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Steve's Google Platform rant

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Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#411

Post by chrisbennet »

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.

This quote comes to mind: "A failure of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine."

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#413

Post by bitmonk »

pitdesi wrote: post #120

It now 404's so I've posted it here: Stevey's Google Platforms Rant I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right. Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one.…

A lot of this is great, but it's clear that the author has not actually followed the process of launching AWS. Bezos did not wake up one day and decide to start selling his datacenter space. AWS was developed, clearly after this person left Amazon, for Amazon developers. The engineer (CTO?) responsible for this woke up one day and realized, well, fuck, we could sell this. Pairing some of the stories here with that basic knowledge actually explains a lot of the SOA startups popping up in EC2. Companies are beginning to form in the shape of departments at Amazon, which is interesting, I'm not sure it's awesome.

That said, let's not fool ourselves. There is nothing more wrong with The Internet right now than EC2. It is poorly executed and Amazon's position as a market leader has made them incredibly lazy about improving it or contributing to the core technologies (Xen!) which are responsible for the most complex bits of it.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#414

Post by bitmonk »

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…

"Never let your employer give you a pager, unless you're an ops guy."

Fuck You

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#415

Post by bitmonk »

peterb wrote: post #96
nirvana wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We set a high bar! B players hire C players! Only hire A players!" The way it works at amazon is, if anyone doesn't like you, you're out. It doesn't matter if its relevant or not. It doesn't matter if the person who doesn't like you knows nothing about programming. My boss- the one with the criminal justice degree- would often veto people because they "weren't good programmers". Of course, he had no clue who was a g…

The funny thing about "A players hire A players and B players hire C players" is that every company I have worked at that uses that mantra is full of B & C players from the top down.

I remember being "Top Graded" as an "A Player" when I was at Rackspace. In addition to everyone quickly beginning to hate me, I caught an article on Top Grading in the next few days which said that A players have an average tenure of 3 months, mostly due to the fact that we shake things up and are unafraid to challenge anyone, which eventually gets tiring. B players are loyal and anyone who has actually read on how all this is supposed to work realizes that C players are just in the wrong job, possibly even at the right company. They're unhappy and they stop trying, unless you can redeploy them.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#416

Post by Foliospaces »

Google+ still has a chance. But time is running out. Having just used it with a class for a semester, it was great (because all my students use Facebook so they weren't distracted!)but there are some huge gaps. Will everyone be gone before they are fixed. Why oh why, didn't they introduce shared circles from the start. Try to get 50 students to add each other, it is just not possible. This is the customer service Amazon point that was made so well in the article. I think it was great that it went public, there are lots of great points to think about.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#417

Post by filutek »

michaelochurch wrote: post #315
ajtaylor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe and Australia have forever ruined me with their standard 4 weeks of vacation time. I can't fathom ever going back to anything less.

This is when most people realize that the U.S. is a third-world country. If not that, it's when they go to the doctor in France and ask about billing and get a funny stare.

Look at the bright side: it is still the richest third world country, at least until Wall Street casino wrecks it for good...

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#418

Post by chadmalik »

filutek wrote: post #417
michaelochurch wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is when most people realize that the U.S. is a third-world country. If not that, it's when they go to the doctor in France and ask about billing and get a funny stare.

Look at the bright side: it is still the richest third world country, at least until Wall Street casino wrecks it for good...

Yeah but since workers don't really see that wealth whats the point? Should your average US citizen who gets weeks less in vacation, has to deal with the idiotic HMO system, etc. celebrate because "our billionaires have more money"???
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