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I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

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Re: I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

#61

Post by specialist »

varjag wrote: post #46
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about time, but focus as well. Other tasks might also be more critical to revenue generation. At the end of the day, there are always going to be some issues left by the wayside so I think you really have to pick your battles.

It's a 100% reproducible, mentally unchallenging, revenue impacting bug, which is frankly a rare combination. There is no excuse in not fixing it, unless you imply the thousands of Tinder devs are in core meltdown situation all the time.

Maybe they ran out those property list updating chisels.

Re: I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

#62

Post by jedberg »

varjag wrote: post #42
korla wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you vastly oversimplify how easy this fix is likely to be. For all we know this may mean touching code in multiple repos, each with hard-coded lists of which cards are supported for some case or another. At least that is what it would mean to change something like this where I am now.

Oh wow, editing a hard coded list. Does one need a chisel for that?

That is not how things work in the real world. Sure, the fix itself might take 30 minutes. But then you have to validate it. And run a canary. And crosscheck your revenue numbers to make sure it didn't have an adverse affect elsewhere.

That's a lot of work for something that will probably mean very little extra revenue.

Re: I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

#63

Post by IggleSniggle »

varjag wrote: post #42
korla wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you vastly oversimplify how easy this fix is likely to be. For all we know this may mean touching code in multiple repos, each with hard-coded lists of which cards are supported for some case or another. At least that is what it would mean to change something like this where I am now.

Oh wow, editing a hard coded list. Does one need a chisel for that?

Depending on the amount of technical debt, it could very well be a number of hard coded lists in a number of projects that may be under multiple teams and which may or may not include first party code. It’s not that fixes like this should be hard, it’s that sometimes they are hard despite themselves, for organizational reasons.

Edit: just for clarity, I’d love to fix this bug myself. I also have a million other easy fixes that I’d like to do and I have a manager to help me prioritize them.

Re: I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

#64

Post by misanthropic »

I remember when I tried to buy a DNA test at 23andme, and they failed to parse my email that was in a form xxx@yyy.zzz.org . They couldn't, and their support suggested using a hotmail address. That's where I got really suspicious of their overall competence, not only IT, and found another DNA test provider.

Re: I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

#65

Post by ballenf »

varjag wrote: post #38
smt88 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely understand why you see this as a 30-min fix, and therefore they should just knock it out. That's not how they would likely see it. If their devs are 100% utilized (which I'm sure they are), then fixing any issue -- even a 30-min one -- is going to mean that a different issue is delayed. The question becomes this: at what point is fixing this issue more valuable to the company than any other issue the sam…

You rationalize dysfunction into a strategy. It's not like they are doing Moon landing there 24/7. It's a simple bug with direct impact on the revenue. They should take a half hour break and fix it.

They didn't claim it wouldn't impact revenue. Just that there are probably bigger issues that impact more revenue that should be worked on first from a purely ROI point of view.

If and when this issue has a higher ROI than anything else, it should be worked on. The flow of new issues with higher ROI may prevent that from ever happening.

I think every developer can easily name 5+ minor bugs in a product they're working on that they know exist and know roughly how to fix, but may never get around to fixing. Or maybe I'm the weird or unlucky one, but that's been true of every production software I've ever worked on.

What can be argued strongly, I think, is that ROI calculation should take into account secondary effects such as the app's reputation in the country or the appearance of discriminating against a country.

Re: I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

#66

Post by IggleSniggle »

mhh__ wrote: post #39
nottorp wrote: post #22

At some point Linkedin changed their site from something that at least worked to some javascript that i can actually watch loading and assembling the page because it's so slow. And you expect ... support for internationalized domain names?

When this happens is it literally just companies trying to save money so they only need to hire JS developers? Or are static sites not webscale anymore? The web framework I use for my personal stuff just takes templates in and fills it with whatever a request requires, and it's definitely easier than dealing with JS wat-isms.

I think it’s more related to “tribes” than anything else. A great designer that can do passable js is going to be more valuable to a company on the front end, and a great dev that does quality work that will last for 5 years without refactoring is more valuable to a company on the backend, while a great “full stack” engineer is more valuable to the company helping multiple teams in a DevOps role. Not to mention that those folks will naturally gravitate towards those distinct roles.

Over time, the frontend design types will want more control over what they can and can’t do userland, and nobody else gives a damn because it doesn’t affect their day-to-day and in many cases makes their codebase cleaner / more “pure” because UI concerns get really messy for a variety of reasons.

It also generally feels safest to a company to put junior programmers on the frontend where even if they mess something up, at least the whole underlying system won’t be hosed. That allows juniors and mids to build chops more rapidly.

Anyway that’s all just my anecdata / speculation.

Re: I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

#67

Post by Tainnor »

Some people here are claiming that it's just not worth for big companies to invest in such "niche" bugs for "small markets".

But I think it's more than that.

I think many US-based companies seriously underestimate difficult issues such as localisation or fail to understand phenomena such as multilingualism. I think this creates a lot of problems for international markets, but somehow these problems are probably not very visible.

For example, why is it that I can't see reviews in multiple languages on the Play Store? This would be valuable information both for customers as well as for developers who speak multiple languages.

Re: I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

#68

Post by josteink »

dandare wrote: post #5

+1 for leading me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode , I had no idea this monstrosity exists :)

I have a few such domains registered for (valid!) vanity domains and emails.

Amount of people using them? Slim. Amount of email-clients confused? Depressing.

Re: I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

#69

Post by Tomminn »

smt88 wrote: post #33
johannes1234321 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is what the cost of that fix would be. Once the ticket reaches the developer it's probably quickly done and pays for itself with a handful registrations. However getting from support to a developer is the complex part. (Support has to understand the issue and then it has to be routed to the correct team ...)

I completely understand why you see this as a 30-min fix, and therefore they should just knock it out. That's not how they would likely see it. If their devs are 100% utilized (which I'm sure they are), then fixing any issue -- even a 30-min one -- is going to mean that a different issue is delayed. The question becomes this: at what point is fixing this issue more valuable to the company than any other issue the sam…

This is absurd. The return on investment for a bug like this must be extraordinarily high. The OP can fix it themselves by changing a string in the developer console.

A permanent new revenue stream from an entire country for the price of 1/16 of one employee's workday.

What kind of fires are burning at Tinder for that to not be a no brainer?

Side note: if there are any devs here from Tinder, I recommend you go fix this on your own initiative and get yourself some quantifiable money made for your employer for your next performance review.

Re: I failed to make LinkedIn fix their broken international domain URL parser

#70

Post by varjag »

jedberg wrote: post #62
varjag wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, editing a hard coded list. Does one need a chisel for that?

That is not how things work in the real world. Sure, the fix itself might take 30 minutes. But then you have to validate it. And run a canary. And crosscheck your revenue numbers to make sure it didn't have an adverse affect elsewhere. That's a lot of work for something that will probably mean very little extra revenue.

I assume they already have the quality assurance pipeline in place at Tinder and don't need to reinvent it from scratch for every bug report.
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