221–230 of 287 posts
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> does an attorney help you write code? That does not sound like the right question. How about: have we vetted our dependencies' licenses?
Why would someone go to the effort of republishing dependencies?
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> I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago where/when did Netflix go wrong? curious to hear from insiders
I don't know if anything went wrong afterwards. I left in 2014, so I only spoke for what I saw when I was there.
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Would you describe your work at large companies as "intoxicating"?
Absolutely. The most exciting work I’ve done that has literally changed our world was done at systemically important multinational megacorps, where we created environments of unfettered innovation and an assembled teams of amazing individuals working as a coherent team. I had some really great leaders early in my career that showed it’s not only possible it’s the only way to enjoy any role at any company no matter th…
I'm not persuaded anyone is in a position to know that there's only one way for people to enjoy work, and to know what that one way is.
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> The arguments are entirely false: ex N^2 communication. No team depends on every [other] team in the org. From the article: "You can’t just work on whatever you want; coordinating would be an O(N^2) communication mess." Evidently, you're agreeing with the article. So which part is false then?
That coordinating is a quadratic mess, because no task requires bidirectional communicating with everyone else. I also disagree with all the other points they make about large companies. Not that there exists teams in large companies that suffer these issues, but that there exists no teams in large companies that don’t have these issues. I further extended it to say startups also aren’t without issue, and many are to…
Whenever I read something like this I roll my eyes and assume the person writing it is either pretty junior or the specific founder type who has weirdly dysfunctional expectations about why their employees work for them. I think a lot of this stems from the bizarre culture of the SF tech world, but outside that bubble people do not really think about their jobs in this way. I emphasize _job_ here. The best devs I've…
I'll raise your spark for complete destruction. Here's an incomplete list that I keep around of the mechanisms that I've observed so far that have played a big part in the decline/destruction of an engineering team (and product thereof): 1. Too-technical leaders: As startup scales, there can sometimes be a mad dash to fill new leadership roles (e.g. VP of Eng, Arch, CTO, etc.). Super-star engineers present at startup…
After 25 years in the full range of IC and management positions, I'm convinced there's no substitute for expertise, maturity and judgement. I could come up with some rules of thumb (eg. ICs need the maximum amount of agency they are capable of handling), but every rule has its exception. Distilled wisdom is easily misinterpreted, taken out of context, and cargo culted by those with insufficient experience to apply it…
The surprising/unfortunate thing is that dysfunctional unproductive organizations can survive and even thrive. There isn't an obvious cause and effect and the time it takes until effects are seen can be measured in years or decades.
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Why would someone go to the effort of republishing dependencies?
Can you have a gplv3 dependency and licence your project under bsd
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I honestly think the book is so bad that it's not worth a lengthy critique, but in short: 1. Dalio doesn't understand what a "principle" is -- but I can understand that "Aphorisms, Cliches and Hunches" is a less arresting title, if much more accurate. (See [0] for a fuller review on this.) 2. Dalio's version of Bridgewater doesn't line up with the experience of others -- which I have heard from so many people as to c…
I agree that his descriptions are less "principles" and more like "heuristics". The overall message of the book, as the referenced reviewer points out, is "do what's sensible." As someone so young, what is sensible to me is not obvious, so I find value in this. What, in your opinion, defines what is sensible in business and leads to your frustration with Dalio's message? Can you give personal anecdotes?
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMGAtxUlAc
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Wow that's so cool but makes sense! Is it not like that there anymore? They still hire experienced engineers, so I wonder what changed? As an aside, is there any low hanging fruit / interesting work left to do at Netflix?
It was a very very special place to work for a time. Everything changes, though, and I will leave it to say the Netflix I left early this year was a completely different place from the one I joined almost 8 years ago.
I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago when it was still small. They hired mature people so they could get rid of processes. Indeed, they actually tried to de-process everything. As a result, things just happened. Non-event was often mentioned and expected in Netflix at that time. Case in point, active-active regions just happened in a few months. A really easy to use deployment tool, Asgard, just happ…
> I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago where/when did Netflix go wrong? curious to hear from insiders