I am going to file this line > If you win every debate, you’re probably accumulating silent resistance.
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Lessons from 14 years at Google
551–560 of 732 posts
Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The load time improvements had destroyed their company culture. Instead of everyone coming into the office, turning on their computers, and spending the next 10min chatting and drinking coffee One of my early tasks as a junior engineer involved some automation work in a warehouse. It got assigned to me, the junior, because it involved a lot of time working in the warehouse instead of at a comfortable desk. I assume…
The more efficient I made the technical part of the job, the more time they had to spend doing the manual labor part of the job to keep up. Imagine you like writing code, and someone automates that part of the job so you have to spend more of your time reviewing PRs and writing specs...
efficiency is the enemy of employment, no?
Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google
#553Not looking to dismiss the authors long tenure at a major tech company like Google, but the first point kind of stuck like a sore thumb. If the Google culture was at all obsessed about helping users, I wonder why Google UX always sucked so much and in particularly in the recent years seem to be getting even worse. Every single one of their services is a pain to use, with unnecessary steps, clicks - basically everythi…
> wonder why Google UX always sucked so much and in particularly in the recent years seem to be getting even worse UX? Google doesn't even bother helping folks locked out of their Gmail accounts. For people who use Android (some 3bn), that's like a digital death sentence, with real-world consequences. It is almost comical that anyone would think Google is customer-focused, but might if they were being paid handsomely…
And how are they supposed to do it if users did not add proper 2FA (and backup those recovery keys)?
Even banks are struggling to authenticate folks. For a longtime in EU people with 3rd world passports cannot create accounts easily.
Google cannot connect identity of a person to email address easily. Or they need to create CS - that will authenticate passports? And hundreds of countries, stolen IDs?
Nay.
> The thing is that at scale your edge cases are still millions of people
> never seem to be capable of handling the other parts that come with it
Same thing with govts. If you go to driver license. passport or any govt office then there will one person with some strange issue.
Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can inflation adjusted income be up and there still be an affordability crisis?
The price of housing can rise even faster than incomes. Housing is only a part of the basket used to measure inflation. Housing's price rose faster than the weighted basket average, some other goods and services rose slower or even fell.
Accommodation costs are the first part of any sensible measure of inflation. If you're not factoring in housing then you're fudging the figures.
Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it might very well just lead to leveling up the entire workforce. How could that possibly work? At some point I could see white collar work trending down fast, in a way that radically increased the value of blue color work. Software gets cheaper much faster than hardware. But then the innovation and investments go into smart hardware, and robotics effectiveness/cost goes up. If you can see a path where AI isn't a o…
Craftsmen will have a resurgence, that's probably a 'leveling up' in terms of resilience against AI takeover. There's just no way of automating quite a few of the physically effective crafts.
So the rich who can afford craftsmen will get richer, spend more on their multiple houses, perhaps. But that's literal crumbs, one or two jobs out of tens of thousands. There's no significant "leveling up" there at the societal levels of job destruction we're talking about.
Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
So teach your kids to kiss ass and play poltiics. Or to stay far away and do something useful with their lives.
This is what I really don’t get about these types of folks. Do they really want to remember their life’s work as “kissing ass and playing politics”? I get the “work to live” and all that, but you’re basically tossing away half your life…for what, money? How much money do you need!?
Well, I think that it depends on perspective and motivations.
Kissing asses/politics can be treated as skill used for different purposes. Imagine your ambition is to build bridge, skyscraper or fancy opera house.
To be chosen as the one for such projects, you must play many games including politics.
(I assume good intentions, selfish ones are possible too, but are they worth discussing?)
Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inflation adjusted incomes are up in the US across the board. The affordability problem is largely the price of housing because it's illegal to build.
How can inflation adjusted income be up and there still be an affordability crisis?
Housing is not part of the inflation calculation. There IS a housing inflation crisis.
Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what is the correct solution to that specific problem then, adjust loading time per customer?
The solution is to accept that this isn’t a software development problem, and to remove yourself from the situation as painlessly as possible. If a manager wants to structure a morning break into their employees’ day, they can do that. It doesn’t require a software fix.
Completely insane, who doesn't get to have coffee breaks without manager permission? Surely any org that treats its employees as adults would not have this problem.
Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google
#55915 years in leadership worked at 3 jobs lead major transformations at retail where nearly 100B of revenue goes through what i built. Ran $55-$100M in a yearly budget… over 300 FTEs and 3x contractors under my or my budget,…largest retailer in google at that time…my work influenced GCP roadmap, Datastax roadmap, … much more all behind the scenes…. besides your capabilities and ability that had to be there to get you i…
This is OP's lesson 20: Eventually, time becomes worth more than money. Act accordingly.
I’ve watched senior engineers burn out chasing the next promo level, optimizing for a few more percentage points of compensation. Some of them got it. Most of them wondered, afterward, if it was worth what they gave up.
Re: Lessons from 14 years at Google
#560What a mediocre article. Its just enough for people to agree and nod and go "wow yeah true!!" while offering almost zero value to people who don't already agree. These are not useful to juniors. Yes, almost all of this is true and well said, but it offers no additional value. It's like a smell test: Show this article to engineers and those who disagree with lots of points should be given a senior mentor.
These points are really good, but they often miss context and further info and caveats. I would have liked if the Author just added a little bit more content.
Like, for example, the point about "Being right is cheap. Getting to right together is the real work". Yes, it's certainly true that a decision made in agreement is better than one that isn't. However, how do you get there? Does everyone else give up their (weakly held, according to the article) opinions? I would argue it should be acceptable for your opinions to hold, to be factually based, and still to not align with the final decision made. Any respectable engineer should be fine with this.
> Your code doesn’t advocate for you. People do.
It depends on how much code you output relative to others, for example, and how performance is measured, how much time is actually spent in meetings (and how much of that is wasted or could-have-been-an-email). I've been told at a previous job that the quality and amount of code I output made them reconsider their entire salary- and bonus-structure (and they did restructure it but by the time it went into effect I had gotten a better offer and left). I just had more programming experience than most other developers there (through open source and my own projects), even though I was junior to most of them. Your code can advocate for you, and so can your general output, your contributions, etc. It's not all politics in all companies, though I'm sure the author's point applies at FAANG.
Furthermore, I don't know if this point results in actionable advice for juniors, for example. To not bother writing good code? To not bother with doing the best you can? To not honing your skill and instead go to public speaking courses? I'm not sure.
Good-ish article, just not enough novel substance IMO, and reads a bit like AI slop.
Also choked on this:
> Colleagues often remark on Osmani’s humility and generosity despite his fame in the field.