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AWS BugBust

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Re: AWS BugBust

#72
post #13

When I read the announcement, I thought they were donating the use of CodeGuru to projects (which I presumed would be limited to open source ones) to (1) improve the code hygiene of the world (2) gather more data for their machine learning models (3) publicity for CodeGuru But as best I can tell, this is the worst of all worlds: I have to already have an AWS account to both create the competition and also to point Co…

One part I'm still not 100% clear about after looking at the site and even your comment. Would people be running CodeGuru against their own internal AWS code, or against existing public open source Github projects, and sending PRs separately from AWS?

Re: AWS BugBust

#73
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, the bug buster benefits if they get up high on the leaderboard, because job recruiters will most likely use the leaderboard for lead gen. If you're looking to make a job move, moving up on the leaderboard will help. I already get plenty of recruiting inbound without having to donate my time to fix bugs for Internet Points. What you're saying is that this is a worthy use of time for people because they'll mayb…

> I already get plenty of recruiting inbound without having to donate my time to fix bugs for Internet Points. You're not the target audience. And also, you wouldn't be donating your time. The whole point is that a company puts up a contest for their own employees, who are presumably getting paid to participate.

the target audience are people stupid enough to work for amazon for free. Amazon, fuck you pay me.

Re: AWS BugBust

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you employed if you won't fix bugs. These types of devs are so annoying to be around. Crank out weird esoteric hard to read code using every weird meta feature / reflections / introspections they can. Then "hard pass" on fixing bugs as a waste of time. You do realize most developers are asked to fix bugs anyways, regardless of any silly competition? Their pitch to Organizations is that 1) They may be able to…

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding how this works, this isn't "give you some perks for doing your job." It's getting perks for doing your job, for someone who isn't paying you. And that's what the problem is. If you want me to fix your bugs, pay me for it. Don't do this gamification nonsense. Edit: apparently I did misunderstand how this works. It seems like the "Bugbusters" are just a company's normal developers…

Yeah, they are just trying to get devs to try their tooling. If tool was amazing, this would be great. But it's hardly the big exploitation people are describing here though it's a bit true that bug fixing is less fun for some and so is often ignored.

That said, other providers of this type of tooling might take some ideas from something like this.

Re: AWS BugBust

#75
post #13

When I read the announcement, I thought they were donating the use of CodeGuru to projects (which I presumed would be limited to open source ones) to (1) improve the code hygiene of the world (2) gather more data for their machine learning models (3) publicity for CodeGuru But as best I can tell, this is the worst of all worlds: I have to already have an AWS account to both create the competition and also to point Co…

Work for us for free! If we like the fix you made MAYBE we will pay you! Yay!

Re: AWS BugBust

#76
post #65
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the employee overvalues their skill, thinking that showing up on the leaderboard is a shoo-in. Maybe the employer is right, maybe the employee is right, Come on, this is just being coy — you and I both know this is a terrible deal for employees — as you write earlier, there’s a very low chance that a random dev will appear on the global leaderboard. What’s more, the best devs won’t even play this game, so it’s left…

I'm not sure where the exploitation is. The developers are already getting paid to fix bugs. Now they have some structure and added incentives.

The structure already exists. It’s called your bug tracker. By building tools to gamify this process, it’s clearly incentivizing devs to put in more hours. I have no doubt that the global leaderboard will consist of devs that would’ve clocked 100s of hours above their regular hours. For very little benefit to the employee.

Let me put it you this way - would an engineer at Netflix ever “play this game” to win ? Would employees at Netflix even put up with something like this? If not, why would you think employees at random tech co should?

Re: AWS BugBust

#77
post #38
post #13

When I read the announcement, I thought they were donating the use of CodeGuru to projects (which I presumed would be limited to open source ones) to (1) improve the code hygiene of the world (2) gather more data for their machine learning models (3) publicity for CodeGuru But as best I can tell, this is the worst of all worlds: I have to already have an AWS account to both create the competition and also to point Co…

The companies that put up the contest benefits. For a lot of people at a lot of companies, a trip to re:invent is a huge prize. If your job is to fix bugs anyway, now your company just incentivized you to do it more and in your off time to win that prize. Also, the bug buster benefits if they get up high on the leaderboard, because job recruiters will most likely use the leaderboard for lead gen. If you're looking to…

> Also, the bug buster benefits if they get up high on the leaderboard

There is literally another story on the front page [1] about such "leaderboards" and what happens when people game them to move up.

I would not advise anyone to participate in such a contest, it sounds more like a race to the bottom while providing valuable training data to AWS for free.

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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27629366

Re: AWS BugBust

#78
post #33

LOL. Developers are so gullible. It would be cute if it weren’t so tragic. They’re giving out t shirts and jackets for 10s of thousands of $ worth of work and we’re lapping it up. Vogels openly said it helps AWS customers reduce “costs”, he’s not even trying to hide it

It’s the meme of the “rise and grind guy”. They believe there’s some magical reward for “hard work” built into the universe. Tragic really is the word.

Re: AWS BugBust

#80
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, the bug buster benefits if they get up high on the leaderboard, because job recruiters will most likely use the leaderboard for lead gen. If you're looking to make a job move, moving up on the leaderboard will help. I already get plenty of recruiting inbound without having to donate my time to fix bugs for Internet Points. What you're saying is that this is a worthy use of time for people because they'll mayb…

> I already get plenty of recruiting inbound without having to donate my time to fix bugs for Internet Points. You're not the target audience. And also, you wouldn't be donating your time. The whole point is that a company puts up a contest for their own employees, who are presumably getting paid to participate.

So by participating in this, a company is making their own employees more attractive to recruiters?
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