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Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

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Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#41

Post by bluebknight »

United857 wrote: post #22

I'm biased, but I'd say out of all the "big" tech companies, FB has the best engineering culture. * With few exceptions, engineers aren't hired for a specific team; they go through bootcamp where they get exposure to all parts of the stack and tasks from different teams. * Ideas usually come from engineers. Managers are there to be a sounding board/connect you with people resources as needed. * Moving fast is valued…

It sounds like a great place to work at. Kinda sucks that, they only interview new grads from top schools unlike the other Big 4.

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#43

Post by sjtgraham »

United857 wrote: post #22

I'm biased, but I'd say out of all the "big" tech companies, FB has the best engineering culture. * With few exceptions, engineers aren't hired for a specific team; they go through bootcamp where they get exposure to all parts of the stack and tasks from different teams. * Ideas usually come from engineers. Managers are there to be a sounding board/connect you with people resources as needed. * Moving fast is valued…

> * With only very few exceptions, every engineer has access to the near-entirety of source code at FB (Oculus, Whatsapp, Instagram...).

What are the exceptions?

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#44

Post by akerro »

United857 wrote: post #22

I'm biased, but I'd say out of all the "big" tech companies, FB has the best engineering culture. * With few exceptions, engineers aren't hired for a specific team; they go through bootcamp where they get exposure to all parts of the stack and tasks from different teams. * Ideas usually come from engineers. Managers are there to be a sounding board/connect you with people resources as needed. * Moving fast is valued…

I think Facebook has very poor engineering culture. They built their iOS app with 18k classes, then claim that iOS and Git can't handle their 'scale'.

Let's avoid putting here obvious companies and companies who over-engineer, maybe?

http://quellish.tumblr.com/post/126712999812/how-on-earth-th...

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3m5n2n/faceboo...

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#45

Post by mikekchar »

culturestate wrote: post #14
jakozaur wrote: post #5

There is no universal scale. Some people prefer to work at big companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook... some at smaller fast moving startups and everything in between. There are for sure better and worse companies in each category, but even within big companies there is huge variance and it depends what you are looking for. Though some generic observation: 1. Product companies tends to have better culture tha…

> Good litmus test is to ask employees, do they have hackathons I'm a designer rather than an engineer, but I've always been a bit puzzled by the popularity of intra-company hackathons. It seems like a great way for management to keep employees working longer hours for less pay – an overnight hackathon that results in, say, 80 hours of additional work from a small team only costs the company some pizzas.

Some people like 24 hour raves too. I personally can't understand it. A good hackathon is a party for people who like to party that way. If you have colleagues that you truly enjoy hacking with, it's awesome.

Plus I like pizza.

I understand that some people don't enjoy these kinds of things the way I do (and to be honest, I can't do 24 hours of anything any more). As programming jobs become more integrated in society I find that hacking culture is changing. There are many more 9-5ers these days than when I first started. As much as I understand it, and as much as I think it isn't necessarily bad, it makes me a bit sad.

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#47

Post by danpalmer »

akerro wrote: post #44
United857 wrote: post #22

I'm biased, but I'd say out of all the "big" tech companies, FB has the best engineering culture. * With few exceptions, engineers aren't hired for a specific team; they go through bootcamp where they get exposure to all parts of the stack and tasks from different teams. * Ideas usually come from engineers. Managers are there to be a sounding board/connect you with people resources as needed. * Moving fast is valued…

I think Facebook has very poor engineering culture. They built their iOS app with 18k classes, then claim that iOS and Git can't handle their 'scale'. Let's avoid putting here obvious companies and companies who over-engineer, maybe? http://quellish.tumblr.com/post/126712999812/how-on-earth-th... https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3m5n2n/faceboo...

I've spoken to Facebook engineers who work on their internal source control systems, and it was pretty obvious from talking to them that Git wouldn't work for their purposes. There is plenty of writing about this topic that explains in some detail why Git is unsuitable, and why Mercurial was a better option for them.

As for the 18k classes in their iOS app, I don't see why this is a sign of bad engineering? I'd expect that a large number of these are auto-generated, for example from Thrift API definitions, and I'd also expect that what we see as users is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the code needed. There's obviously a lot of analytics code, and also I'd expect the resiliency and reliability needed requires much more code than we'd expect.

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#49

Post by FlorianRappl »

I am surprised that no one mentioned Microsoft so far. These days they are professional, innovation-driven, and do not bring in much of the unnecessary cult that comes with companies like Google. They are more open than Apple.

Also from a personal experience I think their interviews / hiring methods are better than all of the other big players.

Re: Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture?

#50

Post by dasmoth »

exfacebook wrote: post #32

Facebook --- far and away the best engineering culture I've ever seen, and I've been programming for 20 years. Other companies aren't even in the same league. Facebook has an incredibly high hiring bar. I never once met someone who I didn't feel was qualified to be there. I was seldom the smartest person in the room. The high average engineer quality allows the company to give developers almost complete autonomy. At…

As someone who generally wouldn't look at large companies, that does make FB sound kind-of interesting.

One question: how much emphasis is placed on day-to-day visibility? Is it legitimate to hide in a corner for a few weeks trying something out?

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