OP is an example of how AI-generated images are usually clutter. Not only do the images not add anything meaningful to the text, and arbitrary parts of the images could be deleted or randomized without affecting the reader's understanding, most of them could be randomly shuffled without anyone noticing. (Which makes them worse then clipart/stockart: if an article swapped the 'hacker hoodie' stockart with the 'neural net brain circuit' stockart, some readers would at least briefly be confused.)
If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
31–40 of 126 posts
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#32I appreciate that they have a programming philosophy that they want people at the company to adopt. A common problem I see at companies that don't have onboarding is that people join the team with assumptions from previous jobs but you never level set them with the company. So 12 months down the line the new guy wants to change the process and you have to repeat the same discussions about what agile means for the nth…
> Amazon does not use relational databases Huh?
Relational databases are not the preferred storage mechanism at Amazon. If a team wants to use an OLTP relational database it’s possible that it will be a decision they will need to defend at any kind of design review.
Of course there are relational databases running OLTP workloads, but it’s far away from the norm. There was a program a while ago to shift many RDBMS systems onto something else.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#33What an amazing article on "de-FAANGing" the perverse org/incentive structure of most startup/tech places. Would love to see more of this type of leadership in the real world.
I like how he says he doesn't need FAANG level people. Then his next paragraph describes working at FAANG. "We’re an inverted organization. That means that tactical decisions are made by the people who are doing the work, not managers. (In theory, anyway, we’re not perfect.) So we’re looking for people who have peer leadership skills, who are great at teamwork, who will take ownership and make decisions on their own.…
Exactly right. People who have “leadership” skills are the ones that pay attention to their own leadership and are manage up more than anything else.
They usually repackage people’s work around them into their own, take ownership and defend loudly their territory (project ownership) and methodically build relationships with leadership. Having “leadership skills” and being good a team work are often orthogonal to each other.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#34Saying that you can’t measure productivity is a pseudo-truism and a cop out of doing your job.
How do you measure productivity = how do you decide whom to promote; how do you decide whom to fire; how do you decide how to distribute bonuses; etc.
If you can’t measure productivity, you can’t do your job as an engineering manager. It’s not a question that should have been asked 3 months into a job. It’s a question that should have been asked during the hiring interview.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#35There’s a weird disconnect because on the one hand I agree you can’t measure productivity and on the other hand we all know that some engineers are vastly more productive than others. So what gives?
Those are two different concepts hiding in similar words. You can't [numerically or precisely] measure productivity, but some engineers are vastly more productive [such that you can easily tell the difference without a formal measurement].
Gut feeling uses all your internal predispositions and biases.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad that it works for some people, but I did not like the forced pair programming in XP at all. And I found adherents to XP were even more cult like than Agile teams.
Does XP and pair programming actually require two people to be simultaneously working together at the same time? My understanding is that this includes one person who codes while another person looks at the results and reviews them afterward. The two are still working closely together and exchanging feedback, just at different points in the process in an iterative loop.
My understanding is that original meaning was that pair programming requires the pair work together at the same desk and machine.
With the ability to share screens/IDEs remotely the need to be at the same desk may have shifted, but working together is intrinsic to pair programming I believe.
The original text went into some detail about making the desk work for 2 people, and having screwdrivers available to do so, which for some reason always amused me.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#37What's the clickbait headline refer to? I can't find any mention of the company in a skim of the article.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#38Saying that you can’t measure productivity is a pseudo-truism and a cop out of doing your job. How do you measure productivity = how do you decide whom to promote; how do you decide whom to fire; how do you decide how to distribute bonuses; etc. If you can’t measure productivity, you can’t do your job as an engineering manager. It’s not a question that should have been asked 3 months into a job. It’s a question that…
I think I agree with you - definitely about the cop-out part. It's kind of the wrong question; it's not "how do you measure productivity?" but you have some hypothesis, "what do you optimize?" If you're right, it might help you win (maybe you win or lose regardless) and you get credit. If you keep experimenting, you might get better or worse, adjust and repeat.
I'm sick of these (implicitly) absolute measurement questions. I pretty much refuse to look at anything other than the delta.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Amazon does not use relational databases Huh?
Friends say they typically use Dynamo and that using a relational database requires approval from a vp (because of scaling concerns).
Related: Amazon kicked out Oracle from the company.
Somewhere along the same timeline, the operational recommendation for teams was to not use relational databases.
https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/16/amazon_ditches_oracle...
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#40There’s a weird disconnect because on the one hand I agree you can’t measure productivity and on the other hand we all know that some engineers are vastly more productive than others. So what gives?
I have an incredibly productive staff developer. Not only does he work a lot, he also produces, and it's very high quality.
He also does a relatively poor job of upskilling his teammates, and is a little rough when mentoring. This is not intentional (i.e. he's not a jerk).
Overall I don't know if, in the context of a staff developer, he's vastly more productive than say, another dev I have who produces less but levels-up his team better than almost anybody I've ever seen.