[chaosphere2112]

This is very on point. We have platform and product in entirely different reporting structures that meet just below Sundar; this leads to hysterically different cultures. My team is trying to straddle the product/platform divide right now and it’s a constant learning experience.

A recent example: someone asked me for my team’s planning schedule, specifically when we figure out what we will be doing for the next six months.

My only response is “we don’t do that here”; my team has to constantly juggle projects to load balance downtime on projects (most of our work is very sinusoidal in how much time it demands in a week), and we pick up new ones that are important enough to add to the load from time to time.

The platform folks set out in December last year with a mission for all of 2021; the design is flexible, but they know exactly what the goals for their year are.

When one team has projects that take an arbitrary amount of time to “get right”, and the other has more reliably predicted cycles that just depend on coding output, things get a little hairy. Mostly just takes a lot of empathy for the folks on the other side, though.

[juancn]

I do platform, I have a rough idea of what I need to accomplish in a year, in two, and reasonable definition of where we'll need to be in the next 5 to 10 years.

The plans move all the time, but we have them there. We usually plan rough deliverables one to two years in advance. Detailed plans cover usually one to two quarters.

[chaosphere2112]

Yeah; my product team will get wildly different priorities over the course of a month as execs spin plates, PMs and managers scramble around, and we nail down what our next round of experimentation will involve. On top of that, relying on A/B testing for all decision making means you’re liable to discover at any point that there’s a totally different piece of software that you should have built instead.

It’s all chaotic, but I enjoy the scrum.