4 ms·

It seems Google (or maybe just some of the employees?) derive pleasure from taking things that were working just fine and then breaking them so my life is harde

by loxias 4y ago

It seems Google (or maybe just some of the employees?) derive pleasure from taking things that were working just fine and then breaking them so my life is harder. It's almost a yearly occurrence at this point -- some thing that, once upon a time in the past I spent effort on configuring so that I could have a happy experience with my computer, will now be announced deprecated forcing me to comply with some new edict from on high with absolutely no benefit for me. Please stop doing this. Stop "fixing" things. I'm an engineer too, I know building new things is fun, but there is also honor in maintaining well functioning things and not making other people's lives unnecessarily hard. I bet that, now that I finally have mutt working again with Google's newest incarnation of authentication, there's a team within Google excited about breaking it in 2 years.

smoldesu 4y ago
The problem is (as always) a lack of regulation in the tech industry. We've taught Big Tech that the only way to 'innovate' is to perform profane moneymaking rituals at the expense of the end user, and the shareholders are always asking for more. The average Google engineer's job is no different from anyone else working in a sufficiently large company. Their job isn't 'press the big evil switch on MV3', but rather 'MV3's staging branch is failing tests, go fix it'. The evil comes from perverse bureaucratic incentive, so it leaves me kinda ruffled to see people blaming the engineers on HN of all places. I can imagine some pinstriped upper-management prick at FAANG reading this thread in their penthouse and laughing their ass off.
- loxias 4y ago
  > We've taught Big Tech that the only way to 'innovate' is to perform profane moneymaking rituals at the expense of the end user, and the shareholders are always asking for more. > The evil comes from perverse bureaucratic incentive.. I think you're entirely right. I have nothing else to add, other than that I've always thought this, it's not a new change of opinion. I guess I don't see any conflict between my comment and yours? Yes, I know that "Their job isn't 'press the big evil switch on MV3', but rather 'MV3's staging branch is failing tests, go fix it" -- I've worked in software my whole career too. :) > so it leaves me kinda ruffled to see people blaming the engineers on HN of all places. I also know that it isn't some nebulous cloud above which is where designs come from, but other employees. I also know, from experience, that if you're a valuable enough engineer within an org or a project, and you significantly oppose a proposed feature or change coming from the suits, it's not gonna happen. What are they gonna do, code it themselves? > I can imagine some pinstriped upper-management prick at FAANG reading this thread in their penthouse and laughing their ass off. Agree.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Holding out because you are the only person who can make a change doesn't work as well with a company like Google with many overlapping developers. Those plans come from management layers above not from the co-worker beside you. Blaming the developers when it usually starts with a vp trying to increase some metric for bonus time missing the key point that it is the organizational culture that demands, forbids and sets the rules for how employees operate. It starts at the top because if the ceo did not promote based in metric scores increasing the vp wouldn't create projects developers work on that the end user hates.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    > I also know, from experience, that if you're a valuable enough engineer within an org or a project, and you significantly oppose a proposed feature or change coming from the suits, it's not gonna happen. What are they gonna do, code it themselves? I’ve had high success rate effecting significant course changes in several roles, at several distinct jobs. One of the things I emphasize to mentees is that their word and will is powerful, more than in most IC roles. Even so, the error in your reasoning here is obvious to me, especially applied to such large companies. Your chance of success effecting a course change is high, but the company may value your contributions less than they value the course they want to keep. They may also be in a position to hire people whose talent and compliance are more valuable than your own. What are they gonna do? They’re gonna find someone else among hordes of applicants to do what you won’t.
kmeisthax 4y ago
So, here's the hidden secret to Google: every inexplicably stupid move they've ever done can be described in terms of promo packets. Every duplicate messaging app? That's someone's promo packet item. Every ground-up incompatible API rewrite? Also a promo packet. Google produces new work purely to satisfy itself. Their hierarchy forms its own internal economy where promotions are purchased with headline-grabbing actions that fool managers into thinking they provide business value. We'll call this "Googlestan". Yes, this occasionally causes problems in the external, "real" economy. Writing message apps as disposable products means you don't have an answer to iMessage or Whatsapp. Breaking APIs every 3 months makes Google Cloud a nonstarter for anything other than easily-migrated guest OSes with a more sensible deprecation policy. But that's how Google was built, and how Google will continue to be built, because all hierarchies have a rule zero: self-preserve. You cannot build a new Google without disenfranchising the people who currently know how to game the current Google, and those people will instinctively fight against an engineering culture they do not understand. The only exceptions to this are the core economic vehicles between Googlestan and the outside world: Search, Chrome, and Android. Note how each one of these products have a dramatically more conservative roadmap, with a reasonably minimized number of breaking changes. Hell, Chrome specifically calls breaking changes "interventions", because they're that serious about not making them. These products form a moat around Googlestan that protects the country from invaders, so they themselves are isolated from the kinds of people who would gank them for the sake of a promo packet. [0] If you're wondering, "how does Google internally handle breaking changes everywhere without boiling the ocean"... the answer is that they have an automated ocean-boiling machine that lets them rewrite the entire Google code corpus whenever an API breaks.
- refulgentis 4y ago
  This isn't true and I don't even particularly care if you think it is and you're a fellow Googler. I know for a fact it isn't. There's some trivial truth to it, of course, but specific assertions are laughably false and more complicated than you are claiming. I very much would like to reiterate this sort of thing is unhealthy, the point I was making was people moralize while assigning grand motives to a large # of uncoordinated actions about decisions that are obviously more complicated in real life if you were making them. This sort of is a perfect exercise in that
kmlx 4y ago
> then breaking them so my life is harder. just use a different ad blocker or a different browser.

by loxias 4y ago

smoldesu 4y ago

The problem is (as always) a lack of regulation in the tech industry. We've taught Big Tech that the only way to 'innovate' is to perform profane moneymaking rituals at the expense of the end user, and the shareholders are always asking for more. The average Google engineer's job is no different from anyone else working in a sufficiently large company. Their job isn't 'press the big evil switch on MV3', but rather 'MV3's staging branch is failing tests, go fix it'. The evil comes from perverse bureaucratic incentive, so it leaves me kinda ruffled to see people blaming the engineers on HN of all places. I can imagine some pinstriped upper-management prick at FAANG reading this thread in their penthouse and laughing their ass off.

loxias 4y ago
> We've taught Big Tech that the only way to 'innovate' is to perform profane moneymaking rituals at the expense of the end user, and the shareholders are always asking for more. > The evil comes from perverse bureaucratic incentive.. I think you're entirely right. I have nothing else to add, other than that I've always thought this, it's not a new change of opinion. I guess I don't see any conflict between my comment and yours? Yes, I know that "Their job isn't 'press the big evil switch on MV3', but rather 'MV3's staging branch is failing tests, go fix it" -- I've worked in software my whole career too. :) > so it leaves me kinda ruffled to see people blaming the engineers on HN of all places. I also know that it isn't some nebulous cloud above which is where designs come from, but other employees. I also know, from experience, that if you're a valuable enough engineer within an org or a project, and you significantly oppose a proposed feature or change coming from the suits, it's not gonna happen. What are they gonna do, code it themselves? > I can imagine some pinstriped upper-management prick at FAANG reading this thread in their penthouse and laughing their ass off. Agree.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Holding out because you are the only person who can make a change doesn't work as well with a company like Google with many overlapping developers. Those plans come from management layers above not from the co-worker beside you. Blaming the developers when it usually starts with a vp trying to increase some metric for bonus time missing the key point that it is the organizational culture that demands, forbids and sets the rules for how employees operate. It starts at the top because if the ceo did not promote based in metric scores increasing the vp wouldn't create projects developers work on that the end user hates.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  > I also know, from experience, that if you're a valuable enough engineer within an org or a project, and you significantly oppose a proposed feature or change coming from the suits, it's not gonna happen. What are they gonna do, code it themselves? I’ve had high success rate effecting significant course changes in several roles, at several distinct jobs. One of the things I emphasize to mentees is that their word and will is powerful, more than in most IC roles. Even so, the error in your reasoning here is obvious to me, especially applied to such large companies. Your chance of success effecting a course change is high, but the company may value your contributions less than they value the course they want to keep. They may also be in a position to hire people whose talent and compliance are more valuable than your own. What are they gonna do? They’re gonna find someone else among hordes of applicants to do what you won’t.

kmeisthax 4y ago

So, here's the hidden secret to Google: every inexplicably stupid move they've ever done can be described in terms of promo packets. Every duplicate messaging app? That's someone's promo packet item. Every ground-up incompatible API rewrite? Also a promo packet. Google produces new work purely to satisfy itself. Their hierarchy forms its own internal economy where promotions are purchased with headline-grabbing actions that fool managers into thinking they provide business value. We'll call this "Googlestan". Yes, this occasionally causes problems in the external, "real" economy. Writing message apps as disposable products means you don't have an answer to iMessage or Whatsapp. Breaking APIs every 3 months makes Google Cloud a nonstarter for anything other than easily-migrated guest OSes with a more sensible deprecation policy. But that's how Google was built, and how Google will continue to be built, because all hierarchies have a rule zero: self-preserve. You cannot build a new Google without disenfranchising the people who currently know how to game the current Google, and those people will instinctively fight against an engineering culture they do not understand. The only exceptions to this are the core economic vehicles between Googlestan and the outside world: Search, Chrome, and Android. Note how each one of these products have a dramatically more conservative roadmap, with a reasonably minimized number of breaking changes. Hell, Chrome specifically calls breaking changes "interventions", because they're that serious about not making them. These products form a moat around Googlestan that protects the country from invaders, so they themselves are isolated from the kinds of people who would gank them for the sake of a promo packet. [0] If you're wondering, "how does Google internally handle breaking changes everywhere without boiling the ocean"... the answer is that they have an automated ocean-boiling machine that lets them rewrite the entire Google code corpus whenever an API breaks.

refulgentis 4y ago
This isn't true and I don't even particularly care if you think it is and you're a fellow Googler. I know for a fact it isn't. There's some trivial truth to it, of course, but specific assertions are laughably false and more complicated than you are claiming. I very much would like to reiterate this sort of thing is unhealthy, the point I was making was people moralize while assigning grand motives to a large # of uncoordinated actions about decisions that are obviously more complicated in real life if you were making them. This sort of is a perfect exercise in that

kmlx 4y ago

> then breaking them so my life is harder. just use a different ad blocker or a different browser.