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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?

#161

Post by United857 »

traviscj wrote: post #60
danpalmer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author meant that the exceptions were Oculus, WhatsApp and Instagram. This would make sense given that they are acquisitions and appear to have separate offices, deployments, datacenters, etc in some cases.

Data point: I read it the other way, that all employees could look at all of those things, and that the exceptions were un-named. I'd imagine the exceptions are some small black boxes that try to catch abuse/spam/etc in various ways & places, or are closed off to prevent a code leak from exploiting a loophole in said software. Defense in depth, and all...

Yeah, that's what I meant. In general, Whatsapp/Oculus/Instagram source code is accessible (at least read access).

For the most part, the exceptions are acquisitions (but those get integrated eventually, see above) or some third-party IP subject to obligations.

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

#162

Post by ksk »

Could someone explain to me why so many people on here fetishize scale? Scale is a constraint on a problem, and it affects the solution you come up with. I don't understand why solving problems around that constraint is considered cooler than solving problems around other constraints like uptime, performance, memory cost, etc. Does "Our API serves 234 million requests" hold more cachet than "Our medical device firmware runs 24/7 without crashing and takes up 12 MB of RAM"?

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

#163

Post by segmondy »

I know some people are going to be looking at this list to find potential places to go to. I urge some of you to be the change you desire. You might not be at place that currently have a great engineering culture, but you can become the origin and catalyst of that change. Read engineering blogs, papers, get new ideas and bring it forth to wherever you want.

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

#164

Post by gervase »

ksk wrote: post #162

Could someone explain to me why so many people on here fetishize scale? Scale is a constraint on a problem, and it affects the solution you come up with. I don't understand why solving problems around that constraint is considered cooler than solving problems around other constraints like uptime, performance, memory cost, etc. Does "Our API serves 234 million requests" hold more cachet than "Our medical device firmwa…

This is just a guess, but I suspect that "scale" also generally correlates positively with compensation. A medical device company with 50 employees just doesn't have the same resources as a company with 1M+ users, for example.

Following from that, compensation is one of the easiest ways to measure professional "success", which is why large, highly-compensated companies are commonly viewed as the pinnacle of software engineering.

Whether that's a fair or accurate assessment is a different question.

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

#165

Post by jansanchez »

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…

How is the work/life balance at Facebook?

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

#166

Post by jansanchez »

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…

How is the work / life balance at Facebook?

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

#167

Post by ma2rten »

segmondy wrote: post #160
ma2rten wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these things also apply to Google, except: * you decide on a team before you start, but after you know you passed the interview * moving fast is not valued as much I would also add that Facebook uses a lot of Open Source, meaning your experience will be applicable elsewhere. Here are some potential advantages about working at Google: * Being ethical is a core value of the company. * Google/Alphabet is more divers…

* you decide on a team before you start doesn't seem to be true. Most of the compliant about Google hiring practice has been along the line of, and I paraphrase "I was promised to be with a team or a position and then I got placed in a totally and differently unrelated position/team"

Unlike most companies you interview for the entire company and not for a specific team at Google. That means you only know what team you are going to be on after you pass the interview. However, you will always know before you start. It mainly depends on what teams have headcount at that time and are a good fit. You can choose to take a pass on a team you are matched with and wait for another match.

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

#168

Post by thesimon »

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…

>Editd

They rebranded to "Edited", but I can confirm that they have an amazing culture.

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