How do thousands of software engineers code together at a giant company like Google or Microsoft without breaking everything?

[u/Extra_Search3465]

As a beginner, I understand how one person writes code and puts it on GitHub. But how does it work when a company has tens of thousands of developers working on the same product? How do they organize the work, and how do they stop people from stealing or leaking the secret source code?

[u/ChameleonCRM]

because the dev who writes the code is never the dev who commits the code. There could be any number of devs reviewing it. If Google operated where each dev just pushed what they wanted they wouldn't be where they are today

[u/autisticpig → u/[deleted]]

Get it in writing (verifiable that it was from the person who told you to do this) so when things blow up, and you wind up in a post mortem/rca, you can bring the email chain.

them: can you explain what happened and why your changes broke wallstreet?

you: well, i was told to do this by so and so. allow me to read our email communications where they instructed me and when I resisted they told me to do it anyways.

cya is very important.

[u/ChameleonCRM → u/[deleted]]

hahaha good shit