71–80 of 187 posts
> 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.
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…
I worked at an organization that had a similar declaration. Here's how it played out: 1. Everyone is super excited for other teams to share their data 2. Everyone wants an exception from sharing their own data because it's too hard or too sensitive to share. 3. Eventually everything gets shared, but it takes 3-4 times longer than it really should.
> what Amazon really did get right that Google didn’t was an internal communication system designed to make all the rest possible. I'm not following what he means. What is the thing he is describing as "an internal communication system" here? That made all the rest possible? What is/was this internal communications system?
I'm assuming Yegge was referring to the RPC framework.
I read this as saying different teams/services don't have to use the same thing either. That doesn't sound like an "RPC framework" or "an internal communications system" at all. It seems to leave the door open to everyone doing things in a diverse mishmash. Which isn't what I'd call "an internal communications system" at all.
But was/is there in fact an Amazon-specific "RPC framework", that all Amazon services use, some consistent framework used consistently accross services? I haven't heard much about this before so am curious to learn more. I haven't heard of an Amazon 'RPC framework' before, or what it's called, or what. And OP doesn't specify it either; does the rest of the audience know what's being talked about, and I'm just missing context?
If that is the thing that the OP thinks is really what Amazon got right... then the interesting thing is figuring out how it went from the paraphrased email, which doesn't actually demand such a thing, to.... such a thing. Who designed or chose this "RPC framework"? When? How? How'd they get everyone to use the same one? If that's the thing Amazon got right, there are some steps missing between the Yegge-paraphrased email and there, since the email doesn't actually even call for such a thing.
Or is that not what happened at all, and I'm still not sure what OP means by "an internal communication system" being the thing Amazon got right.
Yegge's article never says it was an email. What should the title be? Edit: I've taken a rather lame crack at it and am open to improvements.
> what Amazon really did get right that Google didn’t was an internal communication system designed to make all the rest possible. I'm not following what he means. What is the thing he is describing as "an internal communication system" here? That made all the rest possible? What is/was this internal communications system?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
An ex Netflix person, who has since moved to Amazon, spoke at a client place three weeks ago. He casually mentioned things such as "we forgive the first time, and we fire the second time". From how he spoke, we felt that this may be the norm in Silicon Valley and related places. I have much respect for what he has achieved, so I didn't interrupt to question such a fear-inducing mindset.
I worked at an organization that had a similar declaration. Here's how it played out: 1. Everyone is super excited for other teams to share their data 2. Everyone wants an exception from sharing their own data because it's too hard or too sensitive to share. 3. Eventually everything gets shared, but it takes 3-4 times longer than it really should.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure about execs, but this happens in engineering meetings (regarding new features being implemented or other semi-major changes). Whoever is initiating the meeting writes up a paper describing the terminology, the nature of the change and why it's needed, how it will be implemented etc. The entire dev team (+ maybe other dev teams within the group), management (the initiator's boss + 1 level above, maybe other d…
That sounds like a low-fi, synchronous, in-person version of reviewing a Google Doc (with comments, suggestions, etc).
I love some of Amazon's executive policies. From what I've read, everyone has to write a multi-page paper before executive meetings, and everyone has to read it, so the meeting goes smoothly with everyone understanding the issues. I hate how no one reads anything in most organizations.