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I know the person who was in charge of the redesign. This may sound unbelievable, but she was not a reddit user prior to working at reddit or being put in charg

I know the person who was in charge of the redesign. This may sound unbelievable, but she was not a reddit user prior to working at reddit or being put in charge of the redesign. Really nice person, but they did a terrible job.

lawn 3y ago
Unfortunately it's not that unbelievable... At work a newly hired (and newly graduated) developer got the responsibility to completely redesign some core functionality in our application. Of course he had no experience with the system or how it was being used, but he was still rewriting it and designing future use-cases. This was also done with as far as I can tell no code reviews, tests or supervision, only vague directions of "this sounds good, do it!". It's been years since he left for greener pastures, and we're still reeling from the consequences.
- zeroego 3y ago
  Oof, my condolences. As someone who was a junior somewhat recently I narrowly avoided a couple of projects like that. The desire to push off important work to cheap labor blows my mind.
  - michaelrpeskin 3y ago
    Ha! I’m a staff engineer now, but many many years ago when I was a junior I got the same type of project. It was the CTOs pet project to reimagine the core processing framework. I still feel bad for the folks maintaining it now. I was an expert in the kind of thing that the CTO wanted so it was a good project for me, but I should have had a senior to guide the process and tests and things like that.
- whamlastxmas 3y ago
  I briefly worked at a web dev shop that was stuck building a project that a mid level PHP developer started in 2014 using a framework he built himself. I thank god often I wasn’t the one tasked with learning this spaghetti framework with no documentation
- schnebbau 3y ago
  This happened to me. Uber-qualified graduate came in as a decision maker, fucked a load of stuff up, then left. Then the tenured devs gradually started leaving in revolt. Then the product died.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    Sounds familiar. I worked at a bank once that had the brilliant idea of swapping out Angular with Polymer, because an early 30s guy with Google in his CV became the new CTO and Decided that it should be Polymer / web components. They were just about finished with making their Polymer 1.x components ready for Polymer 2 when the Polymer project once again did an overhaul and split off to lit-html or whatever. I mean they picked an experimental / in development project that was best known for running McDonalds menu displays. We had to fix basics like memory leaks because it didn't have proper routing - it wasn't a web application framework, but they tried to use it as such.
Workaccount2 3y ago
Everyone here is shitting on it, but to me it looks like it accomplished exactly what reddit wanted, and was wildly successful at doing so. Reddit very successfully moved away from being the techy nerd basement dweller site to becoming a trendy young "normie" people site. Dumb everything down to shoot for the lowest common denominator, maximizing the size of your target demographic. So hiring someone who probably loved instagram, facebook, pinterest, tumblr, but never used reddit (but had likely been to the site perhaps a few times before) is exactly who they wanted to redesign the site. IIRC something like 95% of users are using the official app and/or the new website. And reddit has exploded in popularity in recent years.
- stemlord 3y ago
  >successfully moved away from being the techy nerd basement dweller site to becoming a trendy young "normie" people site I'm not convinced the redesign contributed to this. I think it was already happening prior to the redesign.
- seydor 3y ago
  That is news to me ( i still use the old site but i dont see a lot of old people) I think reddit's demographic still is young , and has always been so .
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    I'm not convinced, but that's anecdotal from being a millennial and frequent Reddit user myself, and seeing lots of "As a 40/50/60/70 some year old" comments.
    - seydor 3y ago
      https://www.statista.com/statistics/261766/share-of-us-internet-users-who-use-reddit-by-age-group/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/261766/share-of-us-inter...
    - Workaccount2 3y ago
      Because when someone says "As an old person, I agree that the young people are right" it will get 1,000 upvotes in an hour.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Credible, from which facts are known. Still unbelievable because it plays into my suspicions too perfectly. There exists this entire class of business theory now based on the principle of hatred towards the users. Think about the products you actually like and purchase/use... how many of those companies' behaviors are completely inexplicable unless they hate you and want to punish you for buying their stuff?
commandlinefan 3y ago
> she was not a reddit user PHB: "We hired a new CTO with no experience in our industry, because we want somebody who doesn't know what can't be done!" Wally: "Boy, I went the wrong way on my resume"

lawn 3y ago

Unfortunately it's not that unbelievable... At work a newly hired (and newly graduated) developer got the responsibility to completely redesign some core functionality in our application. Of course he had no experience with the system or how it was being used, but he was still rewriting it and designing future use-cases. This was also done with as far as I can tell no code reviews, tests or supervision, only vague directions of "this sounds good, do it!". It's been years since he left for greener pastures, and we're still reeling from the consequences.

zeroego 3y ago
Oof, my condolences. As someone who was a junior somewhat recently I narrowly avoided a couple of projects like that. The desire to push off important work to cheap labor blows my mind.
- michaelrpeskin 3y ago
  Ha! I’m a staff engineer now, but many many years ago when I was a junior I got the same type of project. It was the CTOs pet project to reimagine the core processing framework. I still feel bad for the folks maintaining it now. I was an expert in the kind of thing that the CTO wanted so it was a good project for me, but I should have had a senior to guide the process and tests and things like that.
whamlastxmas 3y ago
I briefly worked at a web dev shop that was stuck building a project that a mid level PHP developer started in 2014 using a framework he built himself. I thank god often I wasn’t the one tasked with learning this spaghetti framework with no documentation
schnebbau 3y ago
This happened to me. Uber-qualified graduate came in as a decision maker, fucked a load of stuff up, then left. Then the tenured devs gradually started leaving in revolt. Then the product died.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Sounds familiar. I worked at a bank once that had the brilliant idea of swapping out Angular with Polymer, because an early 30s guy with Google in his CV became the new CTO and Decided that it should be Polymer / web components. They were just about finished with making their Polymer 1.x components ready for Polymer 2 when the Polymer project once again did an overhaul and split off to lit-html or whatever. I mean they picked an experimental / in development project that was best known for running McDonalds menu displays. We had to fix basics like memory leaks because it didn't have proper routing - it wasn't a web application framework, but they tried to use it as such.

Workaccount2 3y ago

Everyone here is shitting on it, but to me it looks like it accomplished exactly what reddit wanted, and was wildly successful at doing so. Reddit very successfully moved away from being the techy nerd basement dweller site to becoming a trendy young "normie" people site. Dumb everything down to shoot for the lowest common denominator, maximizing the size of your target demographic. So hiring someone who probably loved instagram, facebook, pinterest, tumblr, but never used reddit (but had likely been to the site perhaps a few times before) is exactly who they wanted to redesign the site. IIRC something like 95% of users are using the official app and/or the new website. And reddit has exploded in popularity in recent years.

stemlord 3y ago
>successfully moved away from being the techy nerd basement dweller site to becoming a trendy young "normie" people site I'm not convinced the redesign contributed to this. I think it was already happening prior to the redesign.
seydor 3y ago
That is news to me ( i still use the old site but i dont see a lot of old people) I think reddit's demographic still is young , and has always been so .
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  I'm not convinced, but that's anecdotal from being a millennial and frequent Reddit user myself, and seeing lots of "As a 40/50/60/70 some year old" comments.
  - seydor 3y ago
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/261766/share-of-us-internet-users-who-use-reddit-by-age-group/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/261766/share-of-us-inter...
  - Workaccount2 3y ago
    Because when someone says "As an old person, I agree that the young people are right" it will get 1,000 upvotes in an hour.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

Credible, from which facts are known. Still unbelievable because it plays into my suspicions too perfectly. There exists this entire class of business theory now based on the principle of hatred towards the users. Think about the products you actually like and purchase/use... how many of those companies' behaviors are completely inexplicable unless they hate you and want to punish you for buying their stuff?

commandlinefan 3y ago

> she was not a reddit user PHB: "We hired a new CTO with no experience in our industry, because we want somebody who doesn't know what can't be done!" Wally: "Boy, I went the wrong way on my resume"