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Lessons from 14 years at Google

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Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#31

Post by jacquesm »

trescenzi wrote: post #13

> At scale, even your bugs have users. First place I worked right out of college had a big training seminar for new hires. One day we were told the story of how they’d improved load times from around 5min to 30seconds, this improvement was in the mid 90s. The negative responses from clients were instant. The load time improvements had destroyed their company culture. Instead of everyone coming into the office, turnin…

For close to a decade my business revolved around a common bug in both Microsoft and Netscape, the dominant browsers of the day. With every release we were thinking 'this time they'll fix it' and that would have caused us some serious headaches. But they never did!

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#32

Post by jimmyl02 »

Usually there are nuggets of wisdom in lists shared like this but I feel like every lesson shared here has immense value.

> "remain skeptical of your own certainty" > "Model curiosity, and you get a team that actually learns."

These are two lessons that typically require battle scars to learn. For such big ideas to be summed into two sentences is pretty remarkable and puts to words lessons I wish I knew how to share. Amazing article, thanks for sharing!

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#33

Post by hbs18 »

trescenzi wrote: post #13

> At scale, even your bugs have users. First place I worked right out of college had a big training seminar for new hires. One day we were told the story of how they’d improved load times from around 5min to 30seconds, this improvement was in the mid 90s. The negative responses from clients were instant. The load time improvements had destroyed their company culture. Instead of everyone coming into the office, turnin…

So what is the correct solution to that specific problem then, adjust loading time per customer?

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#36

Post by damethos »

hbs18 wrote: post #33
trescenzi wrote: post #13

> At scale, even your bugs have users. First place I worked right out of college had a big training seminar for new hires. One day we were told the story of how they’d improved load times from around 5min to 30seconds, this improvement was in the mid 90s. The negative responses from clients were instant. The load time improvements had destroyed their company culture. Instead of everyone coming into the office, turnin…

So what is the correct solution to that specific problem then, adjust loading time per customer?

Probably just let them vent until they adjust their habits and just chat with their co-workers, without the need to use this as an excuse. Then, they can enjoy the fast loading times :)

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#37

Post by nostrademons »

croemer wrote: post #30

I clicked through to the bio and am super confused. Third person, extremely long, lots of pictures with CEOs and smelling of LLM writing. Here's a sample: > His story isn’t just about writing code, but about inspiring a community to strive for a better web. And perhaps the most exciting chapter is still being written, as he helps shape how AI and the web will intersect in the coming decade. Few individuals have done…

He led Chrome DevRel for many years - if you were learning about new web platform technologies circa 2010-2015 you probably ran across his writing.

The bio is cringe, but the important thing to realize about these professional-networking bios is that they are sales pitches, intended to sell a person (and specifically, their experience and connections) to a large corporation who will pay them even more money. An ordinary person, with ordinary authentic emotions, is not the intended audience. They're specifically selling to people whose job is to deal with bullshit.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#38

Post by alex1138 »

trescenzi wrote: post #13

> At scale, even your bugs have users. First place I worked right out of college had a big training seminar for new hires. One day we were told the story of how they’d improved load times from around 5min to 30seconds, this improvement was in the mid 90s. The negative responses from clients were instant. The load time improvements had destroyed their company culture. Instead of everyone coming into the office, turnin…

https://xkcd.com/1172/

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#39

Post by ronbenton »

>Abstractions don’t remove complexity. They move it to the day you’re on call.

Damn that's a real one. Nothing like struggling through a bunch of indirection to figure out what the heck a clever abstraction was supposed to do

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