5 ms·

What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

88 points by luc_perkins 14y ago

ckluis 14y ago
Like it or not, the democratic party owns technology compared to republicans today.
- bcoates 14y ago
  In the sense of "the democratic party is using technology to their advantage" or "the democratic party is moving the tech industry into their political machine"?
  - luc_perkins 14y ago
    I'm not sure what it would mean for them to move the tech industry into their political machine. Could you clarify?
    - owenjones 14y ago
      I assume he means having the more appealing political platform to hypothetical Tech Industry employees ie. young, urban and college educated.
    - homosaur 14y ago
      For them I think it would mean that they could generate SOPA level pressure on lawmakers.
  - dmckeon 14y ago
    Based on this article and those about the failure the Romney campaign's get-out-the-vote tool, "Orca" [0] my reaction is that one campaign built usable tech over time, and the other tried to purchase it on deadline. One system was diverse and cooperative; the other isolated, secretive, and ultimately a failure. I'll agree that a GOTV tool is only one part of campaign IT, but I think there's a lesson waiting here. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCA_%28computer_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCA_%28computer_system%29
    - snowwrestler 14y ago
      The Romney campaign did not really have much choice, because of their need to secure the GOP nomination first. As the incumbent, Obama had a much longer lead time, which allowed his campaign to invest early and bring more of the development process internal. And they needed it--they've been pretty upfront that for an uncomfortably long time it was not clear the decision to centralize the technology was going to work at all. The field and other outreach teams did not like or use the products that the tech built for them for months.
- malachismith 14y ago
  If, as the theory goes, the product structure mimics the organizational structure of the group that created the product - you could extend to situations like this. In which case, you would argue that until the GOP changes its (hierarchical and paternalistic) structure the tech advantage will continue.
  - jessaustin 14y ago
    The argument can go the other way as well, if your organization is not so hierarchical that it can't learn anything. Point at this episode as proof that when in direct competition, the organization that's open to multiple approaches and tests to discover what works, has a distinct advantage.
    - zecho 14y ago
      I forget exactly which postmortem article I read it in, but this was actually a problem solved between the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns. The 2008 technology, while still successful, was still too diffuse for top managers at the 2012 campaign and had no overarching hierarchy, so they worked quickly to fix that.
- chernevik 14y ago
  It seems more likely that this was an Obama campaign advantage, rather than a Democratic party advantage. The translation over isn't obvious. From what I've heard their internal organization was pretty fluid. That kind of thing depends on the quality of people involved, their commonality of purpose, and the organizational culture. You can't box that and roll it over to party HQ. That said, Democrats do seem more likely to attract and motivate the kind of people you'd need for this. That's a pretty important head start.
  - malachismith 14y ago
    If you are resistent to change, it's hard to attract people who want to create change....
    - tptacek 14y ago
      This sounds insightful but really isn't. It's the Republicans who want the most change right now. It's change in a direction most of us disagree with, but it's far more radical than the Democratic agenda. The reality is that if there's a tech advantage held by the Dems, it's the product of much simpler demographics; youth, urban, educated.
      - malachismith 14y ago
        You're talking retrograde change (a change back to a prior state). But yes... the demographics obviously favor the Dems when it comes to Tech.
      - tomjen3 14y ago
        I do think the democrats have a technological advantage in this case, but it is far less solid than it may appear at first. For simple demographic reasons the republicans cannot continue to focus on the old white anti homosexual segment of the population, since there aren't enough of them left to form a majority (projections suggest that Texas may turn blue by 2020, perhaps even 2016, if Texas turns blue then the Republicans will never again win the White House) and the other obvious alternative for the republicans is the young, well educated people who want and end to marihuana prohibition and less government interference in the lives in general. Should the republican pivot to take these voters in, then they may very well attract a much larger share of tech people.
- Roybatty 14y ago
  No, only in your little fantasy world
- revoltingx 14y ago
  Wall Street would disagree. You should look outside your bubble.
theevocater 14y ago
I think that what they accomplished is amazing, but remember that their goals were very different than your typical business. Their goals were to create something in a short amount of time with a really random group of people given a fairly short lifetime. The individual projects will live on, but the whole thing was shut down at the end of the campaign. A business is about sustainability. You are creating things that you will be maintaining and using for (hopefully) years to come. You get to be picky about who you are hiring. In that given, its not unusual that you want all of your employees to be able to work on various parts of the stack as focus changes or what not. This isn't to discount the value in polyglot groups. Its almost an inevitability at this point. While totally possible that you could have entirely js stack in node, more likely you'll have ruby (or something) and javascript and maybe objc for iphone and java for android and maybe .Net for windows or more objc on osx or whatever.
- saraid216 14y ago
  > In that given, its not unusual that you want all of your employees to be able to work on various parts of the stack as focus changes or what not. Isn't it? I'm a frontend dev. While I'm capable of digging into the backend and mucking around, it's not a typical part of my job. There are backend devs who I can talk to, who are writing Scala or Java rather than Javascript or Ruby, who can deal with problems faster and better than I could. Changes of focus like what you describe seem to be typical of far more nascent companies. In that sense, Reed's team was like a startup: everyone had to be ultra-capable because they had to pick up anyone's slack at any time, just like a CEO of a ten-man group sometimes has to clean the kitchen or code a component that no one else has time to.
  - oasisbob 14y ago
    In that sense, Reed's team was like a startup: everyone had to be ultra-capable because they had to pick up anyone's slack at any time It's important to note that in this sense, "polyglot" refers to the collective group -- ie, the Obama campaign had numerous talented people with a huge variety of skills in-house -- vs the individual sense of the word. Not to say that there weren't incredibly talented generalists, but when you have a team of this size (dozens of designers and front-end developers, engineers focused on the back-end APIs, a team dedicated to data integration, a handful of dedicated ops and DBAs) the ability of individuals to specialize in an area could be a strength.
confluence 14y ago
> 4Gb/s, 10k requests per second, 2,000 nodes, 3 datacenters, 180TB and 8.5 billion requests. Design, deploy, dismantle in 583 days to elect the President. #madops – Scott VanDenPlas, Obama for America IT team That's impressive. Glad that tech is on the Democratic side. But then again change, liberalism, progress, technology and innovation are all leftist tenets - so it isn't so surprising. Here's hoping to another tech assisted Republican defeat in 2016. May the morons stay out of power - least they screw us all once again.

88 points by luc_perkins 14y ago

ckluis 14y ago

Like it or not, the democratic party owns technology compared to republicans today.

bcoates 14y ago
In the sense of "the democratic party is using technology to their advantage" or "the democratic party is moving the tech industry into their political machine"?
- luc_perkins 14y ago
  I'm not sure what it would mean for them to move the tech industry into their political machine. Could you clarify?
  - owenjones 14y ago
    I assume he means having the more appealing political platform to hypothetical Tech Industry employees ie. young, urban and college educated.
  - homosaur 14y ago
    For them I think it would mean that they could generate SOPA level pressure on lawmakers.
- dmckeon 14y ago
  Based on this article and those about the failure the Romney campaign's get-out-the-vote tool, "Orca" [0] my reaction is that one campaign built usable tech over time, and the other tried to purchase it on deadline. One system was diverse and cooperative; the other isolated, secretive, and ultimately a failure. I'll agree that a GOTV tool is only one part of campaign IT, but I think there's a lesson waiting here. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCA_%28computer_system%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ORCA_%28computer_system%29
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    The Romney campaign did not really have much choice, because of their need to secure the GOP nomination first. As the incumbent, Obama had a much longer lead time, which allowed his campaign to invest early and bring more of the development process internal. And they needed it--they've been pretty upfront that for an uncomfortably long time it was not clear the decision to centralize the technology was going to work at all. The field and other outreach teams did not like or use the products that the tech built for them for months.
malachismith 14y ago
If, as the theory goes, the product structure mimics the organizational structure of the group that created the product - you could extend to situations like this. In which case, you would argue that until the GOP changes its (hierarchical and paternalistic) structure the tech advantage will continue.
- jessaustin 14y ago
  The argument can go the other way as well, if your organization is not so hierarchical that it can't learn anything. Point at this episode as proof that when in direct competition, the organization that's open to multiple approaches and tests to discover what works, has a distinct advantage.
  - zecho 14y ago
    I forget exactly which postmortem article I read it in, but this was actually a problem solved between the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns. The 2008 technology, while still successful, was still too diffuse for top managers at the 2012 campaign and had no overarching hierarchy, so they worked quickly to fix that.
chernevik 14y ago
It seems more likely that this was an Obama campaign advantage, rather than a Democratic party advantage. The translation over isn't obvious. From what I've heard their internal organization was pretty fluid. That kind of thing depends on the quality of people involved, their commonality of purpose, and the organizational culture. You can't box that and roll it over to party HQ. That said, Democrats do seem more likely to attract and motivate the kind of people you'd need for this. That's a pretty important head start.
- malachismith 14y ago
  If you are resistent to change, it's hard to attract people who want to create change....
  - tptacek 14y ago
    This sounds insightful but really isn't. It's the Republicans who want the most change right now. It's change in a direction most of us disagree with, but it's far more radical than the Democratic agenda. The reality is that if there's a tech advantage held by the Dems, it's the product of much simpler demographics; youth, urban, educated.
    - malachismith 14y ago
      You're talking retrograde change (a change back to a prior state). But yes... the demographics obviously favor the Dems when it comes to Tech.
    - tomjen3 14y ago
      I do think the democrats have a technological advantage in this case, but it is far less solid than it may appear at first. For simple demographic reasons the republicans cannot continue to focus on the old white anti homosexual segment of the population, since there aren't enough of them left to form a majority (projections suggest that Texas may turn blue by 2020, perhaps even 2016, if Texas turns blue then the Republicans will never again win the White House) and the other obvious alternative for the republicans is the young, well educated people who want and end to marihuana prohibition and less government interference in the lives in general. Should the republican pivot to take these voters in, then they may very well attract a much larger share of tech people.
Roybatty 14y ago
No, only in your little fantasy world
revoltingx 14y ago
Wall Street would disagree. You should look outside your bubble.

theevocater 14y ago

I think that what they accomplished is amazing, but remember that their goals were very different than your typical business. Their goals were to create something in a short amount of time with a really random group of people given a fairly short lifetime. The individual projects will live on, but the whole thing was shut down at the end of the campaign. A business is about sustainability. You are creating things that you will be maintaining and using for (hopefully) years to come. You get to be picky about who you are hiring. In that given, its not unusual that you want all of your employees to be able to work on various parts of the stack as focus changes or what not. This isn't to discount the value in polyglot groups. Its almost an inevitability at this point. While totally possible that you could have entirely js stack in node, more likely you'll have ruby (or something) and javascript and maybe objc for iphone and java for android and maybe .Net for windows or more objc on osx or whatever.

saraid216 14y ago
> In that given, its not unusual that you want all of your employees to be able to work on various parts of the stack as focus changes or what not. Isn't it? I'm a frontend dev. While I'm capable of digging into the backend and mucking around, it's not a typical part of my job. There are backend devs who I can talk to, who are writing Scala or Java rather than Javascript or Ruby, who can deal with problems faster and better than I could. Changes of focus like what you describe seem to be typical of far more nascent companies. In that sense, Reed's team was like a startup: everyone had to be ultra-capable because they had to pick up anyone's slack at any time, just like a CEO of a ten-man group sometimes has to clean the kitchen or code a component that no one else has time to.
- oasisbob 14y ago
  In that sense, Reed's team was like a startup: everyone had to be ultra-capable because they had to pick up anyone's slack at any time It's important to note that in this sense, "polyglot" refers to the collective group -- ie, the Obama campaign had numerous talented people with a huge variety of skills in-house -- vs the individual sense of the word. Not to say that there weren't incredibly talented generalists, but when you have a team of this size (dozens of designers and front-end developers, engineers focused on the back-end APIs, a team dedicated to data integration, a handful of dedicated ops and DBAs) the ability of individuals to specialize in an area could be a strength.

confluence 14y ago

> 4Gb/s, 10k requests per second, 2,000 nodes, 3 datacenters, 180TB and 8.5 billion requests. Design, deploy, dismantle in 583 days to elect the President. #madops – Scott VanDenPlas, Obama for America IT team That's impressive. Glad that tech is on the Democratic side. But then again change, liberalism, progress, technology and innovation are all leftist tenets - so it isn't so surprising. Here's hoping to another tech assisted Republican defeat in 2016. May the morons stay out of power - least they screw us all once again.