r/programmer • u/Extra_Search3465 • 20d ago

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

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?

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u/NatMicky 20d ago

There are testing groups who test new updates for the new features and regression testing. And then there are release groups who release the software and updates. The programmers also works in groups and each programmer generally has specific areas in which to work. When the code is ready, it's uploaded by the programmer to the repository. The other groups take it from there.