
Twitter's Tips for Making Software Engineers More Efficient - michakinlabi
http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/computing/software/twitters-tips-for-making-software-engineers-more-efficient
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digitalbuckz
Seems odd to take this advice from a company like Twitter when you compare
them to companies like Instagram and WhatsApp. How to keep a lot of engineers
busy and burn a lot of money, they could offer lots of good tips there.

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powerfulninja
Why? Because Twitter as a company hasn't produced effective revenue? Twitter
(or their employees personal projects) has brought us Bower, Bootstrap,
Typeahead, Flight and many other fantastic open source tools to make devs more
productive. I think they are a great company to take advice from in this
specific area.

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tajano
> _Why? Because Twitter as a company hasn 't produced effective revenue?_

Because they're lecturing about engineering efficiency, yet they require 2,000
engineers to support their product. By comparison, WhatsApp scaled to 3X as
many active users with a engineering team 1/40th the size. Instagram also runs
circles around them in this respect.

For a team so huge and so productive, where is the output? More productivity
tools? Maybe Twitter should pivot into that space.

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jurre
Just the number of active users is a really bad metric in this case. WhatsApps
product is much, much simpler than twitters products.

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tajano
> _WhatsApps product is much, much simpler than twitters products._

Can you enumerate Twitter's products?

Perhaps Instagram is a closer comparison -- broadcast photos instead of
broadcast 140 characters. And you have a much smaller engineering team, much
faster growth, twice as many active users, and far fewer fail whales.

Regardless of the comparisons, 2,000 engineers seems excessive in proportion
to Twitter's product, which suggests engineering inefficiency.

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ampersandy
Don't forget that Twitter has a comprehensive advertising platform. The
partnerships, sales, tooling, and ad auction system themselves are likely just
as complicated (or more so) than the basic Twitter product.

Instagram has only recently started to monetize the product -- it's almost
unfair to compare the size of the engineering teams supporting the systems.

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hugh4
It still seems bizarre to need two thousand software engineers for something
whose functionality is as simple as twitter.

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devonkim
I believe the primary difference can be summarized in two words - data
analytics. Twitter has a ton more analytics options for its users than
WhatsApp appears to have mostly because, like Google, Twitter is more of an
advertising platform than a utility platform as far as its actual business
model goes. WhatsApp is potentially b2c as a business while I'd argue Twitter
is really b2b. My experience with enterprise businesses makes it hard for me
to believe that going b2b is actually efficient as much as it is about revenue
assurance and scaling for sales / marketing culture organizations.

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Phlow
To me, this is obvious. I find it extremely valuable to spend time making
things more efficient and clear. Even if the time spent doesn't save that much
time, but makes things less frustrating, it's a big win to me. There's a lot
to be said for having processes that are predictable, that don't randomly have
issues that require taking time out of your day to resolve before you get to
your actual problem. I'd be surprised if there was a significant percentage of
companies that don't spend at least some time solving these types of problems.
I think the question that this article brings up, is what that ratio should be
to actually gain.

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vvanders
Here's the problem with tools and process:

They're a cost center and not a revenue generator.

When you've got a group that provides no measurable revenue they will _always_
be at a disadvantage to the group that provides the money train. This is why
you see a systematic de-valuing of tools and iteration improvement despite the
massive gains they provide.

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gull
What if the tools support the money train to generate 100x more money?

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mwfunk
Regardless of the coefficient, it comes down to whether or not everyone else
in the company realizes that the tools expertise is the secret sauce driving
the money train. I think that's what the person you were replying to was
getting at.

It is unfortunate, but the reality of our profession is that
tools/infrastructure work always has an uphill battle when it comes to
justifying engineering time. It's something we all have to fight for when
appropriate, and discussing why and how to do that can be super useful.

Working on tools and infrastructure is by definition time spent making things
that will help us make things to make money. The people paying us usually
would much rather have us spend time making things to make money, rather than
making things to make things to make money. If there's not enough trust
between the engineer and the nontechnical manager/investor/whatever, it can be
hard to get buy-in for time and money spent making something which is
essentially an IOU for hypothetical returns later on. Build that trust and
have great ideas and hopefully resources can be directed towards indirect
(tools/infrastructure/whatever) engineering expenses.

It is always an uphill battle though, I think it's just the nature of the
industry, or at least most companies. :( I'm not bitter though, because it
really is totally rational if you look at it from the perspective of the
stakeholder who would have to approve it. Just part of the professional
landscape to be aware of.

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OopsCriticality
I didn't realize that _that_ Peter Seibel (author of _Practical Common Lisp_ )
worked at Twitter. Neat.

The article is pretty hand wavey, although the point made feels to be along
the right lines; I'm left wondering what data supports the claims.

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ch0wn
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYsHK81MTHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYsHK81MTHI)

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bozoUser
Sometimes(read: most of the times) the tech debt and other code issues arise
from the last min requirements although as dev. we try make sure the code is
robust enough to absorb these changes seldom this happens.

What I have seen is effective for me is to sit down with pen and paper and
describe the problem at hand and then think about the solution write up.

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brillenfux
Did they pull the scaling out of their hair? I'd like to read about the
rationale.

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rokhayakebe
Looking at Whatsapp and Instagram's engineering teams' sizes, could twitter do
with less than 100 engineers?

If yes than what justifies having thousands when 50 would do? How does an
organization get to that point?

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freyr
> _How does an organization get to that point?_

Raise $1B in private capital and another $2.1B in an IPO. Now you have
billions to burn and sky-high expectations and no path to profit. Hire lot of
people and hope for the best.

But in their defense, Whatsapp and Instagram hadn't demonstrated an viable
alternative yet.

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douche
I wonder how much of this additional engineering workforce is working on
things like Bootstrap, FlockDB, Bower, etc, vs internal tools?

