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Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#201

Post by marcosdumay »

tyre wrote: post #91
bilsbie wrote: post #73

I had an interview question. What would you do if two different people were emailing a spreadsheet back and forth to track something? I said I’d move them to google sheets. There was about five minutes of awkwardness after that as I was interviewing for software developer. I was supposed to talk about what kind of tool I’d build. I found it kind of eye opening but I’m still not sure what the right lesson to learn was…

So my cofounder was talking to Stripe about an acquihire (this was after I’d left.) As part of it, he had to do a systems design interview. He got the prompt, asked questions about throughput requirements (etc.), and said, “okay, I’d put it all in Postgres.” He was correct! Postgres could more than handle the load. He gets a call from Patrick Collison saying that he failed the interview and asking what happened. He e…

Well, yes, doing the interview again is the right choice.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#203

Post by narvidas »

In full-time employment this is sad but true. There is a way out of this toxic loop however.

As a consultant/contractor I always evangelise simplification and modelling problems from first principles. I jump between companies every 6-12 months, cleaning up after years of complexity-driven development, or outright designing robust systems that anybody (not just the author) can maintain and extend.

This level of honesty helps you build a reputation. I am never short for work. I also bill more than I could ever as a full-time engineer based in Europe.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#204

Post by 1980phipsi »

nobleach wrote: post #152
bilsbie wrote: post #73

I had an interview question. What would you do if two different people were emailing a spreadsheet back and forth to track something? I said I’d move them to google sheets. There was about five minutes of awkwardness after that as I was interviewing for software developer. I was supposed to talk about what kind of tool I’d build. I found it kind of eye opening but I’m still not sure what the right lesson to learn was…

Way back when I was in IT Admin, I used to have this problem all the time. Some non-tech person emails a spreadsheet, another non-tech person edits it, and saves it. The original person complains that they can't see the changes. Yeah, because it's saved in some MS Windows Profile location that no sane human would ever visit. My solution was to ONLY email links to shared files on a shared resource. The LAST thing I'd…

I attach a copy of the file and then provide a network location for where it is located. Makes it easy for people to just open up a simple copy to look at it and they know where to go to access the original.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#205

Post by xivzgrev »

bilsbie wrote: post #73

I had an interview question. What would you do if two different people were emailing a spreadsheet back and forth to track something? I said I’d move them to google sheets. There was about five minutes of awkwardness after that as I was interviewing for software developer. I was supposed to talk about what kind of tool I’d build. I found it kind of eye opening but I’m still not sure what the right lesson to learn was…

Not an engineer but reminds me of a similar situation I've seen interviewing

Sometimes we'll ask market sizing questions. We will say it's a case question, it's to see their thought process, they're supposed to ask questions, state assumptions, etc.

Occasionally we'd get a candidate that just doesn't get it. They respond "oh I'd Google that". And I'll coach them back but they just can't get past that. It's about seeing how you approach problems when you can't just Google the answer, and we use general topics that are easily accessible to do so. But the downside is yes, you can google the answer.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#206

Post by bitmasher9 »

fluidcruft wrote: post #198
bilsbie wrote: post #73

I had an interview question. What would you do if two different people were emailing a spreadsheet back and forth to track something? I said I’d move them to google sheets. There was about five minutes of awkwardness after that as I was interviewing for software developer. I was supposed to talk about what kind of tool I’d build. I found it kind of eye opening but I’m still not sure what the right lesson to learn was…

Maybe you were supposed to identify what business need they were trying to solve and see if there was anything better than a spreadsheet? Spreadsheets are a tricky one some people like the power and automomy they have with spreadsheets. But more often spreadsheets are the only way to transfer data between solos and it wastes a lot of time and is error-prone.

It really depends on how much time is spent filling out the spreadsheet.

If they are collectively spending 1hr/mo on the spreadsheet then it’s not worth an SWE’s time to optimize it. If they are spending 4hr/day on the spreadsheet then it’s a prime candidate for automation.

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#208

Post by LPisGood »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #171
PKop wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it's a good answer and shows good instincts, but they still want to know how he would design a system if one was necessary. There's no need to be ridiculous about any of this from either perspective, which is why it should never have been a "fail" without the original interviewer simply saying "That's a solid answer now tell me what you would do if you had to build something new". I mean look how much time he was…

If the numbers can be satisfied by a Postgres then thats the correct answer. The interviewers fucked up, because they sized the problem wrongly. This is the same issue that was prevalent when the industry switched from HDD to SSD: some system design questions suddenly became trivial, because the IOPS went up by magnitudes. This is not a failure of the interviewees, who correctly went with the times, but a failure of…

What kinds of system design questions got destroyed?

Re: Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

#210

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

codingdave wrote: post #2

Sure they do. You just need to spell it out in business terms, not tech terms: "Reduced incidents by 80%", "Decreased costs by 40%", "Increased performance by 33% while decreasing server footprint by 25%" Simplicity for its own sake is not valued. The results of simplicity are highly valued.

And mostly these numbers are made up BS. But management will eat them up.
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