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Comment by fjsolwmv | Hacker News Reader

BBC published a technical (but really PR) article written by amateurs posing as pros, instead of consulting reputable experts?

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To be clear, this isn't a news article written by our journalists - it is a piece written by the team themselves that we felt may be of interest to others, and that might help us do things better in the future. While I enjoyed reading it, I can assure you that SSD performance testing doesn't move the BBC PR needle compared to the identity of the new Doctor Who.

We're acutely aware that we've still got much to learn in this space, so if there are thoughts you have on how we could do better we're all ears.

Finally, while I assured you it wasn't a PR piece we're always looking for engineers in this area (and across the whole BBC) so if you'd be interested in helping us improve, get in touch.

Do you accept American Engineers? /s

I found the piece to be wonderful. I don't do large scale storage work, so I'm very un-knowledgeable in the area, but it's great to see someone else's struggles other than Amazon or a backup service. And it is yet another indicator that the BBC cares about quality content instead of just pushing up some stock price.

Thanks for you write up

Don't let the gratuitous negativity get to you! I may only see a very small slice of what the BBC does, what with being one of those continental imperialist and all. But what does find its way to me has always seemed to be excellent.

(Not a job application. Unless you know something about the EU/British future that I don't.)

The problem isn't that the amateurs wrote the article, it's that the amateurs made the purchasing decisions that created the story in the first place.

No. They were duped by their own IT department. The reporters thought they were talking to experts on all things IT-related. The reality was that their team, while no doubt experts on many things, knew little about testing SSDs. This wasn't PR but a simple mistake in journalism. They should have talked to outside experts before publishing.

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