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An Inside Look At eBay's Technology
endychavez writes with a CIO Insight profile giving a look inside eBay and its technology platform. The company has 40,000 outside developers working to increase its value and efficiency. From the article: "'They are way ahead of other companies' in terms of supporting developers, says one application builder... 'This a new wave of business,' says [another developer's marketing director]. 'eBay is a supplier, a marketing channel and a competitor. It's a weird arrangement.' ... 'If you can't split it, you can't scale it,' says Eric Billingsley, head of eBay Research Labs. 'We've made ourselves masters of virtualization.' ... eBay is able to publish a new version of its site every two weeks, adding 100,000 lines of code, all while in use."
a huge furnace that burns large piles of money, explaining the ever increasing fee structure.
Mr. Lister wasn't bad, but eBay's Turbo Lister is a blight on the history of application programming. While the site is generally well maintained, the support apps leave something to be desired, or they did anyway three years ago when I was still involved in using them. TL was the model of how NOT to design an application, in so many ways. Bloated file sizes, db corruption, copy/paste broken in the WYSIWYG editor. The list could go on and on.
And Ebay never used to tell customers when it expected to correct site programming errors.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Why would eBay need to add that quantity of code every fortnight? It doesn't strike me as an indicator of very efficient programming.
Have they managed to invent code yet that will actually allow them to insert a new item without it costing them money? Maybe then they'd be able to drop a listing fee for the privilege of serving some a customized HTML page to their visitors.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
A+++++++ good article, would read again
And still if you are winning an auction you can't raise your maximum bid without raising your current bid... :-)
"eBay is able to publish a new version of its site every two weeks"
Can someone tell me why this is viewed as a good thing?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Do these guys know that you can use stuff like CGI to make dynamic web sites, with databases? With 40,000 developers, and 100,000 lines of code every two weeks, somebody should tell them that they don't have to code each and every single page by hand...
Apologies for the caps and for the swearing, but what the fuck?
Want to improve eBay's efficiency? Ditch 39,500 of those developers.
Or by developers do they mean "people who have downloaded the API docs"?
That means 2.5 lines of code per developer every two weeks!
Fun and games aside, what's the big deal with upgrading a live site? I write software that builds and packages itself and then deploys it's own code to itself in production while it's running. No issues here...
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Ebay announced a signifigant price increase. Since online auctions are a natural monopoly, I guess we will continue to see these types of price increases until people finally get fed up enough to start listing items elsewhere.
...and loads of money. Yet last time I looked the site went offline every Friday "for maintenance". Please, ebay, teach us your highly innovative processes!
Yes, but do you have millions of people connected while you do that? And do you have millions of database trasnsactions and to-the-second sensitive activities going on while you roll out your code live?
http://bitworking.org.nyud.net:8080/news/The_eBay_ Architecture has way more detail than the buzz-text.
When they say "developers", they're talking about the number of people that register for API access tokens. The number of people that go on to get their API applications certified would be more interesting (eBay requires certification to increase the query limits on your app.)
Their primary focus should be on fixing their insecurity because it's a haven for scams and hijacked accounts and the coverage protection for using their PayPal payment system has been lowered to $1000 (that means if you buy a $5000 item and you get scammed, which will very likely happen on Ebay, you're out $4000). Add to that the non-existent customer service, the rude canned emails when you point out obvious scams that they should be able to flag on their own and the greed with the ever increasing fees I'm looking forward to dumping Ebay/PayPal for a Google solution.
In other words, that count represents the total number of people worldwide writing code that interfaces with eBay. That's very different than 40K developers working for eBay.
Just a few thousand people, but it does involve millions of dollars in work for a company in the top 15 of the fortune 500.
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All your Bays are belo... Oh, never mind.
40,000 developers, and 100,000 lines of code every two weeks = 1.25 lines of code per week per developer.. sounds like a decent place to work!
eBay is merely 458th on the 2006 Fortune 500 list. It's not the top performer it would have you believe. It is likely, however, in the top five when it comes to poor customer service.
All those developers, while little is done to combat fraud on ebay.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
"'They are way ahead of other companies' in terms of supporting developers, says one application builder... 'This a new wave of business,' says [another developer's marketing director]. 'eBay is a supplier, a marketing channel and a competitor. It's a weird arrangement.'
Too bad they didn't support the people who buy merchandise through the site that well.
Having been a regular eBay user for a while I can't get away from an image of a huge room housing 40,000 loudly screaming chimpanzees banging away at their terminals. Oh, and some dude in the room next door swimming in his Scrooge McDuck style money pit while laughing manically....
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
40'000 developers... somehow there has to be a typing monkeys joke in there...
Theres no pictures!
A natural monopoly is a monopoly that comes to exist all on it's own, and can usually be predicted far in advance. It will exist even in spite of competition.
eBay is a natural monopoly because a dominant online auction has a self-reinforcing properties. It's not simple for a buyer to switch to another auction site, because it will not have many listings, so they won't find what they want to buy. And it's not simple for a seller to switch to another site, because no one goes there to buy things (because there are no sellers), so you don't sell anything.
It's a huge catch-22 situation. These kinds of monopolies usually take drastic change to break - some huge event that will cause a critical mass of buyers and sellers to move to another site. As long as eBays price increases stay small and incremental, it is unlikely this will occur.
Shame that in 100,000 lines of code no one has been able to make a little button to stop "Buy it Now" sales appearing on my search results. I came here for a auction.
I think poor is a gross over statement of their service level.
That their phone number is a closely gaurded secret gives you an inkling to their thoughts on the whole thing.
And just try to get into their offices to speak to someone!!! I tried once in order to deliver papers I had picked up from the local court - they wouldn't even let me in the building or send someone to the door to take receipt of the papers!! (Richmond upon thames offices, fairly well hidden but I used to walk past them daily on the way to work)
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Wrong.
40,000 are OUT SIDE developers. They are affiliates. eBay has 11,600 full time employees in total:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=EBAY
Which includes thousands of customer support people, operations, HR, finance... Don't forget it also includes both PayPal, Skype, shopping.com, rent.com, kijiji...
The total eBay site developers are less than 1000.
someone claimed that Slate.com is able to published 100000 pages within a matter of seconds.
If you think this article will tell you what hardware and OS's they're running on you'll be disappointed. It's mostly web 2.0 fluff spared any useful details.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
This would appear to suggest that these are developers independent of eBay and not employed by them. On the other hand:
The result: eBay is able to publish a new version of its site every two weeks, adding 100,000 lines of code, all while in use. The system is never taken off-line for upgrades or maintenance.It doesn't sound as if the 100,000 lines of code are from the 40,000 independent developers. Creating an application to interface with the eBay API doesn't seem to equate to publishing "a new version of its site". Of course, it's possible that the article has made a mistake.
That sounds alien to me - when did you visit Richmond last? I've attended quite a few meetings there since mid last year and they have always had at least the reception open to the public, regardless of what your intentions are.
I reckon it's like the cottage industry that grew up around I-pods, you're not going to invent the Ipod (or Ebay) so why not just make be-jeweled holders or kickass speakers and skim some revenue off the top?
Ebays in a win-win sitch as they get site & product expansion without really having to pay for it. I wonder if they own part of the IP at the end of the day.
I've noticed a similar Open API peripheral strategy with other sites - like FLICKR and even Myspace to a lessor extent. Flickr has a few apps that are really fun like the calender or DVD maker - but they are obviously done by 3rd party devs and Flicker even solicits devs for new ideas.
You had me at merlot
eBay has millions of visitors every day. So eBay's architecture is complex and it would be a nightmare if any error happens.
Since the website is developed for few thousand visitors the architecture will be simple even if it involves multi million dollar transactions. Probably you will host your website in a single server and the upgrade process will be replacing the files in that server. But that is not the case with eBay.
Where I currently work we are located in a colo with one of Ebay's newer server farm build outs. It's quite a humbling thing. Every network and power cord is the exact proper length, the racks are all spotless. But the most impressive thing is all the fiber, we are talking 10-14 a rack, are *just the right length*. The fiber? Damn.
The company has 40,000 outside developers working...
... and not one tester!
They interviewed me a couple months back and despite several emails that included my full sigunature and my full name, they totally flubbed it in the article. My name is Jonathan Field, and somehow they got my name as Jon Athan. Page after page of things like "Athan says this" and "according to Athan's development philosophy".
;)
Back at the office they made me new "Jon Athan" buisiness cards as a joke.
Bitches.
Ah, no. Maybe I didn't phrase that well. I completely agree with you. I meant that eBay is most certainly in the bottom 5 of the league of Customer Service. In fact probably the only company in my experience that proves worse customer service is Paypal, owned of course by eBay.
Hey eBay... How 'bout spending some time to allow me to display listing times in MY time zone? Thanks.
I used to work at e-bay. They are masters of NOT VERY MUCH. Their QA support is a shamble. The treatment of employees is delporeable. Their culture is incapable of Human compassion. They berate, intimidate, and exasaberate their collegues into submission. That is how the work gets done.. They say that 1 out of every 10 employees is a millionarre on paper and really dont need to work, but do because they have nothing better to do (stated in their own words), unfortunately that carries over to how they treat others and how they are treated themselves. Unfortunately its a vicious cycle that is only quenched by greed and money (not money paid to the individual or credit, but paid to the "greater cause".) I hope this culture has changed for the better, if so I stand corrected and profusely apologize for my (would be) incorrect rebuttal and retract it as such. In my opinion, its like FRY's, how much can we push people to give us what we want, and how much can we treat them like nothing before we have to get rid of them before they find better treatment elsewhere and get rid of us.. This may or may not be on the subject of the article, but When I see e-bay and masters and innovation used in the same context, I have to stand up and say something.. To verify, approach an e-bay employee and ask them. I have nothing personal against any specific people at e-bay, and I do wish all of them and their families well into the new year..
Considering that it is a JMS multi-tiered app, sure - this is simple to do. That's what decoupling buys you. Try this with EJBs for example, and you're, well, clusterfucked wouldn't begin to describe it.
/.ers, I haven't RTFA for this post, just running on the last bit of info I read on eBay and their structure. However, since I just mentioned I didn't RTFA, I guess I'm not a good /.er!:)
Disclaimer: Like all good
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Developers! Developers! Developers!!!!! Sorry...... I had to..... :)
"Gentlemen, You cannot fight in here, this is the War Room...." - Dr Strangelove
...those horrible 1994-vintage non-antialiased bitmap font buttons on their navbar?
WTF is the point of using images for navigation if they look worse than the text they're replacing? Is the whole thing some kind of cherished throwback?
100.000 lines a week, 40.000 developers makes it 2.5 lines of code every week (or was it 2 weeks?)
Hmm... we should all work for Ebay, I can shell out that many lines, provided, those lines are not as long as a whole book.
Or does that count include the modified lines of code too? Something is really phishy.
-- Prem
Aiming to tweet on a rice
One system I wrote and now update and maintain has several thousand simultaneous internal users and typically around 100,000 public users on it at any given moment spread throughout about 95 countries, and it transfers over $100 billion in securities each year. We update it live once a month, and sometimes as often as once a week. I don't have millions of simultaneous users, but the dollar value and associated risk of each transaction is substantially higher.
The earlier poster is correct -- there isn't anything all that out of the ordinary about it.
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