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Comment by vasili111 | Hacker News Reader

>Engineering, however, was a disaster story. Code is horribly written and very few tests are maintained to make sure deployments go without issues. There was too much emphasis on deployment and getting fixes/features out over making sure it won't break anything else. It was a common scenario to release a new feature and put duct tape all around it to make sure it "works". And way too many operational issues. There are a lot of ways to break DynamoDB :)

>Overall, though, the product is very solid and it's one of the few database that you can say "just works" when it comes to scalability and reliability (as most AWS services are)

How those two can coexist?

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You throw bodies at it. A small bunch of people will be overworked, stressed, constantly fighting fires and struggling to fight technical debt, implement features, and keep the thing afloat. Production is always a hair away from falling over but luck and grit keeps it running. To the team it's a nightmare, to the business everything is fine.

this is the answer.

source: currently being burned out on an adjacent aws team..

That sucks, man. If they won't move you to another team, just get out of there. We don't benefit by suffering for them, and they're not gonna change.

Yea. I can probably move to a more chill team, but I wouldn't work on anything nearly as cutting edge. I mentally check out for weeks at a time, then get back into it and deliver something large. I'm low key job hunting, but don't entirely trust that it'll be different anywhere else (previous jobs were like this too)

literally every co

if you want to know why capitalism causes this, start a startup and prioritize quality, do not get to market, do not raise money, do not pass go, watch dumpster fires with millions of betrayed and angry users raise their series d

I mean eventually enough duct tape can be solid like a tank :)

Or a bridge...

Or a boat...

https://flexsealproducts.com/products/flex-tape

It sounds incredulous but I have heard similar things about Oracle. May be a large dev team can duct tape enough so that the product is solid.

You're probably thinking of this comment, oracle and 25 million lines of c code: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941

They both likely have solid 80% solutions (design) and incrementally cover the 20% gap as need arises. This in turn adds to operational complexity.

Alternative would be to attempt a near 'perfect' solution for the product requirements and that may either hit an impossibility wall or may require substantial long term effort that would impede product development cycles. So likely the former approach is the smarter choice.

You need the really good duct tape.

AWS level of disaster is very different to an average disaster. :)

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