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Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

addyosmani.com

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Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#61

Post by phtrivier »

nowherebeen wrote: post #30
gmiller123456 wrote: post #20

Is there any evidence that Google is actually better at software engineering than other companies? IMHO, it seems they have enough money to deliberately do things inefficiently which would kill a smaller company, but Google can manage to succeed through brute force. Honestly I think the better example would be from a tiny company that can't afford to do things wrong.

Maybe 10 years ago when they were pushing the envelope. Nowadays, I just don’t see it to be honest. There are a few brilliant engineers for sure, but the new generation are mostly Leetcoders that brag about TC on another social network. You can see it in their open source code too. Critical bugs not fixed for an entire year. You read the code and it doesn’t stand out as anything out of the ordinary. I get the feeling…

What does TC mean in this context ?

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#62

Post by prox »

magicalist wrote: post #18
Supermancho wrote: post #8

Has someone collected all these self-aggrandizing posts that spew from ex-Googlers and current Googlers? It feels like a pre-requisite for their promotion packets. These all sound about the same and are altogether unhelpful. Note the copious links to terms and inlined quotes rather than an actual study, or any evidence at all...just vague rewording of colloquial expressions commonly traded around. The only use seems…

It's somebody's blog post that's passing by and will be gone tomorrow. I don't think we have to worry about it being overly "elevated". On the other hand we have a bunch of people spending too much time on hacker news, often with all the insight of someone who spent 5 minutes scanning a wikipedia article. I'd worry a lot more about the long term effects of elevating this self congratulatory content, but where's this…

Blog is already inaccessible at this moment.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#63

Post by prox »

erung88 wrote: post #45
passivate wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind admitting Google employs people far smarter than I will ever be, but they're creating and maintaining the largest global spying apparatus in history. Maybe we should be learning from people who're actually making the world a better place.

They make you feel like they're smart but everything is relative. Google cloud is constantly the thrid in the market and significantly leg behind AWS in terms of market share while its CEO was replaced every 2 years so there are definitely smarter people (e.g. AWS engineers) out there.

They are only smart in the context of what they are optimizing against. It’s like that for all area’s of an expertise or goal/ideal.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#64

Post by Maro »

phtrivier wrote: post #61
nowherebeen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 10 years ago when they were pushing the envelope. Nowadays, I just don’t see it to be honest. There are a few brilliant engineers for sure, but the new generation are mostly Leetcoders that brag about TC on another social network. You can see it in their open source code too. Critical bugs not fixed for an entire year. You read the code and it doesn’t stand out as anything out of the ordinary. I get the feeling…

What does TC mean in this context ?

Total Compensation

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#65

Post by julianbuse »

phtrivier wrote: post #61
nowherebeen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 10 years ago when they were pushing the envelope. Nowadays, I just don’t see it to be honest. There are a few brilliant engineers for sure, but the new generation are mostly Leetcoders that brag about TC on another social network. You can see it in their open source code too. Critical bugs not fixed for an entire year. You read the code and it doesn’t stand out as anything out of the ordinary. I get the feeling…

What does TC mean in this context ?

I believe it means total compensation.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#66

Post by julianbuse »

addy_osmani wrote: post #14

Hey folks. Author of this post here. I sincerely apologize, this was accidentally published live prematurely (my fault). It’s got a number of style and structure issues I’ve been working through locally (you are spot on regarding the heading feedback). I have taken it down and will be publishing it in the future once it is actually complete.

Hopefully it doesn't get cancelled a week before it's finally ready.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#67

Post by lkamr »

gmiller123456 wrote: post #20

Is there any evidence that Google is actually better at software engineering than other companies? IMHO, it seems they have enough money to deliberately do things inefficiently which would kill a smaller company, but Google can manage to succeed through brute force. Honestly I think the better example would be from a tiny company that can't afford to do things wrong.

No, Googlers in CPython core for example are very unspectacular. Some are extremely power hungry, do nothing but try to rule the project with the boot, using dirty politician's tactics.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#68

Post by erung88 »

verst wrote: post #53
erung88 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make you feel like they're smart but everything is relative. Google cloud is constantly the thrid in the market and significantly leg behind AWS in terms of market share while its CEO was replaced every 2 years so there are definitely smarter people (e.g. AWS engineers) out there.

Being third in the market is independent from the quality of services IMO. Whether the services are being offered that a lot of businesses need is a different question. The services Google Cloud does offer tend to be well designed but many of them are simply not what established businesses (and their engineering organizations) are accustomed to. Lower marketshare is not a direct consequence of engineering excellence…

I totally agree the quality of a product may or may not be directly proportional to the market share (e.g. Windows). My previous comment has nothing to do with engineering excellence. I never work at Google nor an expert on Google cloud so I don't know whether Cloud Google is well-designed (and I'm not surprised if it's).

There're different ways to measure "smart". My view is that in the cloud computing business there are people smarter than them (at least in terms of market share) so it's perfectly fine that Google Cloud engineers learn from their competitors in terms of engineering, marketing, etc.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#69

Post by rizzaxc »

zaphirplane wrote: post #58
rizzaxc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has not pushed anything relevant to the user space for many, many years. It's not without reason people meme about Google Graveyard. Here in Hackernews, people constantly whine about their ads, their irrelevant google search, and what have you. Their latest "flagship" phone is littered with bugs. I wouldn't call them "evolving" anything software as of late. Their hard science departments seem good though, but…

TrueTime and spanner definitely fall in the wow category at least for me Microsoft one of the worlds top software companies couldn’t keep up with chrome. There are a lot of projects that look easy at a POC stage and are very different at million of users, millions of tps, millions of TB or full featured

Chrome was released in 2008. Microsoft is doing fine with Edge, though it's a moot point because Microsoft is even older and more sluggish than Google.

Spanner seems a prototypical Google dev product though; it's only invented to serve Google. I don't think any of their solutions is the de facto choice in any tech stack.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#70

Post by amardeep »

addy_osmani wrote: post #14

Hey folks. Author of this post here. I sincerely apologize, this was accidentally published live prematurely (my fault). It’s got a number of style and structure issues I’ve been working through locally (you are spot on regarding the heading feedback). I have taken it down and will be publishing it in the future once it is actually complete.

Hi Addy,

It is sad to see that more often than not, the top comments on any article are overly negative or even vitriolic and any interesting discussion languishes deeper in the article.

I read your draft, and it is full of excellent advice. Some of it being which I also find very important, some which gives me food for thought and some which I am happy to be reminded of again. I look forward to your finished post.

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