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Twitter's Tech Lead On Making Software Engineers More Efficient
Tekla Perry writes: "Engineering productivity is hard to measure," said Peter Seibel, the tech lead of Twitter's engineering effectiveness group. "But we certainly can harm it." Seibel spoke this week at the @Scale conference in San Jose, hosted by Facebook. He says in large companies one third of software engineers shouldn't be working on the company's products, but should be dedicated to making other engineers more effective. "As an industry we know how to scale up software," he said. "We also know how to scale up organizations, to put in management that lets thousands of people work together. But we don't have a handle on how to scale up that intersection between engineering and human organization. And maybe we don't understand the importance of that. We massively underinvest in this kind of work."
Yes, the company is now profitable and revenue continues to grow, with 2015 revenue expected to be around $2 billion.
I don't get the point of Twitter and don't use Twitter. Having said that, anyone who has thousands of engineers and coders and the project doesn't completely explode has probably learned a few lessons along the way. I'm sure I could learn some things from them. Also, I'm willing to learn from anyone who has brought it billions of dollars.
The attitude of people here suggesting there is nothing to be learned from Twitter's experience is silly - because we've ALL built multi-billion dollar companies around a platfom"with tens of millions of users, right? They only have a few tens of millions of users, they don't know anything about scale. We all know way better than them, because each of has BILLIONS of users on our servers, right?
Let my manager set my goals, then prevent other groups/managers from wasting my time. I spent 14 years at Qualcomm ('94 to '08), I never worked harder, got more done, and had more fun than those 14 years. The secret? Management was very good at keeping distractions to a minimum.
Sadly, from what I hear now that's no longer the case. At the Parade of Lights last, I dunno, November? I met the new boyfriend of a long time friend. He was in his 50's/60's, spent most of his career in Texas at TI, and had been at QC for a year. He hated it. Why? He didn't want to talk about it and I didn't pry.
About 6 months ago I ran across a guy I knew at QC, he'd been there from the beginning. He said they'd cancelled the Christmas parties (which were epic), and the summer picnics (which were epic if you had kids). He was about to take a 6 month leave of absence and wasn't sure if he'd go back.
Then 2 months ago QC announces a 15% layoff in 2 months. That 2 months hit yesterday. I'm hesitant to contact folks I knew when I worked there, but it sounds like QC has gone from good, engineering management, to bad, MBA/cronyism management.
Not really. People keep coming up with new management fads which then fade away and get replaced, but eventually they all come back to MMM and realize it had it right. If you can't understand the concepts in the Idiot's Guide to the Volkswagen Beetle, you will be utterly unable to understand a modern car. Understanding the older stuff is an absolute prerequisite to becoming an expert, even for software, and it's a shame so many incompetent programmers refuse to believe this.
It's not even just for programming that's dysfunctional, everything gets screwed up with management. I see software people whine that it should be done like other engineering, except that other engineering is dysfunctional as well. Seriously, picking pre-built and well tested components, applying the math, and creating a circuit is a myth too. Most places just cobble things together, they'll argue forever about saving two cents on a board but then go and add a component that's never used. If the boss designs part of it then everyone's too afraid to correct it, or politics gets involved. When it's done, it's tossed over the brick wall to software who are told to work around any defects.