Informal Systems| Senior Distributed System Engineer (Berlin, Toronto, Remote)| Full Time| Informal Systems| Senior Rust Engineer (Berlin, Toronto, Remote)| Full Time| https://informal.systems/
Informal is an R&D institution that conducts research and development into the design, implementation, and formal verification of distributed systems and protocols, including blockchain systems like the Cosmos Network (https://cosmos.network/). Our mission is to bring verifiability to distributed systems and organizations.
We're hiring:
Senior Distributed Systems Engineer - working on open-source distributed systems software in Rust that forms the foundation for production blockchain networks securing billions of dollars in market capitalization.
Senior Rust Engineer- working on open-source products and developing correct and reliable software that serves as critical infrastructure in the blockchain ecosystem.
You can learn more and apply online here: https://informal.systems/careers/ Feel free to reach out to hello@informal.systems with any questions!
Growing engineering organizations is simply not a reproducible science. Successful companies are so rare and the conditions which led to their success so exclusive that it's much easier to point fingers at the people you disagree with. I think the parent captures this.
The backlash which is emerging now are really a products of pent up frustration. SoundCloud was never able to develop a culture which resolved differences. Lots of acquiescence, lots of political assassinations but no mechanism for reconciliation. That's where I point my finger at least.
when conflict cannot be meaningfully reconciled the whole system tumbles apart.
fwiw my critique focuses less on specific disagreements but the overall culture. i personally observed more innocent people eaten by this angry machine than necessary. that machine can't be the sole reason the company finds itself in this position today but friction from discord can't help an already uphill battle.
lesson number one: the no asshole rule is inviolable.
Is growing like crazy the issue? You lower the bar for hire and not enough time is given for the new employee to integrate into the culture. Instead new teams make their own cultures, and fight hard for their own success at the peril of company's success.
Berlin is built on a swamp. It's the reason neighbourhoods with ongoing construction have streets lined with "large pink pipes" [1]. I would imagine this would make building skyscrapers difficult and was apparently one of the factors which condemned the famous Volkshalle to fiction[2].
The airport is a disaster. Are you sure it's fair to attribute the delays to regulation? The problems seems to stem from bad design with the effect of being unable to put out fires [3]. It might not be accurate to call it "ready".
It's not just atrocious design. It's also a supervisory board that managed to change the plans so often it confused everyone (leading to bad planning) and a bureaucracy that didn't actually check if contractors did what they were supposed to do.
I think the final blame lies with the SPD politicians that have effectively been in charge of this. The buck stops at the top. Sure, a lot of heads have rolled, but it seems like the Berlin SPD's culture isn't compatible with managing this kind of thing. I mean, when Wowereit was pushed if they could have razed the airport, started from scratch and executed as originally planned that would still have been cheaper than the current situation. This clearly indicates that the people in charge kept fucking up long after Wowereit and perhaps they are still doing so. Why the fuck does the federal government (which pays for part of it) go along with this?
This seems to be a trend in Germany when you look at the projects to build a railway station in Stuttgart or a music hall in Hamburg. Hell, even the subway extension in Helsinki is a good example how a project can be screwed up.
I think a lot of it has to do with the way politicians make decisions. They are not professional project managers, they primarily manage their own career and advance their ideologies and political ambitions. If a public project is expensive, there is debate over whether it should be done or not. So the budget is tightened and there is haggling here and there, some things are left outside the project scope, etc. Then, in the course of the work, it will be noticed that of course those mandatory parts that were left out of scope are still mandatory. So the scope increases, budget increases, and the schedule slips.
But there is huge pressure to keep the schedule. Managers of various sub-projects see the situation of their peers and often they can safely deduct that even though they are late, someone else will be even more late, so that other sub-project can be the fall guy. Thus, each sub-project reports "everything in control, on schedule" regardless of actual problems.
All the sub-projects are optimistic about their own situation and think someone else will draw the "Schwarzer Peter" card (the game is known as Old Maid in English) and be blamed for the final delay. Thus, the overall project manager gets all green sub-project reports and scorecards that yes, we're opening in schedule in June 2012. Since the project manager is not a professional in construction projects, he's unable to assess the actual situation. He also thinks that his political power is enough to override things like fire safety regulations, should these become a nuisance.
Then, a few days before the planned opening, the actual situation is revealed, and the recurring delays begin.
Here in Helsinki region there's indeed a similar situation with the western metro line extension. The fire protection systems were not ready, but the top project management simply did not believe it. Then came the actual tests, with actual fire experts insisting that the systems must work and it must be tested. Poof, the opening is delayed by some months. Then by some more months. Now it looks like it's at least a year.
This seems to be common with public transit projects. In Finnish city of Tampere, there's a counter-example of a tunnel project that got ready in time, in budget. This was a tunnel for car traffic, and the project was intensely challenged by left-wing and green politicians. Thus the accepted plan got a lot of scrutiny. But once approved, the contract model worked. It's now been in use for a few months.
Public transit projects are "good", so if you question the plans, you're a bad person. I think this is one reason we the projects keep failing: if you've ideologically decided it must be built, the plans and budget will not be reviewed critically enough.
Very interesting. Cool to get some insight, but there's something that bothers me:
>Poof, the opening is delayed by some months. Then by some more months. Now it looks like it's at least a year
BER should have opened in 2011. It's now among one of the most expensive airports in the world, and it hasn't opened yet and it may yet end up costing much more. Its peers in terms of cost take more than double the traffic it will be able to take. BER is just abnormally awful.
Many of the problems wave aimed to remedy still stand. It's my hope that google will bow out gracefully, leaving behind the work they have done and allow other to pick up where they left off. This seems to be the plan, although they haven't open sourced the entirety of the effort.
I was at the last montreal reddit meetup, and the ratio was almost 8/6. (http://imgur.com/p5aWY). Most of the guys: programmers. Most of the girls: graduate level psych students.
I read somewhere that reddit as a whole is about 35% female; I'm not sure what the breakdown is when it comes to the different subcommunities within it.
Also, what makes it almost 8/6? Based on that picture, the ratio seems to be exactly 8/6.
Informal is an R&D institution that conducts research and development into the design, implementation, and formal verification of distributed systems and protocols, including blockchain systems like the Cosmos Network (https://cosmos.network/). Our mission is to bring verifiability to distributed systems and organizations.
We're hiring: Senior Distributed Systems Engineer - working on open-source distributed systems software in Rust that forms the foundation for production blockchain networks securing billions of dollars in market capitalization.
Senior Rust Engineer- working on open-source products and developing correct and reliable software that serves as critical infrastructure in the blockchain ecosystem.
You can learn more and apply online here: https://informal.systems/careers/ Feel free to reach out to hello@informal.systems with any questions!