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Go was principally made by 3 people, whose resumes basically justified being allowed to work at their discretion (this last bit is conjecture, but I would be su

Go was principally made by 3 people, whose resumes basically justified being allowed to work at their discretion (this last bit is conjecture, but I would be surprised to be proven wrong). If Ken Thompson has a manager at Google that has any influence whatsoever on Ken's work, then Google's culture is more broken than I thought. The rest of Google is over 100,000 engineers who have managers, team leads, and much more rigid policies and workflows than I imagine the Go designers were ever subjected to during the development of Go. This is the engineering ethos to which I refer, not the system to which the Go designers where subject. So: Google gave a chair and a desk to a few talented people who applied experience and influences from entirely outside of Google to designing a programming language. In my book, Google doesn't get credit for that, and their engineering culture definitely doesn't get credit for that - it was barely involved, if at all.

akerl_ 6y ago
It seems like you’re making a couple of key assumptions about what the work environment looks like for the core Golang dev team, and then extrapolating from there to exclude them from your definition of Google’s “ethos”. Separately, the idea that a manager having influence on a good engineer’s work is “broken” is one I don’t understand. But I think, based on this comment thread, it’s unlikely we’re going to reach a consensus.
googthrowaway42 6y ago
FWIW I am an ex-Googler and I agree with you. The principal authors of Go are not really Googlers in the sense that other "mere mortals" are. Their engineering skills, practices, and decisions are not informed or subject to the strictures of the wider culture at Google.
- akerl_ 6y ago
  To help me understand, can you give an example of the kind of stricture that applied to other engineers but not to the Golang core team?
  - googthrowaway42 6y ago
    Rob Pike and Ken Thompson have Sundar as their manager (I saw this at least with other Google Fellows) and don't go through perf in any real sense if they actually do have a perf process which I doubt they do. They do whatever they want and set their own agendas. At Google seniority is revered. It's very strict in that sense so I literally cannot imagine someone "overruling" or mounting any serious opposition to Pike or Thompson on anything. Edit: They're not actually fellows it's been pointed out but high ranking ICs like that do have a lot of respect within Google and are treated deferentially, especially famous ones just based on my own experience with high ranking ICs.
    - akerl_ 6y ago
      I’m not sure I understand your examples. You note that they don’t go through any sort of performance review process, but your subsequent sentence suggests you don’t really have visibility into whether that’s the case? And then you point out that as senior engineers, you can’t imagine anybody opposing things they say. Do you have an actual example of ways in which their treatment by Google differs from other engineers? These seem like conjecture about what their work experience is like.
      - googthrowaway42 6y ago
        I'm attempting to offer you some insight in good faith. I can't offer you a mathematical proof of this so I'm not sure what you're looking for. If you insist on asserting that Google Fellows are treated the same as other engineers then I'm not sure what to tell you. Holding that view would call into question exactly why they had that title but I'm not you and I don't hold that view.
        akerl_ 6y ago
        I’m asking for an anecdote or some other practical example of a time that you or another Google engineer had a policy or “stricture” applied to you, and that policy or stricture or procedure didn’t apply to a Fellow. I don’t expect there to be a mathematical proof, but I was curious for something that wasn’t conjecture about what people assume their work environment is like. Regarding being a Fellow: finding out that people respect senior engineers and take into consideration their past experience isn’t shocking, or an example of the rules not applying to them. Similarly, if you told me that a head chef at a restaurant has more impact on the menu than a line cook, it wouldn’t be an indication that the rules don’t apply to head chefs, or that nobody cares about their performance. And nobody would make claims that restaurant’s menu didn’t reflect their “ethos” because it was designed by an experienced head chef.

akerl_ 6y ago

It seems like you’re making a couple of key assumptions about what the work environment looks like for the core Golang dev team, and then extrapolating from there to exclude them from your definition of Google’s “ethos”. Separately, the idea that a manager having influence on a good engineer’s work is “broken” is one I don’t understand. But I think, based on this comment thread, it’s unlikely we’re going to reach a consensus.

googthrowaway42 6y ago

FWIW I am an ex-Googler and I agree with you. The principal authors of Go are not really Googlers in the sense that other "mere mortals" are. Their engineering skills, practices, and decisions are not informed or subject to the strictures of the wider culture at Google.

akerl_ 6y ago
To help me understand, can you give an example of the kind of stricture that applied to other engineers but not to the Golang core team?
- googthrowaway42 6y ago
  Rob Pike and Ken Thompson have Sundar as their manager (I saw this at least with other Google Fellows) and don't go through perf in any real sense if they actually do have a perf process which I doubt they do. They do whatever they want and set their own agendas. At Google seniority is revered. It's very strict in that sense so I literally cannot imagine someone "overruling" or mounting any serious opposition to Pike or Thompson on anything. Edit: They're not actually fellows it's been pointed out but high ranking ICs like that do have a lot of respect within Google and are treated deferentially, especially famous ones just based on my own experience with high ranking ICs.
  - akerl_ 6y ago
    I’m not sure I understand your examples. You note that they don’t go through any sort of performance review process, but your subsequent sentence suggests you don’t really have visibility into whether that’s the case? And then you point out that as senior engineers, you can’t imagine anybody opposing things they say. Do you have an actual example of ways in which their treatment by Google differs from other engineers? These seem like conjecture about what their work experience is like.
    - googthrowaway42 6y ago
      I'm attempting to offer you some insight in good faith. I can't offer you a mathematical proof of this so I'm not sure what you're looking for. If you insist on asserting that Google Fellows are treated the same as other engineers then I'm not sure what to tell you. Holding that view would call into question exactly why they had that title but I'm not you and I don't hold that view.
      - akerl_ 6y ago
        I’m asking for an anecdote or some other practical example of a time that you or another Google engineer had a policy or “stricture” applied to you, and that policy or stricture or procedure didn’t apply to a Fellow. I don’t expect there to be a mathematical proof, but I was curious for something that wasn’t conjecture about what people assume their work environment is like. Regarding being a Fellow: finding out that people respect senior engineers and take into consideration their past experience isn’t shocking, or an example of the rules not applying to them. Similarly, if you told me that a head chef at a restaurant has more impact on the menu than a line cook, it wouldn’t be an indication that the rules don’t apply to head chefs, or that nobody cares about their performance. And nobody would make claims that restaurant’s menu didn’t reflect their “ethos” because it was designed by an experienced head chef.