An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google • Hacker News Board

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#191

Post by rrix2 » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #145

bovermyer wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters in this case because the discussion took a turn towards comparing the compensation of staff to the provisioning of the office environment. In that context, companies' consideration of expenditures will take into account capital versus operational categories.

Why does it matter? It's all the same money no matter which budget it comes out of.

It matters in this conversation because it's NOT the same pile of money to the people making decisions about the office space, nor to the people in charge of hiring. Those people are allotted certain budget for the buildout of their roles and expected to justify budget increases, irrespective of other piles of money.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#192

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

SamWhited wrote: post #107

crystaldev wrote: post #28

Good luck to Brad. It sounds like the last twelve years of his life were pure Google, it's a big change. > I don't want to get stuck in a comfortable rut. (And Google certainly is comfortable, except for open floor plans.) It's oddly comforting that even programmers of Brad's caliber are forced to cope with open offices. When can this fad end.

> When can this fad end It's not a fad, businesses aren't doing this just because it's trendy and cool and they think people will like it, they're doing it because it saves them a fortune and they care more about their bottom line than their employees well being.

Companies absolutely are doing it because it’s trendy. Lost productivity and increase of communicable diseases / sick time have been shown over and over to outweigh any superficial real estate savings, even just in a bottom line basis, and it’s not even factoring in effect on morale, superficial “collaboration” and other sources of additional lost productivity.

Many companies spend huge, huge sums of money on open plan offices. Like, not just renting them but tricking them out with super expensive desk units, fountains, game areas, etc. They even pay money to tear down privacy features and replace them with functionless decorations like exposed ductwork or glass whiteboard walls, even when they have no plan at all to increase worker density.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#193

Post by ElderKorihor » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

bradfitz wrote: post #148

heed wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That looks like the Mercer dorm at the University of Washington!

Yup. RIP.

Ha. Around this same time my friends and I set up a vaguely similar system across campus in Haggett Hall. There was a :CueCat at the bottom of the door outside and you'd scan your student ID to trigger a solenoid to spin the doorknob on the inside.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#194

Post by zyang » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

agar wrote: post #82

It's been great fun to follow bradfitz's career. I first learned of him from a post on Slashdot about a cool remote controlled door hack in a college dorm. His roommate posted and basically said, "this guy is brilliant, it's just the tip of the iceberg - he posts what he's working on at bradfitz.com, check it out." This was in...1998? 1999? Seeing him start to post a daily journal, get frustrated, then write LiveJour…

I thought the name sound familiar. This is the guy that got really mad the Nest smoke alarm.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#195

Post by allenu » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

hadrien01 wrote: post #40

25 desk locations in 12 years. Is changing desk every 6 months normal at Google?

I worked at Microsoft for 12 years and I probably moved desks 20+ times. A handful of those was because I changed teams, but even in the same team, you do tend to have one or more office moves a year. Team focuses change and often people are re-grouped as a result. Other times you just run out of space in a building and they move your team to where there's more room (because maybe another team was disbanded or moved somewhere more suitable to their size).

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#196

Post by magduf » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

thrower123 wrote: post #184

magduf wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My theory is that open space is extremely helpful to certain types of people, and those traits coincidentally overlap with the people calling the shots at a lot of companies. Sociable upper managerial-types probably value being able to collaborate more easily in open space more than being able to concentrate in private offices. Yes, and in addition, sociable developers value being able to collaborate more easily in…

If your developers skew towards those in their 20s, many of them have never experienced working in solitude. University culture is dominated by study groups and camping out in the library, so it's no great stretch to go from that to an open-office layout, or even one where you are forced to hot-desk. And laptops have been the norm. It's a little different when you were accustomed to go back to your dorm room where yo…

>And laptops have been the norm. It's a little different when you were accustomed to go back to your dorm room where you had your desktop setup to get anything done.

This isn't quite right: before having your desktop computer in your dorm room was normal, you had to go to a computer lab to get anything done, and those had no privacy whatsoever. Computer labs with PCs were quite common until colleges started requiring students to buy their own PCs, and before this, the computer labs had terminals (like VT100) which connected to VAX servers or mainframes.

Anyone who went to college up until the mid-1990s should be familiar with computer labs.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#197

Post by reaperducer » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 10:57 PM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #115

bradfitz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, I forgot about that door opener! I found the page: https://bradfitz.com/misc/projects/remotedoor/

How did you deal with people criticizing your masking tape construction? This has been a bane for me since I can remember. I love prototyping but hate the instant terrible feedback. People often look at the construction instead of the results and/or can't/won't imagine it a first step or how awesome a final product it can turn into.

Do things for yourself, not for others.

Don't even look at the comments. Turn them off if you can. They're not paying you, so you are under no obligation to please them.

On the other hand, if you know that you're going to get undesired feedback, why post your stuff in public in the first place? You don't get the glory without the risk. Before the internet, people did things because they liked to, and because they enjoyed them. They didn't need the praise of a thousand random strangers to feel good about their accomplishments.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#198

Post by jcrubino » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 11:02 PM UTC

Brad I have learned much from your Go presentations and learning about your path to becoming a Googler. Thanks!

... But if you are responsible for today's downage just say it. : )

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#199

Post by golergka » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 11:03 PM UTC

crystaldev wrote: post #28

Good luck to Brad. It sounds like the last twelve years of his life were pure Google, it's a big change. > I don't want to get stuck in a comfortable rut. (And Google certainly is comfortable, except for open floor plans.) It's oddly comforting that even programmers of Brad's caliber are forced to cope with open offices. When can this fad end.

I'm nowherer near his level, but I have, over the course of my career, rejected several job offers, explicitly saying the recruiter that their open office was the deal breaker. Nothing stops most developers from doing the same. It's just a question of priorities.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#200

Post by RobertRoberts » Mon, Jan 27, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #197

RobertRoberts wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you deal with people criticizing your masking tape construction? This has been a bane for me since I can remember. I love prototyping but hate the instant terrible feedback. People often look at the construction instead of the results and/or can't/won't imagine it a first step or how awesome a final product it can turn into.

Do things for yourself, not for others. Don't even look at the comments. Turn them off if you can. They're not paying you, so you are under no obligation to please them. On the other hand, if you know that you're going to get undesired feedback, why post your stuff in public in the first place? You don't get the glory without the risk. Before the internet, people did things because they liked to, and because they enj…

Something you didn't address, unwarranted critisim or just plain mean comments can just hurt or drain you emotionally. It can rob you of desire to work or entirely demotivate you from your original goal.

While you may argue "deal with it", and rightly so in most circumstances, but then you are only addressing an issue of grit. I have plenty of grit in _some_ areas of my life, but not _all_ areas of my life.

And, sometimes the negativity is unexpected like when you are just showing something you find cool or neat that you built. (ie, I have never once put my code out in public nor sought praise for it)

Everyone has a limit where they can't take any more negative feedback on something.

And with prototyping I have found it better to wait to show the client until it's in an "appealing" state. Hence my question about masking tape prototype. (my favorite material to build with as a kid because it was plentiful and easy to rip, but was unappealing visually)