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Engineers changed the timer live
Auction models
Whatnot sells through live auctions, and each seller picks the model. One is sudden death, where the auction ends the moment the timer does. In the classic version, a bid in the last 5 seconds adds 10 seconds back on the clock.
A seller's complaint
In his second week at Whatnot, Tom Verrilli sat in a room watching a seller on a stream complain that the auctions were taking too long. The seller wanted to move more product, and a 3-second timer would do it.
The change goes live
Two engineers in the office looked at each other, agreed it was a config they could change, and updated it in real time. Then they jumped into the chat of the stream and told everyone to refresh the app. All at once, the auctions ran on the shorter timer.
Why do auctions add time after late bids?
Auctions that end at a fixed moment invite sniping, where bidders wait until the last second so rivals cannot respond. An extension rule, often called a soft close, resets the clock whenever a late bid arrives. In a 2002 study in the American Economic Review, the economists Alvin Roth and Axel Ockenfels compared eBay, which ends at a fixed time, with Amazon auctions, which extended automatically. They found far more last-minute bidding on eBay.
How can engineers change an app without an update?
Many apps read certain settings, such as timers and thresholds, from a server rather than baking them into the downloaded code. Engineers change the value on the server, and the app picks it up the next time it fetches its settings. This is commonly called remote configuration, and tools like Google's Firebase Remote Config provide it. Because the app usually fetches the values at startup or on a schedule, a refresh is what makes the new number appear.
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