The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon

#21

Post by morelisp » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

bdamm wrote: post #12

leoh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do services talk to each other without an API? Is it something like "put a non-well-documented object into a queue?"

Call out to a shell? Pass structs between C-based programs using sockets? Use runtime marshalling? Make your "API" be just different arbitrary JSON objects mapping to maps? Hide the entire API behind a lazy cache with undocumented side effects when cache misses occur? I wouldn't consider any of these "API"s although they are interfaces.

> Make your "API" be just different arbitrary JSON objects mapping to maps?

But enough about the web...

Re: The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon

#22

Post by williesleg » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

Bezos has a time machine. Only way to explain it.

Re: The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon

#23

Post by prepend » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

I wish the actual body of the email was available and published. I’ve only read Yegge’s account of the note and didn’t see it in any of Bezos’ books.

I suppose it’s nice that the email, or really any amazon emails, has not been leaked.

Re: The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon

#24

Post by degenerate » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

FrojoS wrote: post #3

Something like Conway’s Law was also recently cited by Elon Musk (jump to 3:30) https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/dbttaw/everyd...

Direct link to 3:30: https://youtu.be/cIQ36Kt7UVg?t=206

Re: The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon

#25

Post by closeparen » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

leoh wrote: post #5

Twirrim wrote: post #2

Yegge's post was very interesting reading, and I took similar learnings away from it. I was at Amazon at the time, however, and there were things that certainly weren't true any more: >3) There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team’s data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service inte…

How do services talk to each other without an API? Is it something like "put a non-well-documented object into a queue?"

My company increasingly understands "platform" to mean "codebase to build your feature into" rather than "API to consume from your own codebase."

Re: The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon

#26

Post by busterarm » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

Reading Bezos' mandate email puts a smile across my face, every time.

Re: The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon

#27

Post by arkitaip » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

If you use an adblocker like uBlock Origin, you can add the following rule: news.ycombinator.com##.pagetop

Unfortunately it removes ALL of the top navbar but I've found it really useful to get around HN's damaging and useless gamification metric.

Re: The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon

#28

Post by thrwaway647 » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #4

> 6) Anyone who doesn’t do this will be fired. So I've never worked at a company over 150 people. Is this... a normal thing for an email? Maybe I'm just one of those softies but an email with that line would throw me off my day and cause a serious hit to my morale and confidence of working there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the actual email is neither quoted directly nor linked in the post.

Re: The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon

#29

Post by michaelcampbell » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

jeffbarr wrote: post #9

Waterluvian wrote: post #4

> 6) Anyone who doesn’t do this will be fired. So I've never worked at a company over 150 people. Is this... a normal thing for an email? Maybe I'm just one of those softies but an email with that line would throw me off my day and cause a serious hit to my morale and confidence of working there.

I strongly believe that Steve was exaggerating for effect here. In my 17 years at Amazon I have never seen or heard of a threat of this nature. The overall intent of the email was to tell teams to decouple, decentralize, and to own their own destinies.

Yes, IIRC in Steve's original blog post he points out that that particular point was not in Bezos' email and notes he put it in there for dramatic effect.

Re: The 2002 mandate for internal communication systems at Amazon

#30

Post by myself248 » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:00 PM UTC

morelisp wrote: post #15

leoh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do services talk to each other without an API? Is it something like "put a non-well-documented object into a queue?"

A queue if you're lucky! There's also: - Hire an intern / "Customer Service Representative" / "Technical Account Specialist" to manually copy data from one service into another - Dump some file in a directory and hope something is treating that directory like a queue - Read/write from the same database (/ same table) Or the classic Unix trajectory of increasingly bad service communication: - Read/write from the same…

> rowhammering the data you want into the next job

This wouldn't quite fit the "obfuscated C" contest, but I feel like there should be a prize for a system that does useful work this way.