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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is crazy that something as simple as keeping time can have such a complicated solution at that sort of scale. Time keeping is one of the things that is most often underestimated and screwed up at any scale, in my experience. Many a subtle bug turns out to be a poor assumption or misunderstanding about how clocks work. Or calendars.
i.e. A lot of distributed systems problems can be simplified if you can trust your clocks.
"NTP isn't accurate enough so we use a hardware clock assist that uses GPS and atomic clocks" - Google I think it is crazy that something as simple as keeping time can have such a complicated solution at that sort of scale. Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away, just like the recent conversations about working at Amazon, but crazy stuff like this always piques my interest.
Personally, I get paid pretty good money and have tons of resources to build models that serve 100s of millions of people.
https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...
Can't wait for someone to clone this. Come to think of it, has anyone cloned Spanner? I recall some calling GPS a hack but I thought it was engineering brilliance. Spanner was some good work, too.
"NTP isn't accurate enough so we use a hardware clock assist that uses GPS and atomic clocks" - Google I think it is crazy that something as simple as keeping time can have such a complicated solution at that sort of scale. Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away, just like the recent conversations about working at Amazon, but crazy stuff like this always piques my interest.
"NTP isn't accurate enough so we use a hardware clock assist that uses GPS and atomic clocks" - Google I think it is crazy that something as simple as keeping time can have such a complicated solution at that sort of scale. Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away, just like the recent conversations about working at Amazon, but crazy stuff like this always piques my interest.
"Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away" I loved working there. Sure, who your boss is has a huge impact on your happiness. I ended up with a boss I enjoyed working for. Does that review make you want to stay away, too?
"NTP isn't accurate enough so we use a hardware clock assist that uses GPS and atomic clocks" - Google I think it is crazy that something as simple as keeping time can have such a complicated solution at that sort of scale. Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away, just like the recent conversations about working at Amazon, but crazy stuff like this always piques my interest.
Google was Fortune Magazine's #1 best place to work for six years in a row. The reason you occasionally hear a story about how Google isn't perfect to work at is because those are news. In general, it's a fantastic workplace.
Hopefully the irony isn't lost on the readers of this document :)
"NTP isn't accurate enough so we use a hardware clock assist that uses GPS and atomic clocks" - Google I think it is crazy that something as simple as keeping time can have such a complicated solution at that sort of scale. Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away, just like the recent conversations about working at Amazon, but crazy stuff like this always piques my interest.
> Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away Google was Fortune Magazine's #1 best place to work for six years in a row. The reason you occasionally hear a story about how Google isn't perfect to work at is because those are news . In general, it's a fantastic workplace.
But like I said, we're all very different.
"NTP isn't accurate enough so we use a hardware clock assist that uses GPS and atomic clocks" - Google I think it is crazy that something as simple as keeping time can have such a complicated solution at that sort of scale. Every review I hear about working at Google makes me want to stay away, just like the recent conversations about working at Amazon, but crazy stuff like this always piques my interest.
Working at Google is pretty cool. Personally, I get paid pretty good money and have tons of resources to build models that serve 100s of millions of people.