the best they can in the meantime, filing a bug with the platform, creating the https://developer.chrome.com/feeds https://developer.chrome.com/feeds info page acknowledging the issue, and even creating unofficial feeds. You could phrase this as “someone in Google management who decided that RSS could be broken”, but relative to the big decision of whether to spend effort maintaining your own custom infrastructure or just focus on the content, the presence or absence of RSS support is probably just not a big factor. [One could imagine a culture of "never migrate to a new system unless it fully supports every single functionality of the old system", but that (just like "never launch a product/feature unless you're confident you're going to support it forever") is simply not in Google's culture, where there are always ongoing migrations between "the old system that is deprecated and the new system that is not ready yet" — but that is "just" a cultural problem rather than anyone consciously deciding that RSS could be broken.]
      - lapcat 3y ago
        > relative to the big decision of whether to spend effort maintaining your own custom infrastructure or just focus on the content, the presence or absence of RSS support is probably just not a big factor. This is a false dichotomy. I wasn't questioning the decision to migrate platforms, I was questioning "the deadlines, feature freezes, and project reshuffling". > there are always ongoing migrations between "the old system that is deprecated and the new system that is not ready yet" — but that is "just" a cultural problem rather than anyone consciously deciding that RSS could be broken. I disagree, because whenever you migrate, some features are considered essential and others inessential. Someone consciously decided that RSS was among the inessential features in this specific case. The "culture" did not make that specific decision. This is the developer relations team. How can you have relations with developers when they don't even see your announcements? The essential part is the communication with outside developers, not the internal CMS. > they've done the best they can in the meantime, filing a bug with the platform, creating the https://developer.chrome.com/feeds https://developer.chrome.com/feeds info page acknowledging the issue, and even creating unofficial feeds. How were developers supposed to know any of this? I had no idea until now.
  - dagurp 3y ago
    There was a bug in the old RSS implementation (the last-updated date was always Jan 1st 1980) so it would be great if you fixed that when you re-add it
    - gred 3y ago
      My first quick scan of your comment gave me the impression that you were sarcastically asking for the date bug to be replicated in the new system for "backwards compatibility" purposes. Glad to see, upon reviewing, that I was wrong :-)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pc86 3y ago
  Probably related to whatever reason the site was moved in the first place, but regardless an internal Google deadline is unlikely to be met with anything other than "so what, fix RSS first" in this thread. The majority of corporate deadlines are fictional in the sense that there is not a regulatory or legislative component to them, so it's easy to hand-wave them away and say that $THING should be a higher priority than the deadline. But that doesn't make them any less real for the people who have that deadline imposed by their boss (or more realistically, their boss's boss's boss's boss).
  - Ajedi32 3y ago
    "so what, fix RSS first" seems like a valid criticism even if it really is true that this isn't something this particular person has any control over. If your organizational structure is forcing you to do something dumb, then there's a problem with your organizational structure.
    - pc86 3y ago
      Maybe - I don't think letting engineers decide all prioritization is by definition any better than having it all decided by SVPs trying to get their EVP promo or next stock bonus - but "fix Google's organizational structure" is about as helpful/useful a comment as "so what, fix RSS first."
    - Sebb767 3y ago
      Which might be true, but even harder to fix than the feature in question.
- djbusby 3y ago
  Gotta hit those marks you've made up so you can get a bonus.
walls 3y ago
[flagged]
- kinlan 3y ago
  We don't do Christmas bonuses...
  - walls 3y ago
    Sorry, how about: 'Needed this to be done for my year end review' instead?
    - freedomben 3y ago
      The extreme cynicism really surprises me. The dude is here participating directly in the convo and giving super straight-forward answers! If that doesn't already seem like a good enough reason to be reasonable, then perhaps remember that you're talking to/about an actual human, not just a randomly generated text string
      - walls 3y ago
        It's a person likely making $500k+/year for a two trillion dollar company. They absolutely could have waited, but this individual personally prioritized their year end goals over a feature that many things/people depend on. Their participation in the thread complaining about it doesn't make it any less egregious.
happytoexplain 3y ago
For what it's worth, when the answers are "we are working on a solution" and "we are working on making sure this lands", to me, that is classical business speak for "we are not going to add it, but will present an alternative (that probably doesn't meet your needs the way it did)." I'm leaning toward giving the benefit of the doubt in this case, but why be oblique like this? Why not say "We are working on adding RSS" or "we are aiming to restore RSS support"?
- Sebb767 3y ago
  All of these statements seem quite similar to me. Especially "we are aiming to restore RSS support" is even less committal. To me, Pauls post reads like a pretty direct promise to restore that functionality and not like business speak.
- kinlan 3y ago
  Sorry - it was business speak, it's certainly words that we use internally, the intent was to say we are working on adding RSS back to the site.
iamgopal 3y ago
Can you elaborate on why it’s difficult to add ? I mean it is not looking like technological problem,
davzie 3y ago
All the responses here just highlight how unreasonable technologists can be. Business and work is about trade-offs and so many on hacker news seem to be absolutists. Congrats on hitting your deadline and putting yourself out there; these are the sorts of decisions that I wish more hackers would have to actually make to realise the reality of the world.
rabbits_2002 3y ago
Any somewhat competent programmer can create a working RSS feed in an hour. What the hell is happening at Google?

by kinlan 3y ago

hliyan 3y ago

Nice touch in the HN bio! > RSS is alive https://paul.kinlan.me/index.xml https://paul.kinlan.me/index.xml

kinlan 3y ago
Heh. Very apropos (it's been in there for a while).

lapcat 3y ago

> We moved our site to a different infrastructure that doesn't support the automatic generation of RSS feeds. I had been wondering why https://developer.chrome.com/feeds https://developer.chrome.com/feeds suddenly died. > I needed our team to hit a deadline Why?

kinlan 3y ago
There's lots of reasons some of which I can't go into details about, but there are some that I can: There is a freeze to the new infrastructure's product features until after the new year and we needed to get this in before then (we can land feed support without a product feature change) The people I have working on the older infrastructure will be on new projects for our team in the new year.
- lapcat 3y ago
  Were the deadlines, feature freezes, and project reshuffling imposed on you from above, or were they your decisions? In a blog post two months ago you said, "I've taken the decision..." https://web.dev/blog/webdev-migration https://web.dev/blog/webdev-migration There was clearly someone in Google management who decided that RSS could be broken. Why is this important? Well, for example, it seems that the RSS feed was already broken when this important announcement was posted: "Resuming the transition to Manifest V3" https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3 https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to...
  - listmaking 3y ago
    Not the GP but I think that blog post https://web.dev/blog/webdev-migration https://web.dev/blog/webdev-migration you linked explains it pretty clearly? • The people working on web.dev decided to migrate to a common Google site platform, so that they could focus on content rather than maintaining an ad-hoc infrastructure, • That platform happens not to support RSS (yet), so they've done the best they can in the meantime, filing a bug with the platform, creating the https://developer.chrome.com/feeds https://developer.chrome.com/feeds info page acknowledging the issue, and even creating unofficial feeds. You could phrase this as “someone in Google management who decided that RSS could be broken”, but relative to the big decision of whether to spend effort maintaining your own custom infrastructure or just focus on the content, the presence or absence of RSS support is probably just not a big factor. [One could imagine a culture of "never migrate to a new system unless it fully supports every single functionality of the old system", but that (just like "never launch a product/feature unless you're confident you're going to support it forever") is simply not in Google's culture, where there are always ongoing migrations between "the old system that is deprecated and the new system that is not ready yet" — but that is "just" a cultural problem rather than anyone consciously deciding that RSS could be broken.]
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > relative to the big decision of whether to spend effort maintaining your own custom infrastructure or just focus on the content, the presence or absence of RSS support is probably just not a big factor. This is a false dichotomy. I wasn't questioning the decision to migrate platforms, I was questioning "the deadlines, feature freezes, and project reshuffling". > there are always ongoing migrations between "the old system that is deprecated and the new system that is not ready yet" — but that is "just" a cultural problem rather than anyone consciously deciding that RSS could be broken. I disagree, because whenever you migrate, some features are considered essential and others inessential. Someone consciously decided that RSS was among the inessential features in this specific case. The "culture" did not make that specific decision. This is the developer relations team. How can you have relations with developers when they don't even see your announcements? The essential part is the communication with outside developers, not the internal CMS. > they've done the best they can in the meantime, filing a bug with the platform, creating the https://developer.chrome.com/feeds https://developer.chrome.com/feeds info page acknowledging the issue, and even creating unofficial feeds. How were developers supposed to know any of this? I had no idea until now.
- dagurp 3y ago
  There was a bug in the old RSS implementation (the last-updated date was always Jan 1st 1980) so it would be great if you fixed that when you re-add it
  - gred 3y ago
    My first quick scan of your comment gave me the impression that you were sarcastically asking for the date bug to be replicated in the new system for "backwards compatibility" purposes. Glad to see, upon reviewing, that I was wrong :-)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pc86 3y ago
Probably related to whatever reason the site was moved in the first place, but regardless an internal Google deadline is unlikely to be met with anything other than "so what, fix RSS first" in this thread. The majority of corporate deadlines are fictional in the sense that there is not a regulatory or legislative component to them, so it's easy to hand-wave them away and say that $THING should be a higher priority than the deadline. But that doesn't make them any less real for the people who have that deadline imposed by their boss (or more realistically, their boss's boss's boss's boss).
- Ajedi32 3y ago
  "so what, fix RSS first" seems like a valid criticism even if it really is true that this isn't something this particular person has any control over. If your organizational structure is forcing you to do something dumb, then there's a problem with your organizational structure.
  - pc86 3y ago
    Maybe - I don't think letting engineers decide all prioritization is by definition any better than having it all decided by SVPs trying to get their EVP promo or next stock bonus - but "fix Google's organizational structure" is about as helpful/useful a comment as "so what, fix RSS first."
  - Sebb767 3y ago
    Which might be true, but even harder to fix than the feature in question.
djbusby 3y ago
Gotta hit those marks you've made up so you can get a bonus.

walls 3y ago

[flagged]

kinlan 3y ago
We don't do Christmas bonuses...
- walls 3y ago
  Sorry, how about: 'Needed this to be done for my year end review' instead?
  - freedomben 3y ago
    The extreme cynicism really surprises me. The dude is here participating directly in the convo and giving super straight-forward answers! If that doesn't already seem like a good enough reason to be reasonable, then perhaps remember that you're talking to/about an actual human, not just a randomly generated text string
    - walls 3y ago
      It's a person likely making $500k+/year for a two trillion dollar company. They absolutely could have waited, but this individual personally prioritized their year end goals over a feature that many things/people depend on. Their participation in the thread complaining about it doesn't make it any less egregious.

happytoexplain 3y ago

For what it's worth, when the answers are "we are working on a solution" and "we are working on making sure this lands", to me, that is classical business speak for "we are not going to add it, but will present an alternative (that probably doesn't meet your needs the way it did)." I'm leaning toward giving the benefit of the doubt in this case, but why be oblique like this? Why not say "We are working on adding RSS" or "we are aiming to restore RSS support"?

Sebb767 3y ago
All of these statements seem quite similar to me. Especially "we are aiming to restore RSS support" is even less committal. To me, Pauls post reads like a pretty direct promise to restore that functionality and not like business speak.
kinlan 3y ago
Sorry - it was business speak, it's certainly words that we use internally, the intent was to say we are working on adding RSS back to the site.

iamgopal 3y ago

Can you elaborate on why it’s difficult to add ? I mean it is not looking like technological problem,

davzie 3y ago

All the responses here just highlight how unreasonable technologists can be. Business and work is about trade-offs and so many on hacker news seem to be absolutists. Congrats on hitting your deadline and putting yourself out there; these are the sorts of decisions that I wish more hackers would have to actually make to realise the reality of the world.

rabbits_2002 3y ago

Any somewhat competent programmer can create a working RSS feed in an hour. What the hell is happening at Google?