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Comment by m_ke | Hacker News Reader

Based on the linkedin profiles of people who work at the company that made this app it doesn't look like there was a single senior engineer involved.

EDIT: the CTO actually has a lot of experience, I didn't see her first two positions at SRI and Google because linkedin folded it.

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I hope no one comes away from this thinking the engineers were at fault

... they can't just deflect blame either. I'm sure they'd be happy to take credit for any success. Anyone who had direct control over the product is at fault.

I would not blame an engineer whose experience and training was inadequate to the task unless they participated in the misrepresentation of the app as ready for prime time. The blame lies with the leadership.

Unfortunately, you can often point out failures in software leadership by pointing out collective attributes of the team being led. In a void, I don't think "inexperienced" is describing a fault of an engineer, it's an attribute that describes the fault of their leadership. It's a messy situation, I don't think it's black and white as to who's "fault" any of this is.

If the engineer started a company, solicited a bid on the project, and accepted payment they are at least partly liable...

I do mean the regular developers, not company executives.

Or better..that they outsourced it to them cheap Indians.

Yeah I didn't mean to blame them either. It falls on the DNC and the management at this company.

Iowa Democratic Party (IDP), not the DNC.

Iowa wasn't the only state that planned on using this app. The DNC should have a process in place to validate whatever system is used to elect their candidate.

Krista Davis, if you know anything about her this was expected.

For those who don't, is there anything you'd care to share?

She was a Clinton campaign veteran. [1] So were a few others at Shadow, Inc.

1. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-04...

The CTO, Krista Davis, has had staff backend engineer positions. However yes the team looks fairly inexperienced.

>has had staff backend engineer positions

Kind of slow-playing her 8yrs at the Googster with this description, aren't we?

I also think U-dub is nothing to scoff at for CS schools, if you value that sort of thing.

All this being said, her experience doesn't exactly scream "Lead architect and only senior engineer on project building critical democracy-infrastructure software to enable the base mechanisms of our entire nation."

Yeah you're totally right. I missed that section of her profile.

Oh, I missed her google experience because it was folded over.

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