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What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

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Re: What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

#11

Post by tptacek »

malachismith wrote: post #5
chernevik wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems more likely that this was an Obama campaign advantage, rather than a Democratic party advantage. The translation over isn't obvious. From what I've heard their internal organization was pretty fluid. That kind of thing depends on the quality of people involved, their commonality of purpose, and the organizational culture. You can't box that and roll it over to party HQ. That said, Democrats do seem more like…

If you are resistent to change, it's hard to attract people who want to create change....

This sounds insightful but really isn't. It's the Republicans who want the most change right now. It's change in a direction most of us disagree with, but it's far more radical than the Democratic agenda.

The reality is that if there's a tech advantage held by the Dems, it's the product of much simpler demographics; youth, urban, educated.

Re: What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

#12

Post by malachismith »

tptacek wrote: post #11
malachismith wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are resistent to change, it's hard to attract people who want to create change....

This sounds insightful but really isn't. It's the Republicans who want the most change right now. It's change in a direction most of us disagree with, but it's far more radical than the Democratic agenda. The reality is that if there's a tech advantage held by the Dems, it's the product of much simpler demographics; youth, urban, educated.

You're talking retrograde change (a change back to a prior state). But yes... the demographics obviously favor the Dems when it comes to Tech.

Re: What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

#14

Post by saraid216 »

theevocater wrote: post #9

I think that what they accomplished is amazing, but remember that their goals were very different than your typical business. Their goals were to create something in a short amount of time with a really random group of people given a fairly short lifetime. The individual projects will live on, but the whole thing was shut down at the end of the campaign. A business is about sustainability. You are creating things tha…

> In that given, its not unusual that you want all of your employees to be able to work on various parts of the stack as focus changes or what not.

Isn't it? I'm a frontend dev. While I'm capable of digging into the backend and mucking around, it's not a typical part of my job. There are backend devs who I can talk to, who are writing Scala or Java rather than Javascript or Ruby, who can deal with problems faster and better than I could.

Changes of focus like what you describe seem to be typical of far more nascent companies. In that sense, Reed's team was like a startup: everyone had to be ultra-capable because they had to pick up anyone's slack at any time, just like a CEO of a ten-man group sometimes has to clean the kitchen or code a component that no one else has time to.

Re: What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

#15

Post by eli »

luc_perkins wrote: post #6
chernevik wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems more likely that this was an Obama campaign advantage, rather than a Democratic party advantage. The translation over isn't obvious. From what I've heard their internal organization was pretty fluid. That kind of thing depends on the quality of people involved, their commonality of purpose, and the organizational culture. You can't box that and roll it over to party HQ. That said, Democrats do seem more like…

I agree pretty strongly. I read, for example, that the Obama campaign expanded the Democratic Party's voter database by something like a factor of 10.

But the database (and accompanying tech platform) then gets cycled back into the hands of state and local parties, where it can be incredibly useful.

Re: What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

#16

Post by tomjen3 »

tptacek wrote: post #11
malachismith wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are resistent to change, it's hard to attract people who want to create change....

This sounds insightful but really isn't. It's the Republicans who want the most change right now. It's change in a direction most of us disagree with, but it's far more radical than the Democratic agenda. The reality is that if there's a tech advantage held by the Dems, it's the product of much simpler demographics; youth, urban, educated.

I do think the democrats have a technological advantage in this case, but it is far less solid than it may appear at first.

For simple demographic reasons the republicans cannot continue to focus on the old white anti homosexual segment of the population, since there aren't enough of them left to form a majority (projections suggest that Texas may turn blue by 2020, perhaps even 2016, if Texas turns blue then the Republicans will never again win the White House) and the other obvious alternative for the republicans is the young, well educated people who want and end to marihuana prohibition and less government interference in the lives in general.

Should the republican pivot to take these voters in, then they may very well attract a much larger share of tech people.

Re: What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

#17

Post by btilly »

chernevik wrote: post #4
ckluis wrote: post #2

Like it or not, the democratic party owns technology compared to republicans today.

It seems more likely that this was an Obama campaign advantage, rather than a Democratic party advantage. The translation over isn't obvious. From what I've heard their internal organization was pretty fluid. That kind of thing depends on the quality of people involved, their commonality of purpose, and the organizational culture. You can't box that and roll it over to party HQ. That said, Democrats do seem more like…

It seems more likely that this was an Obama campaign advantage, rather than a Democratic party advantage.

Judging from the emails I'm getting, Obama would like to turn it from a campaign advantage to a governing advantage (here are all of my current policy issues, please put pressure on Congress to do X, Y and Z), and if he succeeds in that he will undoubtably try to turn it into a party advantage in the future.

So yes, the organization is fluid and can evaporate. The database of possibly politically active people is much less fluid, and may prove to be a more durable advantage.

Re: What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

#18

Post by btilly »

tomjen3 wrote: post #16
tptacek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds insightful but really isn't. It's the Republicans who want the most change right now. It's change in a direction most of us disagree with, but it's far more radical than the Democratic agenda. The reality is that if there's a tech advantage held by the Dems, it's the product of much simpler demographics; youth, urban, educated.

I do think the democrats have a technological advantage in this case, but it is far less solid than it may appear at first. For simple demographic reasons the republicans cannot continue to focus on the old white anti homosexual segment of the population, since there aren't enough of them left to form a majority (projections suggest that Texas may turn blue by 2020, perhaps even 2016, if Texas turns blue then the Rep…

The Republicans are caught in their own gerrymander here.

As a party they absolutely need to find new issues, stop alienating Latinos, etc. However the national political lights in the party are mostly in Congress, and the vast majority of them are only going to face political challenges from their own right wing, and so have every reason to double down on current Republican policies even though it is not where the party as a whole needs to go.

I don't expect this dynamic to shift until after the Republican brand has so damaged itself that it stops being nationally viable. This will create soul searching, and cause them to pivot. What happens next will depend on how they pivot.

However I do not expect to see a serious discussion within the Republican party about their dilemma until they have pushed themselves to crisis. Which they have not done yet.

Re: What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

#19

Post by zecho »

jessaustin wrote: post #7
malachismith wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If, as the theory goes, the product structure mimics the organizational structure of the group that created the product - you could extend to situations like this. In which case, you would argue that until the GOP changes its (hierarchical and paternalistic) structure the tech advantage will continue.

The argument can go the other way as well, if your organization is not so hierarchical that it can't learn anything. Point at this episode as proof that when in direct competition, the organization that's open to multiple approaches and tests to discover what works, has a distinct advantage.

I forget exactly which postmortem article I read it in, but this was actually a problem solved between the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns. The 2008 technology, while still successful, was still too diffuse for top managers at the 2012 campaign and had no overarching hierarchy, so they worked quickly to fix that.

Re: What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming

#20

Post by Florin_Andrei »

tptacek wrote: post #11
malachismith wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are resistent to change, it's hard to attract people who want to create change....

This sounds insightful but really isn't. It's the Republicans who want the most change right now. It's change in a direction most of us disagree with, but it's far more radical than the Democratic agenda. The reality is that if there's a tech advantage held by the Dems, it's the product of much simpler demographics; youth, urban, educated.

It's not called "change" when it goes backwards in time.
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