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Why is everyone assuming that just because someone works for Google has to be competent? Solving algorithmic puzzles is not an indicator or actual technical ski

Why is everyone assuming that just because someone works for Google has to be competent? Solving algorithmic puzzles is not an indicator or actual technical skills. To me, it looks like a work of incompetent developers led by incompetent technical managers upon requirements of clueless and ignorant product managers.

notretarded 6y ago
Found the google interview reject.
gravypod 6y ago
Cloud service providers aren't really optimizing for the same thing that the average website is optimizing for. They're attempting to maximize their velocity, maximize their API stability, and make programmatic usage of their system as easy as possible. GCP's UI? Yea it's pretty bad. GCP's terraform provider? It's really slick. Probably the best one of the bunch (Azure, AWS, Oracle, OVH, ...).
- levosmetalo 6y ago
  > Cloud service providers aren't really optimizing for the same thing that the average website is optimizing for. They're attempting to maximize their velocity, maximize their API stability, and make programmatic usage of their system as easy as possible. Yep, already covered that under incompetence and cluelessness. > GCP's UI? Yea it's pretty bad. GCP's terraform provider? It's really slick. Probably the best one of the bunch (Azure, AWS, Oracle, OVH, ...). In that case, I would assume that backend team indeed consist of competent people, as opposed to web team. But TFA was about front end experience which is abysmal.
  - musha68k 6y ago
    They had some big outages over the last year. I’m therefore still skeptical to bet on them from a “backend” operations reliability standpoint also. To be fair I’m not sure they are doing worse than AWS though when looking into details. I’m thinking recent AWS Kinesis us-east issue - move fast and break things? Maybe uptime is more important than a gazillion new “feature” services. I also prefer good terraform provider stewardship over any “fancy” new cloudformation CDK or “beautiful” GUI actually. It’s complicated.
- maxsilver 6y ago
  > Cloud service providers aren't really optimizing for the same thing that the average website is optimizing for. (snip) GCP's UI? Yea it's pretty bad. GCP's terraform provider? It's really slick. That's still incompetence. That counts as incompetence, too. "This restaurant is filthy and full of bugs, but that's OK, because they're take-out only, so they're not optimizing for the same thing the average sit-down restaurant is. Sure, that place is disgusting, but the food in box still tasted pretty good..."
  - gravypod 6y ago
    A better comparison: "This restaurant only has one table and 1 chair with a broken leg and gum stuck to the seat but that's ok because they're take-out only"
- the_duke 6y ago
  I thought Terraform provider was developed/maintained by Hashicorp, not Google. Are Google employees actively involved? I also did encounter annoying issues (which have slowly been getting better though). I guess it might speak to a solid, if somewhat slow, API.
  - gravypod 6y ago
    The terraform provider is usually a near 1:1 mapping of the provider's APIs.
  - jmarcher 6y ago
    My understanding is that it is actively maintained by GCP employees, but yes Hashicorp owns the repo.
  - dijital 6y ago
    Yeah they've got a nifty tool called Magic Modules that partially auto-generates the Terraform Provider (along with Ansible and InSpec) from the GCP API: https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/google-provider-new-terraform https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/google-provider-new-terr...
mhh__ 6y ago
The puzzles make sure you can write the O(good) algorithm, knowing the coefficients is a question of experience and knowledge of the shoulders your code stands on.
XCSme 6y ago
I used to think Google hires only "top" developers. Lately I think they mostly hire average or below-average people which resulted in products of average or below-average quality.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Besides well known computing idols, it is basically who is able to put up with their hiring process and manages to score a job offer.
brazzy 6y ago
Slow software doesn't indicate a lack of skill. It indicates that speed is not a priority for management.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
wrsh07 6y ago
I think by attributing it do incompetence you're missing the incentives problem. Others point this out, but Google just has no incentives to improve this UX. Think about who makes the decisions to use Google cloud and what criteria they are using. The snappiness of the gcp ui is not likely to be near the top of their list
- woah 6y ago
  DigitalOcean built a big business off of easy to use cloud hosting.
  - wrsh07 6y ago
    Yes but I don't know that they have much success convincing already huge companies to switch to their cloud B2 large business is different than b2c or b2 small business It's all about who is making the decisions
- logicslave 6y ago
  No incentive? AWS is crushing them, the UI is the product.
pjmlp 6y ago
Coding for Android has taught me that is definitely not the case. They managed to make a mess worse than JEE, the native layer took 10 years to finally use Android Modules, they keep fixing the header files, still don't have proper C++ bindings and force everyone to write JNI boilerplate by hand.
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  The Android base wasn't written by Google. Google bought the company that made Android 2 years after it was written. That's a lot of time to create a base system and a lot of time to create cruft. By now, it's too late to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, hence a new OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    That is no excuse. They had 10 years to fix it, and many issues steem from Google's HR to promote doing shinny toys instead of fixing broken stuff.
- tehlike 6y ago
  Android is really the worst platform for developers. Context? Let's make a god object, and also create application context and activity context, and screw liskov substitution principle. Also create a library to fix all our bugs in all versions of the platform, but also have a shit ton of bugs. Microsoft did nail windows phone apis, 10 freaking years ago, too bad it didn't survive.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Yeah, keep using my Lumia and playing with UWP.
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
Because it is both kind and safe to be charitable, and many problems can be explained without having to assume idiot developers.

notretarded 6y ago

Found the google interview reject.

gravypod 6y ago

Cloud service providers aren't really optimizing for the same thing that the average website is optimizing for. They're attempting to maximize their velocity, maximize their API stability, and make programmatic usage of their system as easy as possible. GCP's UI? Yea it's pretty bad. GCP's terraform provider? It's really slick. Probably the best one of the bunch (Azure, AWS, Oracle, OVH, ...).

levosmetalo 6y ago
> Cloud service providers aren't really optimizing for the same thing that the average website is optimizing for. They're attempting to maximize their velocity, maximize their API stability, and make programmatic usage of their system as easy as possible. Yep, already covered that under incompetence and cluelessness. > GCP's UI? Yea it's pretty bad. GCP's terraform provider? It's really slick. Probably the best one of the bunch (Azure, AWS, Oracle, OVH, ...). In that case, I would assume that backend team indeed consist of competent people, as opposed to web team. But TFA was about front end experience which is abysmal.
- musha68k 6y ago
  They had some big outages over the last year. I’m therefore still skeptical to bet on them from a “backend” operations reliability standpoint also. To be fair I’m not sure they are doing worse than AWS though when looking into details. I’m thinking recent AWS Kinesis us-east issue - move fast and break things? Maybe uptime is more important than a gazillion new “feature” services. I also prefer good terraform provider stewardship over any “fancy” new cloudformation CDK or “beautiful” GUI actually. It’s complicated.
maxsilver 6y ago
> Cloud service providers aren't really optimizing for the same thing that the average website is optimizing for. (snip) GCP's UI? Yea it's pretty bad. GCP's terraform provider? It's really slick. That's still incompetence. That counts as incompetence, too. "This restaurant is filthy and full of bugs, but that's OK, because they're take-out only, so they're not optimizing for the same thing the average sit-down restaurant is. Sure, that place is disgusting, but the food in box still tasted pretty good..."
- gravypod 6y ago
  A better comparison: "This restaurant only has one table and 1 chair with a broken leg and gum stuck to the seat but that's ok because they're take-out only"
the_duke 6y ago
I thought Terraform provider was developed/maintained by Hashicorp, not Google. Are Google employees actively involved? I also did encounter annoying issues (which have slowly been getting better though). I guess it might speak to a solid, if somewhat slow, API.
- gravypod 6y ago
  The terraform provider is usually a near 1:1 mapping of the provider's APIs.
- jmarcher 6y ago
  My understanding is that it is actively maintained by GCP employees, but yes Hashicorp owns the repo.
- dijital 6y ago
  Yeah they've got a nifty tool called Magic Modules that partially auto-generates the Terraform Provider (along with Ansible and InSpec) from the GCP API: https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/google-provider-new-terraform https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/google-provider-new-terr...

mhh__ 6y ago

The puzzles make sure you can write the O(good) algorithm, knowing the coefficients is a question of experience and knowledge of the shoulders your code stands on.

XCSme 6y ago

I used to think Google hires only "top" developers. Lately I think they mostly hire average or below-average people which resulted in products of average or below-average quality.

pjmlp 6y ago
Besides well known computing idols, it is basically who is able to put up with their hiring process and manages to score a job offer.

brazzy 6y ago

Slow software doesn't indicate a lack of skill. It indicates that speed is not a priority for management.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

wrsh07 6y ago

I think by attributing it do incompetence you're missing the incentives problem. Others point this out, but Google just has no incentives to improve this UX. Think about who makes the decisions to use Google cloud and what criteria they are using. The snappiness of the gcp ui is not likely to be near the top of their list

woah 6y ago
DigitalOcean built a big business off of easy to use cloud hosting.
- wrsh07 6y ago
  Yes but I don't know that they have much success convincing already huge companies to switch to their cloud B2 large business is different than b2c or b2 small business It's all about who is making the decisions
logicslave 6y ago
No incentive? AWS is crushing them, the UI is the product.

pjmlp 6y ago

Coding for Android has taught me that is definitely not the case. They managed to make a mess worse than JEE, the native layer took 10 years to finally use Android Modules, they keep fixing the header files, still don't have proper C++ bindings and force everyone to write JNI boilerplate by hand.

LockAndLol 6y ago
The Android base wasn't written by Google. Google bought the company that made Android 2 years after it was written. That's a lot of time to create a base system and a lot of time to create cruft. By now, it's too late to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, hence a new OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia
- pjmlp 6y ago
  That is no excuse. They had 10 years to fix it, and many issues steem from Google's HR to promote doing shinny toys instead of fixing broken stuff.
tehlike 6y ago
Android is really the worst platform for developers. Context? Let's make a god object, and also create application context and activity context, and screw liskov substitution principle. Also create a library to fix all our bugs in all versions of the platform, but also have a shit ton of bugs. Microsoft did nail windows phone apis, 10 freaking years ago, too bad it didn't survive.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Yeah, keep using my Lumia and playing with UWP.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

Because it is both kind and safe to be charitable, and many problems can be explained without having to assume idiot developers.