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Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

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Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#101

Post by robertlagrant »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #100
zrobotics wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: what king did Google kill? They really didn't take down a big player in an existing industry, they started by being very good at search and displaced other search companies at a time when internet search wasn't a big business. I don't have a great answer here, but one of the things that I think caused public opinion to shift is when people started realizing how truly massive they had gotten. It's po…

Google was the company that kept making the web better in every way. Amazing search, endless services each with solid json APIs, a fast multi-process web-browser, & investment in the web as a whole. Google killed the king, and the king was the desktop. The king was apps. Microsoft seemed omnipotent & in total control, and the rise of the web isn't totally Google's but they sure did a lot and they sure rode that wave.…

I don't really understand this. Don't you think search, mail, docs, maps, adsense, were products? What were the API platforms they were making up until G+?

To my recollection, G+ was actually pretty good at launch. It just was killed (or hobbled, for future killing) incredibly early for a network-effects, non-first mover product.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#102

Post by skybrian »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #100
zrobotics wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: what king did Google kill? They really didn't take down a big player in an existing industry, they started by being very good at search and displaced other search companies at a time when internet search wasn't a big business. I don't have a great answer here, but one of the things that I think caused public opinion to shift is when people started realizing how truly massive they had gotten. It's po…

Google was the company that kept making the web better in every way. Amazing search, endless services each with solid json APIs, a fast multi-process web-browser, & investment in the web as a whole. Google killed the king, and the king was the desktop. The king was apps. Microsoft seemed omnipotent & in total control, and the rise of the web isn't totally Google's but they sure did a lot and they sure rode that wave.…

I don't see Google Cloud as "giving up on being a platform." It's a different kind of platform, though!

Early Google initiatives also had a high failure rate. (Buzz, for example.)

My guess is that there are still Googlers trying to improve the web. Young people are idealistic, so why wouldn't they? But nowadays it's unlikely to be successful unless it's relatively uncontroversial infrastructure. (Some examples might be things like certificate transparency and QUIC, which became HTTP/3.)

Higher-profile initiatives to really change things often fail because they raise deep suspicion and resistance. They're certain to be misinterpreted in the worst possible way.

Also, significant changes affect vested interests. Some of those vested interests are internal.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#103

Post by skybrian »

justinclift wrote: post #88
zrobotics wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: what king did Google kill? They really didn't take down a big player in an existing industry, they started by being very good at search and displaced other search companies at a time when internet search wasn't a big business. I don't have a great answer here, but one of the things that I think caused public opinion to shift is when people started realizing how truly massive they had gotten. It's po…

> I think caused public opinion to shift is when people started realizing how truly massive they had gotten. I'm personally more of the opinion that Google has caused enough serious issues for enough people - with famously no way to get the issues resolved - that they themselves seeded or caused the negative public opinion. Combine that with Google behaviour of clearly doing things in their own interest even when not…

I don't think people understand what manifest v3 is trying to solve. It's a good example of how a worthwhile effort to make the Internet less terrible can be misinterpreted.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#104

Post by rurban »

cperciva wrote: post #74

L6 ICs are pretty rare - it already is a top tier of seniority in engineering Is Google really different from other companies? I talk to a lot of Amazonians (AWS Hero, FreeBSD/EC2 maintainer) and my general impression is that developers below L7 ought to be classified as "Junior" -- my mapping is basically L4-L6 = Junior Developer, L7/L8 = Developer, and L10 = Senior Developer. Anything which doesn't have L7+ involve…

Look at her github repos. I would call her a L4 for the technical skills there. Good code, but not top seniority at all.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#106

Post by wnolens »

I_AM_A_SMURF wrote: post #85
dave333 wrote: post #34

The traditional view is that young engineers should join startups in hope of a massive payoff if one goes big, but working for 10 years at BigCo with good salary and stock plans can set you up for life without any risk. One path to avoid is the one I took which was to work at a big tech co as a contractor. Good rates but nothing to show for it after 10 years other than the experience and whatever I had put in my 401K…

I don't know that sounds very optimistic. I'm 10 in tech and L6 now. I'm definitely not set for life, like, not even close.

In big tech? One can pocket an avg 100k/year. Less in first few years, more later on. That isn't "quit immediately and coast" money, but several times a juicy down payment in the bank and a guaranteed MINIMUM 200k USD/year for the rest of your life IS set for life IMO.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#107

Post by jiggawatts »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #18
rabbits77 wrote: post #13

I recently left a job at a very different large company with a similar timeframe (a little under ten years). Pretty much everything this author states is related to my experience. There is nothing all that special about Google. Maybe there was twenty years ago, but that ship has long since sailed. It’s just another large US tech company. Like Microsoft and IBM before it.

> It’s just another large US tech company. Like Microsoft and IBM before it. This is just a hyperbolic statement that should not be taken seriously at all. Look, Google isn't some fantasy land that some people might have lauded it as once upon a time, and it isn't unique in terms of pay or talent, but it is certainly at the top echelon. I did an interview loop for high level IC at both Azure and GCP simultaneously an…

> ...both Azure and GCP simultaneously and the different in talent level (as well as pay) was astounding.

This is maybe the third time I've heard this mentioned here on HN, so now I'm curious: What specific kinds of differences?

I imagine there might be a certain kind of prejudice against Microsoft and its employees, especially for "using Windows" or whatever, which I've found often unfairly coloring the opinions of people from Silicon Valley that are used to Linux.

If you don't mind sharing, what specific differences did you notice that gave you a bad impression of the Microsoft team and such a good impression of the Google team?

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#108

Post by codemac »

cperciva wrote: post #74

L6 ICs are pretty rare - it already is a top tier of seniority in engineering Is Google really different from other companies? I talk to a lot of Amazonians (AWS Hero, FreeBSD/EC2 maintainer) and my general impression is that developers below L7 ought to be classified as "Junior" -- my mapping is basically L4-L6 = Junior Developer, L7/L8 = Developer, and L10 = Senior Developer. Anything which doesn't have L7+ involve…

Nah, you're pretty far off in terms of population numbers at FAANG. Amazon's levels are largely L-1 most places in terms of comp (aka aws L7 gets paid G L6), and 7+ at Meta is ~1% of the company's employees, and even less of it's SWE.

Amazon and Microsoft also have less "alignment" at various levels compared to silicon valley due to literal geographic and historical reasons. Principal SWE at AWS is probably ~L6 at G in my experience. Obviously there are always outliers in all directions.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#109

Post by advisory5739f2 »

rr808 wrote: post #29

I've done the path from SWE to SRE and back to SWE. I was always happy to do production support and diagnose and fix production problems, so I naturally moved to SRE which is always looking for people. It was a real mistake, SRE is hugely stressful and really unrewarding compared to SWE. Yes you learn some skills and get some occasional glory, but year after year of fighting fires really didn't build any long lasting…

SRE is an anti pattern that Google is unwilling to admit and is selling books on. Just like there should not be QA, release engineering, continuing engineering or DBA as separate departments/job titles, because these critical parts of software development should not be considered optional and thrown over the wall to take care of by someone with no stake in developing the product.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#110

Post by beebmam »

advisory5739f2 wrote: post #109
rr808 wrote: post #29

I've done the path from SWE to SRE and back to SWE. I was always happy to do production support and diagnose and fix production problems, so I naturally moved to SRE which is always looking for people. It was a real mistake, SRE is hugely stressful and really unrewarding compared to SWE. Yes you learn some skills and get some occasional glory, but year after year of fighting fires really didn't build any long lasting…

SRE is an anti pattern that Google is unwilling to admit and is selling books on. Just like there should not be QA, release engineering, continuing engineering or DBA as separate departments/job titles, because these critical parts of software development should not be considered optional and thrown over the wall to take care of by someone with no stake in developing the product.

Regardless of these fields being separate departments/job titles: people are not getting promoted for doing QA, release engineering, continuing engineering, or DBA work. It's a huge cultural problem in tech.
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