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Design Docs at Google

industrialempathy.com

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Re: Design Docs at Google

#181

Post by m0zg »

s3r3nity wrote: post #178
m0zg wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing people don't get about Google is how it motivates its employees. You get promoted for _taking credit_ for _launching new stuff_. I deliberately mention "taking credit", because if you can't take credit for the work you've done, you're better off not doing anything at all; a prime example of this is launching a project someone else started but abandoned. Note that you also don't need to do much work to be ab…

> Having said that, I still prefer GSuite to Office. Microsoft has set the bar very low indeed. Depends upon which pieces. You can pry Excel from my cold, dead hands; OneNote is still an amazing piece of software that is getting pretty sweet updates; Outlook by itself is pretty solid for 80% of use cases, with fast iOS/Android apps; everything can be tweaked to your liking with some VBA scripting. Onedrive also gives…

iOS and Android Outlook aren't actually Outlook. They are Accompli. Desktop Outlook leaves much to be desired nowadays.

And yes, my wife is an accountant, so Excel is mandatory for her. She _can_ do most of what she does in Sheets, but Sheets lack integration with the various backends that grew over the years.

Re: Design Docs at Google

#182

Post by m0zg »

pradn wrote: post #176
m0zg wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing people don't get about Google is how it motivates its employees. You get promoted for _taking credit_ for _launching new stuff_. I deliberately mention "taking credit", because if you can't take credit for the work you've done, you're better off not doing anything at all; a prime example of this is launching a project someone else started but abandoned. Note that you also don't need to do much work to be ab…

That's a popular perception but it's not totally true. You need to be able to measure improvements you make, which might make a large category of possible improvements untenable from a perf point of view. But if you can show satisfaction scores or latency numbers or action-conpletion metrics or even just customer comments saying it solved their issue, that's plenty reason to attempt the change. The system encourages…

It's literally 10x more effective to release a half-baked but "new" piece of crap for promotion purposes. You'd have to move heaven and earth to get the same amount of career velocity out of incremental improvements.

Re: Design Docs at Google

#183

Post by afarrell »

thebrokencube wrote: post #81
the_arun wrote: post #57

Do we have any templates for design docs created by Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.,? Not to be negative - My problem is there is no spec/standard template for design docs (like someone compared it with Blueprints). If we have a template approved by industry leaders - it will be convenient. Otherwise everyone creates them in their own way - convenient for their use cases. But this will miss the consistency and all nec…

I think if there was a rigid spec, it would work against one of the points made early on in this doc (which I think is worth taking note of): > Rule #1 is: Write them in whatever form makes the most sense for the particular project. This is an unsatisfying rule, but I think it's important because each team/problem space/etc. is different and too strict of rules can often lead to documents that may end up being shallo…

yes, I think it only matters for the document to be in-sync during the life of the project. Afterwards, it can be a historical record.

Re: Design Docs at Google

#184

Post by mleonhard »

m0zg wrote: post #165
influx wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Google has given up. The iOS Gmail app is terrible and buggy. The web app literally has a loading screen now. The GSuite set of products hasn't advanced much since it was acquired from outside Google. Google Cloud is getting curb stomped by Amazon and Microsoft. I guess they have Search still, but it's getting ad filled and tired. Not that I'm going to short GOOG anytime soon, but come on folks!

One thing people don't get about Google is how it motivates its employees. You get promoted for _taking credit_ for _launching new stuff_. I deliberately mention "taking credit", because if you can't take credit for the work you've done, you're better off not doing anything at all; a prime example of this is launching a project someone else started but abandoned. Note that you also don't need to do much work to be ab…

This is true. I was at Google 5 years. Some Googlers will take credit for your work. Get away from such people as quickly as possible.

Re: Design Docs at Google

#185

Post by mleonhard »

jeffbee wrote: post #74

A fun activity if you’re a Googler is to go read ancient design docs, like the original pitch for bigtable. They are pretty short for the most part, and they were written by the legends. These are the Federalist Papers of your company, they give real context to how the company arrived here. In particular I always enjoyed reading the jarring parts were they describe something that definitely did not make it into the i…

Those "legends" joined the company very early and had opportunities that don't exist today. Why idolize them? Some of them are not good people. There are plenty of people who would do legendary things if the company let them.

Re: Design Docs at Google

#186

Post by learc83 »

Kinrany wrote: post #179
sarchertech wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reproducibility is just a side effect of lack of specificity, which is the major difference and the entire point of my critique. Design docs don't tell you enough to actually build the thing you want to build.

I mean, are there any practical consequences other than the inability to make the same thing twice?

Assume you hold the view that a design document provides all the information necessary to construct a piece of software without any further design work.

Construct a software development methodology around that assumption. Now remove that assumption, and think about the practical consequences for a team who doesn't realize that the assumption is incorrect until after they have started implementing a design document.

Imagine what would happen if you hired an architectural firm to draw up some blueprints for a house, and then midway into the construction of the house it turns out that the assumptions made in the blueprints are wildly out of sync with what's possible to build.

It is significantly better for everyone involved if management goes into the process knowing the limitations of design documents and up front design.

For more concrete example of the practical problems see the history of the debate between iterative and big design up front methodologies over the last 30 years.

Re: Design Docs at Google

#187

Post by robk »

jbeda wrote: post #126
jeffbee wrote: post #74

A fun activity if you’re a Googler is to go read ancient design docs, like the original pitch for bigtable. They are pretty short for the most part, and they were written by the legends. These are the Federalist Papers of your company, they give real context to how the company arrived here. In particular I always enjoyed reading the jarring parts were they describe something that definitely did not make it into the i…

I wrote a design doc/PRD for k8s that outlined the basic API, distributed structure and why/how it related to open source and the marketplace. I lost it when I left google. It was a google doc IIRC and wasn't checked into source control.

Someone must have shared access to find it for you though?

Re: Design Docs at Google

#188

Post by amznthrowaway5 »

m0zg wrote: post #165
influx wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like Google has given up. The iOS Gmail app is terrible and buggy. The web app literally has a loading screen now. The GSuite set of products hasn't advanced much since it was acquired from outside Google. Google Cloud is getting curb stomped by Amazon and Microsoft. I guess they have Search still, but it's getting ad filled and tired. Not that I'm going to short GOOG anytime soon, but come on folks!

One thing people don't get about Google is how it motivates its employees. You get promoted for _taking credit_ for _launching new stuff_. I deliberately mention "taking credit", because if you can't take credit for the work you've done, you're better off not doing anything at all; a prime example of this is launching a project someone else started but abandoned. Note that you also don't need to do much work to be ab…

> Note that you also don't need to do much work to be able to "take credit" - it's easier to just "lead" a project which is already on its way to getting launched by sitting in meetings with people more senior than you.

This is the standard way of getting promoted that I've seen. How do these people not feel disgusting?

Re: Design Docs at Google

#189

Post by amznthrowaway5 »

pradn wrote: post #176
m0zg wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing people don't get about Google is how it motivates its employees. You get promoted for _taking credit_ for _launching new stuff_. I deliberately mention "taking credit", because if you can't take credit for the work you've done, you're better off not doing anything at all; a prime example of this is launching a project someone else started but abandoned. Note that you also don't need to do much work to be ab…

That's a popular perception but it's not totally true. You need to be able to measure improvements you make, which might make a large category of possible improvements untenable from a perf point of view. But if you can show satisfaction scores or latency numbers or action-conpletion metrics or even just customer comments saying it solved their issue, that's plenty reason to attempt the change. The system encourages…

The perception m0zg outlined still seems correct. The system encourages deceptive reporting of metrics. If you can take credit for improving things with metrics, while causing far more damage in the process or making no real contributions, you will still get promoted.

Re: Design Docs at Google

#190

Post by fomine3 »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #20

Does anyone know where to find real examples of design docs, possibly following this guide? I don't mean toy examples but something that's actually used by real people/orgs. My workplace has design docs but they're full of made-up words, so I'm pretty burned out by this kind of thing.

IIRC I saw it on leaked docs by Veritas
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