Comment by Aurornis
3 days ago
> Rarely in software does anyone ask for “fast.” We ask for features, we ask for volume discounts, we ask for the next data integration. We never think to ask for fast.
Almost everywhere I’ve worked, user-facing speed has been one of the highest priorities. From the smallest boring startup to the multi billion dollar company.
At companies that had us target metrics, speed and latency was always a metric.
I don’t think my experience has been all that unique. In fact, I’d be more surprised if I joined a company and they didn’t care about how responsive the product felt, how fast the pages loaded, and any weird lags that popped up.
At 6 out of 8 companies I've worked at (mostly a mixture of tech & finance) I have always had to fight to get any time allotted for performance optimization, to the point where I would usually just do it myself under the radar. Even at companies that measured latency and claimed it was important, it would usually take a backseat to adding more features.
That is how it is most of the time. If you want to experience the other extreme, go to HFT or low-latency projects.
My experience has been that people sometimes obsess over speed for things like how fast a search result returns but not over things like how fast a page renders or how many bites we send the user.
I have been paid to make things fast. Sometimes that was the explicit reason I was hired!