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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#901

Post by mepiethree »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #811
mepiethree wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I recently left a startup that I worked at for 6 years to join Google. At the startup I was overworked+underpaid, generally found it impossible to eat more than 2 meals a day (and difficult to eat more than one), usually worked on Saturdays (and always on Black Friday), rarely made time to visit family, and always lived on tenterhooks thinking about the next RFP we had to win. I did care about the mission of the…

The build tools are not great. Well, maybe the tools are fine, but the build times are killing me. Going from 5ms builds at home to 5 minute builds at work is brutal. 98% of my day is just waiting for builds, tests, CL approvals, experiment results, launch approvals and lunch lines.

I meant more that when I started the job and only had to type one command to run a giant application locally, that tooling blew my mind. No config files, env vars, not even any apt-get or cloning 50 different repos. Just boq run

Yeah it is definitely a lot of waiting. I try to work around that by having a lot of small CLs going at once. But even when I do have to wait it really only helps make this job more of a breath of fresh air, as it builds natural breaks into the work.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#902

Post by ninkendo »

Nimitz14 wrote: post #614
closeparen wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building in silos is when you get something done by yourself or with your direct teammates. Cross team collaboration involves e.g. a weekly sync, coauthored design documents, code changes made in modules you’ve never seen before reviewed by people you don’t know, tasks that are critical blocking dependencies for you but totally irrelevant to the decision-makers of the teams that need to allocate time for them. The ex…

This is not at all what people mean when they talk about silos

Data point of one, but it's precisely what I mean when I talk about silos.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#903

Post by SadCordDrone »

lurker919 wrote: post #624
throwaway678808 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in the org that Jeanine now runs. It had a series of bad-to-disastrous leaders at the Director, VP, and SVP level. To call out Jeanine and only Jeanine in language this harsh feels wrong. From my recollection and from what I have heard from people still working there, she is par for the course. Also I am almost never the person to bring this kind of thing up but ... there aren't a lot of other black women in…

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#904

Post by teaearlgraycold »

devnullbrain wrote: post #873
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes absolutely. I was explicitly told I could get away with doing nothing for 12 months before I’d get fired. I decided to quit instead.

Either I've read a blog post you've written before or this is a common occurrence.

Yeah my blog post hit the front page.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#905

Post by SadCordDrone »

nemo44x wrote: post #394
jjiij wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see how naming the specific individual improved the argument, unless there is true malfeasance, like sexual harassment, I don't think it's ethical to publicly name-and-shame somebody for the crime of being bad at their job. LOTS of people are bad at their job.

It doesn’t really matter as the poster is in the “clueless” cohort of the company and she’s a sociopath. He thinks that the company exists to do whatever he said it was earlier when in fact the sociopaths running it at that time just said that to attract people that can do work to make them rich. He thinks she is bad at her job and it’s clear she’s not. She know precisely how to move people around to take blame for f…

> He thinks she is bad at her job and it’s clear she’s not.

'At her job' - her job is improving the department.

> She knows how to secure her millions in comp per year and retire early. She’s very smart.

If I had the background, connections and privileges of these several MBA types, I could also do that. But I couldnt perhaps be a great engineer. Therefore I wouldn't share your appreciation of sociopathy, and I believe many people are of similar opinion.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#906

Post by jacquesm »

martius wrote: post #897
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition, I don't understand why they stopped them entirely, instead of spin them off as subsidiaries under e.g. Alphabet; make them financially self-reliant, have Google/Alphabet as the main shareholder, and give the people that worked on it (and whoever else wants to) the opportunity to continue working on the product. Some wouldn't have been viable, sure. Others were probably too ingrained in Google's hardware/…

The reason is quite simple: why spend engineering headcount on a less successful product? > Some wouldn't have been viable, sure. Others were probably too ingrained in Google's hardware/software ecosystem to be separated out (although I wonder if nowadays everything Google runs on its cloud offering, which would make it simpler, just change the billing). Google Cloud is built on top of Google's tech ecosystem, not th…

Because things need time and alignment of incentives between creators and consumers and if you interfere in that relationship all the time things will never ever succeed. The last thing any project needs is an investor with a majority interest that fucks up your plans all the time, can take your employees away at will and can axe the project at any time because it doesn't perform according to their metrics.

That's why VCs take a minority stake in start-ups. The trouble usually begins when the founders dilute to the point that they no longer have a majority.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#909

Post by ot1138 »

ryloric wrote: post #833
ot1138 wrote: post #734

> Much of the criticism Google received around Chrome and Search, especially around supposed conflicts of interest with Ads, was way off base (it's surprising how often coincidences and mistakes can appear malicious). The author is refreshingly candid but hopelessly myopic. Speaking as an outsider and a rather large advertiser, Google was great to work with in the early years (2004-2008). I founded the first search i…

Did you really have to say "some engineer in India"? What exactly are you trying to imply there?

I implied nothing. This is literally what happened. A woman who knew next to nothing about search strung us along for weeks. She couldn't answer even the simplest questions or provide any insight whatsoever. She made it clear she had no authority. Yet after making request after request to us for sensitive data, she simply shut off our access.
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