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If you've been at Google for 6 years then you know that my point about the promo system is the dominate opinion held by engineers there. Not that Memegen is the

If you've been at Google for 6 years then you know that my point about the promo system is the dominate opinion held by engineers there. Not that Memegen is the best barometer but you should check that out around promo time since it does comport with the opinions of engineers I talked with in other contexts. I had thought that would be the least controversial point. When I was there they added "Landing a product" as perf criteria as opposed to "Launching a product" and they added some lip service towards maintenance tasks being perfable which is a reflection of the problems I laid out. I don't know you or your situation and there are always exceptions (e.g. Bram Moolenaar, of course, and others not as famous) but in my experience the more tenure an engineer had the worse they were. The best engineers I've met in my career were ex-Googlers who were only there for a few years (some of them became Xooglers while I was there). My assertion is that generally speaking the people who stay are the ones who don't see the problems in the system because they don't have the talent, experience, or perspective OR they have other priorities in their life (raising a family) and Google makes it easier for them. What I encountered was that many long time engineers just weren't aware of what else was out there, the advances in the state of the art, and how things could be better because they were cozily ensconced within the Google ecosystem for so long. It's an incredibly ossified environment.

amscanne 6y ago
I don’t know how many people you worked with closely in two years, but I strongly suspect it’s not enough to properly conclude that “the more tenure an engineer had the worse they were”. I’ll point out the irony of having this discussion on this post. Many of the Go team engineers have a long tenure, but the author wanted to attribute “good” things only to “not Google” influences. Yes, the promo system has issues. Yes, there are widely held beliefs about it. But not all widely held beliefs are accurate: there’s usually some truth, but as always, it’s complicated. Yes, there are some echo chamber issues. But engineers are much more aware of the outside world that you’re implying. I just think your assertions are pointlessly mean by virtue of being overly broad (in terms of who and what). I like to see specific criticisms of any company, even if backed by an anecdote, because you can learn something. What’s anyone’s takeaway supposed to be here?
- googthrowaway42 6y ago
  Personally I am not a fan of Go so I can't speak to that. However, conditioned on Go existing and someone using it, the category of problems he's describing with the tooling are familiar. To your point about engineers being more aware of the outside world, in my experience this only held for new engineers and the ones that try to bring in new practices tend to get shut down or pushed out. See: https://twitter.com/ThomasBurleson/status/1283902169226280960 https://twitter.com/ThomasBurleson/status/128390216922628096... Seeing this was so ironic because of all the engineers at Google, Rob actually came and gave a talk to our team about NgRx and he was one of the few engineers I encountered that really got engineering. Having him come give a talk to our team was like a breath of fresh air. I have no doubt there was some insane political BS he was subjected to and forced to leave. As far as my assertions being "mean" because they are overly broad, the nature of speaking about anything requires some degree of generalization which I've tried to couch (and you're aware that I have). What a silly argument. Another concrete example I can give you is that the people who run the Angular team also own support for Typescript at Google and they disabled .tsx support for Typescript (literally just a compiler flag that does simple desugaring) despite a ton of protest from a lot of teams using it. They did that to kill off and discourage React (which many people want to use) to consolidate political power. I had many private messages with new engineers that were upset when they got shut down for asking if they could use React. Obviously these people were trying to bring in practices from outside of Google. The takeaway is whatever people want it to be.

amscanne 6y ago

I don’t know how many people you worked with closely in two years, but I strongly suspect it’s not enough to properly conclude that “the more tenure an engineer had the worse they were”. I’ll point out the irony of having this discussion on this post. Many of the Go team engineers have a long tenure, but the author wanted to attribute “good” things only to “not Google” influences. Yes, the promo system has issues. Yes, there are widely held beliefs about it. But not all widely held beliefs are accurate: there’s usually some truth, but as always, it’s complicated. Yes, there are some echo chamber issues. But engineers are much more aware of the outside world that you’re implying. I just think your assertions are pointlessly mean by virtue of being overly broad (in terms of who and what). I like to see specific criticisms of any company, even if backed by an anecdote, because you can learn something. What’s anyone’s takeaway supposed to be here?

googthrowaway42 6y ago
Personally I am not a fan of Go so I can't speak to that. However, conditioned on Go existing and someone using it, the category of problems he's describing with the tooling are familiar. To your point about engineers being more aware of the outside world, in my experience this only held for new engineers and the ones that try to bring in new practices tend to get shut down or pushed out. See: https://twitter.com/ThomasBurleson/status/1283902169226280960 https://twitter.com/ThomasBurleson/status/128390216922628096... Seeing this was so ironic because of all the engineers at Google, Rob actually came and gave a talk to our team about NgRx and he was one of the few engineers I encountered that really got engineering. Having him come give a talk to our team was like a breath of fresh air. I have no doubt there was some insane political BS he was subjected to and forced to leave. As far as my assertions being "mean" because they are overly broad, the nature of speaking about anything requires some degree of generalization which I've tried to couch (and you're aware that I have). What a silly argument. Another concrete example I can give you is that the people who run the Angular team also own support for Typescript at Google and they disabled .tsx support for Typescript (literally just a compiler flag that does simple desugaring) despite a ton of protest from a lot of teams using it. They did that to kill off and discourage React (which many people want to use) to consolidate political power. I had many private messages with new engineers that were upset when they got shut down for asking if they could use React. Obviously these people were trying to bring in practices from outside of Google. The takeaway is whatever people want it to be.