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I worked for a storage startup in the South Bay in the late 00s which did something like this

I worked for a storage startup in the South Bay in the late 00s which did something like this. After staff crunched to deliver the base operating system and kernel controllers, management gave across-the-board poor reviews to all IC staff to justify no raise. Those with the ability quickly left for greener pastures; Google hired some of the best. Only those who had to (work visas, lack of experience, etc.) remained. The product, being a v0.1 release implemented in C, was of course plagued with data corruption and poor performance. It read /etc/password from disk on every file access. An uninitialized int caused indirect inode corruption every ~millionth write. And so on. Because of the poor product quality, they lost multiple opportunities, including a bid for early Facebook photo storage. The company never had more than 250 customers and ended up being sold to a Valley stalwart. The CEO and VP Eng were paid out handsomely, of course; preferred converted stock tranches or whatever. My options from 4 years of employment ended up worth $500.

Original discussionI worked 80 hour weeks to deliver a platform for a hedge fund,then they fired me174 source comments · at import
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DF

I just do not believe this story. Nobody in the right mind will fire key software engineer 48 hours after system goes live. This is where all the bugs/problems show up and you need all hands on deck to fix them. Six months after launch when all problems are solved - absolutely, you can fire engineer. 48 hours after launch? absolutely not.

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ST

Sounds like the Igneous playbook, from what I've heard. Immediately after launch they laid off a majority of the dev team, as they'd outlived their usefulness after completing the crunch. I interviewed there but fortunately declined the offer - I felt like I dodged a bullet when my friend (who survived the layoffs, only to be conscripted as a sales grunt) told me about it. I also gather that the CEO had pulled similar shenanigans with Isilon in the past. If it's any consolation, Igneous died and the execs didn't make out like bandits this time.

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AN

”The product, being a v0.1 release implemented in C, was of course plagued with data corruption and poor performance. It read /etc/password from disk on every file access. An uninitialized int caused indirect inode corruption every ~millionth write. And so on. Because of the poor product quality, they lost multiple opportunities, …” It sounds like the poor reviews for the ICs was warranted, wouldn’t you say?

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FO

Smells like Igneous or TinTri. Story shows too much competence for Springpath or Whiptail. Storage is particularly rife with stuff like this for some reason.

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GS

This makes me even more incredulous than the GP commenter. How did people who "read /etc/password from disk on every file access." get hired by Google? Or perhaps the right question is for which roles, because with that level of DS&A they shouldn't have passed Google's DS&A whiteboard interview.

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BI

> The CEO and VP Eng were paid out handsomely, of course It's the prevalence of scenarios like this that makes me hate the MBA caste with a pasison

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