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My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

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Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#131

Post by Mavvie »

lmm wrote: post #102
anyfoo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Transactions are inherently useless in a web service, for example, because you can't open the transaction on the client, so the part of the system where the vast majority of consistency issues happen (the client server communication) will always be outside the transaction boundary. I think I need more help understanding this. In terms of ACID, a consistency issue is something like, for example: "The client ordered…

> In terms of ACID, a consistency issue is something like, for example: "The client ordered an item, and the count of item availability was reduced by 1, but no actual order was saved in the database. An item is now 'lost' with no trace of where it went and how it disappeared." > There is even another consistency hazard right in this very example: "The count of item availability was supposed to be reduced by 2 becaus…

How can eventual consistency handle the inventory use case as well as an ACID system? You can't tell the user "your order is placed successfully" and then later tell them "actually no, it was out of stock".

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#132

Post by neilv »

This could be one of those big-corporate situations:

1. Someone pays a lot of money for something.

2. It turns out to be the wrong thing (either for new needs, or because they didn't consult or listen to the people who could've told them that in time).

3. Someone wants to avoid the political backlash of admitting they bought the wrong thing.

4. The org incurs much more costs than actually fixing the situation would cost, as people have to use the wrong thing and/or can't use the right thing. (Costs from lost productivity, lower quality/uptime, damaged morale, etc.)

(But what I really want to know is... Why did "The Division 2" not build upon "The Division", but instead make you start a new character, and then be more of a selling-brightly-colored hats game? Also, TD1's gritty survival mode was the most compelling gameplay of the franchise, IMHO.)

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#133

Post by MikePlacid »

neilv wrote: post #132

This could be one of those big-corporate situations: 1. Someone pays a lot of money for something. 2. It turns out to be the wrong thing (either for new needs, or because they didn't consult or listen to the people who could've told them that in time). 3. Someone wants to avoid the political backlash of admitting they bought the wrong thing. 4. The org incurs much more costs than actually fixing the situation would c…

> This could be one of those big-corporate situations

Nothing specifically “big” here. Can happen in a corporation of any size. We were not very big, when we bought Siebel software…

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#134

Post by dijit »

neilv wrote: post #132

This could be one of those big-corporate situations: 1. Someone pays a lot of money for something. 2. It turns out to be the wrong thing (either for new needs, or because they didn't consult or listen to the people who could've told them that in time). 3. Someone wants to avoid the political backlash of admitting they bought the wrong thing. 4. The org incurs much more costs than actually fixing the situation would c…

> Why did "The Division 2" not build upon "The Division",

Four main reasons, you can argue if they are "that big of a deal" but ultimately they were. Please also remember that Division 2 was made in 2 years, and Div 1 was made in 7.

1) Clean slate of the architecture built on google cloud meant that connecting in to the datacenters in Montreal would have been very time consuming to get right.

2) The Division 1 continued, so a migration would have had to have some pretty clearly defined semantics, do we sync both the backends constantly? Do we fork your character? Do we stop your previous account from working. Forking sounds like the right thing until you realise you can't fork again. :\

3) We would have to carry over every single item from the Division 1, most of which do not make sense in the setting.

4) We'd have to have a clear upgrade path for your binary save game (from a moving target as Div1 was still getting updates!)

But it was a topic that was discussed at great length.

> Also, TD1's gritty survival mode was the most compelling gameplay of the franchise

Yeah, I really liked that, I wish we could have released it as a standalone game, especially as it came out in the height of BR and for me it hit similar themes.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#135

Post by bombcar »

nickpeterson wrote: post #51
bombcar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heat death of the universe is eventually consistent.

Let’s hope our Kafka topics are caught up in time!

Heat death of the universe has been postponed until Jira can be updated.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#136

Post by neilv »

dijit wrote: post #134
neilv wrote: post #132

This could be one of those big-corporate situations: 1. Someone pays a lot of money for something. 2. It turns out to be the wrong thing (either for new needs, or because they didn't consult or listen to the people who could've told them that in time). 3. Someone wants to avoid the political backlash of admitting they bought the wrong thing. 4. The org incurs much more costs than actually fixing the situation would c…

> Why did "The Division 2" not build upon "The Division", Four main reasons, you can argue if they are "that big of a deal" but ultimately they were. Please also remember that Division 2 was made in 2 years, and Div 1 was made in 7. 1) Clean slate of the architecture built on google cloud meant that connecting in to the datacenters in Montreal would have been very time consuming to get right. 2) The Division 1 contin…

Thank you! (And thank you for contributing to great games!) It's good to hear that the question was taken seriously, even if I might've preferred the decision going a different way.

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#137

Post by MikePlacid »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #81
nickpeterson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re telling me if one writes a plug-in that integrates with source control checkins and provides these summaries plus an additional terser summary to nontechnical users, I wonder if companies would buy that?

The obvious problem with this is that you'd be sending all your (presumably proprietary) source code directly to ChatGPT, i.e. OpenAI, i.e. Microsoft, with a dubiously vague license to use it to improve the ChatGPT product. I can't think of a single company I or someone I know has worked at that has a security department/person that would allow this. Maybe very small businesses wouldn't care that much?

I absolutely do not envy any team who would steal our source code. No, it’s not bad and is rather self-documented, but the amount is huge and it’s all inter-connected. What use can they extract from it?

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#138

Post by NikolaNovak »

bg24 wrote: post #129
NikolaNovak wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is definitely possible they indeed don't do anything. Fwiw though - a decade ago when I was a sysadmin I had a manager that I was certain never did anything. And then he was replaced. And then... We realized how much politics, uncertainty, churn, screaming, changing requirements, ambiguous priorities and other carp he protected us from :-/ Not saying it's the case with your manager. But managers have duties roles…

While I agree with your assessment, the lifespan of such companies (lot of red tape) will get shorter and shorter.

Possibly.

One of the lessons I've learned though is that.. It's not all red tape and inefficiency. Big light bulb moment for me was realizing that users, customers, stakeholders, clients, etc, simply and validly may have different priorities and goals. That's not necessarily disfunction. We are not ants. But it's the manager's job, not sysadmin or coders, to resolve those different goals and help provide unambiguous and stable requirements to the team. This may not immediately be obvious as contributing value to a person building a server or coding a function. It certainly wasn't to me... Until it didn't happen anymore :-)

Re: My manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used

#139

Post by NineStarPoint »

rqtwteye wrote: post #50
nickpeterson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the role of managers should be facilitating productivity. If things are in peoples way, help them.

In reality in most larger companies managers mainly do reporting. There is not much emphasis on productivity.

My experience with good managers at large companies is they do a lot of work to make sure the rest of the company doesn’t get in the way of their developers. Which yes, mostly involves a lot of reporting and meetings with other people on the company. But it probably is more important for the productivity of their reports than what managers do at smaller companies, even if it seems like it accomplishes nothing.
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