661–670 of 1001 posts
A lot of dumb stuff gets greenlit because someone put a lot of attention and effort into making power point presentations, and no one wants to be the guy that says: this is a load of crap.
Seems a little off to be calling out perf metrics when the whole system hasn't found product-market fit yet
> [edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization's performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling tool.] as someone who spends a lot of time…
I think the 5% was a metaphor for how the org is barely able to utilize its resources. Also wouldn't React JS/TS be an instance where you are fully utilizing resources? Not from a raw machine performance standpoint, but from a developer efficiency standpoint. Using nested for loops instead of a series of JS array functions is way more efficient but it is not even close to worth it. Machines are so powerful these days…
i work with canvas rendering and 2M-datapoint arrays, so for me it's almost always worth it. but yes, for < 1K elements it isn't. i wrote a 4x faster version of _.groupBy() recently to process our datasets. is a hand-rolled function worth it for 100 elements? not really, but that's not our use case. so, as with everything in life, it depends!
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Throwaway because it could be easy to identify my position from my normal account name. Carmack is many thing, engineering genius above them. However, he would frequently wade into areas where he had no experience, demand others do what he said, ignore evidence he was wrong, bully people, and disparage entire teams who were doing good, and in some cases legally required, work. When data proved his idea was wrong, he…
HN is all about that cult of personality, we want to believe in heroic programmers (or founders) who singlehandedly change the world with their geinus clarity. Paul Graham said this, John Carmack said that and we lap it all up. It's been this way since the ancient times, and the stories of Hercules and Theseus. We mythologize these personalities, and in our mind they become demigods. But there's a reason the folk wis…
PG has been an inspiration but he gets things wrong all the time. Most famous Silly Valley leaders are people I’d steer well clear of.
"I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage" One of the most important things an organization can have is a "no man". A project that I was involved in when I worked at Google was completed on time primarily because we had a very senior (DE level) engineer tangentially involved in the project. He was near the end of his career, and he just didn't give a f* about politics. He'd sit in design…
Definitely depends on the person. The amount of projects I’ve worked on that were dismissed by such people done anyway and invariably became the saving of the team/org/company is laughable. These always took longer as they were under resourced and the people working on it did because of belief not because it was good for their status in the company. The hallmark of these is the last minute surge in resourcing when ma…
That's intriguing. I would love some examples of these projects / products.
> The hallmark of these is the last minute surge in resourcing when management figures out they got it wrong.
Got what wrong? That they've heard the yeas and nays and chosen to undertake the project sounds like mang got something right?
I think though the major skill at a large organization is not speed of delivery, or even amazing software, but getting everyone bought in, and rowing in the same direction. That's really hard, and 90% of it is emotional labor. That's actually what a Principal Eng or Director does at a big company. Then if you can actually turn the 'Death Star cannon' of a large org at something, it's really powerful. But it can certainly be an exhausting skill.
I think folks who are great software builders, that thrive at small companies can sometimes fail to appreciate those skills. Conversely, 'big company' people look at the crazy, yet productive, ways of small companies and roll their eyes at their lack of "maturity". Both sides require very unique skillsets, and I'm appreciating, often disjoint sets of people that thrive in both settings.
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I interpret this as strong circumstantial evidence that companies who start out as engineering centric and claims to be meritocratic eventually deteriorate into good ole nepotistic power play and a sea of bureaucracy. It’s quite entertaining to observe even John Carmack go through this very relatable frustration.
I see it more as the simple truth. There's only so much influence you can wield working one day a week as an executive advisor. By his own admission he could have steered things better if he'd been more involved, but he didn't want to be more involved. He's got his own startup to work on.
> By his own admission he could have steered things better if he'd been more involved
My reading is that back when he was full time, he was busy with actual product work and coding, and he could have possibly made a difference by going political, but there would have been no guarantee and it would have taken a lot of his time.
In very large organizations (>150 people) incentives shift dramatically because it becomes more valuable to engage in politicking than actually delivering value.
Carmack has perpetually worked in smaller orgs as an IC and has a reputation for being difficult (that is, a reputation for actually giving a shit).
Based on Bahcall's hypothesis, one potential solution would be to break the org into smaller units and create milestone based incentives like large team bonuses centered around performance bonuses