3 ms·

Its like buying both Blockbuster and Radio Shack stock while their stock was in freefall then selling right before they declare bankruptcy and being proud at ho

Its like buying both Blockbuster and Radio Shack stock while their stock was in freefall then selling right before they declare bankruptcy and being proud at how good of an investor you are for not losing more money?

brightball 3y ago
I feel like you’re reaching really hard to make this work. Companies, teams and people do research and test projects all the time to determine direction. Making a decision like moving the entire LinkedIn data center is just a larger version of that.
- hasty_pudding 3y ago
  a management decision lost tens of millions of dollars. you're saying they're good managers because they didn't lose billions. going by your "logic" its literally impossible for management to make a mistake because there's always some slippery slope they didn't slide down. """we put the company out of business but at least we didnt cause the collapse of matter into a black hole! we deserve some bonuses!!""" this is how people who work at monopoly tier companies actually think lol
  - brightball 3y ago
    That's actually not what I said at all. What I said was... > Any amount of employee time spent exploring options that aren’t pursued could be framed that way. Employee time costs money. If 20 people are in a meeting for 1 hour, that 1 hour meeting costs the equivalent of 1 hour of each of attendee's salary. 20 people attend a meeting making $100 / hour, you just spent $2,000 for that meeting. All time spent planning, also costs money. Every Agile "spike" to do research for a story costs money. Every architecture document. Every time you have somebody do a couple of prototype projects to test your options before you make a decision. Sometimes you can't easily find out what's involved until you really dive into the work. It's the nature of the beast. For LinkedIn, purchased by Microsoft who also owns Azure I'm quite certain that during the process they assumed consolidation within Azure would be on the table. If anything it was probably expected to be a huge marketing push for Azure to be able to say that LI ran on Azure so it's likely a management decision that involved a lot of pressure to make it happen. Being willing to abandon that decision after exploring to see what was involved is a big deal. In many companies you'd have just heard platitudes like "well we have to do it, find a way" perpetually extending the project while taking away from more valuable initiatives. I used to work for a business telco that was acquired by a residential telco. They were so convinced they could roll this newly acquired company into their existing systems that they ran off all of the staff who built the systems. 2 years later, they finally realized that business telco was a lot more involved but by then it was too late. I understand the thinking that got them there, but despite a lot of people trying to stop them they proceeded forward until their hand was forced. This LinkedIn decision could have gone much, much worse.
    - hasty_pudding 3y ago
      > being willing to abandon that decision after exploring to see what was involved is a big deal Yeah but spending several years and many millions of dollars isnt 'exploring'. I'd say it's a solid fail for the management. But we can agree to disagree on this. I see you strongly believe that losing tens of millions is good management. For what it's worth there's many posts nowadays on blind about how the culture of LinkedIn has tanked and I'm assuming management probably believes they're doing a great job in that area too.
      - brightball 3y ago
        You're really big on putting words in my mouth on this. > I see you strongly believe that losing tens of millions is good management. Costs are relative to size. There are a lot of people involved, it's going to cost a lot of money. Microsoft's operating expenses are estimated to be just shy of $350 million per day. At that scale, 10s of millions is not as impactful. Could it have been done better? Of course. Could it have been much worse? Yep. Significantly.
        hasty_pudding 3y ago
        [flagged]

brightball 3y ago

I feel like you’re reaching really hard to make this work. Companies, teams and people do research and test projects all the time to determine direction. Making a decision like moving the entire LinkedIn data center is just a larger version of that.

hasty_pudding 3y ago
a management decision lost tens of millions of dollars. you're saying they're good managers because they didn't lose billions. going by your "logic" its literally impossible for management to make a mistake because there's always some slippery slope they didn't slide down. """we put the company out of business but at least we didnt cause the collapse of matter into a black hole! we deserve some bonuses!!""" this is how people who work at monopoly tier companies actually think lol
- brightball 3y ago
  That's actually not what I said at all. What I said was... > Any amount of employee time spent exploring options that aren’t pursued could be framed that way. Employee time costs money. If 20 people are in a meeting for 1 hour, that 1 hour meeting costs the equivalent of 1 hour of each of attendee's salary. 20 people attend a meeting making $100 / hour, you just spent $2,000 for that meeting. All time spent planning, also costs money. Every Agile "spike" to do research for a story costs money. Every architecture document. Every time you have somebody do a couple of prototype projects to test your options before you make a decision. Sometimes you can't easily find out what's involved until you really dive into the work. It's the nature of the beast. For LinkedIn, purchased by Microsoft who also owns Azure I'm quite certain that during the process they assumed consolidation within Azure would be on the table. If anything it was probably expected to be a huge marketing push for Azure to be able to say that LI ran on Azure so it's likely a management decision that involved a lot of pressure to make it happen. Being willing to abandon that decision after exploring to see what was involved is a big deal. In many companies you'd have just heard platitudes like "well we have to do it, find a way" perpetually extending the project while taking away from more valuable initiatives. I used to work for a business telco that was acquired by a residential telco. They were so convinced they could roll this newly acquired company into their existing systems that they ran off all of the staff who built the systems. 2 years later, they finally realized that business telco was a lot more involved but by then it was too late. I understand the thinking that got them there, but despite a lot of people trying to stop them they proceeded forward until their hand was forced. This LinkedIn decision could have gone much, much worse.
  - hasty_pudding 3y ago
    > being willing to abandon that decision after exploring to see what was involved is a big deal Yeah but spending several years and many millions of dollars isnt 'exploring'. I'd say it's a solid fail for the management. But we can agree to disagree on this. I see you strongly believe that losing tens of millions is good management. For what it's worth there's many posts nowadays on blind about how the culture of LinkedIn has tanked and I'm assuming management probably believes they're doing a great job in that area too.
    - brightball 3y ago
      You're really big on putting words in my mouth on this. > I see you strongly believe that losing tens of millions is good management. Costs are relative to size. There are a lot of people involved, it's going to cost a lot of money. Microsoft's operating expenses are estimated to be just shy of $350 million per day. At that scale, 10s of millions is not as impactful. Could it have been done better? Of course. Could it have been much worse? Yep. Significantly.
      - hasty_pudding 3y ago
        [flagged]