{"id":33398,"date":"2021-08-16T16:23:29","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T20:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=33398"},"modified":"2021-08-18T11:00:22","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T15:00:22","slug":"working-on-internet-explorer-3-and-google-chrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/16\/working-on-internet-explorer-3-and-google-chrome\/","title":{"rendered":"Working on Internet Explorer 3 and Google Chrome"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hadi Partovi<\/a>:<\/p>\n

25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0, its first real salvo in the “Browser Wars”. This launch taught taught me how a giant corporation could move at the speed of a startup.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

To motivate us more, I plastered the hallways with quotes from Netscape’s founder, Marc Andreessen: “Netscape will soon reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers.” It reminded us that this new startup threatened to destroy all of Microsoft.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The Internet Explorer team was the hardest-working team I’ve ever been on. And I’ve worked at multiple start-ups. It was a sprint, not a marathon. We ate every meal at the office. We often held foosball tournaments at 2 am, just to get the team energy back up to continue working!<\/p>\n

Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that even at a 20,000-person company, you can get a team of 100 people to work like their lives depend on it.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

This wasn’t a toxic pressure cooker of working against one’s will. The leadership worked hardest of all. Most of us were in our early twenties and it was a launch point for many careers.<\/p>\n

Every member of this team considered it a highlight of their career.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Aaron Boodman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all. The team came in at 9 and left at 5 (figuratively, people actually kept their own ~8h schedules) every workday for a couple years like clockwork. No drama. No broken marriages, no broken families.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

How did chrome-team manage to deliver high quality software without death marches?<\/p>\n

Funny you ask... Turns out that software projects actually benefit strongly from having senior technical leadership deeply involved.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Software engineering is engineering. Like other kinds of engineering, it’s a skill you develop over a lifetime, not a decade.<\/p>\n

When I joined chrome-team I was in my early 30s. And I was on the junior side.<\/p>\n

Most of the core team had already worked on one or two browsers before!<\/p>\n

Having strong technical leadership has lots of advantages, but one of them is it naturally leads to a healthier cadence. These folks typically have to be home for dinner, and they’re old enough to know that death marches don’t work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2021-08-18): See also: Hacker News<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hadi Partovi: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0, its first real salvo in the “Browser Wars”. This launch taught taught me how a giant corporation could move at the speed of a startup. […] To motivate us more, I plastered the hallways with quotes from Netscape’s founder, Marc Andreessen: “Netscape will soon reduce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-08-16T20:23:34Z","apple_news_api_id":"5820fd38-142e-438e-b087-08139c50bf59","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-08-18T15:00:27Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AWCD9OBQuQ46whwgTnFC_WQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,456,295,852,30,32,37,219,807,251],"class_list":["post-33398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-google","tag-googlechrome","tag-history","tag-internet-explorer","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-microsoft","tag-windows","tag-windows-app","tag-working"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33398"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33403,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33398\/revisions\/33403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}