When they said Reddit has 2000 employees I was shocked. what could they possibly do onto a website that is basically run by users (and sysadmins) and that is basically feature-wise mature? I really can’t figure out 2000 people working every day on Reddit… on what? just for a quick comparison, the whole IAmA was run by a single person (Victoria), so… what are they doing?
I did all of the development for Sync myself. It blows my mind the mobile team is around ~200 people and ~70 on Android.
And your app is still 100x better than theirs even with all their resources. To think the CEO gets pissed off that users prefer yours over theirs even though they have no reason to make an app that bad.
But he doesn’t have to add things like NFT and Avatar support… Which is promptly forgotten when the next big thing comes along.
Honestly I would say that that’s probably the one thing that small teams have that large teams cannot have is autonomy.
I was working on a web app for a small team inside of a large corporation. It was me and two other people and every single time we wanted to make a change we had to get approval from legal we had to get right off sign off from a VP and this was for something entirely internal that only 35 people would ever use.
I imagine when you are dealing with an app that is intended to be used by millions you’re going to have the exact same issues but then 200 people all attempting to do minor improvements getting over voted and outvoted and good shit destroyed and for relegated to the dustbin because legal can imagine that there might be some inconceivable problem with it 5 years in the future, or somebody in marketing might say that it interrupts their work flow even though it would be a massive improvement to the app.
This corporate overhead is one of the biggest issues that corporations face when dealing with a mobile active environment. They can’t quickly push improvements and changes it’s got to go through the process because otherwise nobody will document anything and they’ll reach the point where they can’t even read their own app.
Wondering. Given a team of 50 people. Do you think your app would have been better or worse ?
Probably worse. It’s the old software engineering Moto, nine women can’t have a baby in one month
Have you ever worked in a corporate environment?
It’s basically friction losses with occasional sparks of actual productivity.
BTW: I’ve been using sync for years. I hope you can find a way to salvage some of your work.
I have and there’s a reason I work on solo projects now…
If I may ask so frankly: do/did you live completely off Sync or is that just a side project to you?
It was my main job for the last few years
Say I’d been learning js, jsnode, python, CSS, HTML for years without aim other than messing around.
And I wanted to make sync.
Where should I be directing my learning?
Wow that really puts things into perspective, like wtf are they actually doing with that many employees?
Reddit to me IS Sync. It’s the only way I could use the site. Without Sync reddit is dead to me.
70 android developers on an objectively worse app. Wtf? I’m so confused
Anyways thanks for Sync, masterclass in app design
I’ve seen similar things. At my last company I helped start a team of 5 people to implement an identity solution, We got it done in about 3 months. Due to shitty management they pushed out the competent devs and back filled with cheaper replacements, either fresh from university or contractors. Fast forward a few years and the over team is now a group of teams with about +/- 40 people and it takes 4 months just to get a plan together which is then obsolete when they want to start due to more shitty management.
Thank god I am no longer there.