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Ask HN: Gmail account security

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Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at both Amazon and Google. It was only at Amazon where I was exposed to the Craft of software development. Personally, I feel there is a nuanced difference to the role at Amazon being SDE ( Software Development Engineer ) whereas Google is SWE ( Software Engineer ). It's almost like Google thinks Software Developers are lower tier than Software Engineers, but I'd like to think of myself as doing more than ju…

I'm a developer and a school admin, so I can comment on the Classroom point, at least: It is so comically clear that Classroom really was someone's clever idea to simply take existing Google Drive APIs and then create an LMS-like environment using that. Taken like that, it's actually brilliant and super clever. The not-so-brilliant-and-clever part is that by virtue of being free and Google having so many schools capt…

I'm also a developer and an educator using Classroom for a small class. Your insight makes it crystal clear why I always thought that Classroom was completely insane, to the point where I was wondering why nobody else said anything and maybe I just wasn't "getting it" - no, it's because it's basically a clever hack that's a Googler's side project (that maybe now has a small team around it).

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even when you have paid Google products that come with support, it is really awful. They once asked me to submit a business case justifying how answering my support question benefited Google. Just a simple clarification of something in their documentation. I was already under pressure to migrate to Office360, I stopped fighting after that. My employer is a huge AWS user and Google is constantly chasing us with a trea…

> Even when you have paid Google products that come with support, it is really awful Once I subscribed to YouTube Music (paid!) family plan, but my wife's account would always say that she is in another country and can not join the plan. I tried everything - the support never even bothered to reply to my emails. I cancelled the plan and since then I keep seeing the same ads for the premium service every time I open t…

I can second that. Lots of G services think I'm in another country (Spain specifically), so the sites load in Spanish by default, along with other minor headaches.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a developer and a school admin, so I can comment on the Classroom point, at least: It is so comically clear that Classroom really was someone's clever idea to simply take existing Google Drive APIs and then create an LMS-like environment using that. Taken like that, it's actually brilliant and super clever. The not-so-brilliant-and-clever part is that by virtue of being free and Google having so many schools capt…

I'm also a developer and an educator using Classroom for a small class. Your insight makes it crystal clear why I always thought that Classroom was completely insane, to the point where I was wondering why nobody else said anything and maybe I just wasn't "getting it" - no, it's because it's basically a clever hack that's a Googler's side project (that maybe now has a small team around it).

As a fun exercise, I'd encourage you to peruse even their apps script APIs and see how quickly you can actually get something like "google classroom" up and running for yourself, minus some of the UI candy. Truth-be-told their documentation and what they expose to you is pretty rich, and along the way you then start seeing exactly why "Google Classroom" things are the way they are hehehe.

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A browser environment designed for researching is something I've been investigating lately. I want to stay with Chromium for convenience (Chrome for work, ungoogled-chromium for personal). Right now I see two paths that might work for me: - A standalone browser that I use only for research purposes. Currently evaluating Bonsai [1] and am interested in Synth. - A suite of tools that makes bookmarking and organizing ea…

You might also like promnesia https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia#readme And if you're interested we have a small discord server "awesome knowledge management" come join us! https://discord.gg/XPNeDSQE2j

What makes your discord server unique among the thousands of other knowledge-management organizations out there?

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#756

Once upon a time I worked at Google. I returned to Austin to visit old friends and took the opportunity to visit the Google office there. The Googlers sitting around me were primarily corporate sales. They weren't getting any corporate sales calls at all as far as I could tell, but there was one extremely irate user who was locked out of their GMail account and was repeatedly calling them because they were the only h…

"I'd frequently tell my co-workers, "If you're not paying for it, you're the product."" But it sounds like this "extremely irate user" was paying for it.

Yeah, fair point. It's been several years, so maybe my memory of all the details is a bit hazy by now. I just recall that at one point one of the salespeople was addressing a point about something or other involving the user having paid for something. I have no idea whether the user was telling the complete truth (were they referring to something they used to subscribe to and don't any more?) or whether at the time whatever they had paid Google for would have entitled the user to phone support for GMail account access issues. Whatever was going on, the user wasn't able to find any avenues to get the support they needed for their issue.

Regardless I agree with other comments to the effect that even if you are paying, you are often still the product!

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#759
post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting take. It sounds like you really dislike Google. It also sounds like your manager had something to do with it. Perhaps it was a lack of promotion? Since you’ve worked at both, do you have an opinion on why protocol buffers aren’t more widely adopted than json?

> It sounds like you really dislike Google Google's a great if you want a high standard of living and being pampered. Not the highest pay, but it's more relaxed. Also if you have a PhD. Google could be a research playground for you. Everyone at Google is or appears nice. I had a slightly mean team lead at Google once, but he's been always my favorite. Highly technical, no BS, little patience when I wasn't hyper focus…

Thanks for the detailed posts. This can be useful for ppl considering applying there.

I work for Elastic for the last 6y or so and I feel I’ve been lucky to have managers who cared (for customers, also for the team), provided actionable feedback, and put me in projects that lined up with my strengths and interests. I feel a lot of that is encouraged by the company culture, but esp two individuals I have in mind—I think they’d behave like that in any other company (or burn out quickly).

Would you mind sharing if this was SV or some other region? Do you know if this would a “general” culture for Google/AWS, or limited to certain teams or offices?

Re: Ask HN: Gmail account security

#760
post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit ironic that you're bashing Google and praising Go in the same paragraph, never mentioning that Go is designed and supported by Google.

I think that was part of the point. Google made Go and then when OP wanted to use Go, their bosses said “use Java” (and took a month to do something that could be done in a few days)

I disagree with OP on this. Their boss in my opinion made the right call. I'd say for a few reasons:

1. Why did OP do this without talking through it first

2. Introducing a new language to a team is not some small decision, and IMO typically not a good idea

3. Why would it take a month in Java to do what takes a few days in Go

4. If it made this one task faster, the burden it will put on the team in the future can be bad in the long run

Perhaps the team would benefit a move to Go (I doubt that), but it should be something that is planned. Otherwise, they'll have "that" one thing that is written in a language that no one on the team really knows.

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