Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Friendship That Made Google Huge

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 104 posts

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#31

Post by timdellinger »

Does anyone have a reference for "In 1966, researchers at the System Development Corporation discovered that the best programmers were more than ten times as effective as the worst." ?

I'm seeing the year 1968 at http://thecomputerboys.com/?tag=black-art#fn-156-1

Is there a 1966 reference out there somewhere? Or perhaps the actual study was done in '66 and didn't make it into press until '68? I didn't pull the original paper.

(The fact checkers at the New Yorker are typically very sharp.)

edit: I pulled the original paper (10.1145/362851.362858). The studies were done in 1966!

Interesting to see the genesis of the myth of the 10x programmer.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#32

Post by strikelaserclaw »

woodhull wrote: post #15
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #7

these are the kind of articles i like reading, well written, interesting subject and good content length. Too many times i read bold headlines on HN, "Why X is bringing america down", then go to read it and just when they get to the crux of the matter i find the article has ended smh.

The New Yorker does this very consistently every week at an extraordinary level of quality. They will even mail you a copy in exchange for a subscription. It's magical.

i will look into it

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#33

Post by stdplaceholder »

jamestimmins wrote: post #29

Anyone know where folks like Peter Norvig and Urs Hölzle fit on the L1-L11 scale? I assumed that all of the early employees/now legends were at the top level, so I was surprised to see the article state otherwise.

Urs doesn't need a level on the individual contributor scale; he's a Senior Vice President.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#34

Post by Shebanator »

jamestimmins wrote: post #29

Anyone know where folks like Peter Norvig and Urs Hölzle fit on the L1-L11 scale? I assumed that all of the early employees/now legends were at the top level, so I was surprised to see the article state otherwise.

Peter is a director, and Urs is a senior VP. As such, they are now both on the management ladder. I think the article was discussing only people who were on the eng ladder.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#35

Post by forgot-my-pw »

woodhull wrote: post #15
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #7

these are the kind of articles i like reading, well written, interesting subject and good content length. Too many times i read bold headlines on HN, "Why X is bringing america down", then go to read it and just when they get to the crux of the matter i find the article has ended smh.

The New Yorker does this very consistently every week at an extraordinary level of quality. They will even mail you a copy in exchange for a subscription. It's magical.

Only $6 for 12 weeks for print + digital. Subscribed!

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#36

Post by amelius »

Jyaif wrote: post #6

“In terms of sexiness, compilers are pretty much as boring as it gets,” That bit surprised me. For me it doesn't get much sexier than compilers.

Writing a modern concurrent garbage collector is as complicated as writing a compiler, to a great degree because of their "real time" constraints and concurrency.

But to call them sexy is another thing ...

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#37

Post by azhenley »

timdellinger wrote: post #31

Does anyone have a reference for "In 1966, researchers at the System Development Corporation discovered that the best programmers were more than ten times as effective as the worst." ? I'm seeing the year 1968 at http://thecomputerboys.com/?tag=black-art#fn-156-1 Is there a 1966 reference out there somewhere? Or perhaps the actual study was done in '66 and didn't make it into press until '68? I didn't pull the origin…

It is awesome that you were able to find this. This very well may be the genesis!

For anyone else, that DOI points to: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=362851.362858 "Exploratory experimental studies comparing online and offline programming performance" from CACM 1968.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#38

Post by AceJohnny2 »

nlh wrote: post #12
shafte wrote: post #5

I'm so glad this this article (unlike so many other representations of Jeff and Sanjay's work) does not overlook Sanjay's contributions. I don't know what it is; maybe Sanjay is a weird (read: non-English) name, maybe it's that computing culture's obsession with lone hackers leaves no room for a partnership like Jeff and Sanjay's. Anyway, kudos to the New Yorker for not falling into that trap.

Ditto on the sentiment. I’m not a Googler but I’ve worked closely with a few, and Jeff was revered accordingly (along with the Chuck Norris-esque jokes). I’d honestly never heard Sanjay mentioned (and didn’t know who he was) until I read this article. I’m glad he was given his due and I’m glad to have learned about his contributions.

> (along with the Chuck Norris-esque jokes)

Funny thing, that was started by kentonv [0], who worked on open-sourcing protobufs [1], then CapnProto [2], then (with Jade Wang) Sandstorm [3]. He lurks around here :)

[0] https://plus.google.com/+KentonVarda/posts/TSDhe5CvaFe

[1] https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf

[2] https://capnproto.org

[3] https://sandstorm.io

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#39

Post by why_only_15 »

tareqak wrote: post #23

After reading this article, I'm surprised that Google doesn't encourage pair programming / developing developer relationships at the level that Jeff and Sanjay have here. One might even argue that the manner in which interviewing and hiring is currently done in the tech industry in general might actively work against building the sorts of relationships where the output is greater than the sum of the inputs. Edit: add…

Their specific choices seem hard to replicate. Very strong friends, both very strong programmers, both willing to work at the same company. I'm sure that parts of their successes can be applied elsewhere, but from the article a lot of it is about having a strong relationship.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#40

Post by sdenton4 »

tareqak wrote: post #23

After reading this article, I'm surprised that Google doesn't encourage pair programming / developing developer relationships at the level that Jeff and Sanjay have here. One might even argue that the manner in which interviewing and hiring is currently done in the tech industry in general might actively work against building the sorts of relationships where the output is greater than the sum of the inputs. Edit: add…

See also Andrew and Brad: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yG-UaBJXZ80
Post reply on HN