Code Jam/Summer of Code was a great indicator from a hiring perspective ... When I see a junior candidate who participated in those, it was always a good sign. I wonder if they are trying to reduce "training" of talent that could be potentially made into competition.
Google stopping coding competitions
51–60 of 335 posts
Re: Google stopping coding competitions
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tip outs are better in bougie joints frequented by tech workers. This isnt a contradiction to your main point, maybe more of a damning with faint praise if anything.
> Tip outs are better in bougie joints frequented by tech workers. This sounds a little trickle-downy. Why not strive for an economy where people doing important work like feeding their communities just... Don't need to be tipped? I know it sounds crazy in today-terms, but if it makes any sense, it makes tipping culture look like more of a problem than a boon to anyone receiving the tips.
It would be trickle-downy if they weren't competing for the same one bedroom apartments.
Re: Google stopping coding competitions
#53[flagged]
Re: Google stopping coding competitions
#54It seems like large companies are like government: Just like there's a power vacuum that causes governments to exist, there's an economic vacuum that causes large companies to exist. The question is not if these things will exist, but how and why -- and especially with what limits . It's sad to see Google -- the once very promising small company with big ideas -- getting sucked into the vacuum.
I often think of markets in pseudo-evolutionary terms. The types and sizes of companies that survive are those that fit the environmental pressures.
One common trend in evolution is toward gigantism in places of intense competition. Whales, for example, may be as large as they are to avoid having to compete or be eaten by smaller animals. Being bigger means they eat more, leaving fewer resources for competitors.
It can be quite the winning strategy.
At least so long as the environment can provide enough stability to feed such large organisms in the manner in which they are evolved to exploit.
For companies, being large means you can always buy the competition or make sure the barrier to entry is too high for competition (thinner profit margins, "free" services, regulatory capture, etc.).
It works, and quite well. These large corporations can withstand enormous financial shocks, and if they can't, they get purchased by those that can.
For most mature markets this generally seems to shake out to most of the product area being divided between two or three big players and a host of smaller companies at the edges.
Oddly enough, when things are stable being large may be a winning strategy, but it is also very fragile and if the whole system gets disrupted, can be the first to fail when things change too much.
Re: Google stopping coding competitions
#55Interesting that just a few days ago they posted about opening basically the same thing but focused on ML https://developers.googleblog.com/2023/02/MLOlympiad2023.htm... Interesting contrast and I guess a sign of the changing tides.
Bingo! It just means that developer as a job is on the way out and in 20 years everyone is going to be a prompt engineer. Hence getting rid of coding competitions and sponsoring ML competitions instead.
20 years from now prompt engineering wont be required. We might still call it prompt engineering tho.
Re: Google stopping coding competitions
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google has been "just another company" for a while now, but I disagree with "prone to be overtaken". Yes, Google Search is a dead product. The moneymakers aren't, though: AdSense keeps on trucking, fuelled by billions of annual YouTube watch-minutes piling on top of each other. For a company to effectively displace Google, they need a lot of really well-made services priced more attractively than 'free*'.
Apple (and later Spotify) demonstrated that a better quality product can beat the free offering.
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Re: Google stopping coding competitions
#57Another product of the near-zero interest rate phenomenon that needed to go.
Re: Google stopping coding competitions
#58Before jumping on the "Google is now Oracle" bandwagon, curious with anyone with even a little inside baseball knowledge can comment on the reasoning behind this. Because if it's for penny-pinching, "we need to be more efficient" reasons, then yeah, I'm ready to jump on the bandwagon too. But someone else posited it may be more that they want to focus on new skills needed for AI, for example (i.e. "Software 2.0" vs. "Software 1.0" skills, to borrow a term from a recent HN post) - in that case, would make sense.
All that said, by shutting down without announcing a reason, Google must've known people would speculate and likely assume it's because of the "Google = Oracle" reasoning. So I'm certainly leaning towards the "this is pretty sad" side of things.
Re: Google stopping coding competitions
#59Is there any other, more gracious, way to interpret this as Google retiring for on being Google, if so I’d like to know. I think the direct impact of these competitions to hiring were minimal. The biggest impact was to have thousands perhaps millions of coders and researchers see Google as the place to be. As the place that gets it. The Mecca of coderdom, if you will. Now they are just another corporation. I hope the…
As a nerdy kid growing up, Google always felt like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory to me. There was somewhat of a feeling of mystery about the things they were working on, and when things like Gmail were unveiled it felt like such a wonder.
Now they just seem like a worse version of Microsoft to me, at least Microsoft knows how to deal with enterprises.
Re: Google stopping coding competitions
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
You quoted the word “indirectly” and then ignored it in your response.
No, I didn't. Whatever labor benefits accrued to these jobs and others are below the threshold of detection, so I don't consider them. The fact that they can use google now instead of not using google is certainly a change, but not one I consider relevant to the claim being made.
hth :)