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Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

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Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#231

Post by ericd »

random314 wrote: post #210
ericd wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds reasonable. I was referring more to the gatekeeping type, like a heavy focus on things like balancing trees and recursion for roles that clearly involve neither trees nor recursion.

Roles that don't involve recursion? What next, no for loops please - we are developers!!

Shrug recursion, where it makes sense, is wonderful and fun. I’m always happy when I find a problem where it makes sense, because those tend to be interesting problems. But in a lot of roles, working in languages like Python and Java, it just isn’t the best option very often.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#232

Post by manigandham »

caro_douglos wrote: post #226
manigandham wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I personally like unlimited vacation policies and it’s been a hit with most teams I’ve worked on. Adding some basic “mandatory” time off usually solves the problem of workers feeling like they shouldn’t take it. It’s really just dependent on office culture.

Vacation is a great thing. Properly setup PTO policies are better. Eventually you reach a point where accrued time ceilings force you to take a vacation. That’s typically too late from a burnout perspective. IMO unlimited vacation is simply a sugar coated way to not keep track of time off. Out of curiosity have you kept track of how many days you’ve taken off?

The company keeps track to make sure people take off the minimum amount. After that take off as much as you need. I don’t keep track but I’ve taken off a day every other week for months. Comes down to company culture and how healthy and focused it is.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#234

Post by kccqzy »

busterarm wrote: post #128
manigandham wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppEngine is just one product in Google Cloud, and the first they released in 2008. Of course there will be new versions and eventually new products that are recommended like VMs, GKE, Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, and more. It's still supported and has plenty of usage so I don't see it as "hanging by a thread" unless you have more data than things that people said but apparently you forgot?

https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/deprecations

So what? I can give you a point-by-point rebuttal of everything on that page.

> The standalone legacy SDK and appcfg tooling

Just use the newer `gcloud` command-line tool.

> Go 1.9 (GA) and Node.js 8 (GA)

Upgrade your language man. This is PaaS. You're expected to keep your app up to date.

> Admin API v1beta4/v1beta5

These are beta versions of the API. Why don't use migrate to the GA versions?

Etc, etc. In fact the large number of deprecations on that page only shows how rapidly new features and runtimes and frameworks are being developed to replace old ones.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#235

Post by scarface74 »

manigandham wrote: post #215
scarface74 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I realize that but having revenue without profit is kind of meaningless.

Optimizing for growth requires forgoing profit, which is the model in place for GCP (and what everyone seems concerned over) so I don’t see what the problem is. Is it really that you just don’t feel they’re committed enough for your standards?

AWS and Azure seem to both have growth and profit...

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#236

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

I'm going to make an outrageous prediction: due to the changing geopolitical landscape which has been going on since 9/11, loss of trust in the US as a "leader" that can keep the data safe, we will move away from the cloud and back to a model where data sovereignty trumps all else.

This will be enabled by changes to the underlying infrastructure - moving away from BGP and adopting (BGP backward compatible) protocols like SCION[1], as currently implemented by Swiss carriers, which allow improved traffic shaping, and more importantly: jurisdictional geo-fencing.

We'll also see more legislation by the EU to level the playing field against US companies who currently do business with a Double Irish Dutch sandwich.

The current model where the US is the only cloud provider with virtually no EU based competitor and where EU data is locked into US corps is unsustainable. Europeans trust into US companies has never been strong to begin with and current politics (+horrible foreign policy) will reduce it further.

The cloud is dead imo. Because in a climate where national interests are suddenly more important than partnerships and international trade, the cloud is more of a risk than anything else. The US makes that same case too, illustrated by their hostility towards Chinese products (I'm not defending China here at all btw).

[1] https://www.scion-architecture.net/

edit: I have to dig up this quote again from Aral Balkan's recent talk at the EU parliament: "You are acting as an unpaid Research and Development department for silicon valley. Because if a startup here succeeds, it gets bought by Google or Facebook. If it fails, we pick up the bill.": https://video.lqdn.fr/videos/watch/861c07f7-7e9b-4e64-9765-c...

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#237

Post by tcoff91 »

NhanH wrote: post #171
spankalee wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@ericd, what programming roles don't deal with trees or recursion? I've dealt with trees in every single domain I've been in, frontend or backend, whether doing "real" programming or building with no-code tools like FileMaker. I've seen admins and accountants build trees and recursion with spreadsheets. I don't think these things are as "gatekeeping" as you imagine.

Since all programming jobs deal with trees and recursion, and if you are already at Google working on another team, wouldn't it mean you already know about those (since our assumption being all jobs deal with those)? Why not just check directly if you were actually useful instead?

It's 100% not true that all programming jobs deal with trees. I worked for years on a major audio/video/screensharing communications SaaS product and never once needed to write recursive code or use a tree structure. Not all code is for processing data. There was tons of code that had very little to do with data structures or algorithms, and much more to do with implementing network protocols, business logic, managing state, abstracting the differences between the various operating systems we had to support, etc...

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#238

Post by colechristensen »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #236

I'm going to make an outrageous prediction: due to the changing geopolitical landscape which has been going on since 9/11, loss of trust in the US as a "leader" that can keep the data safe, we will move away from the cloud and back to a model where data sovereignty trumps all else. This will be enabled by changes to the underlying infrastructure - moving away from BGP and adopting (BGP backward compatible) protocols…

In the whole chain, not very many people care that much. Maintaining data centers requires expertise and many years of commitment and is simply more expensive at any scale unless you are extremely cautious and predictable.

Maintain your own data centers and they become cost centers, with silly games for getting and maintaining capacity, reluctance to expand capacity, and old technology.

A few people will talk loudly about it but not much will actually get done because the people who have experience with the cloud providers and the alternatives won't have any interest in moving back for vague ideals or vague threats.

The only thing most anybody cares about is their cloud providers directly competing with the customer's business model (most notably Amazon).

A more real threat reaction is jurisdictions going after the big five or so for antitrust issues and trying to break a few of them apart.

Amazon or any of them don't care about national interests any more than they have to and they'll do whatever they need to to calm fears (more or less just strengthening the legal regional isolation as necessary).

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#239

Post by ritchiea »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #236

I'm going to make an outrageous prediction: due to the changing geopolitical landscape which has been going on since 9/11, loss of trust in the US as a "leader" that can keep the data safe, we will move away from the cloud and back to a model where data sovereignty trumps all else. This will be enabled by changes to the underlying infrastructure - moving away from BGP and adopting (BGP backward compatible) protocols…

Even in your example it wouldn’t mean the cloud is dead, the big US cloud companies would suffer as smaller country and region specific cloud providers thrive.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#240

Post by jorams »

Aperocky wrote: post #167
petilon wrote: post #55

Google generated $8.9 billion in cloud sales last year, up 52.7% from $5.8 billion in 2018 and $4.1 billion the year prior. Doesn't sound like Google's cloud business is in trouble.

It includes Gsuit though, I can't exactly see how that is tied to the cloud. In fact nobody other than AWS mention pure cloud revenue.

AWS also includes WorkDocs, Chime and perhaps others. They are not very well known and probably not nearly as big, but we don't actually know either.
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