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Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

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Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#141

Post by pie420 »

gnicholas wrote: post #66

Another question: why does the feed reload when I go 'back' to it? This happens on the website and the app whenever I click into a link and then go back to the feed. It just spontaneously reloads! If I wanted to comment on the link or even just like the post, I can't (unless I remember who posted it, go to their profile, and go to their recent activity, which I almost never have the patience to do). I uninstalled the…

The answer is that A/B testing found that reloading the website/app drove more user engagement.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#142

Post by bcaxis »

rvba wrote: post #69
YouWhy wrote: post #14

TL;DR: There're few global incentives for a LinkedIn app developer to make an overall good app, as opposed to making their PM happy. In detail: This is how death by a thousand papercuts looks like. I've had the (dubious) pleasure of observing a roughly similar BigTech app project. There are likely 100s-1000s of app developers involved in the LinkedIn app, and they are likely under immense pressure to Just Ship Alread…

1) where are the architects? Arent they supposed to deal with such issues? 2) nobody measures such metrics: size, bloat, speed... 3) where are the code reviews? 4) nobody checks if the same library, same icon pack are not attached twice? 5) 1000 people? What do they even do? I suspect a lot of slides, politics and "high visibility projects" Meanwhile the product suffers. Companies sure talk a lot about ecology, then…

> nobody measures such metrics: size, bloat, speed...

Have you ever looked at the bloat of linkedin web? I've had tabs over 1GB memory use. Most bloated site I've ever used with any kind of regularity.

> Not related to Libkedin, but what is the carbon footprint of all electron-based apps that take hundreds of megabytes and gigantic amount of processor time?

I make an election app. It uses 70-80 mb of RAM when running. It's not that bad when you don't blow out your dependencies and code structure.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#143

Post by SkyPuncher »

oferzelig wrote: post #87

The short business answer is that it's currently not a metric that influences people's decision to install or uninstall an app. If it were one, we would've seen an engineering effort to reduce bloatware and duplications as seen in the post.

I'd conjecture even further. The most valuable users of LinkedIn, those with in-demand skills, are more likely to be running a high-spec'd device where they don't care about these issues.

On my phone, 500MB would put you as ~30 largest app on my phone. Those largest 30 include, messages (large attachments), photos app, music/media (downloaded for offline play) and a variety of junk games I never play.

I'd have to delete LinkedIn 40x to save the same amount of space as the dozen or so junk games I have on my phone.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#144

Post by kolme »

marticode wrote: post #81
eptcyka wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last thing I want is my phone or apps on it to automatically change locale depending on the GPS location.

In the case of Uber, the service they provide is highly dependent on where you are.

Localisation means in this context the translations, date and number formatting, currency, etc.

So no, that doesn't change depending on where you are.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#145

Post by dangus »

One of these lovely discussions again. I’m firmly on the devil’s advocate side here: some install bloat isn’t a big deal.

1. Believe it or not the LinkedIn app is huge in terms of the amount of things it does. It’s basically a super-app for professionals. News, social interactions, an entire chat app, a job board, recruiting and sales tools, etc. Of course it relies on a lot of frameworks.

2. You don’t need a “high end” phone or expensive data plan to have this size of install be reasonable. A brand new $159 Samsung A03s phone can take a 1TB SD card which itself only costs $60 from a reputable brand. You can get an unlimited data plan for $30/month from Mint mobile. Basically, the poorest consumer in the US can “afford” to install the app. Mobile download speeds in the US are far into the double digit Mbps. I’ve seen speeds go up into the hundreds of Mbps. Of course the option exists to have your apps update over WiFi automatically and use no mobile data at all.

3. Install Size != Slow performance. Grand Theft Auto V is a 100GB install on my computer, but it runs at a buttery smooth framerate on modest hardware.

4. Those criticizing LinkedIn for having a large development team that has to rely on frameworks rather than custom-building tightly integrated functionality are just on another planet entirely. The app is optimized for ease of development, not install size or perfect performance. LinkedIn isn’t going to hire a bunch of expensive, impossible to find 10X developers just to over-optimize their app so that somebody will notice that it only consumed 50MB of space instead of 500.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#147

Post by ToucanLoucan »

OtomotO wrote: post #31
klabb3 wrote: post #26

This is a perfect example of why the problem isn’t the stack, native vs web, or programming languages. I’ve been saying this for ages when people bash JS for being slow, or the web for being bloated. Yes, you pay a bit for the sandboxing, GC, rendering, built in accessibility. But that’s a rounding error when businesses, especially large ones, go on a PM-centric feature frenzy. You get out exactly what you put in. Pe…

> This is a perfect example of why the problem isn’t... Depends on how you frame the problem. If you declare the problem is that although batteries became way more efficient you don't get out more hours because they are wasted, then the story is a different one. Same when you don't have an abundance in RAM but are forced to use certain programs and applications. I have 64GB Ram these days, colleagues at clients of mi…

> there is undeniable truth that launching a whole browser engine for each and every app can be and indeed is wasteful compared to alternatives.

Wasteful and always, always a worse experience. I'm sorry if this ruffles feathers here or people feel called out, but I can FEEL the difference in these web-cruft apps every single time, full stop. I would Pepsi challenge this as many times as people want and I will eat my snow boots if I get it wrong.

If you make your app with web tools, I will not use it if I can conceivably manage doing so. And if I must, then I guarantee you I will do it as grudgingly and as little as I possibly can.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#148

Post by hbn »

dangus wrote: post #145

One of these lovely discussions again. I’m firmly on the devil’s advocate side here: some install bloat isn’t a big deal. 1. Believe it or not the LinkedIn app is huge in terms of the amount of things it does. It’s basically a super-app for professionals. News, social interactions, an entire chat app, a job board, recruiting and sales tools, etc. Of course it relies on a lot of frameworks. 2. You don’t need a “high e…

> Grand Theft Auto V is a 100GB install on my computer, but it runs at a buttery smooth framerate on modest hardware.

I mean you're not wrong that install size != slow performance, but GTA5 is a funny example for being the game that had 6 minute loading screens to start online mode until someone reverse engineered it and found it was mostly from parsing a giant 10MB JSON blob, and reduced the loading time by 70% with a small patch.

Very possible the bad priorities lead to both the ginormous install size and the fact that no one internal was tasked with fixing the load times.

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