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Any productivity blog that starts with the flawed premise that you can have the average (or even above-average Googlers) developer pump out bugfixes and feature

by belval 4y ago

Any productivity blog that starts with the flawed premise that you can have the average (or even above-average Googlers) developer pump out bugfixes and features 8hrs/day, doing focused work without tiring sets unrealistic expectations. The reality is that a developer's day is a mix of meetings (for coordination they are not necessarily useless), training (it's a fast moving environment with self-actualization), code reviews, environment setup, helping colleagues, and finally, code writing are all necessary for a successful development endeavor. If I need a full compile that takes 15 minutes it does break the flow, but so does all of the above. When Sundar Pichai said that productivity was too low, he's just preparing the press/people for layoffs and hiring freezes.

DisjointedHunt 4y ago
This is spot on. Code is simply a reflection of a very deep thought process. Google spends all that money on "taking the everyday problems away" from its engineers so they can spend their time in the deep thought needed to really think about a problem before writing code to reflect their solution. The fucking bullshit MBA approach of "look busy" is what Google and other tech companies have disrupted through the years. You're absolutely right in the last statement that this is a hedge by the CEO to prep for uncertainty. I would take that argument a bit further and claim that this is also a hedge to insulate their recruiters and pretty much everyone with connections in the bay area from freely referring candidates from the other sinking ships such as Facebook, Snap and the rest that would dilute culture. He seems to be giving cover to everyone with the hiring freeze so that they can more readily control the influx of job applications that is happening right now with these other large employers laying of talent very similar to the cohort working at Google.

by belval 4y ago

DisjointedHunt 4y ago

This is spot on. Code is simply a reflection of a very deep thought process. Google spends all that money on "taking the everyday problems away" from its engineers so they can spend their time in the deep thought needed to really think about a problem before writing code to reflect their solution. The fucking bullshit MBA approach of "look busy" is what Google and other tech companies have disrupted through the years. You're absolutely right in the last statement that this is a hedge by the CEO to prep for uncertainty. I would take that argument a bit further and claim that this is also a hedge to insulate their recruiters and pretty much everyone with connections in the bay area from freely referring candidates from the other sinking ships such as Facebook, Snap and the rest that would dilute culture. He seems to be giving cover to everyone with the hiring freeze so that they can more readily control the influx of job applications that is happening right now with these other large employers laying of talent very similar to the cohort working at Google.