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Software Engineering

Practical challenges in tech companies and tips for researchers

Maurício Aniche

mauricio.aniche@adyen.com

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Maurício Aniche

Tech Academy Lead @ Adyen

Assistant Prof in SE @ TU Delft

​

mauricio.aniche@adyen.com

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Academia or

Industry…

​

so hard to pick one!!

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The fun part of it all was to see and learn from both sides!

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(hosted 10+ of my MSc students and 1 PhD candidate.)

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Payments 101

Acquirer

Scheme

Issuer

Merchant

Shopper

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complex?

What makes payments so

Uptime is non-negotiable, payments can’t be down.

Strict legislative and compliance requirements

Complex ecosystem and many different integrations + legacy

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  • Assistant Professor in SE
  • 10% appointment
  • Interests
    • Maintenance
    • Evolution
    • Testing
  • Research
    • Empirical software engineering
    • ML4SE
  • 2021 Teacher of the Year in Computer Science
  • TU Delft education fellow (for life)

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Table of Contents

01

02

03

04

Tech companies

How do they work, and challenges they have!

Lessons learned

What did I learn and what I'd do differently in my research

Education

SE education is vital!

Takeaways

And goodbye!

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Tech companies

01

What engineering (management) challenges do they face?

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Literally everything is there to help the

business grow

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Big bang changes won't even be considered

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Nothing can stop engineers from

delivering value

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Duplication of (bad) ideas

is the real problem

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Every tech company has some legacy to handle.

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The real scaling problem is scaling people, culture, and teams

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Quality assurance goes way beyond automated tests

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Simplicity is always favored over complex solutions

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Companies won't change their way of working because your idea is cool

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Lessons learned

02

What would I do differently as a researcher?

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I'd understand more about engineering management

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More ways of replicating the work within companies

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Data only gives you only a partial view of the phenomenon

(and that's fine)

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Tools rarely work out-of-the-box in any mid or large-sized company

(i.e., a lot of engineering is required before the cool research starts)

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You don't need to do research that's only useful for Google or Amazon

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Don't focus on what developers already know

(and yet, "fight the common sense")

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Find peace with your research community

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Go to developer conferences and

read their books

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Education

03

We are responsible for the engineers of the future!

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Engineers should be engineers first

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Best practices beyond the foundations

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Accept life-long learning

(i.e., universities are not the only place to learn anymore)

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A stable course is a

dead course

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If teaching is not for you, let someone that cares about teaching do it!

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Takeaways

04

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  • Get to know how tech companies work (organization and engineering)

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  • Get to know what the state-of-the-practice looks like

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  • Focus on industry replication rather than 0.1% improvements

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  • The engineer of tomorrow needs to be a strong engineer first before anything else

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Software Engineering

Practical challenges in tech companies and tips for researchers

Maurício Aniche

mauricio.aniche@adyen.com

Code "au35ani" gives you 35% discount!

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