Thread regarding F5 Networks Inc. layoffs

@6qw typical corporate environment full of politics and useless consultants managed by incompetent “leaders”. What matters is NASDAQ.

@6qw this

I tried and tried to get the architects and PM to listen about problems, got repeatedly sidelined and shut down, and after an especially pu--c and egregious incident of extreme disrespect from a manager, finally took the hint and quit.

You can always tell when a project is going to fail; the managment goes back to their core behaviors; demand a promised deadline upfront, threaten, push and punish when, of course, the made up number is missed.

Agile was never truly implemented, and discarded when things got sticky. I even held a meeting that detailed the ways in which Agile transformations fail, pointed out the warning signs, and was dismissed out of hand.

@3k2 OK. Now let’s do a mental experiment: imagine you are the product manager for bigip next. After extensive and thorough research you came to a conclusion that there is no market fit and the product idea will never fly.

To make it more realistic assume that your PM paycheck is the only source of income for your family of four, your entire family is on your medical insurance, and your green card also depends on your employment status.

What would you do?

You see the problem here, right? It is not lack of technical expertise, it is not due to a mediocre strategy and product vision etc. Your managers created and cultivate an environment where the only driver is fear and rather suboptimal driver for innovations.

@2y7 Then it’s academic child of the product managers. They are responsible for directing efforts and product market fit analysis.

@2xj In meetings. Where else could they be?

@2ng where was product manager?

Also, all the crazy DEI hiring in PM for BIG-Next made things much worse. Woke hiring based on gender and skin color. People with literally no PM or tech experience. Folks who didn't know anything about networking, security, cloud, or the OSI model. It was flabbergasting to see this happen. Most of those folks are gone by now but the damage was already done.

BIG-IP Next was started as an academic exercise by developers who wanted to create their own baby with a clean slate -- and who had no clue how customers actually used the BIG-IP product. There were many times they were told "no, that's not how customers would actually use the product" but they forged ahead undeterred. It was a sh*t show from the start.

@27h That's why everyone should mind its own business. Chill out and take it easy! You were fired. She cashed a few million and left. Lesson? Do what is good FOR YOU and keep silent.

@27h you probably did and then you should be proud about that but 99% of your colleagues chose safe play. I am not the one to blame them just want to point out that while MK people share their part of the product failure you folks were those who spent 3(?) years busily building something was to set up to failure from the beginning.

@27d we did tell Kara. That is why I was terminated.

@1wk what a word salad. Just admit you guys were just dead afraid to tell Kara that the product you were building was 100% bullsh-t.

I was working on core components of NEXT close to the beginning. I can tell you that there were conversations with customers, goals that aligned with those conversations, and a general roadmap based on all of that. Then PD got involved and the goals changed from the features laid out in the roadmap to "feature parity with BIG IP." Considering that the control plane was designed and initially built to be a collection of microservices, forcing them into BIG IP's monolithic design removed all of the advantages microservices could give. On top of that the constant push for faster feature delivery without allowing for proper testing or cleanup of tech debt and you end up with what was delivered: some truly great achievements mired by reactive decisions and non-forward thinking leading to poor product planning and conflicting/unusable designs.

While I partially share your sentiments, the link you posted is a standard bullsh-t zero-value promo blog post, nothing more.

@h8
Sad reality:

It does not matter the quality.
It does not matter if it works or not.
It does not matter the consequences.

What it does matter:

Doing it faster.
Sell it faster.
Profit from it until you can.
Repeat.

@hd “ unpleasant conversations" if you didn't complete all your story points”” - such language deserves the answer in the iconic style : “I know who you are. I will find you and I will k you”

@OP From where I was positioned in the development, I find fault with all of the STEs (Solution Train Engineers) and RTEs (Release Train Engineers) on the development of BIG IP NEXT and Centralized Manager. In my previous company, those roles were an integral part of the development - making sure that there was communication between people and group - in and outside of development. If issues arose, they were there to get a timely and proper resolution.

At F5, if you could find them, questions went unanswered. They were not leaders - just paper pushers. I specifically remember an email from an RTE about "unpleasant conversations" if you didn't complete all your story points. That isn't leadership, that is abuse.

@OP Months of pointless standups without a single architect or product manager in sight. Endless complaints from principals about the direction of the project that went unanswered. Refusing to update ancient runtimes on the host despite having the solutions that actually make money hobbled. Shifting from one naive, unachievable plan to another without bothering to ask the customer what they want. Surely they don’t want twenty years of tech debt in their best of breed, ridiculously easy to use next generation ADC, right?

@f5 "Massive failure of understanding what your customers really want." - Did anyone even ask what customers want? FLD and a few "gurus" always know better. They spend years trying to build things nobody wants. It's a product management 101 class. Clowns.

@OP This is so true. In my 40+ year career I have never seen a more poorly managed project. Next was a mess from the get go. The performance was really bad and getting worse as time went on. I can't even count the number of times we re-wrote major subsystems. API front end 3 times? CP at least 3 times with architecture completely wrong after the great pivot? It was obvious to anybody with a brain that Next was a train wreck. 5+ years of development and 3 customers went to production. Massive failure of understanding what your customers really want.

@d8 regrettably so true

@OP What matters is good press and marketing, a rising share price, and $$$$$ in FLD's bank account. No one at the top cares about fake test coverage.