Comment by zer8k | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zer8k | Hacker News Reader

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To me it's not that either. SaaS can be done well and has been done well historically.

The difference between then and now is the MBA-ization of tech. The MBA cancer infests and does the only thing it can do. Create spreadsheets to force people to track time (points) and other stupid metrics. These can then be boiled down to near meaninglessness but make the non-technicals feel like they have control.

The result is people like me who want to do good engineering can't. You budgeted 40 points for a 70 point project. Congratulations, I have a gun to my head where I can't write good code so I end up fixing it when it eventually causes some level of SEV. That is, if I'm lucky. If I'm not lucky I have to bandaid the bandaid and hope to god I can run out my tenure so I either get promoted out of dealing with it or quit. Only to do it once more at another company.

If tech companies would be run by engineering, like they used to be, things would not be this way. Non-technical garbage Mckinsey level MBA consultants are the problem. Second to them is completely incompetent project management. Typically these two groups intersect on more than 80% of traits.

Meaningless metrics and Goodhart's Law are certainly problems, but this sounds more like an issue of rigid locked-in processes. If an engineer believes that vital changes need to be made, they should be able to argue for it to get it prioritized. Point allocations shouldn't ever be set in stone.

> If tech companies would be run by engineering, like they used to be, things would not be this way. Non-technical garbage Mckinsey level MBA consultants are the problem. Second to them is completely incompetent project management. Typically these two groups intersect on more than 80% of traits.

I'm not altogether convinced this is the solution either. Google, famously, is an incredibly engineering-driven company and these days it can't keep a product around to save its life. Engineers aren't necessarily great at project management. I'm not sure if it's MBAs at Google sending Reader to the graveyard, or perhaps engineering management reading the usage tea leaves and making a cold calculated numerical decision rather than considering for other customer factors.

> I'm not sure if it's MBAs at Google sending Reader to the graveyard, or perhaps engineering management reading the usage tea leaves and making a cold calculated numerical decision rather than considering for other customer factors.

Who manages those managers? The answer is probably MBAs with spreadsheet driven metrics for cutting projects. Reader in particular was egregious because it very easily could've been productized and sold.

> Google, famously, is an incredibly engineering-driven companyGoogle, famously, is an incredibly engineering-driven company

Perhaps it once was. Sundar has next to no experience in the industry he leads. This is not uncommon. A brief look at several of the Google executives now shows a dramatic lack of experience in actual software engineering. Some of them have high-flying CS degrees but that is a meaningless metric.

Coincidentally in my startup-filled career I have rarely met an executive that was an actual engineer. When I do, they are typically 10-20 years behind current technology (even ignoring the new-framework-a-week nonsense). Actual, hardcore, born in the trenches engineers seem to have their heads held underwater by the sociopathic business school leadership.

On the other hand, was engineer Page's second tenure as CEO better than businessman's Schmidt's?

Reader wasn't cancelled for business or technical reasons, but it was for a good reason. I can't share it, mostly because I've forgotten too much of the story I was told to repeat it.

I find it unimpressive how much people focus on it. They don't seem to know there are other RSS readers.

There are plenty of other products in the Google Graveyard, though. It's just the one that gets brought up the most.

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