johan_larson (u/johan_larson)

johan_larson commented on Ask HN: Should we bring software dev in-house? · Posted by u/45HCPW

Do you have any people in your company who could build what you need if given the time? Sometimes there are people who are pretty handy with coding who aren't called "programmers". They may be analysts or engineers or something like that. And is there anyone who understands the domain, has solid leadership skills, and at least a bit of tech skill, enabling them to serve as a project lead?

If you have both of these, you could conceivably use your existing staff to build at least a limited-functionality version 1, and backfill the jobs they used to do with new people. If not, you have the harder problem of needing to hire people to do something you don't know how to do at all.

johan_larson commented on Google lays off more employees and moves some roles to other countries businessinsider.com/googl... · Posted by u/wslh

alephnerd · a year ago

> affected teams in finance include Google's Treasury, Business Services, and Revenue Cash Operations teams

> Google would build out its "growth hubs" in locations such as Bangalore, Mexico City, and Dublin as part of the restructuring

> that a small percentage of the roles will move to other offices in the US and abroad where Google is putting more investment, including India, Dublin, and Atlanta

Doesn't sound too bad or too surprising. Most back office and RevOps was outsourced decades ago, and played a major role in making Ireland, India, and Phillipines what they are today.

Reading between the lines, I think they might be offloading some of these RevOps roles to Accenture or Deloitte based on the locations mentioned.

johan_larson · a year ago

It makes sense that Google would want to push jobs from high-cost centers to low-cost ones. The only question is why they haven't done so more aggressively.

johan_larson commented on Butterflies Full of Wasps Full of Microwasps Are a Science Nightmare (2021) atlasobscura.com/articles... · Posted by u/nxobject

johan_larson · a year ago

Yo dawg, I heard you like parasites, so I put wasps in your wasps so they can parasitize while they're parasitized.

johan_larson commented on How the wrong side won at Boeing backofmind.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/viburnum

rawgabbit · a year ago

>The long-running debate over whether the purpose of the corporation is to maximize short-term profits for shareholders or, alternatively, to operate in the interest of all stakeholders to promote long-term value, dates back to the 1932 law review exchange between Merrick Dodd (here) and Adolf Berle (here). Milton Friedman’s 1970 essay, The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, epitomizes the former view, known as shareholder primacy, which posits that the sole role of the corporation is to maximize shareholder profits. In Friedman’s words, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” We have long advocated for a broader view of corporate purpose than Friedman’s and the shareholder primacy theory: first, as described in 1979 in Takeover Bids in the Target’s Boardroom, to empower boards to consider the interests of all stakeholders, including the communities in which corporations operate, in repudiating takeover bids by opportunistic raiders; and later, to encourage directors to resist short-term pressures and allow boards to exercise their business judgment to evaluate the variety of stakeholder interests that are essential to promoting sustainable success and growth in long-term corporate value.

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2022/11/29/understanding-the...

johan_larson · a year ago

Yeah, it's not hard to find knowledgeable commentary to the effect that the duty of directors to act in the interests of the shareholders does not mean a simple-minded duty to maximize profits. The interests of shareholders are complicated, and boards can make nuanced decisions about short-term vs long-term profits, risks, reputation, and such things that are difficult to capture using financial reports.

Here's a Cornell law school prof saying just this. https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

"There is a common belief that corporate directors have a legal duty to maximize corporate profits and 'shareholder value' — even if this means skirting ethical rules, damaging the environment or harming employees. But this belief is utterly false. To quote the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in the recent Hobby Lobby case: 'Modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not.'"

"Serving shareholders’ 'best interests' is not the same thing as either maximizing profits, or maximizing shareholder value. 'Shareholder value,' for one thing, is a vague objective: No single 'shareholder value' can exist, because different shareholders have different values. Some are long-term investors planning to hold stock for years or decades; others are short-term speculators."

"More to the point, corporate directors are protected from most interference when it comes to running their business by a doctrine known as the business judgment rule. It says, in brief, that so long as a board of directors is not tainted by personal conflicts of interest and makes a reasonable effort to stay informed, courts will not second-guess the board’s decisions about what is best for the company — even when those decisions predictably reduce profits or share price."

johan_larson commented on Snowflake says Frank Slootman is retiring as CEO; stock plunges 20% cnbc.com/2024/02/28/snowf... · Posted by u/coloneltcb

StriverGuy · 2 years ago

Could very well just be about Slootman retiring. He is considered one of the most savvy and aggressive tech ceos out there and is arguably impossible to truly replace.

johan_larson · 2 years ago

> He is considered one of the most savvy and aggressive tech ceos out there

By whom? I used to work at Snowflake, and from what I remember people on the inside were far more excited about the founders than they were about the CEO.

I got the impression that he was meeting expectations for the CEO job, but no more. Though that's a pretty high bar, given position of the company and the industry.

johan_larson commented on Meta cracks down on low performers staffer says feels like a 'witch hunt' businessinsider.com/faceb... · Posted by u/achow

donsupreme · 3 years ago

This possibly the worst way to "trim", because it's not the low performers they will be trimming off, it's the ones who are bad at politics or networking will be let go.

johan_larson · 3 years ago

I don't know about that. Companies generally do regular performance reviews, so there should be a lot of information about who the underperforming or merely adequate workers in each group are.

johan_larson commented on Tech Companies Face a Fresh Crisis: Hiring nytimes.com/2022/02/16/ma... · Posted by u/sizzle

sage76 · 4 years ago

Yes, hiring is hard when you reject every candidate who can't breeze through leetcode hards in 20 mins.

I wonder how much tech companies paid nytimes to write this bs article. Most of my friends have a masters in CS from a top 50 uni, and plenty had work ex, and STILL had a ridiculously hard time getting hired.

Being international might have played a role, but fuck this perception that hiring is hard. If you are only targeting the tippy top candidates, yes it's hard, and that's by design.

johan_larson · 4 years ago

I doubt the really top companies -- top 10, say -- have any trouble finding staff, at least for low-level positions. These companies are mobbed by applicants, and can afford to pay top rates. But I can believe things are rather different farther down the totem-pole of prestige. How far down do you have to go before hiring becomes really difficult, and you can't just pick the top of the crop, but rather have to make do with questionable workers?

Netflix is the #6 internet company by market cap. Probably no problems there.

eBay is #30.

Digital Ocean is #91.

johan_larson commented on No one died in China of Covid since April 15th 2020 worldometers.info/coronav... · Posted by u/rep_movsd

johan_larson · 4 years ago

I don't for a minute believe this number is actually true. But on the other hand, it seems like a very strange lie to tell, because it's so unbelievable. It would be far easier to believe a claim that COVID deaths are simply very rare but not actually non-existent. That would be the sensible lie, the canny lie.

It's tempting to believe that the Chinese government just doesn't give a damn what people think, and are therefore willing to say anything at all. But if they really don't care, why lie in the first place?

The only interpretation that I can come up with that makes sense is that a) the government of China is reluctant to admit to any fault at all, b) the actual number of deaths is low but not impressively low, and c) the Chinese press (including social media) is very tightly controlled, and d) by b and c the government can get away with saying there are no deaths without looking like idiots.

johan_larson commented on Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion simplethread.com/agile-at... · Posted by u/jetheredge

loki49152 · 4 years ago

The fundamental insight behind what became agile is that it isn't actually possible to have both a guaranteed delivery date and a guaranteed set of delivered features. The reality of software development just doesn't allow it.

Businesses don't "get things done" by operating as if they can have both. That's why projects fail, businesses cut corners, and then inevitably ship broken products or don't ship at all.

Most of the "agile methodologies" are nonsense dreamt up by borderline con artists attempting to sell their services. The fact that it's an either / or choice - and that nothing can get around that choice - is inherent in the nature of the work.

johan_larson · 4 years ago

I agree with you that it is not possible to both fix the feature set and fix the delivery date and expect to consistently succeed. But it is also not possibly to tell upper management, who are dealing with a whole other set of difficulties, that they have to pick a feature set or a delivery date and that's all there is to it. If you do that, they'll reject your advice, and find someone else who'll give them a more palatable message.

The best I can come up with is the notion of a double contingency plan. Engineering agrees to a set of functionality to be delivered and a delivery date. This is inevitably going to be a bit optimistic, because people consistently overestimate themselves.

To deal with that, the first contingency plan addresses the question of what should be done if things are not converging to the ship date. The plan here is to keep the ship date, but ask hard questions about what bits of functionality actually need to be kept. What are the actual P0 - MUST HAVE features?

The second contingency plan addresses what is to be done if the first one fails. At this point engineering has already done all they can. They have pushed as hard as they can, and they have deferred every feature that is deferrable. They are down to the actual MUST HAVEs. Now the rest of the organization has to figure out what to do with a product that is inevitably going to be late. What is the alternate ship date? What customers are going to be really unhappy. And so on.

It seems to me any large engineering project should think out these contingency plans in advance. What will they do if making the deadline starts to look daunting? And what will they do if making the deadline turns out to be impossible?