Lindens are happy people, so that's all right...

Anyone see this:
http://secondlife.blogs.com/philip/

So that's OK. The world is bugged to hell, the users are baying at the gates, the bugs are taking over... but the Lindens are happy so that's OK.

All say "ohm" after me...
Cali

amem..hell no
few months ago i would login into sl and feel like logged into something great,these days its like i got into a broken car falling apart and going at 200 miles per hour

My car is only going .002 miles per hour.

I expect pesky customers only get in the way anyway. No people means those bugs can wait while we work on the really interesting stuff.
Cali

There are a few entries relating to customer service that I could add to that handbook.

heh. I don't know how it affects development - I've been in rigid development teams for government applications, and the output was horrendous.

Unfortunately, most jobs -- in the US at least -- are a lot more like Office Space and not very much like Linden Lab.

Don't forget your cover sheet on the TSP report or I'll nail ya with my Red Swingline Stapler!

I don't think it shuld be a choice - employees happy and residents unhappy or vice versa. They could surely adjust their working model to ensure that things that are driving us all nuts get done?

I think that they are so used to people sounding off after an update, that they are not understanding how the lag, bugs, painfulness of the update is affecting people.

We don't have to chain the employees to the desk and abuse them to get the bugs fixed do we? Maybe we do, bugs aren't much fun.

As my SL partner said to me: well, the hard part / most time consuming part of dev work is testing and fixing bugs... if you don't do that at all, I'm pretty sure one could achieve unparalled levels of productivity lol.

Absolutely.
Cali

Hmm...

and

i don't know, but it sounds extremely odd that with every single employee continually "taking risks" on individual level... there's been 'almost zero employee turnover' after 6 years? Either by some miracle they manage to only hire people that are magically able to make only the right decisions (which clearly isn't the case because "We make mistakes." ... or more likely, there isn't actual "risk taking" here because apparently one can mess things aplenty and they still get to keep their work... o.O

Translation: Make risky changes to the code on a weekly basis and don't worry about destroying the users' experiences.

We will only fire you if you break the law or play office politics, not for crashing the project into the ground.

edited for accuracy

It's a TPS report, Flipper. Seems like you have a case of the Tuesdays.

that made me cry, and break things, both.

By the way, what the hell is 'frisch'?

I have that effect on a lot of people.

Damn servers with their crashin'! I can never say that with a straight face because of TPSP... but that acronym ain't appropriate for human consumption.

AR'd FGJ

Nova left to go back to school, she said. Haney left (under duress or not) because of the politics clause I'm guessing (LOLERCAUST!) Ruben is probably making more as a free agent. I assume the rest just got sick of dealing with the petty, vindictive residents.

In other companies, they're called "clients". They are the ones who pay the bills, provide an audience for this piece of software, and for whom some level of quality service should be provided.

For the record, I'm all in favour of having some degree of autonomy in the workplace among people who are able to comport themselves in a professional manner. However, at some point *someone* has to be in charge and determine the important-yet-not-so-much-fun things that *need* to be done, and have the stones to make it happen.

Mine crashes all the time.

-Pall

I don't think that's true - Haney's a great guy, and left to work for a Linden Lab board members non-profit organization, AFAIK.

Regards,

-Flip

Really? You could just as well assume that they left because they felt a need for some sense of direction in their working life.
Or you could assume they found, in time, that working on whatever they wanted to wasn't quite a cool and as much fun as they thought it could be?

You might also remember that to assume anything makes an ass out of you and me both...

The more I think about this, the more insane it seems. Somebody tell me if I'm misinterpreting this.

I work at Linden Lab and decide that adding a flash feature to snapshotting is a fun project to pursue. All I have to do is "bake" the idea with a couple of coworkers over morning coffee, write the code in such a way that it grafts into the trunk without any readily apparent bugs, drop my weekly contribution chip into the counter, and spend the rest of the week sending lovegrams to fellow employees.

At no time will I be held accountable for the flash code causing any kind of problem for the users whether it be general disatisfaction with the feature or major crashing issues. I've done nothing illeagal or political; so my position and reputation are wholly intact.

Am I misinterpreting this? Does this environment really produce useful and profitable software? Are there any viable examples of it?