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Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

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Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#91

Post by klabb3 »

ngrilly wrote: post #75
klabb3 wrote: post #26

This is a perfect example of why the problem isn’t the stack, native vs web, or programming languages. I’ve been saying this for ages when people bash JS for being slow, or the web for being bloated. Yes, you pay a bit for the sandboxing, GC, rendering, built in accessibility. But that’s a rounding error when businesses, especially large ones, go on a PM-centric feature frenzy. You get out exactly what you put in. Pe…

Sounds like bad product management as much as bad engineering. I mean, the outcome — a bloated product — is bad for everyone: the users in the first place, the engineers building the product, but also the PM who can't conceivably be proud of shipping a bad product.

In my experience PMs are not rewarded for good product, but rather a mix of shortsighted metrics and whatever their VP/senior person has on their personal agenda. At big companies, employees are often not even using their own products. The corporate ladder is all that matters.

Obviously that’s not unique to the PM role, but seemingly more prevalent. I think it’s an effect of the rootless roaming you get when you spread people thin over large areas, and don’t have clear ownership and responsibility – which I think is a prerequisite for (the good kind of) pride.

But overall, yes, it’s definitely a structural issue with the organization at large. Clearly, when it’s gotten as bad as in this case.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#92

Post by phillipcarter »

gertop wrote: post #30
YouWhy wrote: post #14

TL;DR: There're few global incentives for a LinkedIn app developer to make an overall good app, as opposed to making their PM happy. In detail: This is how death by a thousand papercuts looks like. I've had the (dubious) pleasure of observing a roughly similar BigTech app project. There are likely 100s-1000s of app developers involved in the LinkedIn app, and they are likely under immense pressure to Just Ship Alread…

> There are likely 100s-1000s of app developers involved in the LinkedIn app I don't understand why you'd need 1000 or even 100 developers to produce such app. It's a CRUD frontend for a backend that already exists. What am I missing? Are you counting the developers of all the third party libs they integrate?

> It's a CRUD frontend for a backend that already exists. What am I missing?

Probably a million features that are all relevant to different people who use the app? As a developer you probably use maybe 1% of LinkedIn, but you're not the primary user. It's a professional social network. It's going to have a lot to do.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#93

Post by itsoktocry »

klabb3 wrote: post #26

This is a perfect example of why the problem isn’t the stack, native vs web, or programming languages. I’ve been saying this for ages when people bash JS for being slow, or the web for being bloated. Yes, you pay a bit for the sandboxing, GC, rendering, built in accessibility. But that’s a rounding error when businesses, especially large ones, go on a PM-centric feature frenzy. You get out exactly what you put in. Pe…

>go on a PM-centric feature frenzy

Do developers have any agency whatsoever, or are they at the mercy of doing whatever their managers suggest (while always knowing the "right" answer, of course)? Does our industry attract people who avoid accountability?

Fraud? It's the executive's fault. Business struggling? It's the MBA's fault. Bad product? It's the PM's fault. Must be nice!

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#94

Post by salamander014 »

klabb3 wrote: post #26

This is a perfect example of why the problem isn’t the stack, native vs web, or programming languages. I’ve been saying this for ages when people bash JS for being slow, or the web for being bloated. Yes, you pay a bit for the sandboxing, GC, rendering, built in accessibility. But that’s a rounding error when businesses, especially large ones, go on a PM-centric feature frenzy. You get out exactly what you put in. Pe…

> punish the grumpy ones in favor of the people-pleasers, that this crap happens

This isn’t exclusive to technology, but I see this all the time at my large organization. As a grump, I have to pick which shitstorm to care about and spend my time chipping away at, which ends up being really draining.

To help with this, we began focusing a team of great folks with shared values, leaning in on modern operations/SRE best practices.

We started to have some real success with SDLC for our operations workflows.

That’s when management changed our teams direction. Good times.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#95

Post by passwordoops »

klabb3 wrote: post #91
ngrilly wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like bad product management as much as bad engineering. I mean, the outcome — a bloated product — is bad for everyone: the users in the first place, the engineers building the product, but also the PM who can't conceivably be proud of shipping a bad product.

In my experience PMs are not rewarded for good product, but rather a mix of shortsighted metrics and whatever their VP/senior person has on their personal agenda. At big companies, employees are often not even using their own products. The corporate ladder is all that matters. Obviously that’s not unique to the PM role, but seemingly more prevalent. I think it’s an effect of the rootless roaming you get when you spre…

>In my experience PMs are not rewarded for good product, but rather a mix of shortsighted metrics and whatever their VP/senior person has on their personal agenda. At big companies, employees are often not even using their own products. The corporate ladder is all that matters.

YES YES YES. It's why I gave up on working as a product manager after nearly a decade. It's turned into KPI Management and everyone suffers, especially if you care about delivering good product

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#96

Post by WJW »

actionfromafar wrote: post #88
oferzelig wrote: post #87

The short business answer is that it's currently not a metric that influences people's decision to install or uninstall an app. If it were one, we would've seen an engineering effort to reduce bloatware and duplications as seen in the post.

How would they know, though? If the download times out, does LinkedIn care or notice?

Surely they'd at least notice a decrease in installations of the new "too big to download" version?

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#97

Post by rad_gruchalski »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #10
beachy wrote: post #3

Why does the web page presenting this complaint take 140 requests to serve and transfer 10Mb? Same reasons - bloat over time, developers with powerful machines and network connections who don't notice the impact, users with huge devices that don't care about 500M space for an app and management and corporate culture that don't care much about optimisation.

Uber actually had a pretty reasonable explanation for their app being huge when their rather large app size made the rounds several years ago. Turns out localization takes a lot of space. I wonder how much of LinkedIn’s insane size can be attributed to that vs just lazy coding

Here is the hn comment you are most likely referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25376346.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#98

Post by klabb3 »

m463 wrote: post #62
vasco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, developers are people too. They are right and they are wrong. I've seen some guys who are proud of having the grumpy persona, which is really just a nice word for "I know better than the other people I work with" and it's not a great attitude. Engineering choices all have trade-offs yet the grumpy guys always frame it as "my way or everything will collapse later".

Sorry, should have been more clear. It is when you - a normal, well adjusted engineer - realize you are feeling grumpy about something. It might be a sign to explore what is really going on.

Agree with this. And why it’s important to have spaces to blow off steam and vent without being shunned as a bad team player or whatever. I’ve seen quite a bit of toxic positivity that makes people sit on their grievances in silence instead and become complicit and resentful (like the parent comment mentions). It’s much better to air it out - oftentimes there’s constructive things behind discomfort. In fact, discomfort is a guiding light for innovation imo.

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#99

Post by ValentineC »

jondwillis wrote: post #16
angiosperm wrote: post #9

TIL there is a Linkedin app. For me the question is why anyone would even consider installing it. The other is easy: It's Microsoft,

It’s required for messaging on a mobile phone. And probably other user hostile patterns.

I just don't use LinkedIn on mobile, and view anyone who wants to connect only via LinkedIn as generally not useful. I think it's a good sheep filter.

(I'm also not a career developer, so maybe my priorities are different.)

Re: Why is the LinkedIn app almost half a gig?

#100

Post by ngrilly »

klabb3 wrote: post #91
ngrilly wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like bad product management as much as bad engineering. I mean, the outcome — a bloated product — is bad for everyone: the users in the first place, the engineers building the product, but also the PM who can't conceivably be proud of shipping a bad product.

In my experience PMs are not rewarded for good product, but rather a mix of shortsighted metrics and whatever their VP/senior person has on their personal agenda. At big companies, employees are often not even using their own products. The corporate ladder is all that matters. Obviously that’s not unique to the PM role, but seemingly more prevalent. I think it’s an effect of the rootless roaming you get when you spre…

I very much agree and I've seen that a lot in large companies. I really like how Bain explains it: "growth creates complexity; complexity kills growth". They talk about in The Founder's Mentality: https://media.bain.com/the-founders-mentality/

I also agree about your point on ownership and responsibility. That's why I like Amazon's principle of Single Threaded Leaders.

"The best way to fail at inventing something is by making it somebody's part-time job" — Dave Limp, CEO, Blue Origin, formerly Amazon

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