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What does it take to make Google work at scale?

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Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#61

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dragonwriter wrote: post #59
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the two clocks are stationary with respect to each other, that isn't a problem. Most of Google's servers are on the Earth's surface, so... (Edit: Yes, different elevations cause a gravitational time dilation difference. For Earth's gravitational field and the elevation difference between different Google servers, I doubt it's an issue at the time resolution that Google needs to maintain.)

> If the two clocks are stationary with respect to each other, that isn't a problem. Most of Google's servers are on the Earth's surface, so... ...you can't generally guarantee that they are (even approximately) stationary with respect to each other, because points on the earth's surface (in general) are not stationary with respect to each other in an inertial frame of reference.

> you can't generally guarantee that they are (even approximately) stationary with respect to each other...

False.

> ... because points on the earth's surface (in general) are not stationary with respect to each other in an inertial frame of reference.

True. There is both the earth's rotation, and the relativistic difference due to differing elevations. But given earth's angular velocity and gravitational gradient, points on the surface are still approximately stationary with respect to each other, where "approximately" is defined by the amount of difference it will make compared to the time precision that Google cares about.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#62

Post by bryanstump »

untog wrote: post #19
munificent wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Everyone is different - while I don't doubt that Google has fantastic perks, I can't think of many things that I would want to work on that aren't the moonshot crazy experimental projects (and, let's face it, most people won't be working on them). And working on a giant campus that's isolated from the outside world... no thank you. But like I said, we're all very different.

yeah those are fun projects

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#63

Post by plorkyeran »

nostrademons wrote: post #46
obeattie wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that Google thinks of that as a problem. In fact, I'd argue a lot of the tech that many companies use nowadays exists because Google pioneered it.

I think that he's talking about the employee perspective, not the company perspective. Google's tech stack is mostly proprietary, which means you can't take your tech skills with you to a new employer. ...And I haven't found it to be a major problem, being an ex-Googler a little over a year out. Tech skills are easy to pick up on your own. My current startup is based on Node.js, a native Android client, and AWS; the…

My fear would be related to not having things to put on my resume or being able to answer specific questions during interviews, but of course that's not remotely an issue for the specific case of ex-Google employees.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#64

Post by vidarh »

MattCruikshank wrote: post #8
davis_m wrote: post #4

"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?

What makes me want to stay away, apart from the ridiculous recruitment process, is the insane staff turnover. No amount of positive reviews will overcome that for me.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#65

Post by chetanahuja »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #58
chetanahuja wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or guarantee that two separate coordinates on space-time can have identical values... which would mean breaking some laws of physics.

If the two clocks are stationary with respect to each other, that isn't a problem. Most of Google's servers are on the Earth's surface, so... (Edit: Yes, different elevations cause a gravitational time dilation difference. For Earth's gravitational field and the elevation difference between different Google servers, I doubt it's an issue at the time resolution that Google needs to maintain.)

Even if the clocks are stationary with respect to each other (within some tolerance), it's impossible to guarantee completely synchronized clocks among the systems. This follows trivially from the impossibility of instantaneous communication due to the second postulate of special relativity.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#66

Post by threeseed »

obeattie wrote: post #44
Thaxll wrote: post #43

The thing that might be scary working at Google is that you work with tech than no-one else uses.

I'm not sure that Google thinks of that as a problem. In fact, I'd argue a lot of the tech that many companies use nowadays exists because Google pioneered it.

A lot of technologies ? No not even close. More like 3.

GFS, MapReduce, BigTable were the key Google inventions that became the sparks that ignited the modern day big data/analytics revolution.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#67

Post by threeseed »

segmondy wrote: post #60
Thaxll wrote: post #43

The thing that might be scary working at Google is that you work with tech than no-one else uses.

There are plenty of other companies that also have tech that Google doesn't have or use too. Google has all these amazing tech, but I can assure you working at Google doesn't mean you will ever get to use it directly.

Exactly. Facebook and Yahoo have contributed equally as much to the technology landscape as Google has.

And unlike Google they actually make it available to the public and then follow it up with supporting the projects.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#68

Post by AnimalMuppet »

chetanahuja wrote: post #65
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the two clocks are stationary with respect to each other, that isn't a problem. Most of Google's servers are on the Earth's surface, so... (Edit: Yes, different elevations cause a gravitational time dilation difference. For Earth's gravitational field and the elevation difference between different Google servers, I doubt it's an issue at the time resolution that Google needs to maintain.)

Even if the clocks are stationary with respect to each other (within some tolerance), it's impossible to guarantee completely synchronized clocks among the systems. This follows trivially from the impossibility of instantaneous communication due to the second postulate of special relativity.

If two clocks are stationary with respect to each other, then there is no ambiguity about where the midpoint between them is. Then you just do something like, when your clock hits noon, fire a projectile at a fixed speed toward the other clock. If the projectiles meet at the halfway point, then the clocks are synchronized.

And there is no relativistic funny business involved, because the clocks are stationary with respect to each other. There's no difference of viewpoint as to whether the projectiles met at the halfway point, or where the halfway point was, or even how far off from the halfway point they met (and therefore how far off the clocks are from each other).

This is the argument used in my relativity class to show that you can synchronize clocks that are stationary with respect to each other. (You have to be able to do that to construct an inertial frame of reference, that is, to be able to determine what time coordinate some event occurs at, no matter what spatial location it occurred at.)

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#69

Post by cmrdporcupine »

nmrm2 wrote: post #57
lg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's a chicago office, fwiw...

Chicago is midwest in geography and climate only. Someone who grew up in a typical small midwest town would feel as out of place in Chicago as in San Francisco, New York, or Paris.

Probably the closest to the vibe the person is looking for would be the Google Waterloo office where I work, or the Pittsburgh office the other poster mentioned.

Re: What does it take to make Google work at scale?

#70

Post by cmrdporcupine »

untog wrote: post #30
DannyBee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I can't think of many things that I would want to work on that aren't the moonshot crazy experimental projects (and, let's face it, most people won't be working on them)." This is true of almost everyone, of course. Every year i read the incoming intern abstracts, and they all literally say the same thing "I really would like to work on ". Literally all of them. That said, often you can work on them if you are good…

Are there ever new, fast-moving projects at Google? That's the core of my perception - I don't want to work on Google Docs, Gmail, etc. etc. or other large, established projects. I want to work on something small, iterate quickly, etc. - but to the outsider, I don't see any Google products doing that.

There are, but as you might expect when a project like that gets started, even the smell of it attracts a lot of people. I can't say that anything I've seen at Google iterates quickly compared to where I've worked before. It's just not a company built for quick iteration -- between the code reviews and style guide and readability restrictions, a lot of discussion around design docs, interacting with a lot of other teams, etc.

But it has other strengths.

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