alexandercrohde

>> I'll say it again, it's a piece of writing that wouldn't warrant any attention if it weren't for the author's status here.

This is probably true. If I was the person to write this, and post this on my personal blog, and submitted it to HN, nobody would give a fuck.

Of course, that may not indicate anything, because that could be said for Newton's Principia, Einstein's Relativity, The Great Gatsby, Proof of Fermat's last theorom...

I think the question isn't "Would the world appreciate this if it weren't by PG?" but "SHOULD the world appreciate this, even if it weren't PG?"

Agree.

Also ironic how this is the top-voted comment on an essay that, itself, spends so much time talking about the inevitability of misrepresentation.

I could write an essay on that myself.

This seems kinda baity to me, for a virus that kills 1/500 people aged 30-40 who catch it.

>> When engineers and other ICs read this article, they tend to assume that these ... mechanisms aren't happening because they don't personally see them

I think you're missing the second point of the article here. Per the article point 1 "Or, if measurement happens, it is done in isolation by the product management team and selectively shared. You have no idea if your work worked"

So the article is also highlighting failure to share as a failure mode. Every good company I worked at, I [the lead engineer] had equal ownership as my product owner. The respected my opinion, learned not to doubt my warnings, trusted my intuitions, and made adjustments based on my recommendations.

That balance of shared ownership is a defining indicator that it's not a feature-factory, whereas a "I call the shots as product" mentality is more feature-factory.

Is it possible you [rightly] worry about this article because you are what it's talking about?

Pyramids are the perfect analogy to disprove your point.

The pyramids were useless tombs that wealthy kings wanted because of religious beliefs.

As an engineer, I have spent many months building features that were disabled/deleted because the measurements showed they were no good after release.

Now, for the 1% of product managers who make the right call every time on their own, having an engineer participate in the discussion may be a burden. But in my personal experience, every product discussion I'm in I bring great value to.

Eh, if it applies to a wide-swath of companies then that's because a wide-swath of companies don't involve engineers in feature ownership.

I don't think the article is saying engineers need to have a meeting for each of these. I think you're entirely missing the point.

It's simply saying that you measure before you build a feature [and again after]. Any good product owner will already have data to support their prioritizations (e.g. this bug affects 10% of users, this feature only applies to 2% of users)

It's not boolean.

There's a lot of options -- salmon (I personally have salmon sushi at least twice a week), omega-3 supplements, a dozen other healthy foods.

That's a great way to look at it.

Until people look at tech and see it as a good top tier career and finance as a fallback, we have progress to make.

That's my point. I know nothing.

All I know is what intermediaries (whom I've never met) say. The Ecuadorian judge says the American judge is lying, the American judge says the Ecuadorian judge is lying. I personally haven't looked at any evidence. And if I did, how could I personally know if it's valid?

You're caught-up and emotional in this one tiny thread which is insignificant. We should be talking about the larger problem.

This discussion is simply an illustration of a larger problem -- namely that none of us know anything.

We have documents alleging person X said Y, because of Z. Without any real first-hand knowledge, none of us actually know how reputable the justice system is in Ecuador, how plausible bribery is, or much at all. First hand, all we know is web-pages on the internet.

I think maybe it's best to take a step back from this specific case and ask "What policies could make bribery harder in general across the board?" Is there a way to build a system (e.g. justice-system, news-system) that results in less ambiguity?

It's not your problem to solve. It's likely not a problem at all.

I think it's just a reflection of our nature -- we all claim to seek boring stability, yet actually thrive on drama. People who don't want drama have no trouble avoiding it online.

I think punishing the engineer would be much less practical than the CEO. There will always be an engineer (perhaps a remote contractor) who will build this.

One way to look at this is to say "Hah, how shameful."

The other way to look at this is to say "Hah, clearly business success isn't a function of code quality"

>> The murders-for-hire are absolutely the most critical part of this whole case.

Well maybe he should have been charged for that.

Care to explain the downvotes?

tl; dr: nothing is proven yet in either direction. The report acknowledges "ongoing work" is needed to root the phone.

Maybe they should have waited to publish until they did that.

>> A lot of processes are inefficient but there is nobody you can talk to about improvements.

Well, I don't think there's nobody you can talk to. Let's just take his first 3 examples, as a random sample:

1. Paragraph 2: A company institutes radical freedom, so half the people leave within the first year. -- I don't see exactly what his point is, I'm not convinced this is a problem, and I don't see him offering a solution, and who can't he talk to about it?

2. Paragraph 3: A company that has a crazy paranoia about leakers. -- Sounds messed up, but I'm like 90% sure he could say "I notice some coworkers are unclear about forwarding emails on things like health plans, which as I understand, aren't company secrets. Could we shoot out a general message clarifying which materials ARE and AREN'T protected to alleviate any confusion?"

3. Paragraph 4: There's a company where to managers hate each other too much to be in the same room. -- I'm not sure what his point is, should one of them be fired? If he earns the ear of their manager, he can certainly insinuate that such a personality conflicts leads to problems.

As far as I can tell, the central thesis is that companies (maybe just tech companies) are screwed up. The sardonic tone though makes it almost entirely undigestable to me.

There's an emotional air of "the world is F'd and nobody sees it," that is independent of the central thesis, that makes it hard for me to take the anecdotes at face value. Which is too bad, because I'm sure there are a lot of grains of truth behind the author's experience.

Additionally, I have to observe that the author's experience doesn't align very well with mine. Certainly I've seen bad decisions, bad tech (but never a failure to use source control as he describes), some politics, intense personalities, but by and large I've found the vast majority of people to be acting in good faith, albeit sometimes creatures of habit and hard to win over before you build a track record.

How is this a story?

If people don't want to use an unsafe library, don't. If their patches aren't getting merged, clone it.

If reddit is being meany-heads, don't login.

I really don't understand what the point of this post is. It's arguable whether there's a problem, and if you take the author's point that this is a problem, no solution is offered.

Yes. Moreover, if you backup the system great, you get peace of mind, but management hardly cares. If you BREAK the system while trying to establish a backup, management cares and it's "your fault."

You have exponentially more to lose than to gain by experimenting with this at all. In this situation you should convey the risks, let the stakeholders decide if/who is going to address this, as it's their risk to take.

Aren't you sort of victim blaming here?

This guy is saying "I believe X" and is fighting really hard for his beliefs. Instead of addressing whether it's valid/worthy, you're insulting his intellect for standing up for what he believes in a way you consider not-savvy.

That's all totally reasonable. However independent of that-

One thing he said that sounded completely outrageous though was that the inclusivity committee asked "A reduction in the amount of effort expended pursuing cheating cases by 50 percent even though there has been no reduction in cheating cases."

That's crossing a huge line in my opinion.

It's apparent you didn't understand what I wrote at all.

My point is (and I'll spell it out for you too, since I think it may apply) -- knowing the right thing is usually much much much much less important than being able to get other people to understand the right thing.

This article is good because it does the 2nd. There is no lack of unhappy people decrying problems, the world has no use for that.

The world does have use for people who can inspire differently-minded people to focus on (and find joy in) fixing a common challenge.

For those unaware -- men's sperm count has gone down 3% a year since we've started measuring.

I see these two facts as potentially related and warranting significant investigation.

Maybe you're obviously not the target audience then.

Since you seem at a loss as to why this article is so successful -- maybe you should ask yourself what you're missing. It seems to me you haven't mastered the author's talent of addressing deep problems in an uplifting way that draws others in.

>> “business people” ... and they typically make decisions in order to maximize good business outcomes.

You had me until this statement. It's been my observation that "business people" are usually self-interested manipulators who hire people they don't need if it makes them look important, game/trick OKRs, hide all failures from their superiors (and would fire you if you went behind their back), often damage brand trust/equity to try to get good metrics for a quarter (e.g. google), willingly let massive problems (e.g. security holes a la equifax) fall on the floor rather than risk being associated with problem by helping.

Not all, but more than half.

This is irrelevant all-or-nothing thinking.

Of course all things change -- that doesn't mean something changing for the worse is therefore inevitable or less shameful

Indeed. There are certain jobs I wouldn't take, or that would have to pay me at least 100,000 more a year to be associated with their moral ambiguity (for me it happens to be facebook)

It wouldn't have to be in writing. Have a friend call up, say they are from "Tech Co" and "Would you recommend Joe Shmoe?"

Very easy.