alt Hacker NewsI'm pretty damn sure those videos were put on the page because someone in marketing wanted them. I'm pretty sure then QA complained the videos loaded too slowly, so the preloading was added. Then, the upper management responsible for the mess shrugged their shoulders and let it ship.
You're not insightful for noticing a website is dog slow or that there is a ton of data being served (almost none of which is actually the code). Please stop blaming the devs. You're laundering blame. Almost no detail of a web site or app is ever up to the devs alone.
From the perspective of the devs, they expect that the infrastructure can handle what the business wanted. If you have a problem you really should punch up, not down.
Replies
this isn't purely laundering blame. it is frustrating for the infrastructure/operations side is that the dev teams routinely kick the can down to them instead of documenting the performance/reliability weak points. in this case, when someone complains about the performance of the site, both dev and qa should have documented artifacts that explain this potential. as an infrastructure and reliability person, i am happy to support this effort with my own analysis. i am less inclined to support the dev team that just says, "hey, i delivered what they asked for, it's up to you to make it functional."
> From the perspective of the devs, they expect that the infrastructure can handle what the business wanted. If you have a problem you really should punch up, not down.
this belittles the intelligence of the dev team. they should know better. it's like validating saying "i really thought i could pour vodka in the fuel tank of this porsche and everything would function correctly. must be porsche's fault."
"Developers" here clearly refers to the entire organization responsible. The internal politics of the foo.com providers are not relevant to Foo users.
And the devs are responsible for finding a good technical solution under these constraints. If they can't, for communicating their constraints to the rest of the team so a better tradeoff can be found.
Fuck that. I just left a job where the IT dept just said "yes and" to the executives for 30 years. It was the most fucked environment I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot coming from the MSP space. Professionals get hired to do these things so they can say "No, that's a terrible idea" when people with no knowledge of the domain make requests. Your attitude is super toxic.
Sounds just like a "helpless" dev that shifts blame to anyone but themselves.
The devs are the subject matter experts. Does marketing understand the consequences of preloading all those videos? Does upper management? Unlikely. It’s the experts’ job to educate them. That’s part of the job as much as writing code is.
In general, how people communicate internally and with the public is important.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law
Have a wonderful day =3
From the perspective of the devs, they have a responsibility for saying something literally wont fly anywhere, ever, saying the business is responsible for every bad decision is a complete abrogation of your responsibilities.
> Please stop blaming the devs. You're laundering blame. Almost no detail of a web site or app is ever up to the devs alone.
If a bridge engineer is asked to build a bridge that would collapse under its own weight, they will refuse. Why should it be different for software engineers?