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Things I've learned at Google so far

bentilly.blogspot.com

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Re: Things I've learned at Google so far

#121

Post by mortehu »

jheriko wrote: post #72
JesseAldridge wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should that be off-putting? Standardized tests are pretty much the only way to objectively measure intelligence. Writing ability doesn't capture stuff like mathematical skill. Yes, yes, tests are imperfect. Everyone understands this. But they're the best measurement we have -- short of getting to know someone over the course of a few months or years. Also, tests, because of the way they establish some people as "…

I dunno about others but when I read it sounded a little arrogant. For example, I have a Mensa gold certificate saying that I scored in the top 0.5% percentile on a test (actual IQ scores vary based on the type of test but mine was 143.5). Sounds pretty arrogant, eh? Generally any statement that equates to "I am intelligent" gets taken this way.

I think IQ tests sound arrogant because they are always given as rank in the population, rather than in absolute terms. "I can recognize any of 9 fundamental patterns in less than 10 seconds, perform 0.3 FLOPS and know the 10 most common heuristics for beating IQ test problems" doesn't sound nearly as arrogant in my opinion.

Re: Things I've learned at Google so far

#122

Post by nostrademons »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #97

Here's a question, and I don't mean this in a snarky way at all. It's a genuine question. With all these smart people, why has the experience of google search not improved substantially over the last 10 years? Sure, there's more little geegaws in search now, but the experience of finding what I want hasn't gotten any easier.

What are some of the tasks you've had a bad experience with?

I work in Google Search, and we actively try to identify areas that people are having difficulty with and then come up with ways to make their search experience better. Unfortunately, most of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. If we knew precisely where the pain points were, we'd be much better able to solve them.

Re: Things I've learned at Google so far

#123

Post by btilly »

dschobel wrote: post #52

This leads to another point of interest. How astoundingly complex the company is. I believe that organizations naturally evolve until they are as complex as the people in them can handle. Well Google is tackling really big, complex problems, and is full of people who can handle a lot of complexity. What do you mean the company is complex? It's not clear to me why solving difficult problems merits organizational or op…

Try to build something that deals with the amount of data that Google has, as quickly as Google handles it, with everything distributed, replicated, load balanced, and with failover to keep the site up when bad things happen anywhere in the system. (Which happens more often than we would like.)

Before you're done you'll have built a lot of pieces of software that do different things that have complex little dependencies on each other.

Now iterate that through many generations of development, and build some other systems that tackle similar problems.

Do that and you'll discover why Google's infrastructure is complex.

Re: Things I've learned at Google so far

#124

Post by btilly »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #97

Here's a question, and I don't mean this in a snarky way at all. It's a genuine question. With all these smart people, why has the experience of google search not improved substantially over the last 10 years? Sure, there's more little geegaws in search now, but the experience of finding what I want hasn't gotten any easier.

Improvement is in the eye of the beholder.

My personal experience of search got a lot better when they started suppressing mirrored content. For me to go back to what they had 10 years ago would be painful. Another improvement that I like is the ability to use search to find stuff on a particular site.

What change would make it better for you?

Re: Things I've learned at Google so far

#125

Post by brown9-2 »

sgk284 wrote: post #108
dschobel wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, thanks! I'd still like to someday understand what makes Google qualitatively different from other companies. Because I don't think 20k smart engineers necessarily yields a functional company nor is immediate access to the top levels always a good thing (for obvious reasons).

I was at Google in 2007, here's my take on it. The people that are working there aren't just the most brilliant in the world, they literally invented a good portion of the internet, computers, computer science, and programming as we know it. They have "the father of the internet" (Vint Cerf), the creator of Vim (Moolenaar), the creator of Python (Guido), the lead developer of Firefox (Goodger), several of the lead Li…

Just curious, how does something like TGIF work with remote offices? Does everyone attend the meeting with some sort of video/audio conferencing?

Re: Things I've learned at Google so far

#126

Post by sgk284 »

brown9-2 wrote: post #125
sgk284 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at Google in 2007, here's my take on it. The people that are working there aren't just the most brilliant in the world, they literally invented a good portion of the internet, computers, computer science, and programming as we know it. They have "the father of the internet" (Vint Cerf), the creator of Vim (Moolenaar), the creator of Python (Guido), the lead developer of Firefox (Goodger), several of the lead Li…

Just curious, how does something like TGIF work with remote offices? Does everyone attend the meeting with some sort of video/audio conferencing?

Yea, they can video conference in. There is also a web based system for asking Larry & Sergey questions. The large majority of Google's engineering force is in Mountain View though. If you ever do work at Google, go to Mountain View... all of the other campuses get similar perks, but Mountain View gets the best.

Re: Things I've learned at Google so far

#127

Post by brown9-2 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #101
brown9-2 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that for most people, the experience of search is easy and is working well. Otherwise I don't think it would continue to be #1. It sounds like you might be outside the norm.

The fact that they're #1 just means they're the best of the available options. It doesn't mean the experience is great, just better than what else is out there.

Then what is stopping someone from designing a better experience?

Re: Things I've learned at Google so far

#128

Post by ojbyrne »

nostrademons wrote: post #120
ojbyrne wrote: post #116

So I'm generally fine with Google as a great company until I deal with SEO people (i.e. the recent Mahalo discussion here). If you're all so great, why do we have to deal with so much pollution on the web?

What are the combined resources thrown at gaming Google's search results? What are the combined resources thrown at preventing people from gaming Google's search results? The webspam team is big and staffed with some incredibly intelligent people, but there are probably millions of people out there that are all trying to figure out how to rank highly in search results.

It's a reasonable counter-argument, but I don't buy it.

1. All those millions of people are competing against each other - many of them will cancel each other out.

2. It doesn't seem at all like google can't control spam, but that given well-funded companies (ideally from California) they look the other way. It seems less like a lack of resources and more like a lack of integrity.

Re: Things I've learned at Google so far

#129

Post by tokenadult »

btilly wrote: post #46
gyardley wrote: post #41

While I enjoyed the article, and I appreciate you posting it, one quibble: it's off-putting whenever anyone mentions a number they got on a test as evidence for intelligence. If you write intelligently, I'll happily consider you intelligent.

I normally don't do that. However for perspective I really wanted to give an idea of how intelligent I consider myself to be, and giving that relatively objective number sounded like the least assholish way I had to convey that to people who don't know me. You'll note that immediately upon giving the number I pointed out that there are issues with that method of measurement and gave an honest self-assessment whose up…

"The closest thing that I have to an estimate for my IQ is scoring 2340 on the GRE exam in 1991. Based on conversions that I've seen, that puts me at about the top 0.01% in IQ. Now I was really "on" that day, happen to believe that there are problems with the measurement of intelligence by an IQ test (a subject which I may devote a future blog post to), but without false modesty I wouldn't be surprised to find that I'm as high as being in the top 0.1% in general intelligence (however that could be measured)."

I see you got snarky replies for writing this. But I'm glad you did. I look forward to seeing you post somewhere, with discussion of the post here on HN, about the issues with IQ tests.

Anyone else who likes to discuss the issue of what to think about IQ tests is someone whose thoughts I'd like to read on a new thread

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093619

about an article several friends told me about today.

Re: Things I've learned at Google so far

#130

Post by mattiss »

mncaudill wrote: post #104
mattiss wrote: post #77

I mean this is interesting and all, but first page? Really? Does everybody want to work at Google that badly?

Speaking for myself, yes and yes. It's a fairly interesting view from someone just starting out in a company that has an almost mystical appeal.

Weird. I thought this board was about entrepreneurship?
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