Meet the Groups Engineering Team
So, we’ve introduced you to the Groups Product Team , the team that kicks off the product development cycle. We’ve also introduced you to the Groups Design Team , the team that takes the features and enhancements the Groups Product Team specs out and brings them come to life visually. Now I’d like to introduce you to the third and largest team that makes up the Yahoo! Groups Team: The Groups Engineering Team.
(Pictured above are the Software and QA Engineers)
(Pictured above are the Operations Engineers)
The Groups Engineering Team writes, maintains, and operates the software that makes up the Groups Product, including both the website and mail systems.
What does a day in the life of the team look like?
Like most kinds of engineering, software engineering follows a cyclical process. The cycle begins with a design for something that needs to be built. After that comes the implementation or coding phase. Then, comes the testing phase. Once testing is completed, the code is released into production. Since no code is perfect, the team spends the final phase of the cycle fixing bugs.
How many Yahoos work on the Groups Engineering Team?
The Groups Engineering Team is composed of several smaller teams, each working on a different phase of this cycle on their own distinct projects. With more that 30 engineers, the Groups Engineering Team has grown substantially over the past several months to help take Groups to the next level. Many of these engineers have been working on Groups for less than six months, so there’s new blood and a lot of excitement on the team.
Are there different types of engineers?
Working on one of the world’s biggest Web properties requires many skills. Yahoo! Groups is built on a diverse set of technologies and, therefore, requires a diverse team of engineers. From a functional perspective, there are three kinds of engineers on the team: Software, QA, and Operations.
You can think of software engineers as the “coders," QA engineers as “testers.” and operations engineers as “mechanics.” Pooling its resources and collective knowledge, the team keeps the Groups product running optimally.
How does the Groups Engineering Team divide its time between new features and current issues?
The Groups Engineering Team is always working on new features and current issues in parallel. The balance between adding new features and fixing features that already exist is currently about 50-50. Groups Labs is an example of new feature that we’ll soon be launching . Improving the ability of search engines to crawl public groups is an example of an existing feature that’s needed fixing for a long time. Over time, we hope to change this ratio to 70-30 so that we’re spending more time adding new features than fixing old ones.
Fun Facts
Yahoo! Groups is a global product, and the Groups Engineering Team is a global team. Members are fluent in eight languages, including English, French, Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin, Korean, Tagalog, and Japanese.
To give you a sense for the amount of Groups data they work with, think about the process of ripping one song a minute. It would take 50 years to burn a disk with all the Groups data, including files, photos, links, and archived messages—that is, if there were a disk big enough to hold it all!
I hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know the various teams that make up the Yahoo! Groups Team. We’re all are extremely passionate about delivering a reliable and effective product so all of you can create online communities that let you connect and interact with people who share your interests and ideas!
Best,
Jami
Groups Community Manager
Toko Mbungu said,
September 10, 2008 @ 6:43 pm
That’s great
Joseph Hand said,
September 10, 2008 @ 7:14 pm
Keep up the good work! You guys are great!!!
Raj said,
September 11, 2008 @ 12:11 am
Good show! Nice to see the team.
Lydia said,
September 11, 2008 @ 12:33 am
That’s a great job there done by you guys.
R. SIVASUBRAMANIAN said,
September 11, 2008 @ 1:17 am
It’s nice to learn about the good work you people are involved in. Expecting Tamil Language also to be a part of your future venture. Thanks & regards.
Ashish said,
September 11, 2008 @ 5:31 am
HELLO,THIS IS ASHISH.I like your blog i am so .intrested in science and i like to talk to engenier or scients. Please give response.
adele said,
September 11, 2008 @ 6:32 am
Very sophisticated, intelligent, flexible people! May I ask, what picture are you guys holding up? A man in a dark costume…is it a symbol or something; or who is the person? I hope it’s not a picture of ’satan’? Thank you for all you guys’ great work! God bless you.
Terry said,
September 11, 2008 @ 8:19 am
Good to meet you,
I guess you are the guys that fix things when the Groups Product Team and Groups Design Team come up with applications that don’t work,lol
No caption on the photo,is Gordon in the pic, perhaps he could step forward ?
A bit of a bug at the Yahoo mail area,with frequent redirecting to both the log in page and Yahoo home page, perhaps one of the engineering team are already working on this ?
Denver said,
September 11, 2008 @ 10:50 am
@Terry - Nope, Gordon is not in the photo above. You can find him in this photo: http://ygroupsblog.com/blog/2008/08/13/meet-the-groups-pm-team/ (He’s the one in the middle.)
Denver said,
September 11, 2008 @ 10:53 am
Hello, Engineering Team!
Thank you for everything you do! YAHOO! Groups IS the BEST groups service provider out there on the world wide web, period.
Denver
Terry said,
September 11, 2008 @ 6:29 pm
Thanks Denver,
I forgot Gordon had been identified previously
Ron D. said,
September 11, 2008 @ 10:01 pm
My group members are very glad to have the forum to talk about our favorite guitarist in the world. I appreciate all the hard work you guys do and can’t wait to see all the new features you’ve been testing. Good luck!
claudine said,
September 12, 2008 @ 12:04 am
Thank you very much to all for this hard work.
Yahoogroups are so helpful. It changed my life and all other tarlovian sufferers that are in my groups
Claudine GOZE-WEBER
TarlovEurope & TarlovTalk
Denver said,
September 12, 2008 @ 1:59 pm
@Terry - You’re welcome. There are just lots and lots and lots of staff… it’s almost like playing a game “Where’s Gordon?!” — Do you see him in this photo? LOL
Happy Weekend
Expedition said,
September 12, 2008 @ 3:43 pm
Dear Yahoo Engineers,
Please figure out a technical solution to enable non-public group owners to block the Grouply domain and other IP addresses or domains that are data-mining our groups.
Thanks!
Sammy Saka said,
September 13, 2008 @ 10:07 am
Is nikce to see that we have commited people in a group i a proud
Mohammed Hassanien said,
October 13, 2008 @ 12:53 am
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Zijuzijazijana said,
October 21, 2008 @ 1:38 am
Hi,
I have wrote a few short stories and I wanted to turn them into games,it’s nice to know about your group,have been looking a long time.
Greetings,
“Z”
Steven F. Trimarco said,
November 20, 2008 @ 6:47 am
Hi,
I have been running a support group since August 2005 and the support group I have is a Family orientated incontinent support group with the emphasis bedwetting issues our membership is very small# 20 Girls, # 32 Boys, # 7 Mothers, # 14 Fathers, 1 Uncle, 2 Grandfather, # 24 Male adult, # 2 Female adults), for safety reasons but we are very active with over 20,000 posts.
Most of the kids in the group post through their families membership, but we do allow kids 13yrs & older to join on their own, and we owe to their parents to keep them safe !
One of the problems of such a group is it attracts pedophiles who pretend to be something they are not to get to kids,
We have a group policy in order to protect the kids in this group of NO private emails and ALSO to keep pedophile out is to require everyone to have a full profile, with either they openly state why they join or though our secrete codes that only the group knows, which NO pedophile will be willing to do because they don’t want to incriminate themselves, and also there are so many other groups with no profile requirement
So her is my problem I know the existing members are safe even though I cannot read their profile. But I cannot accept any new members because when I ask them to set their profile to HIDE THEIR PROFILE for other not to be able to contact them within the group accept through post to the message board. I CAN NOT READ THEIR PROFILE AS WELL !! Where Before I restricted the members from contacting members by restricting them to the membership list. I was still able to read the profiles of my members.
In the past when I have accepted a member because they met the profile requirements I could later check their profile and sometimes I find they change their profile after joining, which tells me they are trying to hid something so I remove them from the group. Well I can’t do that now if I cannot read their profile as moderator if their profile is set up to HIDE THEIR PROFILE.
So how can this be fix so I can have them HIDE THEIR PROFILE.
But I as moderator can still read it????
If this can not be fix I will not accept anymore members and start shopping around to buy my own software to run my support group.
Sincerely,
Steven F. Trimarco
Stay Dry Bedwetting Group
Moderator
Paul said,
December 11, 2008 @ 4:31 pm
I am intereted in knowing more about software, computors and problems. Also, which is the best software for a Vista computor.
Paul C