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So long, and thanks for all the bytes

chethaase.medium.com

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Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#121

Post by p_l »

monero-xmr wrote: post #90
chaboud wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That must have been an amazing ride. Note: in my opinion, a small, lean, focused team is the right way to build an OS. I haven't seen the "throw an army at it" approach succeed for building the core of an OS or platform, as it becomes almost impossible to keep coherence in the system. And, yeah, that GMSCore joke is too real.

Small, lean, focused team is the correct way to build any massive undertaking in software. Maybe not in sending people to the moon, but in building consumer software.

Various individual components involved in sending people to the moon were also composed of small focused engineering teams.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#122

Post by bitwize »

agentgumshoe wrote: post #103
bitwize wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mythical Man Month was literally written because Fred Brooks threw an army at the problem of writing an OS -- IBM's OS/360 -- then found it didn't work and decided to write down why it didn't work. His idea of an ideal software team he called the "surgical team" and your chief architect is the "surgeon" -- the one responsible for the major design decisions who calls all the shots. The surgeon and his team shouldn…

The other key factor is probably the person hiring/hiring being able to identify a 'good' programmer. Whether that's through their own competence or having some knowledge of the candidate outside their resume. Speed to market is also a factor. If you pushing to release a new product, good engineers are very important. For big corporates with established marketshare and profits, it seems to be the thousand monkeys wit…

Indeed. I've noticed that the more off the critical path is the corpo's software team, the more waste they are willing to tolerate when it comes to software development. That's how you come to things like super-scalable, cloud-based, kooberneteez-orchestrated microservice architectures for internal applications which serve a subset of a division of a company. And you need a team 200 strong to service that.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#123

Post by BeetleB »

matt3210 wrote: post #111

Author worked on android as his first job back when people hired entry level. Today, the entry level people I know struggle massively to get a foot in the door.

> Author worked on android as his first job back when people hired entry level.

Not true.

Incidentally, just for fun I posted the whole article into GPT and asked it to evaluate the "correctness" of your comment. Its response was rather verbose, but here's the key portion:

> The comment states, "Author worked on android as his first job back when people hired entry level." However, this is not accurate as per the information in the article. The author clarifies that working on Android at Google was neither his first job nor his second; he had been in the industry since 1992 and accumulated roughly 31 years of experience before deciding to switch careers. His position on the Android team appears to be a result of his already extensive career rather than an entry-level opportunity.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#124

Post by samspenc »

manmal wrote: post #69
hcks wrote: post #41

I though Google paid decent salaries, but it turns out even after 15 years there you’re still concerned about making ends meet it seems

Nicolas Cage can’t make ends meet, and he was one of the highest paid actors, once.

As they say in investing: "past performance is no guarantee of future results"

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#125

Post by jreck »

chairhairair wrote: post #106
raphlinus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined Android in April 2012. Looking back, at that time Android was incredibly lean for what it was accomplishing. The entire Frameworks team reported to one manager, and we would fit in a medium size conference room. That included all of UI toolkit and the bulk of the Java APIs an app would call into, including Binder. (Networking, phone, graphics, Bluetooth, etc were other teams, but we worked closely together.…

Is there any animosity towards the later efforts to “professionalize” some of the early simpler Android APIs? I’m thinking specifically of some of the drama surrounding the banning of SharedPreferences.

Most of that is being driven by the same people who worked on the original APIs. Being on a successful platform means all your rushed, good-enough APIs from years ago tend to now be load bearing regret.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#127

Post by [deleted] »

blindriver wrote: post #7

The idea that another multi-millionaire tech worker would think that leaving their job is something people would be interested in is… strange. He’s letting the world know that in the second worst tech downturn in history, he’s going to retire and pursue comedy writing. Feels more appropriate for a Facebook post to this friends rather than a medium post.

[deleted]

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#129

Post by iraqmtpizza »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #92
manmal wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revenue hasn’t fallen because devs were fired, but because people responsible for selling ads were.

No, I don't think that's what happend. If I remember correctly, he reduced the content moderation team, which led to an increase in hate speech, misinformation and CSAM. That's why big advertisers left and revenues crashed. He then told those big advertisers to piss off and refocused his advertising business on smaller customers, which is why he doesn't need so many ad sales people any more. Perhaps he should hire so…

[dead]

Re: So long, and thanks for all the bytes

#130

Post by johnnyanmac »

yawz wrote: post #2

Because of the downturn, I wonder how many people have given up on their careers at Tech? How many more will respond to the call of a different professional life that pays less, but that will be more fulfilling? Even as recent as yesterday I heard a past-colleague tell me "maybe Tech isn't for me, after all. I'll try my hand at this other thing."

I haven't given up, but the past few years have accellerated my plans to try and become self-suffient in the field instead of relying on corporate to respect and compensate me. At least if I fail to appeal to an audience it will be on my own laurels and not because The company was fine with my labor but needed a 0.1% better earning call statement.

I of course can't speak for everyone, but I imagine there will be more startups/small companies forming over the next few years from people that were otherwise satisfied at BigCo. Tech has definitely felt like it devolved to being a cog in the wheel of raw profits over a field of innovation meant to make lives easier. You can't really get that back without sizing down.

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