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Software Engineering at Google (2020)

abseil.io

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Re: Software Engineering at Google (2020)

#21

Post by flohofwoe »

Probably a bit off-topic, but since I'm a bit triggered by the 'abseil' in the domain name:

I wish Google would relax their 'guidelines' when it comes to software that's also published outside of Google. Case in point: the Dawn C++ library (Google's native WebGPU implementation) has a dependency on abseil, and from what I've seen when glancing over the code, the only reason seems to be some minor string-related stuff.

I can only assume that there must be some interal NIH rule inside Google to use abseil in place of the C++ stdlib (of course I would prefer if Dawn would use neither abseil nor the stdlib, especially since it looks like the only component that's used are related to strings, which definitely isn't the focus of a 3D API).

...and then there's of course the use of 'Google Depot Tools' and of course they are using their own build system [1] (however at least there the Dawn team rebelled and also provides cmake build files).

All those Google specifics make it increadibly difficult to integrate Google C++ projects into any non-Google project, and because of this "Google C++ bubble" I would seriously hesitate taking any advice from them about software engineering as gospel, at least when it comes to C++.

[1] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/tools/gn/+/48...

Re: Software Engineering at Google (2020)

#22

Post by yowlingcat »

ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #11

"As far as this outsider can tell, the systems and processes for writing code at Google must be among the best in the world, given both the scale of the company and how often people sing their praises." Is this really the case? In high school I sure thought Google was a magical software heaven us mortals could but dream of working for, but now (and increasingly as of late) I'm strongly under the impression that 20 ye…

I think this is broadly correct but I do think their cloud services business holds some promise. Although a distant third at best behind AWS/Azure (and maybe fourth behind OCI), I have seen some pretty large shops with a ton of volume of all of their compute to GCP. It does seem like the immense infrastructure Google had to build to power this firehose of money has the skeleton of a great product to power the cloud workloads of many other businesses, in ways that can compete with AWS on their home turf. But this is conjecture from my end, I haven't used GCP in the heat of production.

Re: Software Engineering at Google (2020)

#23

Post by yafbum »

ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #11

"As far as this outsider can tell, the systems and processes for writing code at Google must be among the best in the world, given both the scale of the company and how often people sing their praises." Is this really the case? In high school I sure thought Google was a magical software heaven us mortals could but dream of working for, but now (and increasingly as of late) I'm strongly under the impression that 20 ye…

It's possible that such techniques are unreasonable in low margin companies, and it could also be said that perhaps these engineering techniques have been a factor in allowing Google to keep its margins high as it scaled up by many orders of magnitude. Google in 2003 was making less than $1bn/year in revenue... 200x growth in 20 years

Re: Software Engineering at Google (2020)

#24

Post by kyrra »

dboreham wrote: post #6

This part is good: https://abseil.io/resources/swe-book/html/ch13.html#prefer_r...

I'd say it's a tradeoff. If you are entirely driven by tests that include your deps, they will be slow. Unit tests are good at catching basic behavior issues that would show up with an integration test, but it's easier to see the cause.

I'm of the opinion that both are needed, but don't put all your eggs in unit tests (they don't need to be perfect). That extra time being spent on integration tests tend to be better for maintaining system health.

Re: Software Engineering at Google (2020)

#25

Post by paxys »

Can't say about the content, but this is possibly the worst website layout and navigation I have seen. How are you even supposed to read this thing?

Is there a version with links from one chapter to the next? Or a PDF?

Re: Software Engineering at Google (2020)

#26

Post by n0zmer »

hiddencost wrote: post #9
mushufasa wrote: post #4

Cool. Could someone, maybe an ex-googler, comment on which parts of these work well and which don't? A lot of other companies get into trouble trying to cargo-cult what Google does when they are operating in very different environments wherein those practices aren't optimal. E.g. different levels of scale. Additionally, critics of Google may point out that their engineering culture may not be great on its own terms -…

Engineering culture has somewhat collapsed at Google. The things that made engineering great didn't really survive the last couple rounds of internal coups.

I thought so too, but since then I moved over to Cloud and things are a LOT better.

Re: Software Engineering at Google (2020)

#27

Post by FartyMcFarter »

ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #11

"As far as this outsider can tell, the systems and processes for writing code at Google must be among the best in the world, given both the scale of the company and how often people sing their praises." Is this really the case? In high school I sure thought Google was a magical software heaven us mortals could but dream of working for, but now (and increasingly as of late) I'm strongly under the impression that 20 ye…

I don't understand your argument - why is the one trick pony revenue generation incompatible with high quality systems and processes for writing code?

Both can be true at the same time, and my feeling is that they are, having worked there. The business is not very diversified, and the tools are great.

Re: Software Engineering at Google (2020)

#28

Post by londons_explore »

ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #11

"As far as this outsider can tell, the systems and processes for writing code at Google must be among the best in the world, given both the scale of the company and how often people sing their praises." Is this really the case? In high school I sure thought Google was a magical software heaven us mortals could but dream of working for, but now (and increasingly as of late) I'm strongly under the impression that 20 ye…

Google search was 1998. Google Maps was 2005. Gmail was 2004. Android was 2008. Youtube was 2005. Chrome was 2008. Docs was 2006. Translate was 2006.

Yet in the last decade, they really haven't had many successes (perhaps with the exception of Google Photos - 2015)

One would imagine that with nearly 200,000 employees at least one of them would have a good enough idea for a new product people like. But management and culture, with 'more wood behind fewer arrows', is no longer conducive to the good ideas getting launched.

Re: Software Engineering at Google (2020)

#29

Post by fnordpiglet »

nosefrog wrote: post #14
ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #11

"As far as this outsider can tell, the systems and processes for writing code at Google must be among the best in the world, given both the scale of the company and how often people sing their praises." Is this really the case? In high school I sure thought Google was a magical software heaven us mortals could but dream of working for, but now (and increasingly as of late) I'm strongly under the impression that 20 ye…

I used to work there. The tooling is pretty good.

I’ve not worked there but I’ve worked with many exgooglers. They tend to think Google * is the best in the world and they created it before anyone else and everyone else with similar capabilities copied them, and that Googlers are smarter. However every company of their size and technical complexity has built almost exactly the same tooling and processes, but don’t carry the same attitude around. At a certain point I’ve learned to smile and nod as they explain and take credit for things I’ve developed myself at other FAANG and adjacent highly technical megacorps. The final thing of note is they seem to be unable to replicate their magic outside of Google, and blame the org they’re now in for being deficient in some way for that. “At Google we had X and didn’t have to worry about Y, without Y we can’t do X,” where Y is some nebulous qualitative feature of google culture. After I finish smiling and nodding I just go build X.

N.b., I’m not saying nosefrog is this person, or even everyone at google or ex-google is like this. This was just my experience working with senior principal or other very senior engineering staff.

Re: Software Engineering at Google (2020)

#30

Post by outside1234 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #12
mushufasa wrote: post #4

Cool. Could someone, maybe an ex-googler, comment on which parts of these work well and which don't? A lot of other companies get into trouble trying to cargo-cult what Google does when they are operating in very different environments wherein those practices aren't optimal. E.g. different levels of scale. Additionally, critics of Google may point out that their engineering culture may not be great on its own terms -…

> Additionally, critics of Google may point out that their engineering culture may not be great on its own terms -- every time Google launches a new feature, people post links to the Google product graveyard. It is personally scary when they develop new products. What if it is a brilliant idea, one I cannot live without? If Google develops it, then I am looking at this stillborn thing, mewling for life when I know it…

The inventions are to keep the talent stream coming ... to work on ads.

The inventions are the small tax they pay to pretend to candidates that they could work on inventions when the vast majority of them will be "allocated" to ads.

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