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Steve's Google Platform rant

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Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#201

Post by potatolicious »

paddy_m wrote: post #192
potatolicious wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, the way Amazon treats their employees does harm them substantially, they just haven't paid the price visibly to the public (or quite as hard as they will, eventually). Attrition at Amazon is at horrific rates. I know the actual number, though I'm pretty sure that'd violate my NDA to reveal. It's high. It's really high. Guess a really truly terrible number. It's probably higher than that. The stream o…

I did some interviews with amazon, when they told me that their devs get a 22 inch monitor, I almost dropped the phone. They said that they wanted to keep a "lean startup environment", bullshit. That alone stopped me from going further along in the interview process with them.

When I was there, new hires got 24" monitors. Not too bad - but hilariously enough the old hands had to live with 17-19" old Dells (though they got two of them, as if that really helps that much).

I just don't get it. Monitors are items that survives multiple tech generations, have huge demonstrable benefits (moreso than speedy laptops or pretty offices), and don't even cost much at all! (certainly less than SSDs or high-end MacBook Pros!)

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#202

Post by david927 »

someone13 wrote: post #158
david927 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the very few times I've seen Steve back-off of a provocative statement; whatever made that happen does not bode well for Google and I think my point stands.

I don't get the impression that he was "forced" to back off, but rather that he accidentally posted something that was meant for internal consumption in public. I think it's perfectly within his rights to delete the post - most people don't talk the same way with their co-workers as they do in public, and it's perfectly understandable.

I completely get that now, and I retract my comments. I'm sorry if I cast any undue aspersions.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#203

Post by [deleted] »

Lewisham wrote: post #195
pitdesi wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all those who are criticizing this public posting, first note that it is publicly available in several dozen other locations, including some tech rags. More importantly, STEVE HIMSELF SAID IT'S OK TO REPOST - https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesv... Part of me feels that this is actually written to the general public, and the whole public/private thing is a cover up.

Part of me feels that this is actually written to the general public, and the whole public/private thing is a cover up. This is highly unlikely. This sort of internal conversation happens a lot internally. There's no need to take it public. What would it serve? Some sort of escalation of the problem? Unlikely. It's more likely to get you a stern email than it is to get it heard. Steve has no problems getting the ears…

[deleted]

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#205

Post by csarva »

nirvana wrote: post #8
wouterinho wrote: post #3

Werner Vogels did an on-stage interview recently at the Kings of Code conference in Amsterdam. A question from the audience was: "Does the Amazon shopping site run on AWS as well or on a more private/shielded AWS-cloud?". Werner answered that they use the same infrastructure as everybody else and that they could not justify doing anything else. It gave me tremendous trust in the AWS platform.

This was not true at all, at least thru 2007. At that time, there were some minor services that made some use of AWS services, mostly newer things that had been created after AWS was created. AWS was not available to developers within Amazon to use at any time before the day it was publicly launched. At least not on a broad basis, and none of the main Amazon.com services ran on it in 2007. They did share some data ce…

At AWS Summit back in June they said that all (US only?) pages are now rendered via servers on AWS. The databases are still big-iron type boxes due to them being on, IIRC, Oracle and I/O being what it is on EC2.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#206

Post by tytso »

estel wrote: post #40
wouterinho wrote: post #19

It seems to 404 now, a copy is available at https://raw.github.com/gist/933cc4f7df97d553ed89/24386c6a79b...

He's posted saying that it was meant to be available internally only, but didn't set his permissions correctly: https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/bwJ7kAEL...

It wasn't that he set his permissions properly, it was that he posted using the wrong account (corporate account vs. personal account).

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#207

Post by sethg »

SoupIce wrote: post #27
nirvana wrote: post #7

I worked at Amazon from before Steve left to sometime later. I remember being excited when Larry Tessler was hired, and dismayed at the way he was treated. Everything Steve says about Amazon is true, only, it was much worse. Amazon was, by far, the worst employment experience I've ever had. I'm not saying that lightly, I worked for a dozen startups, a couple of which crashed hard in the most gut wrenchingly painful w…

> of course, and I had to do it- RIGHT THAT MINUTE- in the middle of the night. There is your problem right there. Why in your sane mind would you even consider fixing it at that moment? You should have told them to FUCK OFF - right at that minute - and gone back to sleep. Right there and then a loud and sound go fuck a rake and fuck off.

I think that in general, when you’re in a toxic work environment, you either realize it’s toxic or you don’t. If you don’t realize it’s toxic, then you are likely to assume that anything the boss blames on you really is your own fault, so you try to be a good team player, which is generally inconsistent with telling the boss to fuck off. If you do realize it’s toxic, then you will be looking for another job—but you don’t want to do anything that would get you fired before you can quit with dignity.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#208

Post by [deleted] »

Lewisham wrote: post #195
pitdesi wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all those who are criticizing this public posting, first note that it is publicly available in several dozen other locations, including some tech rags. More importantly, STEVE HIMSELF SAID IT'S OK TO REPOST - https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesv... Part of me feels that this is actually written to the general public, and the whole public/private thing is a cover up.

Part of me feels that this is actually written to the general public, and the whole public/private thing is a cover up. This is highly unlikely. This sort of internal conversation happens a lot internally. There's no need to take it public. What would it serve? Some sort of escalation of the problem? Unlikely. It's more likely to get you a stern email than it is to get it heard. Steve has no problems getting the ears…

[deleted]

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#209

Post by jsnell »

0x12 wrote: post #174
jsnell wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There must have been thousands or tens of thousands Google-internal blog posts, Buzzes, emails and now Plus updates about people's perception of what's horribly wrong with some aspect of Google. AFAIK none of those leaked widely. Why would this be different?

Because Steve is very visible. Random googler 'x' giving his opinion is one thing, a guy with the stature of Steve Yegge doing the same is quite another. Especially one where he pretty much writes that Google's #1 is not 'Steve Jobs'. Really, I think that no matter what that this would have found its way to the general public somehow. That said, I think it's great that he speaks his mind like this, even if it is inte…

Internal blog posts written by Yegge earlier didn't leak afaik. Incendiary technical posts written by people in positions of power didn't leak. I mean, not even hints of them, let alone the full text. Maybe the engineering culture has dramatically changed in the last few months, but it used to be the case that full copying of internal technical discussions to external forums would have been totally unthinkable.
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