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Lessons from 14 years at Google

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Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#141

Post by ajross »

websiteapi wrote: post #113
hansmayer wrote: post #93

Not looking to dismiss the authors long tenure at a major tech company like Google, but the first point kind of stuck like a sore thumb. If the Google culture was at all obsessed about helping users, I wonder why Google UX always sucked so much and in particularly in the recent years seem to be getting even worse. Every single one of their services is a pain to use, with unnecessary steps, clicks - basically everythi…

which company's product has great UX? I'm always seeing people hating on things without showcasing examples of what they think is exemplary

No one's. Everyone sucks. Find a product and you'll find a population collating complaints about it. Whining about interface design is like the cheapest form of shared currency in our subculture.

Fundamentally it's a bikeshed effect. Complaining about hard features like performance is likely to get you in trouble if you aren't actually doing the leg work to measure it and/or expert enough to shout down the people who show up to argue. But UI paradigms are inherently squishy and subjective, so you get to grouse without consequences.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#142

Post by websiteapi »

samiv wrote: post #57
llmslave2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Google would be biased a little more towards quality and performance. Their user-facing products tend to be full of jank, although Gmail is quite good to be fair. In general I think the "ship fast and break things" mentality assumes a false dilemma, as if the alternative to shipping broken software is to not ship at all. If thats the mentality no wonder software sucks today. I'd rather teams shipped working, c…

I wish people who ship crappy software didn't ship it and would let someone else ship something better instead. It really sucks when the first mover / incumbent is some crappy half assed solution. But unfortunately we live in a world where quality is largely irrelevant and other USPs are more important. For example these little weekend projects that become successful despite their distinct lack of quality Linux kerne…

existing is better than not existing and those who move fast and ship crappy software first will win. learn the lesson :)

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#143

Post by joduplessis »

> 1. The best engineers are obsessed with solving user problems.

Complete bullshit. Sorry, but the reason why people use Google is because of the ecosystem + value proposition. Google Drive & Calendar are some of the most outdated pieces of SaaS software that only gets used because of the greater ecosystem they live in - and price. They (along with the other Google products) are also some of the poorest designed user interfaces online. Let's cut the crap for once here. If I were Google I would be worried because companies like Fastmail, Notion & Proton are quickly catching up.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#144

Post by websiteapi »

joduplessis wrote: post #143

> 1. The best engineers are obsessed with solving user problems. Complete bullshit. Sorry, but the reason why people use Google is because of the ecosystem + value proposition. Google Drive & Calendar are some of the most outdated pieces of SaaS software that only gets used because of the greater ecosystem they live in - and price. They (along with the other Google products) are also some of the poorest designed user…

> If I were Google I would be worried because companies like Fastmail, Notion & Proton are quickly catching up.

lol do you honestly think Google is worried about Fastmail, Notion or Proton?

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#146

Post by magicalist »

joshribakoff wrote: post #68

I think part of the importance of being a senior engineer is not spreading hype through the industry. This appears to be the guy who just posted all over social media that they just got Claude and redid a year long project in a week, followed by tweets from his eng team clarifying its just “demo” grade.

> This appears to be the guy who just posted all over social media that they just got Claude and redid a year long project in a week

It would take less time than it did to write this comment to look it up and see that these are two different people.

Google engineer [Jaana Dogan] says Claude Code built in one hour what her team spent a year on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46477966

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#147

Post by websiteapi »

addaon wrote: post #136
websiteapi wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which company's product has great UX? I'm always seeing people hating on things without showcasing examples of what they think is exemplary

Omni Group. Wolfram. Parts of Apple. Rhino3D. Parts of Breville. Prusa (on device, not on desktop). Speed Queen (dial-based). Just from applications I currently have open and devices I can see from where I'm sitting.

I mean something that has a clear Google analog/equivalent that way can compare on. I personally think Wolfram Alpha (assuming that's what you're talking about) isn't any better than Google.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#148

Post by joduplessis »

websiteapi wrote: post #144
joduplessis wrote: post #143

> 1. The best engineers are obsessed with solving user problems. Complete bullshit. Sorry, but the reason why people use Google is because of the ecosystem + value proposition. Google Drive & Calendar are some of the most outdated pieces of SaaS software that only gets used because of the greater ecosystem they live in - and price. They (along with the other Google products) are also some of the poorest designed user…

> If I were Google I would be worried because companies like Fastmail, Notion & Proton are quickly catching up. lol do you honestly think Google is worried about Fastmail, Notion or Proton?

> are quickly catching up.

If you were Yahoo a few years before Google it would sound the same.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#149

Post by ghaff »

samiv wrote: post #57
llmslave2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish Google would be biased a little more towards quality and performance. Their user-facing products tend to be full of jank, although Gmail is quite good to be fair. In general I think the "ship fast and break things" mentality assumes a false dilemma, as if the alternative to shipping broken software is to not ship at all. If thats the mentality no wonder software sucks today. I'd rather teams shipped working, c…

I wish people who ship crappy software didn't ship it and would let someone else ship something better instead. It really sucks when the first mover / incumbent is some crappy half assed solution. But unfortunately we live in a world where quality is largely irrelevant and other USPs are more important. For example these little weekend projects that become successful despite their distinct lack of quality Linux kerne…

WRT Linux. Sure, 1991 or really even mid-90s Linux was clearly immature. But Wall Street was adopting it instead of Solaris by the turn of the century. Plus "open source" so it wasn't the case of a new proprietary Unix just emerging from the sea foam which no one wanted anyway but Linux becoming the good enough Unix standard which is what people did want.

Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google

#150

Post by websiteapi »

joduplessis wrote: post #148
websiteapi wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were Google I would be worried because companies like Fastmail, Notion & Proton are quickly catching up. lol do you honestly think Google is worried about Fastmail, Notion or Proton?

> are quickly catching up. If you were Yahoo a few years before Google it would sound the same.

the writing was already on the road w.r.t to user mindshare among normies. I see no evidence of the same happening with fast mail. why would anyone switch from gmail to fast mail other than privacy, which regular people couldn't care less about?
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