

What it's like to start work at Quora - kahseng
http://www.quora.com/Kah-Seng-Tay/What-its-like-to-start-work-at-Quora

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leftnode
One thing I've always wondered about with companies that provide free food is
are you considered an outcast or thought of not being a team player if you
bring your own food or don't eat with the team?

Sometimes I'm on a very specific diet, and I do like getting out of the office
from time to time, so I'd hate to feel like an outcast for not eating with
everyone everyday.

~~~
woan
I doubt anyone would be offended, but I consider breaking bread with the rest
of the company part of the job and corporate culture especially if folks not
directly working together get together. It is an effective tool for informal
interaction which helps folks adapt to each others unique communications
styles.

I think it might be more in keeping with the spirit to suggest group lunch
outings just to get out of the office. My old team at IBM used to take our
lunches to the park across the street by the Charles River when the weather
was nice or take lunch bicycle rides.

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barrkel
I'm surprised by how unappealing and depressingly earnest it all sounds.

~~~
whalesalad
Yes, this reads an awful lot like an optimistic (and naive) kindergartner's
first day at school. Interesting look inside nonetheless.. I enjoyed it. But,
indeed, I too felt kinda odd after reading all of it.

~~~
kahseng
Thanks for enjoying, do you have a suggestion on how to improve it? Not sell
hiring at the end perhaps?

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lovskogen
_At the end of the day, I got to pick up cool employee schwag to show off to
friends that I'd just joined one of the coolest places to work for. That's my
story so far. Oh and if you're interested, we're hiring! :)_

This made me feel.., strange.

~~~
kahseng
I guess too quick a tie-in to a recruiting sell?

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ck2
Okay here's my honest yet skeptical question:

Reddit is down to running with only one developer (and surviving fine).

How many people does it take to run/develop for Quora and why?

Isn't Quora "simply" a feature-rich forum system like Stackoverflow (with a
different layout) ?

ps. why are we not allowed to see when a question was asked on Quora?

~~~
gojomo
As an outsider, I can't give Quora's opinion on how many people it takes to
run/develop Quora.

I would say that given their ambition, it'd be a big mistake to ever look at
its current state, as if it were a finished product, and then ask _exactly_
what it would take to make/maintain _that_ visible feature-set. That's leaving
out everything that led to that point – which is _not_ a clone of any other
site – and all the options they've created for next steps, and all the hidden
expertise/systems for keeping it vital.

You can get a superficial clone of lots of sites by treating their current
instantiation as a frozen spec, and bidding it out. But you can't discover new
constellations of winning features, and adapt the site endlessly to new
problems and opportunities, without staff that knows and likes the codebase as
if it were an appendage of their own bodies.

P.S.: Regarding your PS, click the timestamp representing 'Latest Activity' on
the bottom of the right column; you'll see a dated log of all question-
activity, back to when the question was initially asked.

~~~
kahseng
You must have been typing while I was. Yes, thanks for providing that
perspective. I echo your thoughts too.

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ryanfitz
I worked for a company that used remote instances to do development, the
latency was terrible and everything took much longer to get done. We
eventually switched to local dev environments and saw a big boost in
productivity.

the 13inch macbook pro also surprised me, what about when you want to work
away from the desk with the 30inch monitor?

~~~
kahseng
I have a 28" external monitor at home for myself. I also value portability
more if I want to work away from the desk. Vim tabs and navigation is okay on
small screens too. Works for me :)

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brown9-2
Makes me wonder if Quora was set up for continuous deployment from the
beginning? The systems used for this type of thing (tracking pushes, tests,
start/end times etc) always seem to be highly custom-built. I imagine it'd be
a lot easier to build this as you build you site from the ground up, rather
than retrofitting it in afterwards.

~~~
kahseng
Quora has taken code quality very seriously. And yes, it was setup for CD
pretty much near the beginning.

commit 9bcf5be94a6ce3efac5fda8de342a476af52d231 Author: Adam D'Angelo
<dangelo@ugcs.caltech.edu> Date: Tue May 19 15:28:20 2009 -0700

    
    
        autotest work
    

commit 9da3069015ec3b2821f9825eb100a62dcedf70f3 Author: Adam D'Angelo
<dangelo@ugcs.caltech.edu> Date: Tue May 19 14:04:43 2009 -0700

    
    
        add after_git_update.py

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jbapple
I'd like to hear more about this line from their job listings:

<http://www.quora.com/jobs>

"You should be ready to make this startup the primary focus of your life"

That could mean a wide range of things - from social engagement and occasional
dinners at work (as described in the post) to

<http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html>

or

<http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html>

~~~
kahseng
It's harsher than it sounds (Adam admits that too), but I think that's been up
there since forever. If you come by (maybe interview?), you can find out for
yourself if you'll be a good fit.

~~~
notJim
It's harsher than it sounds? Or it sounds harsher than it is? These are two
very different statements.

~~~
kahseng
Apologies, it's sounds harsher than it is :) I misspoke.

That statement can't quite get any harsher I would think :)

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statictype
_One thing you'll notice is that Quora doesn't really give its employees any
desktops. Instead, all development is done in the cloud with Amazon EC2
instances, provisioned specifically with custom software scripts._

So are all team members using the same EC2 instance? Or they each get their
own different cloud-machine?

(Do EC2 instances support persistence in the file system anyway?)

~~~
kahseng
We all get our own. Mine was named "devkahseng" if you saw that :) Yes EC2
supports persistence in the file system with Elastic Block Storage (EBS)
volumes.

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sdizdar
They have code review post-commit? It seems like a very dangerous practice.
How do you guys feel about it?

~~~
woan
With a team this size, I think it's spot on given their caveats:
[http://www.quora.com/Does-Quora-engineering-use-a-code-
revie...](http://www.quora.com/Does-Quora-engineering-use-a-code-review-
process)

I assume they have a culture of shame and pride for power and responsibility
afforded to each developer.

~~~
kahseng
We also do pre-commit reviews for the important stuff, especially things
related to privacy and anonymity. We know when to do them pre-commit or post
(which is the norm).

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swah
Did they sponsor you on a Kinesis keyboard, or did you brought that from home?

~~~
kahseng
It was sponsored. I have my own too at home. Others use other keyboards.
Whatever makes you productive.

