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Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

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Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#321

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr »

crazygringo wrote: post #202

This very long article doesn't describe even a single instance of anything GCP has deprecated. It's a long rant with a bunch of f-words, and the claim that he gets deprecation e-mails "about once a month". Can someone who is informed point to actual GCP services that have been, or are being, deprecated? From the article, I have no idea whatsoever if this is some huge actual problem with core services... or pulling su…

Google AppEngine recently stopped support for Go 1.9. My app ran for four years without my attention which was great. But I also didn’t want to give it any more attention. So Google pulled the plug after I didn’t upload a recompiled version. Yes, they gave half a year notice or so, but I really didn’t feel like crawling for the source code and re-compiling it just to satisfy some Google internal deprecation. When the time came, I redirected my users to my new app that is similar (and hosted on a 4€ Hetzner Cloud instance that I fully control).

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#322

Post by typest »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #311
typest wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: How do you know you're good at behavioral interviews? Have you ever seen the feedback written on a behavioral interview? The companies you're describing don't usually give out feedback to applicants, so you can't know, right? It sounds to me like you have anxiety. I'm saying this because I have anxiety , so I know what it's like. One hallmark of anxiety disorders is that you think things are true ab…

I've always passed interviews that focused on behavioral aspects, I've frequently struggled in algorithm focused loops (bombed 2/4 in my Google onsite because, again, I'm intellectually inferior). Besides, until recently G didn't include any behavioral loops. > "compared to a very small subset of people I have failed" Compared to nearly everyone at elite universities I have absolutely failed. I'm sure some of them wi…

Even here you have many false assumptions though. For instance, the Harvard median new grad salary is 69k [1]. So you’re wrong in your assertion that compared to nearly everyone at elite universities you have failed. By your own definition of success, compared to most (by definition of median) people at elite universities, you have succeeded, and it’s they who have failed.

You also have an implicit assumption that people who work at Cisco or IBM haven’t put in work or mental anguish, and you’re wrong. I know many people who worked and studied hard to get jobs at these places.

You’re artificially restricting the set of successful outcomes so that you can say you’ve failed because you don’t fall into that arbitrary set. Not to mention that your entire definition of success as defined by things like money and perks is wrong.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/09/14/sta...

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#323

Post by gundmc »

mplanchard wrote: post #205
crazygringo wrote: post #202

This very long article doesn't describe even a single instance of anything GCP has deprecated. It's a long rant with a bunch of f-words, and the claim that he gets deprecation e-mails "about once a month". Can someone who is informed point to actual GCP services that have been, or are being, deprecated? From the article, I have no idea whatsoever if this is some huge actual problem with core services... or pulling su…

Can’t blame you for missing it given the length of the article, but there’s this paragraph towards the end: > I know I haven’t gone into a lot of specific details about GCP’s deprecations. I can tell you that virtually everything I’ve used, from networking (legacy to VPC) to storage (Cloud SQL v1 to v2) to Firebase (now Firestore with a totally different API) to App Engine (don’t even get me started) to Cloud Endpoin…

I just created a new firebase database for a personal project a couple months ago. They recommend using firestore now, but as far as I can tell there is nothing stopping you from using firebase and it still works fine. This seems to be the type of deprecation he is advocating for.

Similarly, there was tooling released to upgrade Cloud SQL versions:

> In 2016, we started offering Second Generation instances to Cloud SQL customers. Second Generation instances offer improved performance, availability, and storage capacity. In October, 2018, we released a tool for upgrading First Generation instances to Second Generation. On January 29, 2019, we deprecated First Generation instances in favor of Second Generation.

I think maybe Steve's past experiences from within Google are causing him to project the same behaviors onto GCP products, when it doesn't seem to be the case. Though, admittedly I did get bit by the Python 2 issue as well.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#324

Post by scarface74 »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #313
scarface74 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something doesn’t add up. When you say you’re working on the “core tech” are you a developer located in the US working at AWS? Is that your total comp or just your base are you not including RSUs/signing bonus? I’m not even here to shame $150K. That’s what I was making as CRUD developer pre-Covid at 45 years old (long story) and I also graduated from a no name state school - in the 90s. $150k still means you’re makin…

It's total compensation including everything. My base is only around $109k or so. I'm not in California or NYC and I joined out of college so base isn't as good as industry hires. I fully understand shaming $150k, new grads at Google make $180-$210k.

I specifically said that I was not shaming $150k.

You graduated from college and are now making more than most developers in the US and you work at a big tech company. You have the opportunity to leverage that and either get promoted from within or change jobs.

Are you really struggling making $150K straight out of college? You graduated from a state school (as did I) you probably don’t have that much debt.

For context, I’ve been out of college almost a quarter century and I am just now making a little more than a college grad at Google. I’m not complaining and I only have a good 10-15 years to take advantage of the opportunity. You have your whole life ahead of you.

Stop complaining, get on the grind, and do what you need to do. No one owes you a quarter million just because you walked across the stage with a CS degree.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#326

Post by jedberg »

Aperocky wrote: post #227
jedberg wrote: post #219

And then there is AWS, which has depreciated exactly one service, SDB, but only after they created a much better replacement (DynamoDB) and offered to help migrate all of their large customers, so they could get the usage percent so low that almost no one was affected by the shutdown.

Disclaimer: AWS SDE The focus on consistent behavior and once launch, never deprecate practice has caused many headaches, I personally know of control planes specifically written to accommodate old behaviors that a few customers had years ago even when the entire service has been updated. But IMO this is still much better than deprecating production services and behaviors on the fly.

Which, I would argue, is an important lesson for Google to learn if they ever want to be #2.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#327

Post by RonanTheGrey »

joepie91_ wrote: post #155
kungato wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad part about the js ecosystem is that even the biggest corps like Google can't keep their own js ecosystem stable on the last version. I have a small Angular app with Firebase backend and every time I come back to it to update, the libs are out of sync

Google is notoriously bad at maintaining (or even designing) their open-source stuff. I wouldn't say "even the biggest corps like Google" -- Google does considerably worse at this than many hobbyist maintainers! I just don't use Google libraries anymore, if I can at all avoid it. See also my other comment[1] - Angular is an example of such a magical does-everything framework. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=…

We've abandoned an app because of the inability to keep Firebase working on it (JS libraries). Between out of sync Typescript definitions, broken APIs, broken interfaces, "this version of some other dependency works with this version of Firebase thanks to some random transient dependency", it just became too much. We won't use the JS libraries at all anymore.

Angular is the only one that has remained even remotely usable, but certainly not stable. It's never as simple as running the upgrade utilities, changing the version, and being done. It ALWAYS takes at least a day to find all the "little" things they didn't feel fit to mention in the upgrade docs.

It's aggravating. I genuinely don't like using Google software, at all.

I've felt for a long time that Google is coasting on the momentum of the early web and the awe people felt for what they built early on. That hasn't been Google for a long, long time.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#328

Post by RonanTheGrey »

username90 wrote: post #241
mips_avatar wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about other locations, but in Seattle the googlers and SpaceX people walk around with a lot of swagger. And you don’t have to talk to them long until workplaces get brought up and a small jab at Amazon or Microsoft is made. Which idk maybe is fair if they used to work at Amazon/Microsoft. But still I wish we weren’t so intent on maintaining a hierarchy. Maybe we just all need to develop more of a life ou…

Maybe you just don't notice the googlers who don't go around with a lot of swagger?

The counter-case would be, "Do you also notice people from other companies who walk around with swagger?"

Not living in that area anymore, I can't say. I haven't lived there for 10 years.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#329

Post by RonanTheGrey »

john-shaffer wrote: post #37

> [Google] contracted with a company called Bitnami to create a bunch of “click to deploy” solutions, or perhaps I should write “solutions”, because they don’t solve a fucking thing. They’re just there as checkboxes, as marketing filler, and Google never gave a shit whether any of them worked from Day One. I've had similar experiences with broken Bitnami images that makes it seem like they aren't even tested before b…

I've used the Bitnami images to set up Wordpress a few times and won't again. It takes less time to do it from scratch once you know how, because of the exact issues you mention - you keep getting bitten by details that end up taking longer than just starting from scratch.

In fact at this point it's easier to use AWS Lightsail.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#330

Post by hdfhu »

corin_ wrote: post #166
zimbatm wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be even deeper than that. I don't know if it's representative, the few Googlers I talked to were there only for the money. Their view of the company was actually quite negative. Keeping backward-compatibility requires people that care. That have enough pride in their work to counter-balance the grind.

Obviously having people that care about the work they do is a positive thing, but there are plenty of people in plenty of industries managing to do a good job despite only being in it for the money. It might not be a good business decision for Google, but surely if they create enough positions that are solely focussed on the boring stuff but are paid better to make up for it, there is a price point at which they'd ge…

That would be a career suicide to become a support engineer like this. 4 years later, when his stocks dry out, he'd have to switch the company and he'd need to tell a convincing story why the new company should pay him the new market rate. And "I supported legacy code" is not such a story. There's always an option to go to Microsoft and support legacy stuff for life, but beware that MS pays peanuts (relatively speaking) and with the MS pay you'd be priced out of the housing market.
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