Live data from Hacker News

As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door

techcrunch.com

21–30 of 124 posts

Re: As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door

#21

For some reason this reminds me of the "no one has ever been fired for choosing IBM." slogan. I guess maybe there is some truth to it. Seems like new tech needs to start slow on big places, only startups really have the freedom to risk it all.

your post implies digg isn't a startup.

Digg isn't a startup. It started in 2004 and has been mature for about 5 years. They are a business now. And a big one at that.

Re: As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door

#22
Unless Digg cannot roll out new features due to Cassandra (eg: a) Cassandra woes taking all dev team time, or b) tech limitations prevent features) it seems highly unlikely that cassandra is the reason why Digg 4 is grating with users initially.

It's a change of features/product rather than technology that is the problem.

Re: As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your post implies digg isn't a startup.

Digg isn't a startup. It started in 2004 and has been mature for about 5 years. They are a business now. And a big one at that.

For the 40m investment, I wonder how much profit they make. They seem to have a very large staff.

Re: As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door

#25

Is there any reason that Cassandra is the focus of this article? It is really silly and irresponsible to peg a nascent project like that without any reasoning or sources. I'm sure something changed besides just a Cassandra rollout, and wasn't Digg using it on v3 too? I think Cassandra is pretty well tested. There have been lots of super-large-scale deployments. It just seems lame to blame it on that, but I guess mayb…

Placing all the blame on Cassandra helps Digg justify letting go the VP, since he was allegedly the guy who pushed it.

Re: As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door

#26
post #22

Unless Digg cannot roll out new features due to Cassandra (eg: a) Cassandra woes taking all dev team time, or b) tech limitations prevent features) it seems highly unlikely that cassandra is the reason why Digg 4 is grating with users initially. It's a change of features/product rather than technology that is the problem.

I think the folks at Digg where prepared for the heartburn associated with the content changes. They weren't ready for some very serious issues with the implementation. Digg has definitely seen a lot of downtime over the last week or two.

Re: As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door

#27

Is there any reason that Cassandra is the focus of this article? It is really silly and irresponsible to peg a nascent project like that without any reasoning or sources. I'm sure something changed besides just a Cassandra rollout, and wasn't Digg using it on v3 too? I think Cassandra is pretty well tested. There have been lots of super-large-scale deployments. It just seems lame to blame it on that, but I guess mayb…

as far as I remember: yes they were using it on v3 too, for some things

Cassandra was used for a single feature on v3 called "Green Badges". I believe there is a post on the digg blog about the project, in particular.

Re: As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door

#29

I wonder what issues they are running into that a dark launch would not have found. As I have discovered painfully in my own projects, making big changes without a rollback plan is usually a bad idea, and it sounds like this is no exception.

Yeah, it sounds like the launch process is more at fault than the technology for this if there's really no way to rollback to stability.

Re: As Digg Struggles, VP Of Engineering Is Shown The Door

#30
post #28

I have to say I like the new Digg. Sad this guy is getting his career stomped on over it. Lot of people complain that the new site lets big sites submit their own content automatically, but how was it any different with a middle-man user submitting it himself?

The real problem is that v4 removed the illusion that average users had an influence on the rankings, without altering the fact that they don't.
Post reply on HN