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While I'm often annoyed if not downright frustrated by Google search results today, it's perfectly clear to me that I wouldn't have the level of career I have i

While I'm often annoyed if not downright frustrated by Google search results today, it's perfectly clear to me that I wouldn't have the level of career I have if it wasn't for the value Google provided to early internet searches. Compared to the folks who had 10+ years of experience on me in 2000 it certainly felt like a super power.

ghaff 4y ago
Google and just the amount of accessible information. I sometimes think that if I were transported back to my pre-web job, the level of sheer frustration I would have at the limited, out-dated information I would have access to for everything would be immense. Of course, most everyone else would be in the same boat but we're accustomed to trivially looking up so much stuff that would have required significant time and/or money to find out--if it were really even available at all.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  I do a lot of heavily-NDA'd firmware work during the day and play around with web stuff at night There's absolutely nothing available for my day job online, so you could say I've been living without Google for a decade. It's not as tough as you'd think. You just have to remember some basic syntax in your head or write it down in your notes, and look up APIs when you use them. It doesn't honestly take much longer to do something sans-Google at work than it does to cobble web stuff together with Google and StackOverflow's help. It's OK
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I didn't and don't do a lot of software development. I was a product manager for a long time and then an IT industry analysts. As a product manager, to pick on one particular point, we had very cursory competitive information. We had some expensive subscriptions to analysts who essentially acted as a clearinghouse for data sheets that companies couldn't get from each other directly. But it tended to be very shallow and out-of-date. Certainly not everything is on the web with or without paywalls. And, as when I was doing software development at night pre-web, I could just have a library of books. But for a lot of things, you made do with taking longer, being more shallow, and making more mistakes.
  - tstrimple 4y ago
    For most stuff sure. But as soon as you hit an edge case you're kind of on your own. I've been hit by some fairly tough bugs / issues which had ready solutions available a quick search away. When things go wrong is where I think you'll see the most difference in pre and post Google problem solving efficiency.

ghaff 4y ago

Google and just the amount of accessible information. I sometimes think that if I were transported back to my pre-web job, the level of sheer frustration I would have at the limited, out-dated information I would have access to for everything would be immense. Of course, most everyone else would be in the same boat but we're accustomed to trivially looking up so much stuff that would have required significant time and/or money to find out--if it were really even available at all.

Firmwarrior 4y ago
I do a lot of heavily-NDA'd firmware work during the day and play around with web stuff at night There's absolutely nothing available for my day job online, so you could say I've been living without Google for a decade. It's not as tough as you'd think. You just have to remember some basic syntax in your head or write it down in your notes, and look up APIs when you use them. It doesn't honestly take much longer to do something sans-Google at work than it does to cobble web stuff together with Google and StackOverflow's help. It's OK
- ghaff 4y ago
  I didn't and don't do a lot of software development. I was a product manager for a long time and then an IT industry analysts. As a product manager, to pick on one particular point, we had very cursory competitive information. We had some expensive subscriptions to analysts who essentially acted as a clearinghouse for data sheets that companies couldn't get from each other directly. But it tended to be very shallow and out-of-date. Certainly not everything is on the web with or without paywalls. And, as when I was doing software development at night pre-web, I could just have a library of books. But for a lot of things, you made do with taking longer, being more shallow, and making more mistakes.
- tstrimple 4y ago
  For most stuff sure. But as soon as you hit an edge case you're kind of on your own. I've been hit by some fairly tough bugs / issues which had ready solutions available a quick search away. When things go wrong is where I think you'll see the most difference in pre and post Google problem solving efficiency.