9 ms·

> Inflated opinion of own importance Given that he develops software that Google engineers use frequently, I wouldn't exactly say he is inflating his sense of

> Inflated opinion of own importance Given that he develops software that Google engineers use frequently, I wouldn't exactly say he is inflating his sense of importance. It sounds like he is a good software developer who has developed something widely used and appreciated, but the Google hiring script doesn't deal well with those kind of people. It takes a lot of time and effort to go through interviews, I don't blame the guy for being pissed off that Google wasted his time.

kllrnohj 10y ago
Just because a piece of software is frequently used doesn't mean the engineer that wrote it is top of the field. Calculator is a pretty widely used app, too, even by Google engineers. But that hardly qualifies the author to work at Google. Similarly while Homebrew is widely used and fits a need, it doesn't mean that the author is equipped with the skills that Google wants. A package manager and something like Google Brain don't exactly share much in common. It doesn't mean Google's script failed nor does it mean he shouldn't be pissed off, it's just how things are sometimes.
- djtriptych 10y ago
  Just curious - have you ever worked at Google?
- gcp 10y ago
  It was an excellent argument against "inflated opinion of self importance" though. If you write something that's as widely used by developers as homebrew, you've earned that right. So what if random Googlers could also have written it? They didn't.
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    "It was an excellent argument against "inflated opinion of self importance" though. If you write something that's as widely used by developers as homebrew, you've earned that right." No, you actually never earn that right. Seriously. In fact, it's a sign of good engineers that they just view their stuff as stuff, and not "well, i am doing the super important stuff, everyone else is not". Note that this is different than prioritizing, etc. If you have a bunch of high level engineers in a room, and they don't value each other's work (IE recognize that a lot of stuff is "important", and there stuff is just part of that) because they think the stuff they do is super-important, that's going to go very badly. At lower levels, pretty much none of it is so important that there is any value to having an inflated opinion of self importance. The fact that you've achieved adoption does not necessarily make you a good engineer.
    - gcp 10y ago
      "well, i am doing the super important stuff, everyone else is not". Straw man argument. Nobody stated this. There's also a difference between thinking that your stuff is super important in isolation versus simply pointing out it's in wide use at a company and hence your previous efforts have in fact been productive and useful for them.
      - DannyBee 10y ago
        "Straw man argument. Nobody stated this." This is pretty much exactly his attitude, even if he did not explicitly add the other 3 words. "in wide use at a company and hence your previous efforts have in fact been productive and useful for them." Except that assumes it's literally true. It's not, as a downvoted person said :) It also assumes that him working on it would be useful or productive relative to doing something else. That is also probably a negative.
  - ryanobjc 10y ago
    I guess I dont think anyone has EVER earned the right to have an "inflated self opinion". Acting like a jerk, being entitled and demanding things are never something earns. That's just not ok behavior. I talk to people about interview stuff, I notice that most people who say "I shouldn't have to know X" seem to be the least intellectually curious, least great problem solvers and just generally combative folks. If you are going into an interview with a serious chip on your shoulder, demanding a job, asking to exempt yourself from having to show problem solving skills, then just how is that going to work out? Regarding reversing a binary tree, yeah, the interviewer didn't expect you to know it. That's the point. It's something that's a little tricky, not impossible, requires you to be precise about memory ownership and pointers, and algorithmic. It takes no time at all to describe, and isn't impossible to solve. Yeah it's problem solving, but it's not random trivia. It's a functional test of your intelligence and yeah it filters out some who should be at Google, and they know it. However relaxing the bar is fraught with peril. You're quite literally banking the future of the company on it.
    - gcp 10y ago
      You shouldn't have an inflated self opinion. (Duh!) But those were the words used to describe mxcl just because he opinionated that Google ought to have given him a more serious consideration given the software he had already produced. It's my opinion that wasn't an unreasonable assessment (from mxcl). Although if indeed nearly nobody at Google uses Homebrew, as now multiple people are claiming, it was, no matter how reasonable, wrong.
      - ryanobjc 10y ago
        So here's the thing.. he was given the STANDARD interview that every engineer has to pass. How was that not a serious consideration? How is it fair to his future potential colleagues that he got in "easy"? They need to depend on him and his problem solving abilities. I think he saw the question, and basically just refused to grapple with it, thinking it was below him, and then the rest pretty much was inevitable.
        10y ago
honkhonkpants 10y ago
The number of googlers who meaningfully "use" homebrew in the course of their work is probably 4 or another figure similarly close to zero, which should therefore be treated as zero. If it didn't exist and someone needed it, they would write it in a week. The number of googlers with Macs is not even 90% so this line of argument is just silly.
- ryanobjc 10y ago
  As an engineer at Google, this comment is correct. Some teams use it, but since most the development happens on Linux desktops, and not Macs, therefore Homebrew is not as commonly used as normal dev shops. Basically the internal dev environment is already fully complete and works great. It's ultra custom and there are strict rules about bringing in open source code. The AGPL and GPL3 are good, but also one has to be wary about them in a commercial environment.
DannyBee 10y ago
"Given that he develops software that Google engineers use frequently, I wouldn't exactly say he is inflating his sense of importance." Why? To quote one of the demotivational posters, "just because you are necessary doesn't mean you are important".
- gcp 10y ago
  So is that, eh, the official Google stance on how they view their (prospective) employees? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12662182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12662182 Cogs in a machine? https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/worthdemotivator.jpeg?v=1414017066 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/worthde...
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    Yeah, that' totally the take-away message from that. Not "it's how i personally view the attitude that because what i did is used by a lot of people, i'm super-important".
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Given that he develops software that Google engineers use frequently, I wouldn't exactly say he is inflating his sense of importance. He may be important as a person who has developed software used by a variety of people (including many at Google), but that doesn't mean he is someone who ought to be important for Google to employ.

kllrnohj 10y ago

Just because a piece of software is frequently used doesn't mean the engineer that wrote it is top of the field. Calculator is a pretty widely used app, too, even by Google engineers. But that hardly qualifies the author to work at Google. Similarly while Homebrew is widely used and fits a need, it doesn't mean that the author is equipped with the skills that Google wants. A package manager and something like Google Brain don't exactly share much in common. It doesn't mean Google's script failed nor does it mean he shouldn't be pissed off, it's just how things are sometimes.

djtriptych 10y ago
Just curious - have you ever worked at Google?
gcp 10y ago
It was an excellent argument against "inflated opinion of self importance" though. If you write something that's as widely used by developers as homebrew, you've earned that right. So what if random Googlers could also have written it? They didn't.
- DannyBee 10y ago
  "It was an excellent argument against "inflated opinion of self importance" though. If you write something that's as widely used by developers as homebrew, you've earned that right." No, you actually never earn that right. Seriously. In fact, it's a sign of good engineers that they just view their stuff as stuff, and not "well, i am doing the super important stuff, everyone else is not". Note that this is different than prioritizing, etc. If you have a bunch of high level engineers in a room, and they don't value each other's work (IE recognize that a lot of stuff is "important", and there stuff is just part of that) because they think the stuff they do is super-important, that's going to go very badly. At lower levels, pretty much none of it is so important that there is any value to having an inflated opinion of self importance. The fact that you've achieved adoption does not necessarily make you a good engineer.
  - gcp 10y ago
    "well, i am doing the super important stuff, everyone else is not". Straw man argument. Nobody stated this. There's also a difference between thinking that your stuff is super important in isolation versus simply pointing out it's in wide use at a company and hence your previous efforts have in fact been productive and useful for them.
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      "Straw man argument. Nobody stated this." This is pretty much exactly his attitude, even if he did not explicitly add the other 3 words. "in wide use at a company and hence your previous efforts have in fact been productive and useful for them." Except that assumes it's literally true. It's not, as a downvoted person said :) It also assumes that him working on it would be useful or productive relative to doing something else. That is also probably a negative.
- ryanobjc 10y ago
  I guess I dont think anyone has EVER earned the right to have an "inflated self opinion". Acting like a jerk, being entitled and demanding things are never something earns. That's just not ok behavior. I talk to people about interview stuff, I notice that most people who say "I shouldn't have to know X" seem to be the least intellectually curious, least great problem solvers and just generally combative folks. If you are going into an interview with a serious chip on your shoulder, demanding a job, asking to exempt yourself from having to show problem solving skills, then just how is that going to work out? Regarding reversing a binary tree, yeah, the interviewer didn't expect you to know it. That's the point. It's something that's a little tricky, not impossible, requires you to be precise about memory ownership and pointers, and algorithmic. It takes no time at all to describe, and isn't impossible to solve. Yeah it's problem solving, but it's not random trivia. It's a functional test of your intelligence and yeah it filters out some who should be at Google, and they know it. However relaxing the bar is fraught with peril. You're quite literally banking the future of the company on it.
  - gcp 10y ago
    You shouldn't have an inflated self opinion. (Duh!) But those were the words used to describe mxcl just because he opinionated that Google ought to have given him a more serious consideration given the software he had already produced. It's my opinion that wasn't an unreasonable assessment (from mxcl). Although if indeed nearly nobody at Google uses Homebrew, as now multiple people are claiming, it was, no matter how reasonable, wrong.
    - ryanobjc 10y ago
      So here's the thing.. he was given the STANDARD interview that every engineer has to pass. How was that not a serious consideration? How is it fair to his future potential colleagues that he got in "easy"? They need to depend on him and his problem solving abilities. I think he saw the question, and basically just refused to grapple with it, thinking it was below him, and then the rest pretty much was inevitable.
      - 10y ago

honkhonkpants 10y ago

The number of googlers who meaningfully "use" homebrew in the course of their work is probably 4 or another figure similarly close to zero, which should therefore be treated as zero. If it didn't exist and someone needed it, they would write it in a week. The number of googlers with Macs is not even 90% so this line of argument is just silly.

ryanobjc 10y ago
As an engineer at Google, this comment is correct. Some teams use it, but since most the development happens on Linux desktops, and not Macs, therefore Homebrew is not as commonly used as normal dev shops. Basically the internal dev environment is already fully complete and works great. It's ultra custom and there are strict rules about bringing in open source code. The AGPL and GPL3 are good, but also one has to be wary about them in a commercial environment.

DannyBee 10y ago

"Given that he develops software that Google engineers use frequently, I wouldn't exactly say he is inflating his sense of importance." Why? To quote one of the demotivational posters, "just because you are necessary doesn't mean you are important".

gcp 10y ago
So is that, eh, the official Google stance on how they view their (prospective) employees? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12662182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12662182 Cogs in a machine? https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/worthdemotivator.jpeg?v=1414017066 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0535/6917/products/worthde...
- DannyBee 10y ago
  Yeah, that' totally the take-away message from that. Not "it's how i personally view the attitude that because what i did is used by a lot of people, i'm super-important".

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Given that he develops software that Google engineers use frequently, I wouldn't exactly say he is inflating his sense of importance. He may be important as a person who has developed software used by a variety of people (including many at Google), but that doesn't mean he is someone who ought to be important for Google to employ.