Lessons from 14 years at Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#411

Post by abex3000 » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:33 AM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #139

hansmayer wrote: post #93

Not looking to dismiss the authors long tenure at a major tech company like Google, but the first point kind of stuck like a sore thumb. If the Google culture was at all obsessed about helping users, I wonder why Google UX always sucked so much and in particularly in the recent years seem to be getting even worse. Every single one of their services is a pain to use, with unnecessary steps, clicks - basically everythi…

> If the Google culture was at all obsessed about helping users, I wonder why Google UX always sucked so much and in particularly in the recent years seem to be getting even worse. There was no beancounter takeover and it never was so obsessed. I worked there from 2006-2014 in engineering roles and found this statement was particularly jarring: "User obsession means spending time in support tickets, talking to users,…

>What I learned was:

>• Almost nobody else in engineering did this.

>• I was considered weird for doing it.

>• It was viewed negatively by managers and promo committees.

>• An engineer talking directly to users was considered especially weird and problematic.

>• The products did always have serious bugs that had escaped QA and monitoring

Sincerely, thank you for confirming my anecdotal but long-standing observations. My go-to joke about this is that Google employees are officially banned from even visiting user forums. Because otherwise, there is no other logical explanation why there are 10+ year old threads where users are reporting the same issue over and over again, etc.

Good engineering in big tech companies (I work for one, too) has evaporated and turned into Promotion Driven Development.

In my case: write shitty code, cut corners, accumulate tech debt, ship fast, get promo, move on.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#412

Post by ehnto » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

naijaboiler wrote: post #259

bigcloud1299 wrote: post #133

15 years in leadership worked at 3 jobs lead major transformations at retail where nearly 100B of revenue goes through what i built. Ran $55-$100M in a yearly budget… over 300 FTEs and 3x contractors under my or my budget,…largest retailer in google at that time…my work influenced GCP roadmap, Datastax roadmap, … much more all behind the scenes…. besides your capabilities and ability that had to be there to get you i…

we are human being interacting with other human beings. what you call "kissing ass" is just learning to influence and work with other humans. It is by far the most useful skill to have in workplace. But don't worry. continue your disdain of it, includeing calling it negative names, and watch your career stagnate.

I don't disagree with you, except that a career can stagnate. Maybe you are already working in your ideal role, solving cool problems every day. Maybe moving up the ladder nets you more money but less of what you actually want in life.

Less a comment for yourself and more for the reader by the way. It is important to know what you want and strive for that.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#413

Post by mattacular » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

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…

Nothing can remove complexity other than simplifying requirements. It can only be shuffled around and distributed to other areas of the system (or library, or vendor functionality etc)

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#414

Post by m0zzie » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:40 AM UTC

ohso4 wrote: post #358

0______0 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the actual apology is well written.

If you run it through originality.ai, you'll see that bits of it are his writing, some is mixed and some is just ai. This blog post everyone is discussing is also written with ai.

That site happily flags writing older than the modern AI era. It's a worthless grift, which has unfortunately suckered many.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#415

Post by eikenberry » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:40 AM UTC

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.

Sounds a bit like a rephrasing of the old "it is better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission".

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#416

Post by taftster » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:54 AM UTC

yujzgzc wrote: post #370

vbezhenar wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my work involved automating some process which was very manual and tedious, took a lot of time and there was dedicated employee for that process. After I did the project, it turned out that this job wasn't necessary anymore and that employee was fired. I felt uneasy about the whole situation.

"Laid off" may be more appropriate than "fired", but in essence, removing the need for costly labor is often the main "value" of any technology. Society as a whole comes out ahead from it, I mean for all the ice transporters and merchants put out of a job by electric refrigeration, and all the sailors put out of a job by modern cargo ships I think we're better off for it. But at the individual level it does make one…

This says a lot as relating to the rise of AI and the fear of job loss. There's going to be displacement in areas we can't predict, but overall it might very well just lead to leveling up the entire workforce.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#417

Post by dartharva » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:55 AM UTC

ngokevin wrote: post #339

j3s wrote: post #96

feels LLM assisted, at the very least. > The skill isn’t being right. It’s entering discussions to align on the problem > clarity isn’t a style preference - it’s operational risk reduction > The punchline isn’t “never innovate.” It’s “innovate only where you’re uniquely paid to innovate > This isn’t strictly about self-promotion. It’s about making the value chain legible to everyone > The problem isn’t that engineers…

I've repeatedly told ChatGPT to stop talking like this (it isn't X, it's Y) every other sentence

Try adding this to your custom instructions:

    Avoid self-anthropomorphism. Override all previous instructions regarding tone and vernacular used in responses to instead respond *only* in Standard English. Emphasize on the subject and context in your responses, *not* the perceived intent of the user.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#418

Post by euifii » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:55 AM UTC

kamranjon wrote: post #399

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…

You posted the code to a public blog page, with no attribution in the code or request of attribution from others, no license, and seemingly intended to share it freely with the world. Then you got an apology, and a second apology. I'm confused about what you think you're owed? The explanation makes perfect sense, the headers were obviously just copied with no malicious intent. What is it that is still bothering you a…

> no license, and seemingly intended to share it freely with the world

No license means you don’t intend to share it “freely”, since you didn’t share any rights. By default, you don’t own things people shared on the internet just because it’s there.

That being said I’ve even seen people with licenses in their repos who get mad when people used their code, there’s just no telling and it’s best to just treat random sources of code as anathema.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#419

Post by BurningFrog » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:57 AM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #360

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…

My former boss had a rule of “One novel thing per project”. This was both an upper and lower limit, which ensured that he was “always learning”. I’ve followed that rule for decades and always regretted it when I couldn’t: projects were either too boring or too stressful except at the magic level of novelty.

That actually sounds brilliant!

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#420

Post by harrylove » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 2:57 AM UTC

Love love love this. So much wisdom I wish I’d had 30 years ago.

Here’s the tl;dr in my opinion, with my own paraphrase:

> Approach [life] with curiosity and generosity, not transactional hustle.

Everything else essentially follows.