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Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

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Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#51

Post by sosense »

sigi45 wrote: post #47
baccheion wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also felt the same. The place was draining, distracting, chaotic, cramped, and noisy (in 2010). A complete waste of time in hindsight that's still with me today (haven't been able to work again since leaving at the end of 2010). Everyone still says Google is so great. Enough that I still wonder what happened. I also couldn't settle in, didn't like anyone, and was continually interrupted/harassed/followed.

oO you didn't like anyone there? Sounds like a problem with yourself. Can't imagine that you were sourrounded by assholes.

Sounds like any given open office environment to me.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#52

Post by Radim »

sokoloff wrote: post #48
username3 wrote: post #42

Anyone have videos of someone programming fast or a video of a 10x engineer working or a comparison output of a 10x vs above average?

This question misses the point I think. The differences aren’t going to be that they type 1200 wpm or something that would be interesting or obvious on video. It would more likely look like someone spending time thinking carefully, not (necessarily) at a keyboard, thinking about really needs doing, how to best do it, what the user needs and will value, and they might write 1/3 of the code of a median engineer. The ac…

This is exactly correct. The difference is in how you approach problem solving, not how fast you write the code.

Can you clearly articulate the important concepts and how they inter-relate? Define the problem boundaries (and later, as a consequence, boundaries of functions, data structures, objects)? Separate which component is responsible for what, in a way that makes sense to the business need? Choose the right algorithms? Focus on optimizing what matters, know your tools to get standard parts done in a standard way?

Like all true craftsmen, the final output will make everything seem so easy, so concise and obvious. But it's anything but. The same problem solved by an army of mediocre engineers will just end up a huge convoluted mess. And it doesn't matter how many of them you unleash during the initial architectural stages of a project — arguably the more, the worse the result. Being able to handle uncertainty (as opposed to an unrealistic list of minute specs), ask the right questions and make the right technical choices is what makes 1000x engineers.

The value chain of software is long, and the higher up the chain you can empathize with and code to, the better for you.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#53

Post by CoolGuySteve »

username3 wrote: post #42

Anyone have videos of someone programming fast or a video of a 10x engineer working or a comparison output of a 10x vs above average?

To actually answer your question, Jonathon Blow has some twitch streams of him debugging some problems: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/321734897

I don't know about 10x engineer (I actually think that whole line of thinking is bullshit), but Blow has shipped a few games.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#54

Post by speps »

vinhboy wrote: post #25

> Someone who can do that is ridiculous. Talk about 10x engineers. That's more like 1000x. And it's good, clean code too. Literally no number of median engineers can do that. You can give me a million median engineers and they would never be able to do that. They would just make a huge mess. This is probably one of the most truest thing I've read about our profession. Linus Torvalds, Steve Wozniak comes to mind, who…

https://people.xiph.org/~jm/

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#55

Post by hknd »

grey-area wrote: post #30
ilovecaching wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what's incentivized though. Getting in to a FAANG is just the first step. The next step is to actually show that you can affect more than just your two screens. That's why they work in constant review cycles. People who get frustrated are often the people who don't know how to affect more than their two screens. It's hard, because you're competing with other people who are equally or more brilliant. Althou…

But you're not competing with those brilliant people on technical merit, but in the political game of building a fiefdom in a large company. That takes very different skills, and many people find it distastful.

That might be true for a small percentage of projects/teams.

If you want to succeed as a SWE at a FAANG company you'll have to be an exceptional engineer, or have other skills (leadership, pm, ...). You can't just weasle up the ladder by playing "political games".

Though, most of my colleagues don't even care about their career - most of us just want to work on cool projects which immediately affect billions of people.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#56

Post by grey-area »

tpurves wrote: post #37
grey-area wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're not competing with those brilliant people on technical merit, but in the political game of building a fiefdom in a large company. That takes very different skills, and many people find it distastful.

Some might be surprised at what are the most effective strategies in fifedom building and rising in a large org. It very often has much more about making deliberate choices to help those around you succeed, to actively recognize others and help others arond you sieze opportunities. And that kind of demonstrated leadership is what will propel your own rise in status within an organization. It’s a mistake, and will set…

It's still building a fiefdom based on loyalty. You'll be competing with people who build loyalty in other, more negative ways - good doesn't always triumph, and I'd contend that in large orgs it rarely does. The pressures that come to bear as you rise will not push you to be good to those under you.

Politics does not have to be a zero sum game but often those who view it that way and are absolutely ruthless rise to the top. Perhaps that's just the human condition.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#57

Post by hknd »

basejumping wrote: post #23
ilovecaching wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what's incentivized though. Getting in to a FAANG is just the first step. The next step is to actually show that you can affect more than just your two screens. That's why they work in constant review cycles. People who get frustrated are often the people who don't know how to affect more than their two screens. It's hard, because you're competing with other people who are equally or more brilliant. Althou…

From what I hear it's turning fairly intelligent to asshole

99% of people within FAANG are the most friendly people ever. E.g. for Google not being a dick is a hiring criteria (Googleyness).

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#58

Post by YokoZar »

nodesocket wrote: post #22

> When they sat down with me they said, “we want you to build an email something.” As I understand Paul began work on Gmail in 2001 at the time Yahoo Mail and Hotmail were market leaders. Interesting Google execs knew they could do better, even though Gmail didn't officially launch until over 3 years later.

it's been widely reported that gmail was a 20% project to start with. That seems inconsistent with this version of events.

Re: Paul Buchheit on Joining Google, How to Become a Great Engineer, and Happiness

#60

Post by C1sc0cat »

baccheion wrote: post #41
mehrdada wrote: post #2

> Overall, the job wasn't exciting to me. I didn't have to work that hard, and one day I had this realization while sitting in my gray cubicle (I was in a sea of gray cubicles surrounded by gray walls, listening to white noise and all alone): I'm like, “Man I am so tired. I need to go home and take a nap.” I went home, but as soon as I got there I realized, “I'm not tired anymore.” Working at Intel was a draining env…

I also felt the same. The place was draining, distracting, chaotic, cramped, and noisy (in 2010). A complete waste of time in hindsight that's still with me today (haven't been able to work again since leaving at the end of 2010). Everyone still says Google is so great. Enough that I still wonder what happened. I also couldn't settle in, didn't like anyone, and was continually interrupted/harassed/followed.

Most places that do "interesting" work do have some elements of distracting and noisy.

At my first job on campus at Cranfield university my shared office was a portacabin which was next to the hardstanding between two of the hangers and they used to test run executive jets after being serviced < 100m away now that is loud.

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