What a fascinating insight into the guts of a MegaCorp. Their scale (Discover alone paying $13MM/yr for ads), politics and inner workings. Very well written, too.
The most interesting aspect to me, apart from the main plot, was how far detached from reality everyone is operating.
Someone discovers a fatal flaw (5 second latency) in a multi-million dollar ad campaign.
You'd think this is a no-brainer; file a bug with the engineering team and have this fixed, right?
Instead, at Amazon, it eventually escalates into someone desperately "asking for the contact information for the person that manages latency for amazon.com". That alone is the stuff that comedy TV shows are made of.
Stories like these make me feel real pity for the little engineers all the way down the food chain. The ones who had to implement and test this adserver. The ones who likely weren't happy at all with 5 second latencies either.
I wonder if their voices were squelched by management in the same way, or if there's just an established culture of resignation and nobody cares anymore.
With every new team and new layer of management, the agents' incentives drifted farther away from the organization's leading into a gray zone entirely focused on self-promotion and detached from fundamental business ethics.
The most interesting aspect to me, apart from the main plot, was how far detached from reality everyone is operating.
Someone discovers a fatal flaw (5 second latency) in a multi-million dollar ad campaign.
You'd think this is a no-brainer; file a bug with the engineering team and have this fixed, right?
Instead, at Amazon, it eventually escalates into someone desperately "asking for the contact information for the person that manages latency for amazon.com". That alone is the stuff that comedy TV shows are made of.
Stories like these make me feel real pity for the little engineers all the way down the food chain. The ones who had to implement and test this adserver. The ones who likely weren't happy at all with 5 second latencies either.
I wonder if their voices were squelched by management in the same way, or if there's just an established culture of resignation and nobody cares anymore.