A story about a dev finding a job, the effect of group sizes on productivity, and who cares about Uber's security breach?

apparently, no one!

Hi there. This is my first letter, and against my better judgement, it is long. The first part is a story that illustrates how broken engineering recruitment is these days. After that, there’s a note about how group productivity changes with its size, and finally, a somewhat depressing note on security breaches.

With every letter, I will send you a contemporary story and engineering and management related notes. Please do drop in feedback, I want to get better at this. Here’s the list of notes in this letter-

• A developer finds a job, or many.

• The Ringelmann effect

• Uber’s security breach, who cares?

• Currently Reading.

Alright, let's start with the story, it’s a bit long, so get a cup of coffee or tea. And someone please tell substack to allow me to add a table to contents.

A dev finds a job, or many

E01

A small storm in a beer mug

It was that conversation that did it for Rajiv. Four years of constant teasing didn’t really move him much. But that evening, his friends were talking about buying flats in an apartment block together. Till now, it was only about toys, and he didn’t really care too much about not earning as much as them. For the first two years, he had learnt a lot at his job, even though he got paid half as much as his batchmates who, as luck would have it, got placed at product development companies out of college. Rajiv had been saving a little bit every month but it was nowhere near enough cash to pay a flat’s down payment. That beer mug he was holding, it couldn’t hold the angst he felt about the predicament.

Thing is, Rajiv is a good programmer and an excellent problem solver. And he knows this. He’s one of those quiet guys back in engineering college who everyone would go to understand tough math and physics and when their electronics went bust. He never scored at the top, but everyone around him knew then, who to go to when they needed help. He had this thing about breaking big problems into smaller ones till he could use the basics of any subject to solve it. And he didn't limit to reading textbooks, he went deeper into subjects he loved. His reputation from college days carries on till today, almost all of his friends use him as a sounding board on technical problems they face. “You would be a star in my team man, why are you stuck at that pathetic services job?”, something he heard often, and ignored till now.

After dinner, as he put the lights off to sleep, that little storm in his beer mug took over his thoughts. He felt he had done enough at his company. In fact for the last 6 months, he hardly needed to do anything. He didn’t identify with his current team any more. He knew he was better technically than his boss, although he respected him a lot for being a really good mentor. And he had been solving problems for these friends most days. Just last week, he had solved a critical SQL problem Abdul was facing at work, explained how Kafka rebalances to Ashok who had no clue about what he was doing, and helped Vishy solve a boring memory leak issue he had been struggling with. 

In this angry moment, he finally felt that he deserved to earn more than his friends who he was helping all the time. 

He had to do something about it. He had never interviewed anywhere before, so lacking the confidence to get a job, he called up an acquaintance who worked at the edtech company called Abacus. He had heard they were hiring senior engineers after their recent series A round. No, he will not ask any of his friends for referrals, he couldn’t face them if he couldn’t get through interviews at their companies. 

Interviewing 

After the initial jitters, Rajiv gained confidence while interviewing at Abacus. He was rather pleasantly surprised that he was asked questions that weren’t really hard. He did feel that some interviewers were trying to prove him wrong, but his training kicked in, he thought of them as clients and answered patiently. After the 4th interview, when he came back home, he felt confident that he would get this job. With that boost in confidence, he thought he may even try out at Bridge Logistics; he had heard a lot about their culture and people, and how hard their interview process was. Might be a good challenge, real time logistics problems were known to be tough to solve, and these guys were market leaders for a decade now.

And then he thought he might as well try out at Click Money (CM); their hoardings were all over the city and on LinkedIn, telling everyone how cool their culture was. They were in the lending business, so there was a good chance the startup would make money. The news was abuzz last month about their latest funding round, even during this funding winter. So he called Thiyagu, he’d met him at a conference last year and knew that he had joined Click as an Engineering Manager, to check if they were hiring Senior Engineers. He met Thiyagu over coffee the next day to find more about the company, and came back excited about the role Thiyagu was hiring for. 

The next few days were a blur for Rajiv, he went through many interviews at these 3 companies. After meeting people at Bridge and Click, he was not really excited about Abacus anymore. Their interviewers were very knowledgeable and the interview standards were much higher. But he was not confident about landing a job at any one of these two as much as he was at Abacus, and so he kept interviewing at Abacus as well. 

He didn’t really have much to do at work. So he spent that time studying. Bridge had a take home coding assignment and he liked that, instead of the on the spot whiteboarding at Click, or not even a mention of coding at Abacus. Knowing that his first and immediate answers weren’t as great as when he had some time to think about things, he really liked that he could solve this problem offline. He also felt that he was best representing himself to a prospective employer through his code. He put a lot of time on solving this problem and even got some good feedback from the company. 

He felt he enjoyed interviewing now, there was a thrill in meeting some senior people and sparring with them on technical topics, something he missed doing at his work and with friends. At Bridge, he met some really senior people who were building an address database for all of India, a map with really low latency requirements, this was deep technical work he had dreamt of building back at school. And then at Click, through the questions he could sense that scale was a big problem there, the interviewers asked him to design a distributed highly available cache, he relished the opportunity to do so. Even though his answers were only partially correct at first, he left exhilarated and happy that good work was happening somewhere. 

Offers!

Now through with the interviews at all 3 companies, he awaited the final decisions from them. He hadn’t told any of his friends yet about interviewing, he still didn’t feel comfortable failing in front of them. So he was alone the whole weekend in his flat, anxious.

The next Monday, he got a call from Bridge about his selection as a Senior Engineer in their Driver Platform team. An hour later, he received an email from and then a call from the recruiter at Abacus, again for a senior engineering position. The money both of these companies were offering was beyond belief. They were both in the range of doubling his current salary! 

After kicking himself a bit for taking so long to decide on finding a new job, he had to start thinking about where to join now. He hadn’t really thought about choosing one, every time that thought came in his mind the past month, he parked it in the fear that he would jinx the whole thing. 

Abacus’ offer was slightly better and they were offering ESOPs as well. But in his mind, Rajiv knew during the interviews at Click and Bridge that he would not really learn much at Abacus - their interviews weren’t really hard and the problems they were solving weren’t very difficult. He did want to work in education at some point, but right now, he was willing to forego the extra 5% they were offering him in exchange for better learning opportunities at Bridge. Still, he didn’t want to miss out on the stock options, people around him talked about the potential to make a lot of money through them. 

He called Neha, the recruiter at Bridge he was talking to, to check if the company did offer stock options or not, and they do, why weren't they part of the offer. Neha told him that they do offer ESOPs to some candidates, but she didn’t know the answer to his question right away, so she requested a call back. 

That evening he got a call from Thiyagu, with apologies for the delay, he congratulated Rajiv, they really liked him at Click Money and would like to offer him a Senior Engineer position. He shared a number with him on call and said that his recruitment team will share the offer letter the next day, and yes, there will be some ESOPs. 

Negotiating with self

Rajiv’s mind was a playground of strong emotions now. He was so happy to have made it at all the 3 companies, but now the confusion about where to join took over. This was a completely different type of problem for him, one he knew would disappoint others, and he just wanted to come out of this situation as a gentleman. 

Neha, the recruiter at Bridge called him the next day and told him that the company has recently changed their ESOP policies, grants will still be made but they will be legally shared only after his 3 month probation is over. This brought Bridge’s offer at par on options. 

He was sure he didn’t want to join Abacus. So to reduce the number of things to worry about, he picked up the phone and called the hiring manager there, thanked him for the offer, and told him about his decision. They asked him to share some more details, and he shared his feedback about how the interview process and work seemed a bit less learning focused. The hiring manager accepted his feedback well, and requested if he can call back soon. 

And he got a call from Vikram, who headed recruitment at Abacus, within the hour. Vikram told him that Abacus will match the best offer he had in his hand and on top of that, they will give him an additional Rs 10 Lakh cash as joining bonus, and in addition to that, they will be giving him ESOPs worth Rs 10L every year for 4 years. 

This shook Rajiv’s conviction. He couldn’t think about anything else the whole day. He had always felt strongly about people who chose money over good work when looking for a job, from a distance. He himself was an example of that till yesterday. “If you focus on good work, money will come later”, he used to respond to others. Or so he thought. But this 10L made Abacus’ offer very attractive for him, having that much cash would allow him to buy an apartment with his friends immediately. Not able to think well about this, he wished that Click would offer him an even better salary, so he doesn’t have to choose money over work. So when he did get the offer from Click Money, he was a bit disappointed to see that it was just about in the range of Bridge, not even close to the new offer from Abacus. 

Not knowing what to do, he called his friends home and finally told them about the interviews and the offers. After all the celebratory talk, he went to bed even more confused now, each of his friends had told him a different version of the same thoughts he had been going through in his mind, and nothing was conclusive. Abdul said pick up money now over anything, you can always find good work later. Vikas told him to follow his instincts. What instincts, he thought ? 

He slept that night torn between 2 offers, one that would help him buy that apartment right away, that was the original premise, that made him start this job search. He had never dreamt of getting so much money up front. And the other, at Bridge, where he was so impressed by the problems they were working on. 

Good or bad, problems are problems

He woke up the next morning with some determination to conclude on the choices. He didn’t want to keep people waiting, so first he went to his manager and shared his decision to quit his current position. Rajat, his manager, wasn’t surprised at all. He always knew that this day would arrive. He congratulated Rajiv and advised him to talk to Bridge and Click about Abacus’ offer before making the call, and to always focus on a long term career over cash today.

This felt right, so he called Thiyagu from Click right away, since he knew him personally now, and shared some details about the situation. He chose to leave information about the offer from Bridge because he didn’t want to be judged as a person going around interviewing everywhere. Thiyagu said he will come back in a bit, but didn’t sound very encouraging about it. Instead he chose to tell Rajiv about how Click’s stock options can help Rajiv make a lot of money, as Click was already a profitable company, while Abacus’ business models may not see profit for quite some time. 

Thiyagu called back an hour later to tell him that if upfront cash was important, Click can pay him the 3L relocation bonus they pay to all candidates who join them from outside of Bangalore, and they can also pay him 7L as a salary advance, to be clawed back over the next 6 months. Kiran thanked him, he felt good about this, he was relieved, and at the same time he started feeling guilty about sharing his personal situation with a prospective employer, to get more money. The middle class upbringing dialled in and called him greedy. 

He wanted to get out of this situation quickly, but instead he was sinking deeper into something he had never thought would be a problem. To all his friends, he had always advised them to not think about money alone. In desperation, he called Neha at Bridge and requested a call with the hiring manager there.

To the hiring manager, he repeated the conversation with Thiyagu, but left the names out; he didn’t want to hear about comparisons, he just wanted some closure. He shared his expectations about a joining bonus. The hiring manager at Bridge told him right away that Bridge always releases the best offer they can make and they choose not to renegotiate. He offered a relocation bonus of 2L. And then he talked about Bridge’s strengths, the culture and work. He also shared that Bridge has had nearly 0% attrition for the last 3-4 years, because of these. 

Bridge’s answer was a bit striking for him. They told him the regular stuff about ESOPs and their decade long leadership position getting them a preferable IPO in 2 years time. But what struck Rajiv was how clear and direct their hiring manager was about negotiating, and the reason he shared. He said that by giving him more money, Bridge will be discriminating against people who are already working at his level, and that Bridge will never do. 

At last, some light ? 

Thanking him for the call, Rajiv put the phone down, impressed by the conviction and care for their team, but this didn’t solve his problems. He had 3 options. One,  quite lucrative from Abacus and nothing more than that. Second, from Bridge he recalled the interview process, the coding problem and the last call, but with almost no joining bonus and 5-10% lesser salary compared to others. Third, with Thiyagu’s team at Click Money, once again, decent interviews and profitable company, but the upfront cash was just a loan. 

In his heart, he knew where he wanted to go, but that apartment conversation kept coming back to him. He had also pushed someone who was an acquaintance earlier and a friend now, Thiyagu, for money, something he had never done before. And this made him very uncomfortable. If he refuses to join now, he will hurt some relationships, and maybe even his reputation - Thiyagu especially. 

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Well that was a long read. 

It isn’t finished yet, this is the 1st of 2 episodes (if you like the 1st one, you will get the 2nd one).

But I wanted to leave you with only this much for now, and ask you to choose a job amongst the three as if you were Rajiv. Please do comment with your reasoning.

And also, through this story, can you identify the 3 big problems with engineering recruitment at software product companies these days?

The Ringelmann Effect

Lately I have been reading a bit about group dynamics, and I came across something very obvious yet not talked about in simple terms - the effect of group size on individual productivity. Back in 1913, a French agricultural engineer Max Ringelmann discovered what we now know as the Ringelmann Effect - the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases.

Basically, as the size of a team grows, more and more people slack and loaf about at their job. All of us have lived through this, and yet we get surprised when we notice it again at work. Here are some real life examples -

• People do not vote because they think their vote doesn’t count, and others are voting anyways.

• People clap softly in a crowd. People sing softly in a crowd.

• People do not help an accident victim on the road, and continue on thinking someone will help them.

The effect on professional teams is as drastic. With team members slacking off a little, the loafing compounds and slows down everything. Remember the good old days at any startup ? Well that was because everyone knew what everyone was supposed to do, everything was direct. Now there’s a 100 more people and its really easy to hide lack of effort.

Ringelmann posited, again very obviously in hindsight, that a group fails to achieve its maximum potential because of 2 reasons -

• The cost of coordination and communication grows as the team size goes up

• Lack of motivation - Individuals tend to loaf about more assuming their team mates will pick up the slack. Or that their effort doesn’t count.

I want to add one more compounding effect based on my experience -

• Slack aping - When a team member is allowed to slack, others are motivated to loaf.

How do you deal with this effect at work?

Here are some things you can do to identify and fix group size problems -

• Keep a document on What happens if you reduce the team by 10% ?

• Ensure that each and every member has a specific role in your team. If you cannot find a specific role with crisp actionable goals for a team member, that member is redundant in your team and will cause.

• Set goals for all individuals in your team, preferably make everyone’s goals public. Set challenging work for people and help them achieve their goals. If you are a manager, here’s a half-decent guide.

• Work towards making every member of the team know the importance of their contribution. This isn’t just empty praise, if you have a role for this person, they must know that it is contributing to the team’s success and company’s success. Contrarily, if you are finding hard to do this, the role is redundant and you should downsize.

• Cull slack aping when you notice it. Do not let slacking slide, or else it will ruin a high performing team. Do not wait for the performance reviews to communicate feedback.

If you are a manager, you should really worry about your team’s size. Often times we get into an expansionist mode, and want to acquire more and more team members. Without creating these guardrails, expansion only increases output, and reduces outcome.

Remember, our collective image of an ideal engineer is of a person who is technically sound, self motivated and driven to excel, and not everyone is an ideal engineer. Most people need a clear path to perform well, even the ones who are technically brilliant.

The same goes for teams; every senior engineering leader should work hard to make sure their teams have clear goals and knowledge about their importance to the company.

Who cares about the Uber Security Incident ?

Last week, Uber suffered a cyber security breach that could have been really catastrophic for their business. Maybe is, we don’t know yet. They could have lost a lot of personally identifiable information (PII) of users like you and me, most probably have. If there’s no punishment for a company this size, this is overbearing and this strong at engineering, how are we to believe that they will safeguard our data ? Or do we really care if our private data is made public ?

Once again, social engineering, phishing

Reading about the Uber breach here is quite frustrating; once again phishing, once again proper 2FA could have averted a situation. But I do not have high hopes for industry wide changes, simply because the market doesn’t care. Customers don’t abandon a product that leaks personal data, unless they lose money or money equivalents. 

Across the world, there are no examples of a non-financial B2C product losing customers because they leaked PII data. The noises that are made are made by less than 1% of the customers, most of them are people like you and I, developers and activists, people who may know how long term harm that may come to them because their data got leaked. 

Regulations?

Sometimes I feel, should we even care about data security if customers don’t care? Well we should. If the market doesn’t punish such companies, it’s because the effects are mostly non-financial and also not immediate. Without an immediate pain trigger, we hardly learn, as a species. This is why, I now believe, quite regretfully, that regulations are the only way to solve this problem. I dislike government oversight in private enterprise. But as anyone can observe, CEOs and CTOs (I have been a culprit as well) will do just enough, and wait for the bad press to move on so they can restart their feature factories. Nobody gets punished for a disease that doesn't kill immediately.

Then again, regulations aren't so well designed and comprehensive either. Some, like GDPR have made companies think, yet the punishments and penalties are puny compared to the harm that comes from PII data leaks. So unfortunately the situation doesn't really look good, and as an individual, I try to limit PII exposure as much as possible. A bigger regulatory push I hope will open up incentives for startups and enterprises to build products in this area and make it easier and economical for others to be better at data and infra security practices. Till then, it’s everyone for themselves.

Currently Reading

• NK Jemisin’s brilliant Broken Earth trilogy. I started reading the 3rd book - The Stone Sky

• Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Saga. I finished the 2nd book - The Tombs of Atuan recently and will pick up after the Jemisin book.

• I will pick up a Murderbot or a Maigret book after that.

• On the slow soaking read path, I am reading The Lords of Finance.

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That’s it for now. If you would like to receive this as an email, please -

And please do share feedback, and if you would me to talk about a certain topic, please feel free to ask, I’m at r at rnjn.in .