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Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

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Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#151

Post by mathteddybear »

miki123211 wrote: post #76
danpalmer wrote: post #24

There are a bunch of comments saying that Google is just like any other big tech company and that the exciting engineering bit has gone. My experience is only from the last 2.5 years, but I've got a slightly different take. Engineering from >10 years ago seems like it was a wild west. Some truly stunning pieces of technology, strung together with duct tape. Everything had its own configuration language, workflow engi…

> Nowadays we've got Boq/Pod, the P2020 suite, Rollouts, the automated job sizing technologies, even BCID Could you elaborate on what these are for a non-googler? Ironically enough, Google isn't very helpful.

can't speak for others, but BCID is this thingy: maybe your team has some petabytes quota in the datacenter, but as a software engineer, you no longer can test your number-crunching data-processing program by running it there, not before checking it into repository. Instead, you'll have to check it in, and then run, and then check in the fixes you found

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#152

Post by troad »

steelframe wrote: post #44
stonethrowaway wrote: post #6

Light on details and mostly seems to revolve around money.

When I worked at Google I immediately sold my stock and diversified. In hindsight that "cost" me at least $2MM. At a subsequent employer I held the stock, determined not to make the same mistake again. That "cost" me nearly $100k before I realized that the new employer's stock was not going to do what GOOG did. Anyway, congratulations to those Googlers who "picked" GOOG by not selling their GSUs and who made out like…

> Imagine having had an opportunity to miss out on 8 figures of stock returns and only be left with 7 figures because you followed sound financial advice.

A bit of perspective may be warranted. There are single mothers busting ass raising kids on tips and food stamps, while you're asking for sympathy for making out with only seven figures from your Google stock options.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#153

Post by ben_w »

usr1106 wrote: post #148

Some 20 - 10 years ago I was seriously interested in joining Google for many of the reasons he lists. In the end I never applied because at the time they had no development in any country I would have been interested to relocate to. However, during recent years I have turned into a Google hater. He does not mention any of those aspects. Google is an evil business IMHO. They are an advertising company. The challenges…

Similar, but less emotively. I'm disappointed in them but I'm not a hater.

> 90% of Youtube is useless crap

That is the way of all things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

But the best of YouTube, people are clearly willing to pay for that.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#154

Post by ben_w »

tinco wrote: post #146
skybrian wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although there were some rough areas, Google has been considered to have pretty advanced software engineering for 20 years or more. There was plenty for a new engineer to boggle at even then. On the other hand, someone who started in 2015 missed out on the years when Google was mostly considered to be the good guys and given the benefit of the doubt. That’s about when the culture started turning against “big tech” in…

No, that culture started turning against big tech when Microsoft and Oracle started very brazenly abusing their market domination in the late 90s. The culture turned on Google around the same time Google lost their innocence and dropped the "Don't be evil" clause (note the dropping of that clause was not the cause, just one of the symptoms).

Back in the 90s, at least in the UK, it wasn't called "big tech"; and it wasn't a major part of our direct culture as a family home might have one personal computer if they were well off but it wasn't all that important.

I suspect that even today you'd have a hard time finding a random person on the street who even knows that Oracle is a company and not a character from The Matrix or ancient Greek mythology. And if you tell them they bought Sun they'll think you mean the newspaper, if you talk about Java they'll either think you mean the island or are talking about a brand of coffee.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#155

Post by p4bl0 »

I've always wondered if privacy conscious engineers who work at Google do actually use Google's services for their personal lives (Google Drive, Google Photos, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Keep, Google Docs, etc.)? And if so, do they continue to use them when after leaving the company?

I ask this question here because there seem to be quite some (ex-)Google employees in this thread.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#156

Post by usr1106 »

ben_w wrote: post #153
usr1106 wrote: post #148

Some 20 - 10 years ago I was seriously interested in joining Google for many of the reasons he lists. In the end I never applied because at the time they had no development in any country I would have been interested to relocate to. However, during recent years I have turned into a Google hater. He does not mention any of those aspects. Google is an evil business IMHO. They are an advertising company. The challenges…

Similar, but less emotively. I'm disappointed in them but I'm not a hater. > 90% of Youtube is useless crap That is the way of all things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law But the best of YouTube, people are clearly willing to pay for that.

I would be willing to pay based on usage. But my usage is so low that the current price feels horrendous per hour.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#157

Post by thaumasiotes »

tinco wrote: post #146
skybrian wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although there were some rough areas, Google has been considered to have pretty advanced software engineering for 20 years or more. There was plenty for a new engineer to boggle at even then. On the other hand, someone who started in 2015 missed out on the years when Google was mostly considered to be the good guys and given the benefit of the doubt. That’s about when the culture started turning against “big tech” in…

No, that culture started turning against big tech when Microsoft and Oracle started very brazenly abusing their market domination in the late 90s. The culture turned on Google around the same time Google lost their innocence and dropped the "Don't be evil" clause (note the dropping of that clause was not the cause, just one of the symptoms).

> around the same time Google lost their innocence and dropped the "Don't be evil" clause

When did that happen? It's still there.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#158

Post by jononor »

zrobotics wrote: post #83
ethbr1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the years when Google was mostly considered to be the good guys and given the benefit of the doubt It's been interesting to see the tech and public zeitgeist shift on this. Lesson: if you're going to be popular for killing a king, be careful how similarly the thing you place on your head starts to look to a crown.

Serious question: what king did Google kill? They really didn't take down a big player in an existing industry, they started by being very good at search and displaced other search companies at a time when internet search wasn't a big business. I don't have a great answer here, but one of the things that I think caused public opinion to shift is when people started realizing how truly massive they had gotten. It's po…

"kill" is not a good metaphor in tech/markets, because established things and companies actually goes away. "Dethrone" is better, as the newer thing at some point becomes equal, and then dominant. But the old still exists, potentially staying in terms of absolute market value, but minority in terms of relative market value.

During the lifetime of Google: mobile has dethroned PC, video streaming has dethroned TV, SaaS over pay-once software, online advertising over physical, etc. Google has been a force in all of these (and more) - though not alone of course.

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#159

Post by [deleted] »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #42
lysace wrote: post #37

> USA centric culture, if you are not in USA at Google and don’t have a big presence in a location it’s a bit like swimming upstream, it’s easy to feel isolated, sidelined or on the flipside overwhelmed with late meetings It's like the fourth time I read/hear this. I understand that it's a tricky one to adress.

This is US companies in general! Never work for one in another country; if you can help it. All decisions will be centralized to the US head office and require face to face. Communication is generally terrible. I’ve worked for European and Asian owned companies, and they seem to be able to handle distributed authority much better. For the “land of the free”, it sure seems like US companies run on a feudal system.

[deleted]

Re: Postmortem of my 9 year journey at Google

#160

Post by pfsalter »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #157
tinco wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that culture started turning against big tech when Microsoft and Oracle started very brazenly abusing their market domination in the late 90s. The culture turned on Google around the same time Google lost their innocence and dropped the "Don't be evil" clause (note the dropping of that clause was not the cause, just one of the symptoms).

> around the same time Google lost their innocence and dropped the "Don't be evil" clause When did that happen? It's still there.

Back in 2018 [1], at a similar time that there was a lot of moving about and restructuring. I think this is about the time that Google search started going downhill as well

[1] https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

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