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So long, and thanks for all the bytes

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Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#101

Post by bitwize »

ghaff wrote: post #72
chaboud wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That must have been an amazing ride. Note: in my opinion, a small, lean, focused team is the right way to build an OS. I haven't seen the "throw an army at it" approach succeed for building the core of an OS or platform, as it becomes almost impossible to keep coherence in the system. And, yeah, that GMSCore joke is too real.

Maybe? How many people worked on the core of Windows NT? On a number of the big Unixes? Various minicomputer OSs? What you probably do need is a chief architect--like Cutler in the NT case--to keep everyone lined up.

The Mythical Man Month was literally written because Fred Brooks threw an army at the problem of writing an OS -- IBM's OS/360 -- then found it didn't work and decided to write down why it didn't work. His idea of an ideal software team he called the "surgical team" and your chief architect is the "surgeon" -- the one responsible for the major design decisions who calls all the shots. The surgeon and his team shouldn't exceed about ten people.

The Mythical Man Month is, like the Bible, one of those tomes that everyone cites with reverence, yet no one seems to read or follow the principles of. The ideal team from corporate's perspective is what I call the RAMP -- Redundant Array of Mid Programmers. The idea being that if you get a bunch of mid programmers together and have them constantly communicating, you can get the output of one good programmer without the risk of one good programmer, since you can always replace any of the mid programmers that fail or falter. But this approach has a number of drawbacks: you don't actually get the output of one good programmer this way, and you don't get the speed of one good programmer either. Furthermore, you run into the same problems you do with actual RAID: similar components tend to fail on similar timelines, so you end up having to replace all the components at around the same time anyway. Programmers tend to burn out, or quit and look for greener pa$ture$, after a few years, so you may end up losing a significant chunk, if not all, of your team at around the same time.

But if you're an organization with billions in the bank, you can remain idiotic for much longer periods of time than any of your people are willing to stick around for and attempt to positively change things.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#102

Post by jethro_tell »

ghaff wrote: post #39
Seanambers wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech pays so much, people can afford to move on. That's probably the biggest reason.

It's not most people or even most people in tech obviously. But I know a fair number of people in tech, especially post-pandemic, who reassessed things and decided they had enough money and really weren't enjoying their jobs any longer so they moved on.

I know a number of people that were true believers until the the pandemic. I think that as tech workers, we are generally really isolated from a lot of real problems people face. I remember having sick family members, kids that were out of school with nowhere to go and nothing to do and I could watch the weight of boardom and loneliness weighing on them and the additional responsibilities of having the kitchen stocked and open for 3 or 4 meals a day and then sitting there and listening to some shithead rambling on about a useless product and fake deadlines so someone I didn't know or care about could make 15% instead of 10% this year.

I kinda reassessed who is benefiting and the actual importance of a lot of the work you do. Even though it's all framed as 'mission driven' and 'Changing the world' a lot of it really is only important so some mega corp can make a couple extra points on their stock.

I've talked to a bunch of people in the industry that had similar realizations. I've heard things like 'it's not something I can do today, but in x years . . .'

I believe there were a lot of people who reassessed an have a different view and that is and will continue to change the trajectory of many tech careers over the coming decade.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#103

Post by agentgumshoe »

bitwize wrote: post #101
ghaff wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? How many people worked on the core of Windows NT? On a number of the big Unixes? Various minicomputer OSs? What you probably do need is a chief architect--like Cutler in the NT case--to keep everyone lined up.

The Mythical Man Month was literally written because Fred Brooks threw an army at the problem of writing an OS -- IBM's OS/360 -- then found it didn't work and decided to write down why it didn't work. His idea of an ideal software team he called the "surgical team" and your chief architect is the "surgeon" -- the one responsible for the major design decisions who calls all the shots. The surgeon and his team shouldn…

The other key factor is probably the person hiring/hiring being able to identify a 'good' programmer. Whether that's through their own competence or having some knowledge of the candidate outside their resume.

Speed to market is also a factor. If you pushing to release a new product, good engineers are very important. For big corporates with established marketshare and profits, it seems to be the thousand monkeys with typewriters approach

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#105

Post by agentgumshoe »

monero-xmr wrote: post #90
chaboud wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That must have been an amazing ride. Note: in my opinion, a small, lean, focused team is the right way to build an OS. I haven't seen the "throw an army at it" approach succeed for building the core of an OS or platform, as it becomes almost impossible to keep coherence in the system. And, yeah, that GMSCore joke is too real.

Small, lean, focused team is the correct way to build any massive undertaking in software. Maybe not in sending people to the moon, but in building consumer software.

Much like societies, there is no 'one way' to do it all.

Best is to really understand what you are trying to do in the first place.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#106

Post by chairhairair »

raphlinus wrote: post #20
adamgordonbell wrote: post #6

Chet's book on the early days of Android is super interesting. Lots of crazy OS building stories. He must have interviewed 50 people who worked on the first couple releases of Android. I had him share parts of that story on the podcast and result is one of my favorite episodes. I always thought of Android as, of course it succeeded, it was a big google project. But the story is far more interesting. They were somewha…

I joined Android in April 2012. Looking back, at that time Android was incredibly lean for what it was accomplishing. The entire Frameworks team reported to one manager, and we would fit in a medium size conference room. That included all of UI toolkit and the bulk of the Java APIs an app would call into, including Binder. (Networking, phone, graphics, Bluetooth, etc were other teams, but we worked closely together.…

Is there any animosity towards the later efforts to “professionalize” some of the early simpler Android APIs? I’m thinking specifically of some of the drama surrounding the banning of SharedPreferences.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#107

Post by slily »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #92
manmal wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revenue hasn’t fallen because devs were fired, but because people responsible for selling ads were.

No, I don't think that's what happend. If I remember correctly, he reduced the content moderation team, which led to an increase in hate speech, misinformation and CSAM. That's why big advertisers left and revenues crashed. He then told those big advertisers to piss off and refocused his advertising business on smaller customers, which is why he doesn't need so many ad sales people any more. Perhaps he should hire so…

The first line is the narrative of the MSM that's in bed with government censors and hate that it's no longer controlled by political interests. It is also directly contradicted by independent studies commissioned by Twitter. But speaking of "misinformation", people tend to parrot what they hear whether it's true or not. Thankfully on Twitter that is less effective, thanks to community notes.

Advertisers leaving is a combination of instability caused by Musk's impulsive decision-making, uninformed bandwagoning based on the perception projected by aforementioned MSM and parrots (AKA peer pressure), and the state of the economy combined with the above forcing them to reevaluate their investments. Advertisement revenue has been dropping everywhere as it turns out.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#108

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

This chap sounds like a really cool person. I probably would have loved working with him, and wish him the best.

I'll bet he gave great presentations. Having a good speaker, who can draw out laughs, makes any kind of presentation a joy.

I assume that he has banked enough to follow his muse, so he can remain in the SF area.

I happen to love tech, so, when I retired, I actually increased my coding fervor (I was a manager, before, so I left all that stuff behind).

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#109

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

yawz wrote: post #2

Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."

In my case, I dove deeper into tech, but I love this stuff. Since no one wants to work with a greyhair (no beard), I just do it for free, for folks that couldn't come close to affording the kind of work that I can do.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#110

Post by Buttons840 »

hnthrowaway6543 wrote: post #32
yawz wrote: post #2

Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."

Tangential to the article since that was a voluntary departure, but this is absolutely happening, yes. My partner decided to get "into tech" in ~2018. Her reason more or less amounted to looking at me and determining "it's a cushy job that pays very well." For a while, I tried pointing her to various sources to start learning a bit about software development and programming; there's no barrier to installing PyCharm C…

If the most valuable programmers have a personal interest in tech and use it as a hobby, then businesses will realize this and will look for people who do tech as a hobby or who go to hobbyist meetups, etc, and then people who just want the money will start going into the hobby spaces. I wonder how much more potent our industries could be if they were filled with only people who deeply cared, and everyone else just got a generous UBI?
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