Ask HN: What current companies have the best software engineering culture? • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by sjg007 » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:23 PM UTC

mrswag wrote: post #115

jacques_chester wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically they hire 2 people to do 1 person's work. Pivotal is a for-profit company. We pair program because we think it's more effective for most engineering activities (not all: most) than soloing. I'm vastly more productive in a pair. I don't take 3 hour "5 minute" Facebook breaks. If I get stuck, my pair usually has an idea, so rather than spending a day fighting I spend minutes. Usually the discussion with a p…

I'm genuinely wondering: is pair programming better, compared to doing the design in pair, going to work on your own, then reviewing each other's code? As an introvert I don't think I could handle the "pair all day" approach.

I guess it keeps you honest.... e.g focused and ontrak

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

#142

Post by nailer » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:24 PM UTC

mercer wrote: post #139

mattmanser wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nothing more complex than 100,000s of other apps out there. Yet somehow they managed to create 18k classes? Scale is handled at the back-end.

I can't immediately think of any apps that are just as complex as Facebook's, but maybe I'm just not thinking hard enough. Could you give me some examples (honest question)?

Unreal Engine.

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

#143

Post by faitswulff » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:24 PM UTC

sidcool wrote: post #128

ThoughtWorks has a great Engineering culture. It's run by most engineers. The amount of freedom is amazing. Pretty transparent culture.

It's also extremely progressive. Last I heard, they had managed to hire 40% woman engineers in recent cohorts. Compare this to a ~10% industry average.

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

#144

Post by santaclaus » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:28 PM UTC

I knew some peeps at Fog Creek who seemed to love the culture. I haven't worked there myself but Joel Spolsky seems like a thoughtful fellow.

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

#145

Post by randomname2 » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:28 PM UTC

London-specific (and from a recruiter that is listing some of their own clients, so take with a grain of salt), from https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-software-engineering... (2014):

Large tech firms:

================

Google, Deepmind

Facebook

Twitter

Microsoft, Skype, Yammer

Palantir Technologies

Bloomberg

Start-ups

=========

Improbable.io

Swifkey

Hailo

VisualDNA

Editd

State

Opengamma

Duedil

…and plenty more good ones in stealth.

Gaming:

======

Mind Candy

EA Games (Playfish)

Playfire

Foundry

…and the list can go on forever.

Not software engineering firms, but have plenty to offer software engineers:

Investment banks:

================

Morgan Stanley

Goldman Sachs

JP Morgan

Barcap

....and plenty more.

Tech-driven funds:

=================

Man AHL

G-Research

KCG (Getco, Knight, Automat)

…any plenty more you've probably never heard of.

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

#146

Post by nailer » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:28 PM UTC

Vinnl wrote: post #36

Reading the Netflix engineering blog now and then, I do appreciate how many of their engineering decisions also take into account the effect it will have on their colleagues, i.e. "does this change affect how quickly/independently our engineers can do stuff"?

Also they popularized Chaos engineering.

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

#147

Post by nailer » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:29 PM UTC

seattle_spring wrote: post #137

pram wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the perception of 'Atlasssian Engineering' has been tainted by HipChat

JIRA taints their perception, for me at least.

And how unmaintained Sourcetree is.

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

#148

Post by rayui » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:31 PM UTC

randomname2 wrote: post #145

London-specific (and from a recruiter that is listing some of their own clients, so take with a grain of salt), from https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-software-engineering... (2014): Large tech firms: ================ Google, Deepmind Facebook Twitter Microsoft, Skype, Yammer Palantir Technologies Bloomberg Start-ups ========= Improbable.io Swifkey Hailo VisualDNA Editd State Opengamma Duedil …and plenty more g…

You do know that there is no Yammer or Skype in London anymore? (we did have a fantastic culture though, so great it has been recognised. source: ex-Yammer.)

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

#149

Post by BeetleB » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

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.

Sometimes hackathons are for a social cause (i.e. not tied to a company's products). Even in those cases, they strongly suggest using the company's tools/products to solve said social problem. I see it as a win-win. You get to use your tech skills to solve a social need for some nonprofit (they are not required to buy anything for this solution) and the company gets some publicity.

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

#150

Post by V-2 » Wed, Jan 04, 2017, 4:36 PM UTC

thecupisblue wrote: post #106

akerro wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Even worse, look at their Android app - They made an overly complex open source image loading library which is despised by most quality Android Engineers because it uses parts of memory it shouldn't be using, switching to and from it is terrible, has a big dex footprint and often results in OOM crashes. They use runtime hacks and then complain directly to Android developers when something breaks during updates, their…

The most mind-boggling thing they did with their Android app (that I know of, at least) was hands down this: https://jaxenter.com/facebooks-completely-insane-dalvik-hack...