Google's first employee
mercurynews.com
Google's first employee
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Re: Google's first employee
#2I took more notes the first time Craig spoke at YC than I've done with any other speaker. Most of the time I only write down one or two sentences. The first time Craig spoke I took 4 pages of notes.
Re: Google's first employee
#3I took more notes the first time Craig spoke at YC than I've done with any other speaker. Most of the time I only write down one or two sentences. The first time Craig spoke I took 4 pages of notes.
I think stories by early employees of successful companies are often the only way to see the messy truth of early stages. Founders are so involved in many aspects that constant self-observation is not possible.
At least books by founders highlight the big lows and the big highs, but there are many insights to be gained from smaller daily decisions or way of making them, and I think employees can remember better how was the daily life in the early stages.
Re: Google's first employee
#4I took more notes the first time Craig spoke at YC than I've done with any other speaker. Most of the time I only write down one or two sentences. The first time Craig spoke I took 4 pages of notes.
I think stories by early employees of successful companies are often the only way to see the messy truth of early stages. Founders are so involved in many aspects that constant self-observation is not possible. At least books by founders highlight the big lows and the big highs, but there are many insights to be gained from smaller daily decisions or way of making them, and I think employees can remember better how w…
I've found this too. We also had Shel Kaphan speak, the first employee at Amazon (and really de facto cofounder), and he was very good as well.
Re: Google's first employee
#5"A There are these cultures you see in some companies -- they are just very negative, where the way that you show you are the hot shot engineer is by showing how stupid everyone else's idea is, or how bad everyone else's code is. And honestly, we see that more at Google now then we used to when it was small. And part of it is we've got people who were used to these other cultures; it's a very prevalent, sort of alpha-dog culture you see in the programming world. But it's never been part of Google's culture. And I think even when you see it now, it's not as respected. The respected voices say, hey cut it out. "
--That's very true. What I have seen in large companies, looking good is important, and apart from building stuff and bragging about it, and even easier way to do it is by criticizing others, and finding any way on how to point at minor flaws on other's people's work, simply malignant / non constructive behaviour, but masqueraded in the name of 'quality', company standards etc..
Re: Google's first employee
#6I'm not sure if the parent link works or not, it didn't work for me.
I believe this is the article linked.
http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/pr...
Edit: Nevermind, now it wants to work. Although I did link to the print version, incase anyone wants that instead.
Re: Google's first employee
#7I'm not sure if the parent link works or not, it didn't work for me. I believe this is the article linked. http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/pr... Edit: Nevermind, now it wants to work. Although I did link to the print version, incase anyone wants that instead.
I had problems with it too, but got this working:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_16291970
Re: Google's first employee
#8I'm not sure if the parent link works or not, it didn't work for me. I believe this is the article linked. http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/fragments/pr... Edit: Nevermind, now it wants to work. Although I did link to the print version, incase anyone wants that instead.
Odd, yeah site seems to require registration with a random(?) pattern. Maybe someone with enough karma can edit the original link to point to printed version, seems that I can't.
Re: Google's first employee
#9I took more notes the first time Craig spoke at YC than I've done with any other speaker. Most of the time I only write down one or two sentences. The first time Craig spoke I took 4 pages of notes.
What made his remarks so notable?
Re: Google's first employee
#10Firefox says the connection is untrusted and refuses to open the page.