[pyjug]

> the employee overvalues their skill, thinking that showing up on the leaderboard is a shoo-in. Maybe the employer is right, maybe the employee is right,

Come on, this is just being coy — you and I both know this is a terrible deal for employees — as you write earlier, there’s a very low chance that a random dev will appear on the global leaderboard. What’s more, the best devs won’t even play this game, so it’s left for juniors and people trying to “prove themselves” to trample over each other for peanuts.

Not to single you out, but I wish influential tech folks like you would speak up more about the cynical exploitation that’s going on here in plain sight.

[jedberg]

I'm not sure where the exploitation is. The developers are already getting paid to fix bugs. Now they have some structure and added incentives.

[pyjug]

The structure already exists. It’s called your bug tracker. By building tools to gamify this process, it’s clearly incentivizing devs to put in more hours. I have no doubt that the global leaderboard will consist of devs that would’ve clocked 100s of hours above their regular hours. For very little benefit to the employee.

Let me put it you this way - would an engineer at Netflix ever “play this game” to win ? Would employees at Netflix even put up with something like this? If not, why would you think employees at random tech co should?

[jedberg]

> would an engineer at Netflix ever “play this game” to win ?

I think you're missing the point. The leaderboard is an extra bonus. The main thing is squashing bugs you were already squashing. But yes, there are definitely engineers at Netflix who would play this to "win", just for the love of the game.

But let me relate another similar story -- when Amazon released the Deepracer, they added a leaderboard. All around the world, people got paid by their employers to compete. I think the first winner worked for Samsung and was paid her full time salary just to compete on Deepracer. They saw it as a point of pride that one of their employees was on the leaderboard, with enough value to pay her to work on it full time. I'm pretty sure that is what they are going for here with the global leaderboard. Everyone wins in that situation. The company gets to brag about having the best bug squasher, the employee gets to get paid for squashing bugs, and Amazon gets publicity.

[pyjug]

You didn’t address whether engineers at Netflix would put up with this.

> I'm pretty sure that is what they are going for here with the global leaderboard

Sorry, I’m confused. This seems like a change in your position? Earlier you argued the intent is for employees to be able to showcase their skill to recruiters… you also responded to someone else who said they already have recruiter attention with “you are not their intended audience”

> paid her full time salary just to compete on Deepracer

Wait, are you seriously comparing a global competition in cutting edge tech to squashing bugs … in your own codebase? Come on.. there’s no comparison. If anything, a company would be semi embarrassed that they have so many bugs in their pre existing codebase.

I’m asking you in good faith. Why the contortions to defend such a product? I see from your profile that you are an investor and advisor. I would seriously try pushing this product to your companies and see how they react. If they do adopt it, run an anonymous survey of the devs .. then I would love to see you argue with a straight face that it “benefits developers”

[jedberg]

> Sorry, I’m confused. This seems like a change in your position?

There is a benefit to both employees and employers. Being on the leaderboard benefits the employee because it raises their profile. Having an employee on the leaderboard, as an employer, also raises the company's profile. It's like how companies send people to conferences to talk. It benefits the employee by raising their profile but also benefits the company.

> I’m asking you in good faith. Why the contortions to defend such a product?

I'm not really making contortions. This product is aimed at large enterprises. It's not aimed at startups (so I would never suggest it for any company I invest in) and it's not aimed at companies that are already well known (FAANG). It's aimed at the 1000s of other large enterprises out there who want to incentivize their employees with some prizes to do a job they're hopefully already doing while also possibly raising the company profile a bit by having people show up on the leaderboard.

But it definitely solves a problem for it's target audience, which you don't seem to be a part of. I am not their target audience either. But I see the value to their target audience.

[pyjug]

> I'm not really making contortions

I would politely disagree — in any case the thread is there for all to judge.

If you sincerely believe that this is a product that should exist and will positively impact everyone involved, I can only hope you’re right [0]. In the end it’s all up to your conscience, but I do wish our leaders in tech were a bit more sensitive to seeing the broader picture.

[0]: pour one out for all the naive devs that will no doubt sink 100s of hours to be on the leaderboard for little benefit to them.