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The Friendship That Made Google Huge

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Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#91

Post by Pica_soO »

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…

They do not discourage is, but there promotion system encourages "authorship" and pair-programming does not produce that.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#92

Post by puzzle »

wsxedcrfv wrote: post #49
puzzle wrote: post #21

Holy moly, a mention of Bogdan! He was a legend of his own. Some of the most consequential changes, like elevating your service to higher QoS levels, which something like e.g. Gmail would require, were gated on his approval and his only. Someone made him a SW Easter egg, but the story already on the Internet gets some basic facts wrong.

Do tell! There have got to be a few good ones. He interviewed me for his current company.

The internal Easter egg was basically a random fortune, which cycled through his greatest "hits" (#1: "No"). You really had to know where to look.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#93

Post by kentonv »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #38
nlh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Hello...

Indeed, I wrote the internal web site (built on a pre-release prototype of AppEngine!) that aggregated these jokes, and released it on April 1, 2007. I was not funny enough to come up with the jokes myself; I enlisted some friends to seed the site before "launch".

In retrospect, I regret that Jeff Dean Facts gave people the impression that Jeff is more notable than Sanjay. The only reason it was "Jeff Dean Facts" and not "Sanjay Ghemawat Facts" is because Jeff seemed "funnier". But I dunno, that might just be some form of subtle racism that I failed to recognize at the time. :(

PS. Your list doesn't include my current project, Cloudflare Workers... :) https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloud-computing-without-containe...

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#95

Post by xapata »

jhayward wrote: post #89
xapata wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi are extreme outliers in soccer/football, even compared to other greats. They're probably 10x. Trouble is amateurs don't play in the big leagues, so we don't have data on how a normal person would peform. There is an amusing Ronaldo vs Ronald video. I think it's called "Tested to the Limit." Occasionally a 1st league team plays a 3rd league. I saw a video of Napoli vs Nowhere go 26-0. They…

You are confusing game scoring with some concept of "x times ability". In many games, someone who is only 10% better than opponents can win close to 100% of the games.

What's your productivity metric? Perhaps having only 10% fewer bugs per hour makes someone 10x faster at writing complete programs.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#96

Post by AlexCoventry »

ineedasername wrote: post #20
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.

Yeah. Maybe that's the outside view, or view from the surface level folks concerned with the next shiny framework, but I think the best engineers are always at least a little enamored with deeper nuts and bolts.

I think he meant the business side isn't going to give a damn about a compiler.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#98

Post by lazyasciiart »

lowercased wrote: post #22

“I don’t know why more people don’t do it,” Sanjay said, of programming with a partner. ======= Maybe because most employers won't pay for that. Two people? For one level of output? You'd have to prove yourself a level 11 googler before most places would give you the luxury of working as a long-term pair.

Thats definitely not the only reason. I've been on teams where managers were keen on pair programming but only a couple people ever did it.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#99

Post by ineedasername »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #96
ineedasername wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Maybe that's the outside view, or view from the surface level folks concerned with the next shiny framework, but I think the best engineers are always at least a little enamored with deeper nuts and bolts.

I think he meant the business side isn't going to give a damn about a compiler.

That makes sense. At least, outside of massive companies like Google, who would see the value in a compiler that optimized code for their use even a fraction of a percent better. Then compilers become the "shiny object" for them.

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge

#100

Post by dlederle »

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…

I emailed the author and he pointed me towards this copy of it: https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/645438.pdf

I haven't read through it yet, but it appears to be a more extensive whitepaper version than the CACM version.

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