[zmb_]

As someone frustrated in a team of 10+ that is struggling to ship even seemingly trivial things due to processes and overheads and inefficiencies, I would really appreciate some insights on how do you organize the work to allow a single developer to achieve this.

How do you communicate with the rest of the organization? What is the lifecycle and release process like? Do you write requirements and specs for others (like validation or integration) to base their work on? Basically, what does the day to day work look like?

[cwzwarich]

Well, the first thing to realize about scaling codebases with developers is that an N developer team will usually produce a codebase that requires N developers to maintain. So by starting small and staying small until you reach a certain critical mass of fundamental decisions, you can avoid some of the problems that you get from having too many developers too early. You can easily also fall into the reverse trap: a historical core with pieces that fit too well together, but most of the developers on the team don’t intuitively understand the reasons behind all of the past decisions (because they weren’t there when they happened). This can lead to poorly affixed additions to a system in response to new features or requirements.

As far as Rosetta in particular was concerned, I think I was just in the right environment to consistently be in a flow state. I have had fleeting moments of depression upon the realization that I will probably never be this productive for an extended period of time ever again.

[janderson215]

Thank you for what you did with Rosetta 2. It is outstanding.

On your last point, I’ve felt something like that myself and I hold onto hope that it isn’t true for myself (and now for you in your future endeavors). But even if it is true, you achieved something superhuman in your niche and the vast majority of people throughout the history of time have no idea what that is like. Tasting Heaven cannot last too long while on Earth. Maybe AI will bring us a little bit closer to that Heaven.

[markus_zhang]

Thanks for sharing. Do you have an estimation of LoC? I know it's a BS indicator but just curious. I'd imagine it's something difficult but not too large.

[tonyedgecombe]

>How do you communicate with the rest of the organization?

I wonder if Apple's renowned secrecy is a help with this. If nobody outside your small team knows what you are doing then it is hard for them to stick their oar in.

[ladberg]

For the record I was interning on Cameron's team while he worked on Rosetta 2 and didn't even know myself what he worked on (the rest of the team and I were working on something else). I only found out later after it was released!

[iwontberude]

Apple is like this, I have seen plenty of instances where you have one person carrying a team of 5 or more on their back. I always wonder how they manage to compensate them when it’s clear they are getting 10x more done. Hopefully they get paid 10x, but something tells me that isn’t true.

[markus_zhang]

Maybe getting interesting work is a better perk than $$, especially when Apple is already paying top dollars?

I'd imagine a lot of people are willing to do things for free.

[tonyedgecombe]

When I was consulting I saw that everywhere. A team of ten people would have one or two primary contributors and often one person who had a negative impact on productivity.