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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
141–150 of 1001 posts
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, I interviewed for both a GCP and multiple Azure teams simultaneously and the difference in talent level was astounding. The latter team leads were anywhere from disinterested, asking basic level leetcode questions I could breeze through, to fucking incompetent who didn't even understand the coding questions they were asking. I was shocked at how different they were in terms of thoughtfulness and intelligence.
Did you pass the Azure ones then?
lol no, I got into a big argument having to explain recursion, tail call recursion, etc.
The dude asked me a leetcode hard (that I hadn't seen before!) that I was actually able to code up, and he didn't understand that memoization and bottom up dp are equivalent with the exception of stack space.
But at that point I was so annoyed in general at the experience.
My recruiter quit the day I had an interview, my first interview rescheduled the time and no one told me, etc.
It was a fucking joke.
Also, I interviewed at Netflix as well, and I didn't get the job (passed technical interview but didn't get selected after Director level interview. Just wasn't a good fit in terms of interests) and I can't say enough good things about netflix, everyone I met there, and the overall interview process.
So I'm not just annoyed at Azure folks because I didn't get the job. I'm annoyed cause they're mostly morons.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All their revenue came from ads, and they loss-led other projects. Great, market has matured from that. Has it? Seems like Google still makes most of their money via ads and everything else is a loss leader.
Yes Google is still less diversified than its peers. Cloud and YouTube (edit: and Pixel phones?) are profitable afaik. The overall tech market has matured is what I meant; it's no longer time to loss-lead everything.
Not sure I’d characterize YouTube as a diversification from ads.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#144This is interesting, surprisingly blunt, and quite on point about the current malaise, but . . . I think this is the perspective of someone that was happily drinking the kool aid for longer than they should have been. For example, my impression was that had Android assimilated into the wider Google they would have failed. The wider Google views the fact Android isn't Chrome OS as a strategic failure, but the truth is…
Yeah, I take exception to the painting of Android as inherently "unhealthy" and not "solving real problems for users." Also with lumping it in with the unmitigated disaster that was the Social/G+ effort. I attribute much of Android's success to Larry & Eric being very supportive, shielding the team from constant interference from the rest of the company, and letting us get shit done and ship.
I came aboard during the Android acquisition, some months before he started at Google, so of course I may be a bit biased here. I was pretty skeptical about landing at Google and didn't think I'd be there for more than a couple years, but spent 14 years there in the end.
Android had plenty of issues, but shipping consumer electronics successfully really does not happen without dealing with external partners and schedules that you can't fully control.
No idea what the laundry bins thing is about -- never saw that.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#145Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…
I have a long list of ways to improve processes and when I was young, energetic, and didn’t know any better, I got very, very lucky getting many or most of them through. As I’ve gotten older I’ve found more things that I “need” to improve and there’s been more time for me to forget how I need to justify things I consider “the right way” and so I don’t always win those arguments.
But the bigger thing I’m coming to grips with is that I have to stop entertaining offers from companies that give me an “I can fix them” vibe because I will only be able to fix half the things I know to fix before everyone else decides they’ve changed “enough” and would I kindly shut up now. Hello ossification.
Eventually having half good, half bad is going to drive me nuts and take other people with me. I need a higher bar where they are already doing at least half and I can settle for reaching 2/3 or 3/4 instead of fighting uphill to get to 50%, only to give up and start the cycle earlier. If this were dating I was talking about, someone would have sat me down by now for an intervention.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#146The following is a pretty damning statement. > Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural norms of early Google. A symptom of this is the spreading contingent of inept middle management.
Completely accurate IMO.
He wasn't the snake in the garden of Eden-- google completed rather than began its transition with his ascension-- but he would definitely have been Team Snake once he saw the fig leaf sales figures.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#147> one of the most annoying is the prevalence of pointless cookie warnings we have to wade through today. Hey if you're cool with me using your hardrive to store data I have a bunch of chia coins that need mining. Its weird how getting somebody's permission before using their stuff is considered unnecessary.
You don't need to show a "cookie warning" to store a cookie. You only need to show a warning if you're tracking a user, regardless of the technology used (cookie, local storage...) But if you want to store someone's language choice, username, or credentials in a cookie, no banner is needed. In fact, this website is the perfect example.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#148Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…
Well said. I think this happens very naturally with every growing / successful company. Comparing my company of 30 or so with Google is like comparing a bacterium with a race horse, but even at our size being disruptive / staying innovative gets harder every month. Do you assign your best resources to the product that gets the money in? Or can you afford having capable people taking bets on new products, even when you know that such a product (if successful) is possibly years from making a dent in your revenue stream.
That decision is never easy and finding a product that creates a "dent in the revenue stream" at a company like Google with a once-in-a-lifetime product like Ads is probably not realistic even with their resources.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the issues brought up by the author are not ones of priorities, but ones of a select group of mid-level directors (whom you've never heard of, but each of whom wield significant influence over the work output and roadmap for hundreds of engineers) doing a poor job, with nobody above them interested in doing anything about it. > She treats engineers as commodities in a way that is dehumanising, reassigning peo…
I think it goes back to org structure ossification, but also keep in mind that in a sufficiently large company, every department is a thorn in someone else's backside. A world where the people you dislike regularly get the boot is also a world where you have to constantly justify your own existence, where you have aggressive stack ranks, and so forth. It's a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of a de…
And the degree to having some level of org structure ossification is to have lots of people sort of going off and doing their own thing. Which probably worked at Google for a longer time than is often the case just because they were printing money. So what if they were doing projects and then just killing them, living with duplication, or having a bunch of random activities that led to nowhere.
Even if it's a bit frustrating it can also be more fun to be in an environment where it's more of a make your own adventure sort of thing. Mature companies though mostly have to be very structured about how they operate.
Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agree. The people complaining about culture shifts there seem to want the company to pretend it's ~2006. I was never impressed with old Google. All their revenue came from ads, and they loss-led other projects. Fun, but the market has matured from that. Since I joined several years ago, perks have really degraded but overall I've become more satisfied with my actual work. Over-engineered pet projects in and a…
> All their revenue came from ads, and they loss-led other projects. Great, market has matured from that. Has it? Seems like Google still makes most of their money via ads and everything else is a loss leader.
Are the Android app store and GCP loss leaders? I assumed those two would be profitable at least.