> Little bored. Not learning as much as I used to.
I think that's pretty common around 40 years old. The career just doesn't feel as challenging as it used to.
An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google
241–250 of 280 posts
Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google
#242Thanks 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)
I wonder if she ever cashed out!
Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have diagnosed ADHD and are forced to work in an extremely distracting environment like an open floor plan then talk to your manager and HR about getting an accommodation. They will work with you to find some reasonable way to limit the distraction based on the particulars of your workplace.
Alternately, they'll make no accommodations. The developer's productivity keeps falling. Eventually he's put on a PIP (performance improvement plan) and finally once it runs its course, they'll have a legal way to just kick him out.
Most companies want their employees to provide them with value and are willing to make reasonable accommodations toward that end.
If you have an hostile manager or HR department then yes it's time to move on.
Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternately, they'll make no accommodations. The developer's productivity keeps falling. Eventually he's put on a PIP (performance improvement plan) and finally once it runs its course, they'll have a legal way to just kick him out.
Yeah, that depends entirely on the company and – most importantly – you current boss. Also, I don't think ADHD is a protected class so, even if accommodations are made, the next boss that comes over can totally do the PIP thing. For anyone reading this: if you ever find yourself placed in a "PIP", leave. That's like being inside a black hole's event horizon, you'll never come back.
Disability is a protected class, but proving discrimination can be difficult.
Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google
#245I wonder if Brad has any idea how many lives he's affected.
At some point in 2013, I was a Linux sysadmin with 20 years of work under my belt and rapidly burning out, seeing the DevOps movement approach and feeling outmoded. I couldn't code. I saw a post here on HN about Brad's rewriting of Google's download system in Go and was intrigued. That night, almost out of a job and feeling like I had nothing left to lose, I sat down and started to learn Go. Hoping to write a control system for a high altitude balloon, I started writing a little every night after work. Soon, I attended The first Gophercon and really fell in love.
From there, doors started opening for me. I left the sysadmin job and got a job as a DevOps engineer. Wrote more and more Go. Better jobs and better pay followed. Job interviews became something to look forward to, not fear.
Anyway, it was Brad's blog entry that inspired me and totally changed my life. Things are amazing today. Thanks, Brad.
Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google
#246Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google
#247> 12 years, 5 months at Google > many Google-internal CLs ("change lists" == commits == PRs) > 3,064 Android CLs > 10,787 Go CLs This is at least an average of 3 commits a day (4 if he didn't work weekends). How is that possible?
All of the Go commits are public, you can look at them for yourself:
• https://github.com/golang/go/graphs/contributors
• https://github.com/golang/build/graphs/contributors
Brad also once gave a lightning talk about HTTP/2 that had 80+ slides in 5 minutes. He’s very fast.
Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google
#248Been following your work for a long time now (memcached, livejournal, camlistore/perkeep, etc.) but could not contribute to any of your work sadly (other life priorities, sigh).
Met you in a Golang conf and talked about some client libraries for Go for AWS. You were really helpful and motivating.
Best of luck to whatever you are building. On a personal level, I hope someday I get to work with you in some project :)
Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternately, they'll make no accommodations. The developer's productivity keeps falling. Eventually he's put on a PIP (performance improvement plan) and finally once it runs its course, they'll have a legal way to just kick him out.
Yeah, that depends entirely on the company and – most importantly – you current boss. Also, I don't think ADHD is a protected class so, even if accommodations are made, the next boss that comes over can totally do the PIP thing. For anyone reading this: if you ever find yourself placed in a "PIP", leave. That's like being inside a black hole's event horizon, you'll never come back.
You can in fact refuse a PIP. I don't mean refuse to sign the paper they give you, I mean refuse the whole process. This will almost certainly result in the termination of your employment, but depending on the circumstances you may get far better terms than simply being let go.
That said, I have seen people come back from a PIP and kill it, to the point where on their next review they get all of the equity they lost in the prior cycle plus the comp from the new cycle. Obviously this is rare, but I have seen it.
Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've followed Brad Fitz over the years because I also started in Perl and ended up in Go. His intellectual curiosity and interest in doing cool things well shines through. He is a great example of the leader-by-example category.
Notable that the word "Perl" appears nowhere in his write up of technical legacy. He was once Chief Architect at Six Apart, developers of the Perl-based Movable Type blogging platform which once rivaled Wordpress.
While this is true, he joined Six Apart after they bought LiveJournal. Movable Type was originally developed by Ben and Mina Trott. I suspect that Brad was chiefly working on Six Apart's ill-fated "Vox" hosted blogging platform, which looked an awful lot like an attempt to re-imagine LiveJournal in a more modern (by mid-2000 standards) form.