As f5 continues to sink we can turn this around. Go back to hiring people not on how they look but on what skills and vision they bring to the table. How John McAdam did it.
38 replies (most recent on top)
@OP who gives a F ?
Let it sink, let it sink, let it sink
@3pe and trim the middle fat
@3pe engineering at its best!!!
@OP How to raze the f5 ship.
Fixed it for you. If we remove the upper deck, the ship would be better.
@34z F5 is still a human first company - just the humans are now the first to be RIFd
Completely agree with the comments in this post. Such a shame. I worked at F5 for 13 years. F5 was truly a customer first culture, initiated by John.
I was hoping that our hard graft and authentic approach would continue to shine bright. Shamefully destroyed by Francois L-D and his virtue signaling brigade. Shame, what a great company F5 was.
Employee reviews suggest F5’s “Human First” culture feels diluted, with decisions perceived as top-heavy and optics-driven.
Management rated 3.0/5 on Blind; - weirdly generous score!
@OP not worth the cost or effort
@OP It's best just to let it sink and never found.
@17t emphasis on the word "take" not earn
@17t and doing a pi-s poor job of it
@OP executives are responsible and accountable for answering questions like that. They take $$$$$$ for doing this job.
@h2 I remember the guy who became GM last year around this time of Cloud offerings forget his name. Regardless, the challenge for us at the time was convincing years-long Silverline customers to migrate into XC. We’re taking huge banks who prefer to test new tech slowly and move into it only after careful - sometimes years long - review and feedback/improvements. These happened to be the largest and most beneficial customers with the largest contracts. Then we deadlined Silverline, and some of the customers had already had a p.i.ta. experience since SL tended to have outages and the like, like 2-3 times per year or more [you cannot protect traffic if you’re dropping it].
So the deadline drops and it’s hella “soon” and my top customers are mad as heck and I’m expected somehow magically convince them to go against all reason and procedure to get them to swing assets over before cutoff. What do you think happened from there?
…Bueller? …Anybody?
@ga agreed. I’d say lack of diversity is part of the problem. The diverseness is no longer against cis-het white dudes as much anymore. The balance just shifted into different supremic demographics
@OP F5 office hours
Are you considering migrating from F5 to HAProxy, but don't know where to start?
https://www.haproxy.com/content-library/webinars/f5-office-hours-dec
@wh From the first go/no go software release meeting I attended shortly after I started at F5, it was obvious that quality was not a priority nor welcomed. I had the week before the meeting reported a critical flaw with BIG IP. I brought this up during the meeting and the Program Manager stared me down and said "So you want to delay the release!!!!" Being the newbie, I coward down and said no. I was so wrong. I should have taken him to the mat. I should have left F5 then and there. But I didn't. This became the norm for release meetings and the norm for F5. I am so ashamed of myself now.
@rp The pattern is clear: ship broken, fix later. Sometimes.
https://techtrenches.substack.com/p/the-great-software-quality-collapse
@rk I totally agree to that. I have seen it firsthand , there was a principal engg opening during covid and the candidate selected was no good and that got proved soon after hiring too. even after layoffs, I still see them there. Some ppl are just good at tricking the system i guess.
@rp impressive. 15 up votes in 10 minutes
@rk You need not look any further than Boeing, as the perfect example. Boeing used to be the gold standard when it came to engineering, quality, and safety. Then after its merger with McDonnell Douglas, their entire strategy shifted. Their new CEO prioritized profits over engineering—even moved their entire HQ to Chicago to for corporate execs to be buffered from engineering. Ever since then, they've been cutting corners to save money at the expense of engineering and safety. Oh, but big ole Wall Street doesn't want you to believe that they are to blame. Mainstream media will align with Boeing and Wall Street to paint a different narrative, its the minorities. Its the diversity.
They push the idea that the problem isn't the decades of corporate decisions prioritizing shareholder value and cost-cutting over expertise, but rather a convenient scapegoat—distracting the public from the financial imperatives that actually gutted the engineering culture and led to catastrophic failures.
@rh I blame DEI hiring also. When I was conducting interviews I was never allowed to select the best candidate
@kn You obviously don't work in engineering because DEI hiring is definitely not the issue. All of the engineers have always been top notch. Yes, blame the diverse engineers -- how mo--nic. Then why isn't this happening everywhere, why is this unique to F5?
F5 is a fiduciary, the bottom line is make Wallstreet money. So the executives are reactionary, and make decisions to increase revenue fast, at the the cost of product quality. And instead of looking up and blaming decisions for immediate financial growth at the detriment of engineering quality, you blame it on DEI hiring?
@fn absolutely true...Fire the indian leadership especially the ones in Seattle and San Jose. Few Solution architects just talk out loud and over project themselves with out any actual knowledge
@ga I’ve met a lot of engineers. The best engineers. Absolutely tremendous people. You know what they care about? Code that compiles and servers that don’t explode. That’s it.
They don’t care what you’ve got in your pants. They don’t care who you’re dating, marrying, or serenading at 2 AM. They don’t care which bathroom you use as long as you’re not rerouting the company’s DNS in there.
And the color of your skin? Let me tell you! If your brain can debug a distributed system at 98% CPU saturation while the backend is on fire, you could be purple with glow-in-the-dark stripes. They don’t care. They’ll hire you twice.
But no, here comes the DEI committee, clipboard in hand, ready to check your diversity score like it’s a Pokémon card:
“Ooooh, very nice, but do we have the right assortment of identities on this team?”
Meanwhile, the real engineers, the ones building the internet, solving impossible problems, inventing the future, are over here saying:
“Look, can you write code that doesn’t turn the production database into a Jackson Pollock painting? Yes? Great. Welcome aboard.”
Because in the world of engineering, talent is king. Brains are the currency. Genius doesn’t come in colors!!! It comes in commits, pull requests, and the tears you shed trying to fix a race condition at 4 in the morning.
@OP You don’t, folks. You don’t. What matters, what really matters, is the last, very powerful torpedo. Bo-m! Bam! The best bo-m, everyone says so. And then, just like those big, beautiful gulal powder bags exploding at Holi. Your pants go off in spectacular color, leaving a mess everywhere. Total disaster! People are saying they’ve never seen anything like it.
@fn also, they are only interested in keeping the status quo, looking good in the eyes of their managers, and pretending all is working well. They have ingrained the caste system in their brains. You can feel it in every meeting, every interaction. “Command and control” instead of collaboration. Promises without plans. Sick environment! You either get rid of the cancer or don’t complain people don’t give a f about the place.
@ga People who think DEI is not to blame just look at how well PD, HR & Marketing performed when those C-Suite Roles were given to the DEI mandate... No products that clients want (product sales are dropping), the moral in the troops is low, no matter what the survey says, and Marketing is non-existent....open your eyes and speak to the people on the side and you'll hear the truth....
@ed+ Exactly. Touting the same BS rightwing talking points saying DEI is the reason the company is failing. Complete bogus
@fn Task #2 - see Task #1
Task #1 remove all Indian higher and middle management. Also all the Indian architects. They value nothing.
@e2 the poster was being sarcastic
@bp you're d-mb
@OP but but but DEI was supposed to make sure that we did everything right to make lots of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
@OP The virus/disease started in the mid to late 201xs has infected F5 is too deep. It cannot be irradiated no matter what is tried. Best just to remember the good times and just let it go.
the trouble is... f5 has the mantra of "Visibility promotes over competence"
@OP first, get rid of middle management/principles that prevent innovation and block initiatives from senior engineers. We don’t need more people, we need better leadership.
@OP like hiring people for their skills and vision is ever going to happen again.
@OP its got to be depressing for Mr. McAdam to see a company that he built over 15 years to disappear in flames.