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From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

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Re: From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

#91

Post by mindwok »

fivea wrote: post #80
mindwok wrote: post #3

Am I crazy to think there’s something wrong with the amount of engineering effort going into these startups? When you have engineers working into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want a cursor to blink on a text field, I can’t help but feel that’s an enormous waste of energy and effort. Since I first used Airbnb 7 years ago, the only real change I can think of is when they added experiences (which is aw…

> When you have engineers working into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want a cursor to blink on a text field, (...) You're grossly misrepresenting the problems being faced and what forces engineers to work into the wee hours of the morning. Just because stuff seems done to you or you notice no change, that does not mean nothing is being worked on. Let's take basic A/B testing. To you, it's a blinking…

It wasn't my intention to dismiss the engineering challenges, I'm aware of how difficult something like this can be at a scale like Airbnb. I was more venting about the fact that all the engineering effort is directed at such a seemingly minor thing to begin with.

Re: From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

#92

Post by draw_down »

ricardobayes wrote: post #90
mindwok wrote: post #3

Am I crazy to think there’s something wrong with the amount of engineering effort going into these startups? When you have engineers working into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want a cursor to blink on a text field, I can’t help but feel that’s an enormous waste of energy and effort. Since I first used Airbnb 7 years ago, the only real change I can think of is when they added experiences (which is aw…

Honestly I find the Spanish stance on this to be extremely refreshing and the only scaleable one: - 'Good' is good enough, no need for perfect - Doing it tomorrow is just as good as today If you think about it, both are true. If you don't think these are true, you are far too caught up in a hamsterwheel to notice.

No post body was provided.

Re: From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

#93

Post by fivea »

modo_mario wrote: post #85
fivea wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you have engineers working into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want a cursor to blink on a text field, (...) You're grossly misrepresenting the problems being faced and what forces engineers to work into the wee hours of the morning. Just because stuff seems done to you or you notice no change, that does not mean nothing is being worked on. Let's take basic A/B testing. To you, it's a blinking…

Imagining boatloads of complexity involved with the blinking cursors according to markets, profiles and geographic locations and whatever else really doesn't make it sound any better at all.

> Imagining boatloads of complexity involved with the blinking cursors according to markets, profiles and geographic locations and whatever else really doesn't make it sound any better at all.

These basic everyday requirements are oblivious to those who have zero first-hand contact or experience with professional user-facing problems imposed by business requirements.

However, just because you're oblivious or unfamiliar to these requirements, they don't mean they aren't requirements.

Think about it for a second. If it's necessary to target a service to specific geographical markets to comply with legal and/or business requirents, and given it's considerably more profitable to target a shop to a customer based on their personal interests, why would you ignore that and naively presume that the hypothetical "blinking cursor" is straight-forward to implement? And I'm not even touching hard technical probs which most developers aren't experienced or competent in, such as security and reliability.

There is a widespread problem in software development which is this this tendency to be very opinionated over all problems in spite of being totally ignorant and oblivious to the underlying problem domain. Everyone is an idiot except themselves, who always hold the answer in spite of not even knowingwhat the problem is, let alone understanding it.

Re: From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

#94

Post by spaetzleesser »

thundergolfer wrote: post #74
quanticle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Dan Luu's excellent blog post on the value of in-house expertise [1]: Another reason to have in-house expertise in various areas is that they easily pay for themselves, which is a special case of the generic argument that large companies should be larger than most people expect because tiny percentage gains are worth a large amount in absolute dollars. If, in the lifetime of the specialist team like the kernel t…

Dan Luu also elsewhere makes the argument that most of the impactful engineering work done in large companies is performed by a small percentage of the engineering group.

“most of the impactful engineering work done in large companies is performed by a small percentage of the engineering group.”

That is probably true. But we shouldn’t forget that these people can do these things often because they are supported by a large number of people who do the mundane tasks that need to be done.

Re: From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

#95

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

fivea wrote: post #80
mindwok wrote: post #3

Am I crazy to think there’s something wrong with the amount of engineering effort going into these startups? When you have engineers working into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want a cursor to blink on a text field, I can’t help but feel that’s an enormous waste of energy and effort. Since I first used Airbnb 7 years ago, the only real change I can think of is when they added experiences (which is aw…

> When you have engineers working into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want a cursor to blink on a text field, (...) You're grossly misrepresenting the problems being faced and what forces engineers to work into the wee hours of the morning. Just because stuff seems done to you or you notice no change, that does not mean nothing is being worked on. Let's take basic A/B testing. To you, it's a blinking…

Then why has the site become more annoying and less usable over time?

This isn't just a personal opinion. I've heard it spontaneously from various friends and acquaintances.

Granted we're mostly a similar demographic in a single market.

But even so.

Re: From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

#96

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

fivea wrote: post #93
modo_mario wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagining boatloads of complexity involved with the blinking cursors according to markets, profiles and geographic locations and whatever else really doesn't make it sound any better at all.

> Imagining boatloads of complexity involved with the blinking cursors according to markets, profiles and geographic locations and whatever else really doesn't make it sound any better at all. These basic everyday requirements are oblivious to those who have zero first-hand contact or experience with professional user-facing problems imposed by business requirements. However, just because you're oblivious or unfamili…

If you have the infrastructure to manage multiple versions and collect and analyse related information, adding/removing a blinking cursor or any other UI change and analysing the results should be trivial, because most of the process should be automated. Even in multiple territories and/or different user demos.

Unless you're reinventing the wheel for each modification.

Re: From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

#97

Post by fivea »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #95
fivea wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you have engineers working into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want a cursor to blink on a text field, (...) You're grossly misrepresenting the problems being faced and what forces engineers to work into the wee hours of the morning. Just because stuff seems done to you or you notice no change, that does not mean nothing is being worked on. Let's take basic A/B testing. To you, it's a blinking…

Then why has the site become more annoying and less usable over time? This isn't just a personal opinion. I've heard it spontaneously from various friends and acquaintances. Granted we're mostly a similar demographic in a single market. But even so.

> Then why has the site become more annoying and less usable over time?

I can't and won't speak on behalf of AirBnB, but you should keep in mind that in general:

a) all software grows by accretion until a breaking point,

b) paying off technical debt without solving any concrete problem or adding any tangible benefit is not considered a worthwhile investment,

c) a site did not changed for the worse if the data shows its conversion rate increased.

Re: From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

#98

Post by rmbyrro »

mindwok wrote: post #3

Am I crazy to think there’s something wrong with the amount of engineering effort going into these startups? When you have engineers working into the wee hours of the morning because you don’t want a cursor to blink on a text field, I can’t help but feel that’s an enormous waste of energy and effort. Since I first used Airbnb 7 years ago, the only real change I can think of is when they added experiences (which is aw…

As systems grow, it becomes exponentially harder to do anything. What to you may sound extremely simple and easy on a small SaaS app, at Airbnb scale (after several years of development) it really requires several highly talented engineers to deliver without blowing everything up.

Re: From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

#99

Post by fivea »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #96
fivea wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagining boatloads of complexity involved with the blinking cursors according to markets, profiles and geographic locations and whatever else really doesn't make it sound any better at all. These basic everyday requirements are oblivious to those who have zero first-hand contact or experience with professional user-facing problems imposed by business requirements. However, just because you're oblivious or unfamili…

If you have the infrastructure to manage multiple versions and collect and analyse related information, adding/removing a blinking cursor or any other UI change and analysing the results should be trivial, because most of the process should be automated. Even in multiple territories and/or different user demos. Unless you're reinventing the wheel for each modification.

> If you have the infrastructure to manage multiple versions and collect and analyse related information, adding/removing a blinking cursor or any other UI change and analysing the results should be trivial (...)

What leads you to believe in that? I mean, you have zero insight or understanding how things work or were designed. You have zero idea of where that blinking cursor comes from, let alone who owns that particular bit of code.

Let's think things through for a moment. Let's imagine you're talking about a blinking cursor in a random page from Google or Amazon. These are organizations where you have teams owning small widgets that show off only in specific pages, and that the page that you see in your browser come from a lengthy page engine pipeline that has all sorts of tests and failsafes, not to mention regional and localized deployments managed by whatever deployment policy.

This doesn't even take into account the whole workflow from product managers, who often demand data on the impact of touching a button.

You don't just edit a HTML file and hit save, don't you?

Re: From Belonging to Burnout, Five Years at Airbnb

#100

Post by cosmiccatnap »

"the founders announced that they had no choice but to lay off all 500ish contractors and around 1,900 employees. The CEO cried on a broadcast that we needed to say goodbye to some of our Airfam and called on us to support each other through this difficult time. “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers played at the end of the broadcast"

This stuff is sickening and toxic.

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