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An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

bradfitz.com

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Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#251

Post by chipotle_coyote »

rurban wrote: post #141
bradknowles wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember Six Apart and Movable Type. I always wondered what happened to them. Thanks for helping make that connection for me!

It died when it had that huge, exploitable serialization bug, similar to those other platform serialization bugs those times. Other than it was fine, but personally I preferred my PHP frameworks, which were just better. Not WordPress, WordPress survived it unfortunately.

Movable Type isn't dead, except in the sense that every self-hosted blogging platform that isn't WordPress (and possibly Ghost) is dead. MT 7.1.3 was released in November 2019.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#252

Post by harryf »

chrissnell wrote: post #245

I 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…

I remember this giant slide deck he presented at OSCON back in 2004 (guess) about scaling LiveJournal with MySQL, memcached etc. IIRC it was the first real “template” for how to scaling on an open source stack, and it massively benefitted the team and company I was working for at the time.

Edit: this looks like one of the versions of that slide deck - http://www.danga.com/words/2004_lisa/lisa04.pdf

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#253

Post by ramblerman »

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…

You might reflect on the fact that perhaps "you" are the one concerned about if it is appealing or not.

My reaction was, huh cool. I didn't even stop to think about the aesthetics. You were the one to introduce that into this thread.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#254

Post by xani_ »

dexterdog wrote: post #204
anarazel wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think we're talking the difference between $300/month on open desk space vs $1000/month on an office I'd be very surprised if that were the extent of the difference. Are these numbers based on any data, or guesses?

I would assume that in open space you have somewhere around 100 sq ft per person (room for a 10x10 desk and access) and for a closed-in space they would have about 3x that.

Right but it usually isn't really between "open space" and "everyone gets their private office", but between "open space" vs "offices of few people in each, usually working on same stuff"

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#255

Post by neop1x »

chrissnell wrote: post #245

I 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…

I used to work in C and PHP before. Then decided to look at Go, despite not liking big binaries it produces (at the first sight), I immediately fell in love. Go made programming fun for me again! Thanks everyone involved making Go happen. It has some drawbacks (like limited OOP) but you always have to trade something for something else. I like it as it is and it is my primary language I write the code in now.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#257

Post by solarkraft »

nostrademons wrote: post #66
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true; some of those folks just left the software industry, though, I think, or are at or approaching retirement age. Tangentially, it's still interesting -- and faintly depressing -- to me how much I think LiveJournal got right about social media that its bigger successors, well, don't, specifically related to privacy. LJ users had comparatively immense control over who could read and reply to posts. This isn'…

When Google+ was under development in 2011, I remarked to my team "So, our differentiator from Facebook is...basically everything that LiveJournal had in 2002?"

Circles were great! Google+ was among the least obnoxious social media platforms I have experienced.

I think it could really have replaced all the fragmented around Google comment forms, but it sure wasn't wise to force everyone on YouTube on it in such a shitty way. I think that initial public outcry was a significant stop to its velocity, yet it could have become moderately successful and very valuable long-term to slowly integrate all of Google's services. Just so many parts of the execution were questionable, including the mobile apps :\

Was the lack of a semi-immediate huge return the reason it was killed?

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#258

Post by owenmarshall »

chrisseaton wrote: post #180
bovermyer wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. Capital expenditures are reported differently and held to different standards and strategies.

But if you have a million in funding, then who does it matter to if you spend it on infrastructure or operational expenses? You're still burning the same amount of cash.

Salary and benefits aren’t treated exactly the same as capital expenditures. That’s how your purchase of a ten thousand dollar piece of electronics becomes a thousand dollar charge every ten years, no matter when the check clears. Which looks better on your companies balance sheet?

Have you ever tracked your time as a salaried software developer? I used to, and used to think it was a stupid exercise. Then I learned that my payroll costs were being capitalized against the project in development. Two years later when the project launched, it hit the books and started deprecating over seven years. That meant my company essentially had two years where my salary wasn’t on their books; when it hit, those two years were skewed over seven.

Have you ever had to differentiate between tracking time spent doing development and time doing support? Support is an ongoing operational expense that can’t be capitalized.

Same pot of money, vastly different ways to split it up.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#259

Post by xwowsersx »

ibeckermayer wrote: post #106
aswanson wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What dolt would think that more noise & distraction would make for a more productive workplace where the product requires sustained periods of focus? It's literally the dumbest thing you can do in that circumstance.

I think that’s all just propaganda and the real reason for it is so that management can always keep an eye on their code cattle

I don't think it's nefarious, not usually at least. It's just a lot cheaper and then it's justified after-the-fact as fostering collaboration or whatever. I'm not asking for my own office (though I would love it), but at least some physical division like a cubicle.

Re: An Update on Bradfitz: Leaving Google

#260

Post by xwowsersx »

chrshawkes wrote: post #89
xwowsersx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate it so much.

So many companies, even non-tech companies with tech divisions adopted this plague and now it seems there is no turning back. I find the constant movement to be the biggest distraction over noise.

Movement is a big one, noise bothers me more personally I think. I dislike the fact that I cannot function at work without headphones. I have 2-3 feet of my space between me and other co-workers and at any point in time, there's various conversations going on right next to me and it's making getting deep work done very challenging.
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