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Lessons from 14 years at Google

addyosmani.com

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Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#381

Post by H8crilA »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #373
H8crilA wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to have the right personality. Either actually enjoy the game, or have an unsatiable (fear-driven?) need for status, or something else of this sort. We don't get to choose our personalities, though some limited modifications are possible - see treatments for personality disorders, for example.

> actually enjoy the game, or have an unsatiable (fear-driven?) need for status, or something else of this sort Ie. Somewhat serious mental disorders as requisite for leadership. I wonder how we got onto this darkest timeline?

Evolution. It is a brutal process.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#383

Post by euifii »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #351
euifii wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I really don’t get about these types of folks. Do they really want to remember their life’s work as “kissing ass and playing politics”? I get the “work to live” and all that, but you’re basically tossing away half your life…for what, money? How much money do you need!?

Depends where you want to live, but $5M to $10M would help with enough passive income to future proof one’s family and their kids.

[dead]

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#385

Post by hhhhhggg »

Sephr wrote: post #287

This feels somewhat hypocritical coming from Addy. Addy Osmani plagiarized my code and 'apologized' years later by publishing an article on his website[1] that he has never linked to from his social media accounts. I cannot accept his apology until he actually syndicates it with his followers. Seems relevant to note this behavior in light of points "6. Your code doesn’t advocate for you. People do.", "7. The best cod…

"i cannot accept this apology unless.."

you got a written apology already, what else do you want?

a post of this in all of his socmed accounts? him telling this story to his kids at dinner table and bedtime stories? at his eulogy, obituary, and his grave?

what's your life mission now, to post this little drama of yours on each and every content he puts out?

was that code your best achievement to date? did it stole millions from you and ruined your life?

grow the fuck up dude

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#386

Post by qmr »

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…

Please stop abusing co-opting and denigrating the title of engineer.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#387

Post by wahnfrieden »

damethos wrote: post #36
hbs18 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Why would the boss accept that? They automated the work to eliminate employee downtime. If the employees were upset to lose their chatting time then presumably they lack the agency to choose chatting over work duties when they’re unblocked. The only way to help them in that situation is to organize them

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#388

Post by astrojams »

firefoxd wrote: post #5

They are pretty insightful. Particularly this one: > 3. Bias towards action. Ship. You can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank one. I have my own version of this where I tell people that no amount of good advice can help you make a blank page look better. You need to have some published work before you can benefit from any advice.

I’m a big fan of Amazon’s leadership principles. One of them is bias for action. I worked at AWS for a few years and I’d be in a meeting and someone would say bias for action and we’d all know what we needed to do.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#389

Post by JuniperMesos »

simonw wrote: post #10

I first learned about the "innovation tokens" idea in "Novelty is a loan you repay in outages, hiring, and cognitive overhead" from this, still one of my favorite essays on software architecture: https://boringtechnology.club/ Likewise, "Abstractions don’t remove complexity. They move it to the day you’re on call." made me think of this 23 year old classic from Joel Spolsky, the Law of Leaky Abstractions: https://www…

> I first learned about the "innovation tokens" idea in "Novelty is a loan you repay in outages, hiring, and cognitive overhead" from this, still one of my favorite essays on software architecture: https://boringtechnology.club/

I don't think this is consistently true - in particular, I think that a lot of current well-known practices around writing code result in code that implicitly relies on assumptions in another part of the system that can change without warning; and novelty is necessary in order to make those assumptions more solid and ultimately result in software that is less likely to break unexpectedly.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#390

Post by [deleted] »

cletus wrote: post #104

I'm going to pick out 3 points: > 2. Being right is cheap. Getting to right together is the real work > 6. Your code doesn’t advocate for you. People do > 14. If you win every debate, you’re probably accumulating silent resistance The common thread here is that in large organizations, your impact is largely measured by how much you're liked. It's completely vibes-based. Stack ranking (which Google used to have; not s…

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