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OneTrust lays off 25% Workforce

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Re: OneTrust lays off 25% Workforce

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a certain level of complexity, necessary to support everything a large company does at their scale, simply mindlessly churning out more code actually makes things worse not better. The big question is how to do something and not the actual work of doing it. Bringing down Facebook for a day due to a bad config is going to cost more money than a century of someone writing code.

>Facebook for a day due to a bad config is going to cost more money than a century of someone writing code. I simply don't believe this is true. Its one of those things that has become "fact" through repetition. I don't think there is even a way it could be proven if you wanted to. I don't think amazon loses $X millions if the site is down for an hour. I think people just say oh its down and come back later and buy e…

The reason they aren’t down more is because they have systems and processes to keep them up. It generally requires multiple failures for them to go down in any meaningful way.

That being said if your service went down for 24 hours because of a bad code change, it probably means and your service goes down a lot. Because whatever caused that 24hr outage probably points to a systemic lack of process and discipline within the organization.

Re: OneTrust lays off 25% Workforce

#82

I'm always amazed with how big tech companies get in terms of employee count. I once wandered the engineering area of the HQ (with an employee) of a FAANG (MAANG sounds... silly) and made a tick mark on my notebook when I saw someone actually coding - or at least having code on screen. There were over 1200 people on the development team and at the time most worked out of HQ. So... when I was done walking, I had 22 ti…

At a certain level of complexity, necessary to support everything a large company does at their scale, simply mindlessly churning out more code actually makes things worse not better. The big question is how to do something and not the actual work of doing it. Bringing down Facebook for a day due to a bad config is going to cost more money than a century of someone writing code.

A classic rant on the subject: Steve Yegge's "Code's Worst Enemy:"

https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/12/codes-worst-enemy.h...

Re: OneTrust lays off 25% Workforce

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook does not make money selling physical items though, it makes money on page views and clicks. If the site is down, they lose all of those ad views and clicks, they are gone because the time needed to view them and all of the other ads is gone.

I have not worked in the ad space so I'm certainly ignorant of the day to day mechanics. How can you prove that the people didn't just come back 6 hrs later and spend the same time clicking and viewing the same ads? Just in a different timeframe? Is the cost of an ad at 6PM really that much greater than at 10PM? IME SLA's rarely pay out enough to really make it worth pursuing. However I have gotten a couple payouts f…

Think the extreme case - what if the site is down for a whole month, a whole day? Then you can understand.

Another way: you have nothing else to do at the time. so you might click the ads. But now the site is down, there is no ads for you to click.

Re: OneTrust lays off 25% Workforce

#84

I'm always amazed with how big tech companies get in terms of employee count. I once wandered the engineering area of the HQ (with an employee) of a FAANG (MAANG sounds... silly) and made a tick mark on my notebook when I saw someone actually coding - or at least having code on screen. There were over 1200 people on the development team and at the time most worked out of HQ. So... when I was done walking, I had 22 ti…

Most of these jobs hire software engineers, not programmers. The job is more than coding.

Software engineering is writing technical design docs. Gathering business requirements. Gathering technical requirements. Negotiating with stakeholders like InfoSec, legal and accounting. Discussing user research and new features with UX practitioners. Etc.

Re: OneTrust lays off 25% Workforce

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say firing 25% would be enough assuming you start from the top down. User hostile software usually hostile by design.

I don't think firing 25% would be enough. Ultimately the entire purpose of the company is to provide a solution that allows companies to pseudo-comply with the GDPR without actually complying. Actual compliance would require removing all the trackers & other bullshit and then you no longer need a "consent management platform", therefore this company ceases to exist and 100% of the employees are let go. If you ask peo…

Yeah, my remark was based on the presumption that there would be a viable product without all the lying and cheating. You’re probably right there isn’t.

Re: OneTrust lays off 25% Workforce

#87

I'm always amazed with how big tech companies get in terms of employee count. I once wandered the engineering area of the HQ (with an employee) of a FAANG (MAANG sounds... silly) and made a tick mark on my notebook when I saw someone actually coding - or at least having code on screen. There were over 1200 people on the development team and at the time most worked out of HQ. So... when I was done walking, I had 22 ti…

Its almost like the practice of software engineering in a large organization involves (much) more than writing code?

Everywhere I've worked (including for MAANG companies), software engineering was best done by a combination of three things, listed in priority order:

A) thinking

B) programming

...

Z) meetings

The meetings contained something useful maybe 1/10th of the time, lasted maybe 4x longer than they should have, and involved maybe 20x more people than they should have. Those numbers skew higher the larger the organization.

Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.

Re: OneTrust lays off 25% Workforce

#89

I often wonder how companies like this exist. Their "Market" isn't really a market but forced government regulation. I suppose its all sweethart deals, kickbacks, lobbying for contracts, and fedramp. Having 4000 employees for what is essentially streamlining the process of filling out government paperwork seems absurd to me. Don't misunderstand I've delt with compliance and know very well how much a headache it is an…

Their "Market" isn't really a market but forced government regulation.

Regulatory compliance is a huge, stable, market. (IDK anything about the specifics of this company, just pointing out that government regulation creates markets.)

Re: OneTrust lays off 25% Workforce

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook does not make money selling physical items though, it makes money on page views and clicks. If the site is down, they lose all of those ad views and clicks, they are gone because the time needed to view them and all of the other ads is gone.

I have not worked in the ad space so I'm certainly ignorant of the day to day mechanics. How can you prove that the people didn't just come back 6 hrs later and spend the same time clicking and viewing the same ads? Just in a different timeframe? Is the cost of an ad at 6PM really that much greater than at 10PM? IME SLA's rarely pay out enough to really make it worth pursuing. However I have gotten a couple payouts f…

I mean there was an article yesterday about people not buying/playing GTA5 because of a 5 minute load time.

Commercial web sites lose money when they are down. This is obvious to everyone.

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