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I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

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Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#121

Post by Retric »

yard2010 wrote: post #103
Retric wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, in 2016 there was several off the shelf options for doing the exact same thing. It’s a perfect example of a young engineer feeling a huge accomplishment from reinventing the wheel, and then realizing the clever solution wasn’t actually worth anything like the effort required to create it. I had a long conversation to convince someone not to go down that path in 2006, and I am sure someone’s going to do it in…

I would say what you talk about is experience. To have an experience, you must go this path to realize what to not do. It feels like a catch 22 kind of thing.

Doing it well comes down to experience, but doing it at all comes down to asking which of your unconscious assumptions are hard requirements. Nobody is actually saying you have skills X, Y, Z, which you must use to solve this problem, which is a huge difference from how schools prepare people for the workforce.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#122

Post by fader »

erulabs wrote: post #23

I read this article looking forward to the complex bespoke code to be ripped out and deleted - but the author clearly grew as an engineer in a way I didn’t expect: > Sometimes that’s just how it is. The devops saying “Cattle, not pets” is apt here: code (and by proxy, the products built with that code) is cattle. It does a job for you, and when that job is no longer useful, the code is ready to be retired. If you tre…

> My entire career is effectively to sit in meetings and tell young, passionate engineers not to build things. It’s a bit depressing, but it’s also vital.

This was the single most impactful thing I learned in my early career. I was building out monitoring systems for an in-house service we hosted on site. My boss wanted to buy some small utility to keep tabs on some minor aspect of our environment. I was a bit offended -- I could have written that myself and here he was paying someone else to do it!

He asked: "How long would it take you to write and test this?" Me: "Probably a week. Maybe a bit less, maybe a bit more if I run into something tricky." Him: "Okay. This tool will cost us $500 to buy. What's your hourly pay rate for 40 hours?"

With this I achieved enlightenment. I've never again built something at work that I could buy cheaper.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#123

Post by DrDroop »

abeppu wrote: post #59

I'm confused about the circular reference thing. Like, was there a reason to do the linear regression that way? Is there a secret story in a story where next week, in a spinoff / sequel episode, the data scientist responsible will explain why they took the weird/surprising choices they did?

I didn't know you could do this in excel but it reminded me of the converge adverb in k: https://xpqz.github.io/kbook/Adverbs.html#converge-f-f

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#124

Post by contravariant »

m00x wrote: post #119
sublinear wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the opposite. Software written off the clock that does not compete with the employer is not only not the property of the employer, but any contract attempting to gain such ownership is unenforceable. Many businesses even actively encourage their developers to contribute to open source projects.

That's if they didn't use any resources from their employer. If that code touched their work laptop (which it did since he showed it), it's now company property. That code most likely belongs to Uber legally, but they probably don't care that much.

Even if it didn't touch any company resources the company just needs to be able to claim it was created within the scope of their employment or as part of the work they were hired to make.

Which is, you know, hard to argue against if you wrote the code during your employment and copied it into the code base you were hired to work on.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#126

Post by mock-possum »

continuitylimit wrote: post #24
bastawhiz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. The code was originally written outside of work hours. I offered the code to Box and they didn't want it. If Uber wants a few thousand lines of JavaScript from over half a decade ago that didn't originate with them and that they used for less than a month, they can send me a letter.

So come on man, let’s be honest here. I got serious sacred masterpiece vibes from this story. This reminds me of some Hindu parable about people who let go of possessions and head out to become ascetics. So there is this wealthy man and wife and the wife is all upset because her brother keeps insinuating that he’s gonna go ascetic and cut loose. The husband tells her to stop her crying and don’t worry about it, he ai…

What an utterly bizarre story. What’s the point of it? Why is the wife upset about her brother? Why is the husband so sure the brother won’t do it? What’s the significance of his little performance at the end? Why is the wife the husband’s mother, what does that have to do with anything, considering the issue is with the wife’s brother? Why don’t we get to see what the wife’s reaction to the husband’s stunt is - is she convinced by his actions, or is she as baffled as i am?

Did I just fall for a chat gpt generated nonsense fable?

What is going on here!

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#127

Post by blincoln »

JohnMakin wrote: post #94

Reading this and having China cloud experience on my resume I wonder how many chinese data laws they may have violated, you have to really strictly segregate data when it comes to chinese users.

I was wondering the same thing, especially since it arguably involves mapping/geolocation information.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#128

Post by Alupis »

Clamchop wrote: post #88
pc86 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which likely means your "free time" code you decided to do to make your job easier now belongs to your employer since they asked you to write it (albeit indirectly in this situation). Especially when you have problem A at work, then some time later write "generic code" that solves problem A, then some time later "import" the code to your dayjob to solve problem A. And double so if nobody else ever uses this generic…

Ethically, I'm not sure how to slice it. I'm operating on what you wrote here rather than this specific story. Some contracts stipulate that anything you write while employed is owned by your employer. (I'm settled in that this is unethical, but it's reasonable to comply.) But let's suppose there's no such stipulation. You get an idea while at work. Everyone gets ideas. You take your brain home with you (I hope) and…

There would be a difference between you publishing your code to a public repository, under a permissive license and then allowing your company to fork the codebase and do whatever with it. Under this situation, the author retains copyright, and the company has the option to decline use of the licensed code.

That is different than solving common business problems at home, then when asked to solve them at work just copy/pasting those solutions and assuming you retain rights. Contributing that to your employer under that situation is no different than just working on salary - and you have not given the employer the option of rejecting those contributions.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#129

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

fader wrote: post #122
erulabs wrote: post #23

I read this article looking forward to the complex bespoke code to be ripped out and deleted - but the author clearly grew as an engineer in a way I didn’t expect: > Sometimes that’s just how it is. The devops saying “Cattle, not pets” is apt here: code (and by proxy, the products built with that code) is cattle. It does a job for you, and when that job is no longer useful, the code is ready to be retired. If you tre…

> My entire career is effectively to sit in meetings and tell young, passionate engineers not to build things. It’s a bit depressing, but it’s also vital. This was the single most impactful thing I learned in my early career. I was building out monitoring systems for an in-house service we hosted on site. My boss wanted to buy some small utility to keep tabs on some minor aspect of our environment. I was a bit offend…

> This tool will cost us $500 to buy. What's your hourly pay rate for 40 hours

This argument makes sense, but I worry that it’s a bit short-sighted. There are a lot of metrics that are hard to quantify where it might end up better: for one thing, I’ve found that integration costs and maintenance of integration of third-party systems are routinely underestimated: I’ve implemented “buy” for various systems where the work to integrate was essentially the work to build. The cost of learning a proprietary toolset rather than developing experience with open tools. The cost to the industry as a whole when something like AWS or React becomes the unreflective default choice.

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