[HN Gopher] AWS BugBust
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       AWS BugBust
        
       Author : belter
       Score  : 145 points
       Date   : 2021-06-25 14:22 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (aws.amazon.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (aws.amazon.com)
        
       | pkghost wrote:
       | "Pay us to train our ML systems that will ultimately put you out
       | of a job!"
        
       | danpalmer wrote:
       | Has anyone had a positive experience with Code Guru? All I've
       | seen so far is that it's _very_ expensive, and provides the sort
       | of feedback I expect from open-source linters and static-
       | analyzers, and without any understanding of how appropriate those
       | recommendations might be in context. I've only really seen it for
       | Python though, maybe it's better for other languages?
        
         | k__ wrote:
         | I didn't use Code Guru, but looked into Snyk Code. It gives
         | much more and better tips, especially for security related
         | things.
        
         | hughrr wrote:
         | Better to start with defining the problem that you are solving
         | and whether or not you need to solve it before even delving
         | into that particular rabbit hole. ROI on analysis is usually
         | fairly low unless you're in a regulated industry or the product
         | is cheap or free.
        
         | pram wrote:
         | The profiler is very good as part of your CI automation, you
         | can alert on regressions and such.
        
         | St-Clock wrote:
         | We had similar experience! We tried CodeGuru Reviewer on one of
         | our Python codebases (around 71 KLOC) and abandoned it after a
         | week.
         | 
         | The feedback was indeed similar to what standard linters and
         | static analyzers can provide with more noise. I have no doubt
         | they can improve their recommendations as they get more
         | feedback and analyze more codebases, but we were not interested
         | to pay to contribute.
         | 
         | We have had much more success with https://deepsource.io/ ,
         | which found real bugs and we generally agree with their
         | recommendations. We are currently evaluating whether or not we
         | will include this service as part of our process.
         | 
         | Deepsource is rule-based, but my understanding is that they are
         | starting to use ML to rank recommendations.
        
           | pja wrote:
           | How did it compare with more "traditional" code analysis
           | linters like Coverity or Semmle?
        
       | boldslogan wrote:
       | kind of cool how they just "Created" a market place out of
       | nowhere with their huge aws offerings.
       | 
       | I can see this as a future repository challenging stack overflow,
       | and with automation, challenging other CI pipelines, and then as
       | someone else mentioned these magic carrots could be used as
       | hackerrank/linkedin/hiring.
        
         | mdaniel wrote:
         | That's only true if people start to use it, which for sure
         | isn't a given with the current incentives. Also, there is 100%
         | no way this challenges S.O. in any way
        
         | zeusk wrote:
         | > magic carrots could be used as hackerrank/linkedin/hiring
         | 
         | Please god no. We have enough terrible hiring practices as it
         | is, we don't need to make every other tech company a sweatshop
         | like Amazon is.
        
       | throwmamatrain wrote:
       | Given how amazon has eroded trust with things like Sidewalk, why
       | would I give them free time to improve CodeGuru and fix bugs?
       | 
       | Amazon has been openly adversarial to businesses, including
       | software companies, so what goodwill are they banking on?
        
       | whoisjuan wrote:
       | This is so hard to understand. It seems like a service to create
       | fixatons or bug bashing events in you org, but they also say it's
       | a global competition (?)
       | 
       | I fail to understand the value of this. Seems to me like they
       | want you to use and pay for CodeGuru, which will tell you shit
       | about your codebase. Then you can import those issues into some
       | sort of campaign inside this BugBust thing so you can create
       | competitions and as you do it you compete with other teams around
       | the world from other companies(?)
       | 
       | If that's what it is, then this sounds like an idea created in a
       | vacuum, with no customer input at all. I fail to see any value on
       | this.
        
         | judge2020 wrote:
         | Maybe it's for product managers that see 'low productivity' and
         | are trying any sort of program or incentive to increase
         | productivity/output...
        
       | salil999 wrote:
       | Sounds like free training for AWS CodeGuru. And the rewards
       | aren't that great.
       | 
       | What's the incentive for people to actually do this?
        
         | hobofan wrote:
         | > and customers pay only for their use of Amazon CodeGuru
         | 
         | Doesn't even sound free.
        
       | Dotnaught wrote:
       | Are participants necessarily working for the companies sponsoring
       | BugBust events?
        
       | theden wrote:
       | I'm struggling to find a compelling reason why someone would
       | participate in this?
       | 
       | Looking at https://aws.amazon.com/bugbust/ the prizes are yet
       | more corporate trash that don't need to exist ("AWS BugBust
       | Varsity Jacket" okay ), and they have a pricing page so it's not
       | even free.
       | 
       | All this tells me is that Amazon doesn't value your time
        
         | Aboh33 wrote:
         | Reminds me of a former Atlassian-based t-shirt reward for
         | setting up the entire suite of Atlassian products (here be
         | dragons or some logo like that). Glad to see there are many
         | others who value their time and are not content to be treated
         | like children in exchange for their time and effort.
        
         | garblegarble wrote:
         | >the prizes are yet more corporate trash that don't need to
         | exist
         | 
         | What I can't wrap my head around is that the top of the FAQ
         | says that 1 Point has an estimated Dollar Equivalent of $769,
         | and for 100 Points you get a t-shirt. As a "prize" in exchange
         | for saving $76,900 I'd be expecting a car at the low-end...
        
           | rplnt wrote:
           | It might be that work worth the equivalent of $769 is
           | required to get a point?
        
             | rattray wrote:
             | Right - they're saying that if the work of a point is worth
             | $769 to a company, then that's the amount they should get
             | paid as a developer.
             | 
             | Even if Amazon took a $269 cut from each point, I'd expect
             | to get paid $50k for doing 100 points. But instead you yet
             | a $12 t-shirt.
        
               | anchpop wrote:
               | do you not fix bugs in the course of your job anyway?
               | it's your employer who should be paying you, amazon is
               | just giving you a t shirt for using their software
        
           | Robadob wrote:
           | The $769 is referring to the estimated money saved by fixing
           | bugs, rather than the trade in value of the points.
           | 
           | > For information on how points are awarded, see the Official
           | Rules. Actual savings may vary.
           | 
           | Section 5 of the official rules document states approximate
           | retail value of the prizes as; reInvent:$4000, Resin
           | Trophy:$60, Hooded Sweatshirt:$27, tshirt:$12
           | 
           | https://d1.awsstatic.com/product-
           | marketing/bugbust/AWS_BugBu...
        
             | garblegarble wrote:
             | That's exactly my point - Amazon have given that figure as
             | their estimated savings, so either that's an insanely
             | overinflated figure, or my point stands and if you save one
             | of their clients several tens of thousands of dollars
             | they'll give you a "prize" of a tshirt. They probably spent
             | more money producing that video than they will pay for all
             | the t-shirts they'll give out.
             | 
             | $77,000 for a t-shirt. $1,500,000 for a jacket. If you're
             | saving somebody that much money who cares whether Amazon
             | gives you a t-shirt? So either have prizes comensurate with
             | the alleged savings involved or don't insult people with
             | such low value prizes.
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | I think you misunderstand, you fix your own code not
               | somebody else's. The BugBust is basically them
               | advertising trying out their new CodeGuru analysis tools
               | for free and sending some prizes to the ones that use it
               | the most.
        
               | mdaniel wrote:
               | > trying out their new CodeGuru analysis tools for free
               | 
               | I for sure did not get that impression; where did you see
               | they're offering free analysis?
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | The pricing/FAQ/Sign up page on the actual BugBust site
               | linked all tell you. E.g. from the pricing tab:
               | 
               | > When you create your first AWS BugBust event, all costs
               | incurred by the underlying usage of Amazon CodeGuru
               | Reviewer and Amazon CodeGuru Profiler are free of charge
               | for 30 days per AWS account.
        
         | Sheepzez wrote:
         | > they have a pricing page so it's not even free
         | 
         | BugBust itself is free. You pay for usage as per normal for
         | CodeGuru Reviewer and CodeGuru Profiler (after the 30 day free
         | trial of BugBust and 90 day free trial of Profiler).
        
           | theden wrote:
           | Not sure if you have to use CodeGuru with BugBust, they don't
           | clarify.
           | 
           | >(after the 30 day free trial of BugBust and 90 day free
           | trial of Profiler).
           | 
           | So it's not free, dev time is expensive and has a lot more
           | value than their proprietary service usage time--so they're
           | coming out on top whilst charging people for it.
        
             | cjaybo wrote:
             | They say this service "utilizes" CodeGuru, so I'm betting
             | it cannot be used without CodeGuru.
        
       | ElijahLynn wrote:
       | I looked for the compelling point of this and go to the point
       | where I could win an expenses paid trip (doesn't say "all
       | expenses" fwiw) to AWS Reinvent and was really unmotivated to
       | read further. Feels like a scammy way to get free engineering
       | work.
        
       | k__ wrote:
       | Half-OT: What do you use for JavaScript/TypeScript? (CodeGuru
       | only works for Java and Python)
       | 
       | I looked into Snyk Code, but it's mad expensive.
        
         | paulddraper wrote:
         | ESLint
        
         | vips7L wrote:
         | If you want free sonarlint is good for every language:
         | https://www.sonarlint.org/
         | 
         | They also have their paid service SonarQube which is really
         | good. https://www.sonarqube.org/
        
         | belter wrote:
         | It seems they have a free plan
         | 
         | https://snyk.io/blog/snyk-code-now-available-free-sast/
        
       | WYepQ4dNnG wrote:
       | Maybe a little off-topic.
       | 
       | You wanna solve or avoid millions bugs? Instead of hiring people
       | capable of memorizing how to invert binary trees and similar bs,
       | companies when interviewing and hiring should focus on real
       | hands-on experience, should value developers who empower and
       | demostrate best practices and good code craftsmanship.
       | 
       | Ask candidates to write and review real production code.
       | 
       | It is just unbelievable how low is set the bar when it comes to
       | writing high quality code even at so called FAANG. You can just
       | imagine how bad it gets for any other random company out there.
        
         | barbazoo wrote:
         | > You can just imagine how bad it gets for any other random
         | company out there.
         | 
         | Or how surprisingly solid developers can be at non FAANG
         | places. Not everyone aspires to work at Amazon.
        
         | dvtrn wrote:
         | _Ask candidates to write and review real production code._
         | 
         | Presumably you pay candidates for this, right, if we're talking
         | about "real production code" and valuing developers?
        
           | aledalgrande wrote:
           | There are companies that pay for your interview work, I think
           | DuckDuckGo is one of them.
        
           | WYepQ4dNnG wrote:
           | it does not take much, I usually ask candidates on-site, to
           | review real production PR. I would also keep around pieces of
           | real production code and ask the candidate to either fill in
           | additional/missing functionalities, or ask them what
           | changes/tests if any they would implement and why.
           | 
           | Basically testing real day-to-day job. If you were to work in
           | this company and you were given this task, how would you
           | approach it?
           | 
           | You can easily tell which people care, strive for good
           | practices and who have high quality standards vs the ones who
           | tend to just hack things together.
           | 
           | It worked well for me, and never regretted any hiring.
        
             | dvtrn wrote:
             | _I would also keep around pieces of real production code
             | and ask the candidate to either fill in additional /missing
             | functionalities_
             | 
             | So as opposed to a boilerplate test or asking developers to
             | solve a challenge with a few lines of code and discuss
             | their thoughts on it, they're asked to look at _real_
             | production code that is in use, opine on it, and add
             | /change functionality to it?
             | 
             | Can I re-ask my question if I've read you properly and
             | understood: presumably you pay people for this right?
             | 
             | I ask because in my mind, solving a coding challenge or
             | talking about something hypothetical/conceptual probably
             | isn't too much different than solving a problem on actual
             | code the company uses from a technical standpoint in as
             | much as they both require effort on my part to think about
             | the problem and bang out a solution...
             | 
             | ... but in terms of time spent interviewing and evaluating
             | employers, I'd feel less comfortable contributing anything
             | to production code without the guarantee that the company
             | wont just take the work and implement it, and then later
             | say they hired someone else/went another direction or just
             | decided not to hire at all.
             | 
             |  _Which has happened_.
        
               | WYepQ4dNnG wrote:
               | it is trivial code, but in the context of a real code
               | base. I would never ask a candidate to solve a "hard"
               | problem that no one in the company wasn't able to solve.
               | Just an example: in the context of a spring application,
               | I would ask to add a new api, from the controller all the
               | way down to the database. And of course, I'd gauge the
               | interview according to the experience of the candidate
               | and knowledge of a specific framework etc. They are free
               | to lookup the documentation. Really simulating what would
               | happen if the candidate were to get hired.
               | 
               | I mean either that, or you are back at the : implement a
               | linked list, invert binary tree, check palindrome string
               | and similar bs.
        
       | harikb wrote:
       | For those who are wondering the rewards aren't worth it... this
       | is not Amazon asking for oss contribution to their AWS source
       | code. This is for private companies to offer bug fest to their
       | own employees / target audience.
       | 
       | > customers can set up private AWS BugBust virtual events
       | 
       | Why should the jacket be sponsored by Amazon? I don't get it.
        
         | salil999 wrote:
         | Why would they need AWS to do so? Engineers in companies don't
         | know every line of code in their product - many of them are
         | siloed in their own teams.
         | 
         | A team can easily just dedicate an hour or two a week and do
         | their own bug bash, right?
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | But thus way the labor is free(tm).
        
           | DoctorOW wrote:
           | This pairs it with the AWS bug finding AI tools to automate
           | the bug bash overhead. I.E. Finding bugs, assigning point
           | values, keeping track of point values, etc.
        
       | rayshan wrote:
       | I don't get it. It's for your company yet it's global? Is it like
       | Mechanical Turk for fixing software bugs?
        
       | mdaniel wrote:
       | When I read the announcement, I thought they were donating the
       | use of CodeGuru to projects (which I presumed would be limited to
       | open source ones) to (1) improve the code hygiene of the world
       | (2) gather more data for their machine learning models (3)
       | publicity for CodeGuru
       | 
       | But as best I can tell, this is the worst of all worlds: I have
       | to already have an AWS account to both create the competition and
       | also to point CodeGuru at the repos, then I have to pay for
       | running CodeGuru on any potential PRs, but then also separately
       | create a BugSnag account seemingly just for this stunt. And in
       | the end I ... get Internet points on my BugSnag account?
       | 
       | I fail to see how anyone but AWS benefits from this, unless a
       | participant happens to be one of the top competitors who
       | accumulated enough Internet points to get a free trip to
       | re:Invent
        
         | ehsankia wrote:
         | One part I'm still not 100% clear about after looking at the
         | site and even your comment. Would people be running CodeGuru
         | against their own internal AWS code, or against existing public
         | open source Github projects, and sending PRs separately from
         | AWS?
        
           | mdaniel wrote:
           | I didn't set it up beyond creating a skeleton "Event", cause
           | I have zero interest in paying real money to kick the tires
           | on this, but as I understand it one would add existing repos
           | to their AWS Code* tooling, at which point machine learning
           | awesomeness takes place and it surfaces findings (inside
           | those AWS CodeWhatever APIs, having nothing to do with
           | BugBust)
           | 
           | If those findings are imported into a BugBust Event [which is
           | defined by the tuple of (start date, end date, scoring, and
           | repos in scope)], then one can (invite|publish) a link to the
           | BugBust Event and at the end date the participant who fixed
           | the in-scope issues with the highest point values claims the
           | cited prizes. Further (again, AIUI), at the end of the *AWS*
           | event, the BugBust account who has the most *overall* points
           | wins a re:Invent trip
           | 
           | I don't believe AWS gets into the business of monitoring the
           | PRs, only observing the CodeWhatever outcomes -- if
           | CodeWhatever found an issue, time elapses, and the
           | CodeWhatever sees the issue is fixed, then BugBust will look
           | up the category of said issue, multiply it by the assigned
           | score in any Events it is associated to, and award the
           | Internet points to any Event participant it knows about
        
         | ransom1538 wrote:
         | Work for us for free! If we like the fix you made MAYBE we will
         | pay you! Yay!
        
         | pokoleo wrote:
         | I think you mean BugBust, not BugSnag.
        
           | mdaniel wrote:
           | Yes, sorry, I was on my phone :-(
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | jedberg wrote:
         | The companies that put up the contest benefits. For a lot of
         | people at a lot of companies, a trip to re:invent is a huge
         | prize. If your job is to fix bugs anyway, now your company just
         | incentivized you to do it more and in your off time to win that
         | prize.
         | 
         | Also, the bug buster benefits if they get up high on the
         | leaderboard, because job recruiters will most likely use the
         | leaderboard for lead gen. If you're looking to make a job move,
         | moving up on the leaderboard will help.
        
           | quadrifoliate wrote:
           | > Also, the bug buster benefits if they get up high on the
           | leaderboard
           | 
           | There is literally another story on the front page [1] about
           | such "leaderboards" and what happens when people game them to
           | move up.
           | 
           | I would not advise anyone to participate in such a contest,
           | it sounds more like a race to the bottom while providing
           | valuable training data to AWS for free.
           | 
           | -------------------------------------------------
           | 
           | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27629366
        
             | jedberg wrote:
             | That has nothing to do with this though. The global
             | leaderboard is for fixing bugs in your own company.
        
           | pyjug wrote:
           | > The companies that put up the contest benefits
           | 
           | > if you're looking to make a job move,...
           | 
           | Why would companies allow their best developers to be
           | poached? Unless of course there's a way for companies to keep
           | their developer scores private...
        
             | jedberg wrote:
             | The risk to the company is pretty low that their employee
             | would show up on a global leaderboard. And even if they do,
             | they can give them a raise or other benefits. It helps them
             | determine the market rate for their employee.
        
               | pyjug wrote:
               | > The risk to the company is pretty low that their
               | employee would show up on a global leaderboard.
               | 
               | This invalidates your other point that it benefits
               | developers. Why would a dev sink countless hours for a
               | "very low" chance at being on the global leaderboard and
               | hence moving jobs.
               | 
               | You can't simultaneously posit it's good for both
               | companies and developers.
        
               | jedberg wrote:
               | > This invalidates your other point that it benefits
               | developers.
               | 
               | Not at all. The company undervalues their employee and
               | sees little risk in them showing up on the board, and 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, or maybe both or
               | neither is right.
               | 
               | Also, the employee does it because they get paid to hunt
               | bugs regardless. It just helps the company by putting a
               | structure around what they are already doing.
        
               | pyjug wrote:
               | > 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 wrote:
               | 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 wrote:
               | 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 wrote:
               | > 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 wrote:
               | 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 wrote:
               | > 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 wrote:
               | > 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.
        
           | theli0nheart wrote:
           | > _Also, the bug buster benefits if they get up high on the
           | leaderboard, because job recruiters will most likely use the
           | leaderboard for lead gen. If you 're looking to make a job
           | move, moving up on the leaderboard will help._
           | 
           | I already get plenty of recruiting inbound without having to
           | donate my time to fix bugs for Internet Points.
           | 
           | What you're saying is that this is a worthy use of time for
           | people because they'll maybe move up in the leaderboards
           | which then _might_ lead recruiters to reach out to them.
           | 
           | And after all that, you have to do a phone screen, technical
           | phone interview, a full-day onsite, plus whatever other hoops
           | you'll be made to jump through to change jobs.
           | 
           | Yeah, no. Hard pass. Seems like a huge waste of developers'
           | time.
        
             | jedberg wrote:
             | > I already get plenty of recruiting inbound without having
             | to donate my time to fix bugs for Internet Points.
             | 
             | You're not the target audience.
             | 
             | And also, you wouldn't be donating your time. The whole
             | point is that a company puts up a contest for their own
             | employees, who are presumably getting paid to participate.
        
               | bogwog wrote:
               | So by participating in this, a company is making their
               | own employees more attractive to recruiters?
        
               | jedberg wrote:
               | No the company is getting some extra structure to their
               | bug bash with some prizes provided by Amazon, as well as
               | being able to recruit other people by pointing out how
               | good their current people are (because they are on the
               | leaderboard).
        
               | jjav wrote:
               | Everything about this seems like a sketch out of The
               | Office (if they were a software company).
        
               | hnechochamber wrote:
               | the target audience are people stupid enough to work for
               | amazon for free. Amazon, fuck you pay me.
        
             | catbuttes wrote:
             | > We will pay you with exposure...
        
             | slownews45 wrote:
             | How are you employed if you won't fix bugs. These types of
             | devs are so annoying to be around. Crank out weird esoteric
             | hard to read code using every weird meta feature /
             | reflections / introspections they can. Then "hard pass" on
             | fixing bugs as a waste of time.
             | 
             | You do realize most developers are asked to fix bugs
             | anyways, regardless of any silly competition?
             | 
             | Their pitch to Organizations is that
             | 
             | 1) They may be able to help you save money 2) They may make
             | it more fun / easier to solve bugs.
             | 
             | Pitch to developers - they'll give you some perks for doing
             | your job.
             | 
             | Note that I also think it's lame because I don't think code
             | guru is that good and don't care about re"invent
        
               | theli0nheart wrote:
               | > _How are you employed if you won 't fix bugs. These
               | types of devs are so annoying to be around. Crank out
               | weird esoteric hard to read code using every weird meta
               | feature / reflections / introspections they can. Then
               | "hard pass" on fixing bugs as a waste of time._
               | 
               | You misread pretty much everything I wrote. My original
               | comment wasn't an explanation for why fixing bugs _in
               | general_ is a  "waste of time". My opinion is that
               | uploading your code to this service that uses ML to
               | automatically generate bugs for your team to do a bug
               | bash on is a waste of time.
               | 
               | Our bug backlog has hundreds, if not _thousands_ , of
               | bugs already. We don't need to rely on ML to tell us what
               | to fix.
               | 
               | We have _real_ issues that customers are facing that need
               | immediate attention. This is just a total distraction and
               | a waste of time.
        
               | ARandumGuy wrote:
               | Unless I'm completely misunderstanding how this works,
               | this isn't "give you some perks for doing your job." It's
               | getting perks for doing your job, for someone who isn't
               | paying you. And that's what the problem is.
               | 
               | If you want me to fix your bugs, pay me for it. Don't do
               | this gamification nonsense.
               | 
               | Edit: apparently I did misunderstand how this works. It
               | seems like the "Bugbusters" are just a company's normal
               | developers. It still seems kinda dumb, but not as
               | exploitative as I initially thought.
        
               | slownews45 wrote:
               | Yeah, they are just trying to get devs to try their
               | tooling. If tool was amazing, this would be great. But
               | it's hardly the big exploitation people are describing
               | here though it's a bit true that bug fixing is less fun
               | for some and so is often ignored.
               | 
               | That said, other providers of this type of tooling might
               | take some ideas from something like this.
        
               | jedberg wrote:
               | They're marketing page isn't super clear, but it's adding
               | structure for a company's existing bug bashes. You set up
               | a bug hung for your own developers on your own code.
        
               | mdaniel wrote:
               | Then why in the world make Internet Widgets, Pty users
               | create _yet another_ login on some random .aws property
               | that (as very best I can tell) does not support _any_
               | kind of SSO auth that an outside organization would use:
               | GitHub /GitLab, IAM/Cognito nor OIDC/SAML
        
             | the_arun wrote:
             | Why bug leaderboard is important? Don't I have few ways
             | already to showcase my profile?
             | 
             | 1. Stackoverflow to show my expertise
             | 
             | 2. Any Open source contribution that shows up in my github
             | profile
        
           | pyjug wrote:
           | > For a lot of people at a lot of companies, a trip to
           | re:invent is a huge prize
           | 
           | Only for cheapo companies. Companies should (and do) _pay_
           | their devs to attend re:invent. I get your point though. For
           | naive devs, it's like getting to go to a concert. But it's
           | quite cynical for AWS to exploit this
        
         | isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
         | Quite frankly I've never seen people use AWS offerings for CI
         | pipelines, I wonder if other products (Code* family) are any
         | good - can anyone comment on them? I've only used CodeCommit
         | once during a hackathon, and it seemed rather basic.
        
           | calpaterson wrote:
           | I have. Their offerings are even less impressive than many of
           | the popular SaaS CI servers, which themselves are usually
           | (and incredibly!) inferior to Jenkins - except they maintain
           | themselves due to all the cloud whatnot
        
           | Aboh33 wrote:
           | I have used CodeDeploy/Codepipeline/Codebuild over several
           | years. Overall they work well but there can be edge cases or
           | gotchas that show up on occasion depending what you are
           | trying to do.
           | 
           | I also prefer externalizing the CI/CD process with Jenkins or
           | Spinnaker-based setups.
        
           | timvdalen wrote:
           | From my experience the products work fine, but they much more
           | complex than they need to be (and than competing products
           | are). They have a lot of weird constraints that make it hard
           | to be really productive.
           | 
           | That said, when you've setup a build/pipeline, it mostly just
           | works as it should.
        
           | dingosity wrote:
           | I'm going to chime in and say the only benefit we got from
           | CodeDeploy was its cost was folded into our AWS account. We
           | didn't have to go through the hassle of explaining why we
           | need "yet another <$100/month expense" from a different
           | company.
           | 
           | I appreciate this is a bad reason to recommend a service, and
           | am not defending it. Just explaining why we wound up using
           | it.
           | 
           | The service itself is not horrible, but like every other AWS
           | service, I felt like I was definitely not in the target
           | market: some easily implemented feature was left out and the
           | configuration space easily allowed you to specify things that
           | weren't covered in the (very) thin documentation and seemed
           | to behave unexpectedly.
        
             | ec109685 wrote:
             | Many SaaS companies offer the ability to pay for themselves
             | via the AWS marketplace so you can have everything under
             | one EDP / bill (though AWS takes a little cut in this
             | case).
        
           | slownews45 wrote:
           | Unfortunately surprisingly poor in quality!
           | 
           | You can get much better results almost anywhere else.
        
           | mercora wrote:
           | CodeDeploy fails in horrible ways and the maintainers are
           | somewhat unresponsive. I don't use it anymore but am still
           | subscribed to some issues which apparently weren't fixed for
           | years...
        
       | jacobsenscott wrote:
       | I can't read this and the video is unwatchable. Are they saying
       | they want a bunch of people to fix static linter warnings in
       | python code? Who's code? Your code? Open source code? Amazon's
       | code?
        
       | awinter-py wrote:
       | if you work at amzn and you don't fix 1 million bugs you lose
       | your pto? I would simply write 1 million bugs then revert them?
        
       | pyjug wrote:
       | LOL. Developers are so gullible. It would be cute if it weren't
       | so tragic. They're giving out t shirts and jackets for 10s of
       | thousands of $ worth of work and we're lapping it up. Vogels
       | openly said it helps AWS customers reduce "costs", he's not even
       | trying to hide it
        
         | ixtli wrote:
         | It's the meme of the "rise and grind guy". They believe there's
         | some magical reward for "hard work" built into the universe.
         | Tragic really is the word.
        
         | holtalanm wrote:
         | Most of the comments are completely dunking on Amazon for this,
         | though.
        
           | rantwasp wrote:
           | when you dunk 100 times you get a free tshirt!
        
       | hughrr wrote:
       | No thanks. This smells like a new way to do more work I don't
       | want to do and at the same time gain a reputation for working for
       | carrots.
        
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