An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google • Hacker News Board

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#221

Post by incompatible » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #200

reaperducer wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, some…

Criticism doesn't bother me. It will generally come into three categories: 1. Insults and trolling with no valid content: this tells me nothing I didn't know already, that there are morons in the world 2. Valid criticisms, but things that I already know about and either can't do anything about or where I decided it wasn't worth the effort: again nothing I didn't already know 3. Valid criticisms that I hadn't thought of: these contain new information and are potentially very useful.

The masking tape criticism would come into category 2.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#222

Post by google234123 » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

holtalanm wrote: post #91

asdkhadsj wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commit count can vary a lot, perhaps? I know I commit far more than my coworkers, but that does not reflect the LOC or "amount" of work. I just visualize and chunk things up into commits more frequently.

my commit count is really low. i usually squash my commits before submitting a PR. that was the workflow at my previous place of work, so it just became my workflow habitually.

This is not good practice in many circumstances. Large commits are very hard for others to review.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#223

Post by yawaramin » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

xrd wrote: post #76

bradfitz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Raku, right? :)

Look, I've moved on from Perl so I don't need to know what it is called now. (Edit: it's a joke. But I accept the down votes)

Fortran. (To paraphrase C.A.R. Hoare)

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#224

Post by the-rc » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #147

Thanks for all the things you did. The Android jank stuff made a big impression on me--you made the value so clear with your work. And also thanks for the rants when something wasn't up to par. I'm thinking about https://bgr.com/2015/02/18/google-nest-smoke-alarm-video/ , which has only grown more hilarious to me over time.

I'll never forget the convoluted story of Bitcoins for his haircuts. I'm no longer at Google, but still wonder from time to time what happened to them. (Long internal story)

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#225

Post by yawaramin » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

Congrats on taking the next step! Are you already working on something under wraps right now? Or taking a well-earned break?

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#226

Post by JabavuAdams » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #25

xyst wrote: post #8

It’s amazing how this is the first time I have heard his name. Great people basically disappear under the Google name.

It's interesting how fleeting software fame is. Perhaps that's just a special case of how fleeting fame is. Folks who came of age in the early 2000s certainly remember him - he founded LiveJournal; wrote memcached, MogileFS, Gearman, and a bunch of other prominent software packages; authored the first version of the OpenID spec (which eventually became OAuth, which you see all over the web); and was one of the early…

I know all of those names, except Brad Fitz. This is like a WTF moment for me.

Like first hearing about Gaiman's Sandman 15 years after it came out and thinking it would have been right up my alley 15 years ago.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#227

Post by leggomylibro » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

xwowsersx wrote: post #49

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 hate it so much.

It's beyond terrible. I quit my last job (which I otherwise enjoyed and felt fulfilled by) because of the open floorplan and the impossibility of changing it.

Sometimes you have to vote with your feet.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#228

Post by mntmoss » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

oblio wrote: post #178

johnyzee wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google just lost a top percentile developer over their open floor plan. Literally irreplaceable. But they saved a few dollars on space. That is being penny wise and pound foolish, particularly for a company like Google who is not capital constrained. (He may not have quit directly because of the open office plan, but given that it's one of the few complaints he makes, it obviously is a factor.)

The thing is, it doesn't matter. To make a parallel with Microsoft in the early 00's and IBM before that: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... > Although there is some truth to the fact that Linux is a huge threat to Microsoft, predictions of the Redmond company’s demise are, to say the least, premature. Microsoft has an incredible amount of cash money in the bank and is still incredibly pr…

Though I'm tempted to agree, there is an old macroeconomic observation that might throw a wrench in the analysis, which is that the waves of new technology seem to be coming faster and faster, and likewise, the turnover of companies in major stock indexes has also gone faster and faster.

In an imagined hyper-accelerated future market where the trend continues, companies will be born, grow large, be disrupted and die in a figurative eyeblink. And Google's lifespan would be cut considerably shorter in such a circumstance, if for example something like Brave's business model were to hockey-stick and disrupt their golden goose.

However, the counterfactual to that is that there surely is some kind of end to accelerating turnover in the markets. And it's a statistical rule; individual companies can be hardy survivors given the right circumstances and management, and companies with longstanding platform monopolies, like IBM, MS, Oracle, and now Google tend to have a lot more freedom to redefine themselves; it's the customers that get screwed, not the company. All the company has to do is find a way to move its customers to the next-gen platform, and even when they start failing at that, like IBM, they have a lengthy fall.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#229

Post by umeshunni » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:40 AM 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 surprised no one has brought up Joel Spolsky's takes on open offices (from 2006) from right at the beginning of this fad: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/09/07/a-field-guide-to-d...

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/07/30/private-offices-re...

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#230

Post by BLKNSLVR » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

abtinf wrote: post #120

bradfitz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/perkeep/Kqvh2dJVmoo/9N4YXAuX... I no longer pay Mathieu to work on it full time, and my time is tempered by 2.5 and 0.5 year old kids. I still use it, but don't have time to add to it much. Others work on it a bit. Mathieu and I did work on https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp just recently, to fix the Google Photos importer. So it's still moving a bit. Others still work on it t…

> I'll pick up my involvement again as kids get a bit older. I thought this would be true for me, but it turned out the other way. The chores of toddler care are slowly replaced as the kids become more verbal. Playing a game or having a conversation with my kids now is enormously pleasurable—to the point where I’ve become acutely aware of the time trade off of other projects.

Very true, and this can't be overstated!

Once kids get their own personalities you actually want to spend more time with them, understanding and developing their interests.

In between work and kid sports (or music, or scouts or whatever else) commitments the time the kids spend entertaining themselves is important parental 'downtime' and personal projects often just have to wait, potentially forever, depending on one's ambition and sleep requirements.

I now actively resist pulling many of the threads that interest me, just because I know it'll be yet another half-complete mess that's fundamentally less important than the development of the kids. Choose your side projects wisely (Perkeep sounds like a wise one).