131–140 of 197 posts
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.
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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.
Any sentence containing the word "Mensa" is arrogant.
It was only later that I realized he must have been in Mensa himself and was recruiting me.
Proving I wasn't nearly as smart as my test scores indicated.
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.
I was thinking I could email you at the address in your profile, but when I think about it, it might be more productive to post a Ask HN here once I have a better explanation of what I mean. Then the whole community could participate, which seems like it would be constructive.
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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…
Aw man, I wish I'd joined as an engineer now. The lens I'm seeing the company through (product management) isn't half so cool. I mean, a lot of the above is still true, but we definitely have deadlines, tasks, responsibilities, and the team doesn't seem to eat together all that much. Obviously teams vary though, and this one has been thrown together fairly recently from a very disparate set of people, so that cohesiv…
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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.
Would you mind if I followed up with you later on that? I'd like to organize my thoughts on how it could be better for me. I was thinking I could email you at the address in your profile, but when I think about it, it might be more productive to post a Ask HN here once I have a better explanation of what I mean. Then the whole community could participate, which seems like it would be constructive.
Also, to be clear, I'm speaking in an unofficial capacity here, as myself. I'm quite curious what people's frustrations are, but I can't promise anything.
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I'm surprised you don't know your own IQ score. I couldn't even make it to middle-school without having undergone a battery of at least a half-dozen IQ and aptitude evaluations. By the time I made it out of High School I knew probably more than any person should know about their own intelligence and had a pretty clear idea of the range my IQ would fall into as well as my learning styles, cognitive strengths and weakn…
I had all that same testing, but my parents would not tell me my scores. PS: I was classified as Exceptionally Gifted / Learning Disabled and I am perfectly happy to leave it as that. In theory I could take another IQ test, but I think I am a little old to focus on my potential. IMO, your potential is only important when you have yet to accomplish anything.
The only thing I really wish is that my parents, and the various school administrations had ignored the tests too, because they usually resulted in all kinds of "special programs" that did very little to help me deal with school and adolescence and had negligible impact if any on me when I got older.
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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.
Google Moderator (it's public now). HN user "litewulf" worked on it...
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Google believes in data only . Designers are not used to justifying their ideas with data. While no one comes out and says it, the implication is that most of what constitutes the design profession is mere flimflammery. You don't need a designer to tell you what shade of blue to pick when you can just A/B test a few hundred shades. That's why a lot of designers quit.
Bullshit. For example, do you honestly think that Android UI was done in a data-driven way from the scratch without designers? Google uses data to tweak experience of their existing products like Search UI. That's it. Designing interfaces for new products or features is done by designers (or in some case, like many Google Labs products, by developers).
One thing I'd like to know about is how google deals with declines in productivity. Undoubtedly, their hiring process gets them highly qualified individuals, at least initially. But over time, there has to be people who become lazy and take advantage of their good graces. And it would be expected that as people age they start a family and their work priorities may take a back seat. Is there some kind of process, ala…
It's the same as pretty much any big company - underperformers are notified that they're underperforming, put on a performance improvement plan to help improve their performance, and if they still don't improve, they're fired. There're no quotas for removing people (good riddance, the "fire the bottom 10%" school of management always struck me as the best way to create a poisonous, stressful company culture). But it'…