Without it being said, we knew such things are happening. There are a few 100s of only mobile devs in Uber, while Uber app hasn’t really changed in years, and these devs aren’t creating any user-facing values. Running it must be difficult and a company need a lot of people for it, but there must be some point at which a company stops “disrupting” and just starts optimising and micro-optimising. This is what OP is talking about it, they are micro-optimising budget. There are 100s of them employed, so they must be doing something!
Consider that 300 mobile devs produce close to 1 year of man-hours every day. This is enough time to complete your TODO list of app you always wanted to do. They spend it producing values for shareholders, not you.
Now consider how many devs and experiments like these are done every day on facebook, instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and gmail.
I don’t think that is fully the case, 300 hundred devs don’t provide in a day what a dev provides in 300 days. Basically the coordination needed between those 300 devs require so much effort that they won’t get done as much. I like the comparison with a pregnancy, with 9 women, you can’t get one baby in a month. After 9 months you can end with 9 babies or so, but it still takes 9 months.
Having 300 devs is incredibly inefficient, with so many, many of those are just doing menial work. And surely there will be plenty doing less than they would do in a smaller team. The reason for such big teams I feel is double, one, high rotation of employees, like OP, the best ones see the shit show and leave. The worse ones that won’t find another job easily remain, unhappy and even less efficient, so the company keeps hiring more. The other reason is, the more employees, the easier it is to get shitty unethical stuff done. Each dev provides a little bit of crap, so little that they might not see the impact or so that they won’t feel like fighting it, but combined with everyone, it creates that shitshow.
That’s not at all what I meant. Coordination of people is value added too, that totally counts into working hours.
The other reason is, the more employees, the easier it is to get shitty unethical stuff done
That’s the main spirit of what I tried to express. The more people to keep employed, the more ideas you need to justify your existence to the shareholders. The 300 devs aren’t adding new features, aren’t making your app faster, smaller, safer. The last 20 updates with “bugs fixed” in change logs? These bugs were bugs in A/B tests they are running on your device. They aren’t adding any end-user facing value to the app or experience. They are adding new way of tracking, updating existing A/B tests for new remotely controlled flags, adding new A/B tests.
They are squeezing the profit margin from you. You’re paying for it AND are the product.
Without it being said, we knew such things are happening. There are a few 100s of only mobile devs in Uber, while Uber app hasn’t really changed in years, and these devs aren’t creating any user-facing values. Running it must be difficult and a company need a lot of people for it, but there must be some point at which a company stops “disrupting” and just starts optimising and micro-optimising. This is what OP is talking about it, they are micro-optimising budget. There are 100s of them employed, so they must be doing something!
Consider that 300 mobile devs produce close to 1 year of man-hours every day. This is enough time to complete your TODO list of app you always wanted to do. They spend it producing values for shareholders, not you.
Now consider how many devs and experiments like these are done every day on facebook, instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and gmail.
I don’t think that is fully the case, 300 hundred devs don’t provide in a day what a dev provides in 300 days. Basically the coordination needed between those 300 devs require so much effort that they won’t get done as much. I like the comparison with a pregnancy, with 9 women, you can’t get one baby in a month. After 9 months you can end with 9 babies or so, but it still takes 9 months.
Having 300 devs is incredibly inefficient, with so many, many of those are just doing menial work. And surely there will be plenty doing less than they would do in a smaller team. The reason for such big teams I feel is double, one, high rotation of employees, like OP, the best ones see the shit show and leave. The worse ones that won’t find another job easily remain, unhappy and even less efficient, so the company keeps hiring more. The other reason is, the more employees, the easier it is to get shitty unethical stuff done. Each dev provides a little bit of crap, so little that they might not see the impact or so that they won’t feel like fighting it, but combined with everyone, it creates that shitshow.
That’s not at all what I meant. Coordination of people is value added too, that totally counts into working hours.
That’s the main spirit of what I tried to express. The more people to keep employed, the more ideas you need to justify your existence to the shareholders. The 300 devs aren’t adding new features, aren’t making your app faster, smaller, safer. The last 20 updates with “bugs fixed” in change logs? These bugs were bugs in A/B tests they are running on your device. They aren’t adding any end-user facing value to the app or experience. They are adding new way of tracking, updating existing A/B tests for new remotely controlled flags, adding new A/B tests.
They are squeezing the profit margin from you. You’re paying for it AND are the product.