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Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

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Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#241

Post by twblalock »

bsaul wrote: post #156
Moodles wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a job in a company obsessed with DLT. I didn’t see anything useful. In fact I’d go as far to suggest that the only use of a blockchain is in cryptocurrency. What have you seen which suggests otherwise?

Maybe you’ve got more insights on the subject since you’ve actually had a job on the tech, but it seems that « private » DLTs , or « b2b » dlts could have some applications where competitors need to share and persist information. Another is with all systems taking the roles traditionnally filled with state actors ( registers of some sorts). But you’re right, so far no « killer app » has been found. That’s what makes…

> But you’re right, so far no « killer app » has been found. That’s what makes it interesting today, imho.

How long do we have to wait until the lack of a killer app stops being interesting, and simply means the technology is not useful?

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#242

Post by TeMPOraL »

existencebox wrote: post #227
TeMPOraL wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dale Carnegie, in his book "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living", raised a similar point. I won't quote directly, as I read it in Polish; the following is based on my notes: In one the latter chapters, he has a rule about "summoning your own enthusiasm". The primary observation in that part of the chapter was that it's really hard to truly exhaust someone physically, and even harder to exhaust them mentally, if the…

I was literally talking about this exact phenomena with the wife last night. It's almost impossible for me to be bored if I'm doing nothing. I could fill years of daydreaming, just in my own head. However, give me work tasks that I have no interest in, and I'll feel so bored/lethargic/unmotivated that just keeping my eyes on task and moving forward requires mental exertion. When I was young, apparently this meant I h…

Yeah, I feel the same way you do. Please, leave me with nothing to do; I'll manage. Left to my own devices, I have 20 ideas 5 trains of thought to explore per minute.

> I see in a side comment you were concerned about undiagnosed ADD, I'll admit I'm somewhat concerned with _overdiagnosing_ ADD.

I get it. Child AD(H)D seems definitely overdiagnosed in the west; from what I read, giving medication seems to be the easiest hack to get kids to survive modern school system. But personally, I just want to have an expert opinion on whether or not I might have adult ADD, simply because I'm running out of plausible hypotheses, and this one fits well. I was depressed in the past and worked through that. I had anxiety issues, but they're almost gone too - I don't generally feel debilitating background anxiety anymore, unless I'm seriously falling behind on my obligations. The only unresolved thing left is the anxiety and weakening I feel in context of working.

> The joke I used to make as a kid was that I only had an attention deficit for things that didn't matter

I still feel like this. In a better world, this would be fine. Alas, we're not there yet.

> and often haunts me with a "why do you feel such fundamental friction with doing your job like every other professional adult"

Yes, this is exactly how I feel all the time, and had since entering the workforce. I have decent skills, I don't struggle with technical challenges. I only struggle with this fundamental friction. I look at people around me - friends, coworkers - and they all seem so productive and relaxed. Hell, my wife is the exact opposite of me - she's so good at getting things done at work she puts David Allen to shame. So yeah, it's reassuring to know that I'm not alone in this state - so thanks for sharing!

> (I realize this is tangential, but if you're _at all_ a hip hop/poem fan, check out 9-5ers Anthem by Aesop Rock. this is one of my "at work coping mechanisms" when I feel this way.)

Not a fan, just a casual listener. But I'm always open to any coping mechanism for this particular problem.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#243

Post by coldtea »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #155
coldtea wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What job wouldn't fire you for leaving in the middle of the day? Many. Especially smaller shops in laxer countries.

Willing to bet you that it's less than 50% of total shops, therefore less than the word "many".

Probably, which why I said "many" and not "most".

It's not a thing in big faceless corporations, chains, etc, for example (though it can be a thing in places like Google, MS, etc, with the right manager).

But on small businesses (e.g. 2-20 people) it's not uncommon in certain countries (thinking of Southern Europe that I know of) to have an understanding when one needs to leave. There are also practices like "siesta" where places close for a few hours altogether and people have lunch etc.

I was also surprised to see the hours kept in french towns (not Paris, smaller, but still big ones) that e.g. shops opened casually at around 10am, many were closed at lunchtime, and reopened again later, etc.

I'm pretty sure this is the case elsewhere without the "protestant work ethic" (or Japan's version of the same, instilled after lots of humiliating defeats on the hands of the west), e.g. Africa, Latin America, and so on.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#244

Post by kornish »

username3 wrote: post #189
sokoloff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question misses the point I think. The differences aren’t going to be that they type 1200 wpm or something that would be interesting or obvious on video. It would more likely look like someone spending time thinking carefully, not (necessarily) at a keyboard, thinking about really needs doing, how to best do it, what the user needs and will value, and they might write 1/3 of the code of a median engineer. The ac…

I’m not saying 10x are fast at typing. I just wanted to see how fast someone can use emacs as the person from the interview.

It's not writing real code (except for some examples), but this guy's got some chops: http://emacsrocks.com/

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#245

Post by mattmar96 »

metachris wrote: post #101
username3 wrote: post #42

Anyone have videos of someone programming fast or a video of a 10x engineer working or a comparison output of a 10x vs above average?

Notch coding Minecraft comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhQ70O1MiXc See also https://www.gun.io/blog/what-i-learned-from-watching-notch-c...

Like others in the thread have said, he's not writing code at 1000 wpm here. In this ~20 minute clip he's written at most 50 lines. It's more his ability to solve problems where he finds them

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#246

Post by dionidium »

sulam wrote: post #128

His reason for why he’s a vi guy was funny! (He only had 60M free for his Linux partition and emacs wouldn’t fit). It did sound mildly apocryphal but so did most of it. My reason for vi is equally random. I learned Unix at college, but I wasn’t allowed on the systems because I wasn’t an engineering student. I had to resort to nefarious means to get online, so I needed to keep a really low profile. The easiest way to…

I had a prof in college who demonstrated stuff in vi and I knew immediately that I wanted to do what he was doing. If he'd have been an emacs guy, then I probably would be, too, but instead I still prefer vi over anything else ~15 years later.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#247

Post by Agathos »

Sytten wrote: post #120

[Off topic] Can someone help me understand why computer scientists call themselves engineers in the US? Is there a reason beside the fact that it is probably not regulated? Here that would be so totally illegal if you are not a member of the order which requires an engineering diploma.

We are far too well paid to be called scientists.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#248

Post by Balgair »

GCA10 wrote: post #232

t. I think you have to interview them a little bit. Ask hard questions and see if they give direct, insightful answers, or if they're evasive and dismissive.> Actually, letting charismatic founders deliver a triple-scoop of their enchanting story isn't the technique I'd recommend. Both the good ones and the bad ones got this far by being very persuasive. Do reference checks instead. Find people who worked with them f…

Great advice to do reference checks yourself. But HOW? Like, what are the brass tacks steps that you'd follow to do that, given the time and resource limits most new-ish people have?

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#249

Post by utopcell »

misterman0 wrote: post #137

> “wow, these people [Yahoo] are idiots, and we're going to roll over them.” From then on, we just kept winning deals and squashing other companies. That was exciting." I wonder, what kind of deals were Google making at this point in time? What was their product? Sure, they had a web page that could search the internet, but how did they monitize on that? Did they offer custom site search solutions?

I think the comment referred to Inktomi (that had just lost the search deal to Google,) not Yahoo.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#250

Post by utopcell »

neolefty wrote: post #181
YokoZar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's been widely reported that gmail was a 20% project to start with. That seems inconsistent with this version of events.

Maybe he was already working on something email-y, and they noticed?

But that's not what he reported.
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