Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google lays off its Python team

social.coop

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 476 posts

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#451

Post by fullmetal09 »

zem wrote: post #59
compiler-guy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it does. Pretty much every FAANG, and many smaller ones, have teams for every programming language they consider important. Google has C++, Rust, Python, Java, JavaScript, and others (although I've heard that several of these teams were hard it in this round.) To take a basic example: Google has a team that works inside LLVM and Clang to improve the code it produces for Google's specific workloads. (Often t…

in addition to contributing to upstream python, we * maintained a stable version of python within google, and made sure that everything in the monorepo worked with it. in my time on the team we moved from 2.7 to 3.6, then incrementally to 3.11, each update taking months to over a year because the rule at google is if you check any code in, you are responsible for every single breakage it causes * maintained tools to…

> maintained tools to keep thousands of third party packages constantly updated from their open source versions.

Hi Zem could you say more about how you maintained those thousands of third party packages? We are facing the same issue and would love to hear your insight!

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#452

Post by KingOfCoders »

pabloivan57 wrote: post #304
bbrake wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving things to india sounds like a great idea, except the 13-15 hour difference in communication. it's all well and good until you're in Cupertino and taking an 11:30 pm call because they have 0 hours of overlap... guess you can force them to work US hours, but that goes to culture as well. Are they trying to show that India's workplace is more compliant and they'll just do what corp types will tell them?

I worked at Amazon for almost 10 years and I hate, repeat hate working with India teams. Their quality is subpar, period. No other way to put it

India is just like every other country. Ive worked with very bad developers in India, unbearable, and I've worked with excellent developers that I would hire again in an instant.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#453

Post by zem »

fullmetal09 wrote: post #451
zem wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in addition to contributing to upstream python, we * maintained a stable version of python within google, and made sure that everything in the monorepo worked with it. in my time on the team we moved from 2.7 to 3.6, then incrementally to 3.11, each update taking months to over a year because the rule at google is if you check any code in, you are responsible for every single breakage it causes * maintained tools to…

> maintained tools to keep thousands of third party packages constantly updated from their open source versions. Hi Zem could you say more about how you maintained those thousands of third party packages? We are facing the same issue and would love to hear your insight!

sure! it used a collection of tools, the main ones were

* copybara [https://github.com/google/copybara] to mirror between github and our internal repo and transform the source tree layout to our internal conventions

* mercurial patch queues [https://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/managing-change-with-mercur...] to apply internal changes

there are internal tools to automate the copybara configuration for python packages specifically, and to map between mercurial and google's version control system, but that's the main idea, and a specific review process for adding new packages.

the process is actually documented here though not all the referenced tools are available (or even applicable) externally: https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/thirdparty...

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#454

Post by smsm42 »

Vegenoid wrote: post #415
jubalfh wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you do realise that ussr does not exist anymore (it's been replaced with a hyper-capitalist structure that mutated into a fascist dictatorship); and that the existence of people being highly paid does not disprove the fact tha the us-style capitalism is a terrible system for anyone but the highest echelons?

The point is that many would view Google SWEs as being in the highest echelons. Generally, people who get paid very large amounts of money under capitalism are seen as being hypocritical when they criticize capitalism, if they aren't using their wealth to make change. It's not that their criticism isn't valid, it's the feeling that they are perpetuating and benefiting from capitalism more than 99% of people, so they…

If there was some valid criticism, it'd warrant some engagement on merits. But it's not even that. It's just "I've got laid off from my extremely lucrative job, and probably will land a similarly lucrative job within a short time, therefore the whole societal system must be overthrown". It's not a criticism, it's just some kind of mental tick - any time anything bad happens, say some fashionable nonsense about capitalism being awful. As they saying goes, it's not even wrong! It's just lazy.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#455

Post by smsm42 »

jubalfh wrote: post #365
smsm42 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you do realise that ussr does not exist anymore O RLY?! That fact totally changes my whole argument... unless it was an example of a non-capitalist society and I never claimed it currently exists and the point was the comparison of living in capitalist and non-capitalist system. > the existence of people being highly paid does not disprove the fact tha the us-style capitalism is a terrible system for anyone but the…

dude, i'm polish, and i know very well how dysfunctional ussr was. moreover, my father was from lviv; he repatriated to poland in 1956. members of my family enjoyed the hospitality of the siberian gulags for the reason of defending warsaw as a part of polish pre-war military, too. however, i do not mistake capitalism with free markets; capitalism (in the stage where we are, ruled by rentiers and oligarchs that we cal…

I think for somebody fresh out of Google and an RM for Python survival is not going to be a pressing concern. The streets aren't exactly filled with starving ex-Googlers. Again, getting fired sucks, but it's not exactly an atrocity which necessitates the overthrowing of the whole political system.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#456

Post by pclmulqdq »

isatty wrote: post #438
pclmulqdq wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard that SRE teams can get away with this on the idea that SREs usually are not as good at software engineering as SWEs, so some bad engineering practices can fly. I never saw Python actually get used, though, in the projects I worked on.

This is blatantly false, along with the idea that there’s only very little python.

On the scale of the company, Python is a very small language, and the very important stuff is 100% not in Python. However, 100,000 people work at Google, and probably over a million have it on their resume, so "small" at Google is "big" for a lot of people.

Google can definitely afford (in technical terms) to be a follower rather than a leader when it comes to Python.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#457

Post by DavidAmelia »

zem wrote: post #59
compiler-guy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it does. Pretty much every FAANG, and many smaller ones, have teams for every programming language they consider important. Google has C++, Rust, Python, Java, JavaScript, and others (although I've heard that several of these teams were hard it in this round.) To take a basic example: Google has a team that works inside LLVM and Clang to improve the code it produces for Google's specific workloads. (Often t…

in addition to contributing to upstream python, we * maintained a stable version of python within google, and made sure that everything in the monorepo worked with it. in my time on the team we moved from 2.7 to 3.6, then incrementally to 3.11, each update taking months to over a year because the rule at google is if you check any code in, you are responsible for every single breakage it causes * maintained tools to…

[dead]

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#458

Post by jubalfh »

smsm42 wrote: post #455
jubalfh wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dude, i'm polish, and i know very well how dysfunctional ussr was. moreover, my father was from lviv; he repatriated to poland in 1956. members of my family enjoyed the hospitality of the siberian gulags for the reason of defending warsaw as a part of polish pre-war military, too. however, i do not mistake capitalism with free markets; capitalism (in the stage where we are, ruled by rentiers and oligarchs that we cal…

I think for somebody fresh out of Google and an RM for Python survival is not going to be a pressing concern. The streets aren't exactly filled with starving ex-Googlers. Again, getting fired sucks, but it's not exactly an atrocity which necessitates the overthrowing of the whole political system.

non sequitur.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#459

Post by zenlikethat »

Attrecomet wrote: post #445
joezydeco wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gateway to cheap developers in Eastern Europe, Poland, Ukraine, etc

I would have expected countries like Poland to have a mature enough IT ecosystem that Google could have just moved there directly if they wanted. Why stop over at one of Europe's most expensive places to get talent if that was to goal?

because it's easier to get Polish, Czech, Ukranian engineers to move to Munich than Dutch, UK, German etc. to move to eastern europe I assume

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#460

Post by zenlikethat »

brutus1213 wrote: post #315
mihai_maruseac wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, production code is C++, but the way the models are built is Python code, colab, save via Orbax/TF SavedModel, etc and then serve in C++. All (most, to hedge it) development is done via Python. I don't directly develop the models, I played with some for fuzzing [1] and I'm working on security for them [2]. And, before joining GOSST, I was leading the OSS DevInfra team in TF. I still have the most number of commit…

Hello! Can I ask you for some random career advice? I am mid-career, in a low-level mgmt position but want to return to being an IC. My team's tech stack is Python and Kotlin, but in my position I don't get to code. I code for fun at home but it gravitates towards Python (as it is highly relevant for doing Deep Learning work). My question is if I ever go into a backend role, what language best lets me get into a deep…

It's not language, it's experience, network, and having a differentiator that makes potential employers say, "Wow, we need to hire brutus1213 for our team because they have a really unique skill at !" (X could be Kubernetes, deep learning, Erlang, whatever... the more uncommon, the better though.)

To that end, focus heavily on whatever exists in the vertex of what you're good at (which did you like and excel at of those things you did?) and a growth area (example: Python, C++ and the multitudinous ways they continue to be used together in AI etc).

So you have to look at what existing leverage you have and build upon that foundation. It will be very difficult to get a role without getting some hands on experience back first, so where I'd start is, could you step down to become IC at your current job? I'd be more interested to evaluate a candidate doing Python/Kotlin that wants to move into something adjacent than someone in management who just wants to be a dev again.

Post reply on HN