Also, the bug buster benefits if they get up high on the leaderboard, because job recruiters will most likely use the leaderboard for lead gen. If you're looking to make a job move, moving up on the leaderboard will help.
I already get plenty of recruiting inbound without having to donate my time to fix bugs for Internet Points.
What you're saying is that this is a worthy use of time for people because they'll maybe move up in the leaderboards which then might lead recruiters to reach out to them.
And after all that, you have to do a phone screen, technical phone interview, a full-day onsite, plus whatever other hoops you'll be made to jump through to change jobs.
Yeah, no. Hard pass. Seems like a huge waste of developers' time.
You're not the target audience.
And also, you wouldn't be donating your time. The whole point is that a company puts up a contest for their own employees, who are presumably getting paid to participate.
You do realize most developers are asked to fix bugs anyways, regardless of any silly competition?
Their pitch to Organizations is that
1) They may be able to help you save money 2) They may make it more fun / easier to solve bugs.
Pitch to developers - they'll give you some perks for doing your job.
Note that I also think it's lame because I don't think code guru is that good and don't care about re"invent
If you want me to fix your bugs, pay me for it. Don't do this gamification nonsense.
Edit: apparently I did misunderstand how this works. It seems like the "Bugbusters" are just a company's normal developers. It still seems kinda dumb, but not as exploitative as I initially thought.
That said, other providers of this type of tooling might take some ideas from something like this.
You misread pretty much everything I wrote. My original comment wasn't an explanation for why fixing bugs in general is a "waste of time". My opinion is that uploading your code to this service that uses ML to automatically generate bugs for your team to do a bug bash on is a waste of time.
Our bug backlog has hundreds, if not thousands, of bugs already. We don't need to rely on ML to tell us what to fix.
We have real issues that customers are facing that need immediate attention. This is just a total distraction and a waste of time.
1. Stackoverflow to show my expertise
2. Any Open source contribution that shows up in my github profile
There is literally another story on the front page [1] about such "leaderboards" and what happens when people game them to move up.
I would not advise anyone to participate in such a contest, it sounds more like a race to the bottom while providing valuable training data to AWS for free.
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> if you’re looking to make a job move,…
Why would companies allow their best developers to be poached? Unless of course there’s a way for companies to keep their developer scores private…
This invalidates your other point that it benefits developers. Why would a dev sink countless hours for a “very low” chance at being on the global leaderboard and hence moving jobs.
You can’t simultaneously posit it’s good for both companies and developers.
Not at all. The company undervalues their employee and sees little risk in them showing up on the board, and the employee overvalues their skill, thinking that showing up on the leaderboard is a shoo-in. Maybe the employer is right, maybe the employee is right, or maybe both or neither is right.
Also, the employee does it because they get paid to hunt bugs regardless. It just helps the company by putting a structure around what they are already doing.
Come on, this is just being coy — you and I both know this is a terrible deal for employees — as you write earlier, there’s a very low chance that a random dev will appear on the global leaderboard. What’s more, the best devs won’t even play this game, so it’s left for juniors and people trying to “prove themselves” to trample over each other for peanuts.
Not to single you out, but I wish influential tech folks like you would speak up more about the cynical exploitation that’s going on here in plain sight.
Let me put it you this way - would an engineer at Netflix ever “play this game” to win ? Would employees at Netflix even put up with something like this? If not, why would you think employees at random tech co should?
I think you're missing the point. The leaderboard is an extra bonus. The main thing is squashing bugs you were already squashing. But yes, there are definitely engineers at Netflix who would play this to "win", just for the love of the game.
But let me relate another similar story -- when Amazon released the Deepracer, they added a leaderboard. All around the world, people got paid by their employers to compete. I think the first winner worked for Samsung and was paid her full time salary just to compete on Deepracer. They saw it as a point of pride that one of their employees was on the leaderboard, with enough value to pay her to work on it full time. I'm pretty sure that is what they are going for here with the global leaderboard. Everyone wins in that situation. The company gets to brag about having the best bug squasher, the employee gets to get paid for squashing bugs, and Amazon gets publicity.
> I'm pretty sure that is what they are going for here with the global leaderboard
Sorry, I’m confused. This seems like a change in your position? Earlier you argued the intent is for employees to be able to showcase their skill to recruiters… you also responded to someone else who said they already have recruiter attention with “you are not their intended audience”
> paid her full time salary just to compete on Deepracer
Wait, are you seriously comparing a global competition in cutting edge tech to squashing bugs … in your own codebase? Come on.. there’s no comparison. If anything, a company would be semi embarrassed that they have so many bugs in their pre existing codebase.
I’m asking you in good faith. Why the contortions to defend such a product? I see from your profile that you are an investor and advisor. I would seriously try pushing this product to your companies and see how they react. If they do adopt it, run an anonymous survey of the devs .. then I would love to see you argue with a straight face that it “benefits developers”
There is a benefit to both employees and employers. Being on the leaderboard benefits the employee because it raises their profile. Having an employee on the leaderboard, as an employer, also raises the company's profile. It's like how companies send people to conferences to talk. It benefits the employee by raising their profile but also benefits the company.
> I’m asking you in good faith. Why the contortions to defend such a product?
I'm not really making contortions. This product is aimed at large enterprises. It's not aimed at startups (so I would never suggest it for any company I invest in) and it's not aimed at companies that are already well known (FAANG). It's aimed at the 1000s of other large enterprises out there who want to incentivize their employees with some prizes to do a job they're hopefully already doing while also possibly raising the company profile a bit by having people show up on the leaderboard.
But it definitely solves a problem for it's target audience, which you don't seem to be a part of. I am not their target audience either. But I see the value to their target audience.
I would politely disagree — in any case the thread is there for all to judge.
If you sincerely believe that this is a product that should exist and will positively impact everyone involved, I can only hope you’re right [0]. In the end it’s all up to your conscience, but I do wish our leaders in tech were a bit more sensitive to seeing the broader picture.
[0]: pour one out for all the naive devs that will no doubt sink 100s of hours to be on the leaderboard for little benefit to them.
Only for cheapo companies. Companies should (and do) _pay_ their devs to attend re:invent. I get your point though. For naive devs, it’s like getting to go to a concert. But it’s quite cynical for AWS to exploit this