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Google showed me the fine engineering at large scale. And the key is the people as they are behind everything. That’s why I changed my view on who was the key

Google showed me the fine engineering at large scale. And the key is the people as they are behind everything. That’s why I changed my view on who was the key person for google success. I used to believe Larry and Sergei, then urs, now I put on Laszlo Bock.

nessunodoro 7y ago
honorable mention: Guidooo!
- bt848 7y ago
  Really? One thing I learned at Google is that even having Guido on staff can’t make Python work.
  - mundanevoice 7y ago
    Elaborate, please?
    - bt848 7y ago
      Python just doesn’t scale. Th language isn’t typed enough to be safe in a large program. Eventually you will iterate over a string or access an attribute of None. And the runtime is too slow. SRE at Google years ago banned new projects in python because the incredible slowness of the tools was extending the time to repair outages.
aalhour 7y ago
Can you share more details? What advice would you give to people to engineer things at scale?
- justicezyx 7y ago
  I wrote a partially finished article: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10wylnn8qHD4clDyrEIhYyP1FWxzEkf89hfwbmoyS-yI/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/document/d/10wylnn8qHD4clDyrEIhYyP1F... It's not even touching the techniques and approaches yet. I was too lazy. Here a summary of my understanding: * Relentlessly hire the best, train them and give space for them to grow and shine. This is the basis. It's not that a less quality engineer cannot grow, it's just too costly to do that at large scale. * Build the infrastructure to support large scale engineering. The best example is the idea of "warehouse scale computer" that is the data center, embodied in systems like Borg Spanner etc. * Relentless consistency at global scale. Example would be the Google C++ style guide. It's opinionated at its time, but is crucial to ensure a large C++ code base to grow to big size. * Engineering oriented front line management. L6-L8 managers are mostly engineering focused. That's necessary. * Give the super star the super star treatment. Google's engineers are rewarded as strategic asset of the company. Numerous example are made public.
  - aalhour 7y ago
    Interesting, thanks for sharing. Any plans for extending the document?
    - justicezyx 7y ago
      I am having a hard time to find the mechanism for motivating myself. But if you think it's interesting, that is a good signal that I should finish it. You can keep the link, in case it's updated in the future.
samueljackson 7y ago
they are ok at it, far from great. netflix is a good example of engineering at scale.
- mav3rick 7y ago
  Google started distributed systems at scaled. There's a reason those systems work even today.
- justicezyx 7y ago
  Well, I do not meant to be complacent, but I am pretty sure that anyone think Google are not the best at its scale, probably have only a superficial understanding of the Google engineering machine's reach and influence.

nessunodoro 7y ago

honorable mention: Guidooo!

bt848 7y ago
Really? One thing I learned at Google is that even having Guido on staff can’t make Python work.
- mundanevoice 7y ago
  Elaborate, please?
  - bt848 7y ago
    Python just doesn’t scale. Th language isn’t typed enough to be safe in a large program. Eventually you will iterate over a string or access an attribute of None. And the runtime is too slow. SRE at Google years ago banned new projects in python because the incredible slowness of the tools was extending the time to repair outages.

aalhour 7y ago

Can you share more details? What advice would you give to people to engineer things at scale?

justicezyx 7y ago
I wrote a partially finished article: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10wylnn8qHD4clDyrEIhYyP1FWxzEkf89hfwbmoyS-yI/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/document/d/10wylnn8qHD4clDyrEIhYyP1F... It's not even touching the techniques and approaches yet. I was too lazy. Here a summary of my understanding: * Relentlessly hire the best, train them and give space for them to grow and shine. This is the basis. It's not that a less quality engineer cannot grow, it's just too costly to do that at large scale. * Build the infrastructure to support large scale engineering. The best example is the idea of "warehouse scale computer" that is the data center, embodied in systems like Borg Spanner etc. * Relentless consistency at global scale. Example would be the Google C++ style guide. It's opinionated at its time, but is crucial to ensure a large C++ code base to grow to big size. * Engineering oriented front line management. L6-L8 managers are mostly engineering focused. That's necessary. * Give the super star the super star treatment. Google's engineers are rewarded as strategic asset of the company. Numerous example are made public.
- aalhour 7y ago
  Interesting, thanks for sharing. Any plans for extending the document?
  - justicezyx 7y ago
    I am having a hard time to find the mechanism for motivating myself. But if you think it's interesting, that is a good signal that I should finish it. You can keep the link, in case it's updated in the future.

samueljackson 7y ago

they are ok at it, far from great. netflix is a good example of engineering at scale.

mav3rick 7y ago
Google started distributed systems at scaled. There's a reason those systems work even today.
justicezyx 7y ago
Well, I do not meant to be complacent, but I am pretty sure that anyone think Google are not the best at its scale, probably have only a superficial understanding of the Google engineering machine's reach and influence.