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What I find weird is why does anybody want to work at Google? I use their tools all the time at work. If you go to console.cloud.google.com... I mean... Wow.

What I find weird is why does anybody want to work at Google? I use their tools all the time at work. If you go to console.cloud.google.com... I mean... Wow. Just yesterday I was trying to find the logging for our cloud endpoints on Stackdriver. They should use that as their interview question ;-) And this is the big thing I've noticed about many Google apps (especially dev tools): they are all incredibly (for want of a better word) hacky. And the documentation... while I can very much appreciate that they are serious about it and work very hard, it's a huge mishmash of marketing speak ("It washes your socks and makes dinner for you!") with the crucial information you need hidden away in secret corners. I literally have to use Google the search engine to navigate any of the documentation. I don't mean to be so negative. It's not that it's so terrible in reality, it's just that it's not anything particularly great. I literally can't think of a single offering they have that I would aspire towards. There are lots of smaller, hungrier companies making much better products. And by extension, I think if you work at those smaller, hungrier companies you have a better chance of learning more, becoming a better developer and even being happier with your job. So the thing is, unless I'm alone in my assessment, I think the main things people are looking for from a job at Google are status and money. Additionally, I think a lot of young people believe that talented developers mostly work at famous companies. In my experience, this is the opposite. Back when Microsoft was the powerhouse, I knew a lot of MS developers. Some were amazing. Most were average (as you might expect when a company is hiring thousands upon thousands of developers). However, you had a much better chance of actually working with someone amazing if you got a job at a small shop. I still think this is true. Personally, I don't complain about the "You have to be this clever to ride" interviews. Yes, they self select for people who are not like me (bulldogs that work away obsessively at problems until they are solved without using any particular magic insight). Yes, it means that I'm unlikely to get paid at the very, very top of the payscale (heck, if I wanted to get paid more, I would have been a lawyer -- I want to write code). It just means that it's that much easier for me to find companies that are a good fit for me. I don't really see a problems with that.

thewarrior 8y ago
Simple answer: Money + Prestige + Job security + Resume
- zimpenfish 8y ago
  Kinda the BBC of Silicon Valley then.
toast0 8y ago
> What I find weird is why does anybody want to work at Google? I use their tools all the time at work. If you go to console.cloud.google.com... I mean... Wow. Just yesterday I was trying to find the logging for our cloud endpoints on Stackdriver. They should use that as their interview question ;-) Working for Google is the only way to get bugs in Google products fixed, or your feedback even listened to. ;)
- mikekchar 8y ago
  I'll be honest, I complained about my total lack of ability to find anything in the documentation and they emailed me back to ask for suggestions on what to fix. I never got back to them. I really should find time. It was funny because in my frustration, I left a comment on the last page I looked at and they responded with the completely reasonable question, "Why were you looking at that page? It doesn't contain any of the information you were looking for." It was such a great summation of what my problems was that I felt difficulty in finding an appropriate response :-). Possibly this is too unfair, but I felt like the question, "How should I have found the information I was looking for?" was something that had never occurred to them. It's pretty applicable to virtually everything I've used from Google. It has that feel of, "If you don't already know, then you don't deserve to know".
HillaryBriss 8y ago
> why does anybody want to work at Google with all the android privacy issues researchers keep uncovering, i feel like Google has really driven a certain fraction of the labor pool which cares about protecting user privacy directly away from itself > they are all incredibly (for want of a better word) hacky. yeah, i haven't seen much of anything to feel inspired by either (although I do think Google Maps team has put out a really solid product). but i have to deal with the Android SDK and other google libraries for android, and "hacky" seems like the best single word description for that stuff, IMHO, too. what makes me laugh about the android documentation is that even though Google's mission is to organize the world's information, the best android documentation and guidance i can find is organized by Stack Overflow.
chrisbennet 8y ago
Maybe google employees aren’t incentivized to fix things as much as they are for making new things?
- mikekchar 8y ago
  I'm probably responding more to this thread than I should, but I'm an a chatty mood today :-) I think there are a lot of factors and this is almost certainly one of them. Having worked in a couple big, wealthy and famous companies before, one of the biggest problems is that they are always making acquisitions. One day you're building X and then upper management thinks, "Woah... X + Y would be awesome. But we don't want to spend time to build the Y part. Let's acquire a company and glue it onto X." Usually that happens with great grumbling from the programmers who complain that X and Y were never meant to work together and it would actually take more time to get them to work well than it would have to build Y in the first place. Upper management doesn't believe this and says, "Stop grumbling". And, well, the programmers do what they have to do. So it ends up being super hacky... because it is super hacky :-) But I think it's more than that. You know how certain things are obviously built by committees? You can see it because everything is consistent, but it's often got a lot of compromises. On the other hand some things are obviously built by individual contributors. It's got some things that are really great, but other things that are horrible because the developer just has blinders on. Many Google apps give me the latter experience. Also, when they have a suite of tools, although they are tied in together, they have wildly different UI, naming conventions, placement and layout of information, etc. Usually there are some really cool bits, but these bits are often not the point of the project and look a bit out of place. I think teams in Google often have people who are confident and smart and the tools reflect that. It's a kind of "This is the way to do X", shouted 500 different ways. One of the biggest things I find frustrating is the mountain of trivia that I have to commit to memory in order to use their tools fluently. I really do think it reflects the type of people that Google chooses when they hire people. While they may be good at the things that Google screens them for, they may not be the best people overall when it comes to building finished products.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

thewarrior 8y ago

Simple answer: Money + Prestige + Job security + Resume

zimpenfish 8y ago
Kinda the BBC of Silicon Valley then.

toast0 8y ago

> What I find weird is why does anybody want to work at Google? I use their tools all the time at work. If you go to console.cloud.google.com... I mean... Wow. Just yesterday I was trying to find the logging for our cloud endpoints on Stackdriver. They should use that as their interview question ;-) Working for Google is the only way to get bugs in Google products fixed, or your feedback even listened to. ;)

mikekchar 8y ago
I'll be honest, I complained about my total lack of ability to find anything in the documentation and they emailed me back to ask for suggestions on what to fix. I never got back to them. I really should find time. It was funny because in my frustration, I left a comment on the last page I looked at and they responded with the completely reasonable question, "Why were you looking at that page? It doesn't contain any of the information you were looking for." It was such a great summation of what my problems was that I felt difficulty in finding an appropriate response :-). Possibly this is too unfair, but I felt like the question, "How should I have found the information I was looking for?" was something that had never occurred to them. It's pretty applicable to virtually everything I've used from Google. It has that feel of, "If you don't already know, then you don't deserve to know".

HillaryBriss 8y ago

> why does anybody want to work at Google with all the android privacy issues researchers keep uncovering, i feel like Google has really driven a certain fraction of the labor pool which cares about protecting user privacy directly away from itself > they are all incredibly (for want of a better word) hacky. yeah, i haven't seen much of anything to feel inspired by either (although I do think Google Maps team has put out a really solid product). but i have to deal with the Android SDK and other google libraries for android, and "hacky" seems like the best single word description for that stuff, IMHO, too. what makes me laugh about the android documentation is that even though Google's mission is to organize the world's information, the best android documentation and guidance i can find is organized by Stack Overflow.

chrisbennet 8y ago

Maybe google employees aren’t incentivized to fix things as much as they are for making new things?

mikekchar 8y ago
I'm probably responding more to this thread than I should, but I'm an a chatty mood today :-) I think there are a lot of factors and this is almost certainly one of them. Having worked in a couple big, wealthy and famous companies before, one of the biggest problems is that they are always making acquisitions. One day you're building X and then upper management thinks, "Woah... X + Y would be awesome. But we don't want to spend time to build the Y part. Let's acquire a company and glue it onto X." Usually that happens with great grumbling from the programmers who complain that X and Y were never meant to work together and it would actually take more time to get them to work well than it would have to build Y in the first place. Upper management doesn't believe this and says, "Stop grumbling". And, well, the programmers do what they have to do. So it ends up being super hacky... because it is super hacky :-) But I think it's more than that. You know how certain things are obviously built by committees? You can see it because everything is consistent, but it's often got a lot of compromises. On the other hand some things are obviously built by individual contributors. It's got some things that are really great, but other things that are horrible because the developer just has blinders on. Many Google apps give me the latter experience. Also, when they have a suite of tools, although they are tied in together, they have wildly different UI, naming conventions, placement and layout of information, etc. Usually there are some really cool bits, but these bits are often not the point of the project and look a bit out of place. I think teams in Google often have people who are confident and smart and the tools reflect that. It's a kind of "This is the way to do X", shouted 500 different ways. One of the biggest things I find frustrating is the mountain of trivia that I have to commit to memory in order to use their tools fluently. I really do think it reflects the type of people that Google chooses when they hire people. While they may be good at the things that Google screens them for, they may not be the best people overall when it comes to building finished products.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]