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I can relate to this so much. When I was a newly joined Google consultant at a partner firm, we went to their office - some 13 different types of cuisines, diff
by neya 9mo ago
I can relate to this so much. When I was a newly joined Google consultant at a partner firm, we went to their office - some 13 different types of cuisines, different types of game rooms, lounges and what not. A luxury star hotel experience. We were waiting for our meeting on behalf of this one particularly large media client who was bleeding money on Wordpress.
3 engineers arrived - fashionably late. We explained them the situation and all we wanted from them was some GCP offering that would cure our woes and one that would cut our bills. The senior consultant - and presumably the only tech guy (rest seemed to be salesy) wasted our time like a used car salesman - he didn't even understand Google's own product portfolio and recommended us to use something like Spanner - which was totally not the solution to the problem, not to mention, expensive.
My boss and I left the meeting pissed off and he told me - "Neya, you probably know more about the product portfolio than these guys. Let's leave". That weekend, I went with my tried and trusted favorite Db - PostgreSQL - CloudSQL with a custom Elixir middleware based an old CMS I wrote a decade ago. After some trial and error, the solution worked flawlessly (and still does till date on auto-pilot). My client still has the lowest cost in the region - 1/3rd the cost of their competitors...7 years later. Back then, there was no vibe-coding, no AI, no auto-completion. Just pure thinking and experimentation.
All this just to say I agree that the new guy sometimes can make the best solutions to a problem and not always screw up. I always listen to new hires these days (now I'm a fractional / CTO) because you never know who could pull off that 1/3rd cost cutting framework move.
- Aeolun 9mo agoIt’s funny you complain about the sales pitch the guy gave you, but the comment itself sounds like a sales pitch :)
- smartbit 9mo agoIMHO it sounds more like someone who is proud of solving a problem for very little effort that Google tried to sell a very expensive solution for.
- neya 9mo agoThank you, that's exactly what I was trying to convey
- neya 9mo agoHey, really sorry, I'm genuinely not trying to sell anything (I don't have a product to sell...yet). I can see why you might have interpreted like that though. And it's unfortunately too late to edit my comment. I'll try to think less sales-y next time.
- Brian_K_White 9mo agoI think you need to calibrate your perception of things you read.
- kstrauser 9mo agoNice work! Sometimes those complex solutions are the right tool for the job. And other times, you just need to glue some stuff together, call it good, and start making money. Experience helps a good engineer know when each approach is appropriate.
- neya 9mo agoThanks, totally agreed.
- sinnsro 9mo agoThanks for sharing! Every time I see a post about Elixir and how it Just Works™, I get an urge to learn and build something with it.
- yurishimo 9mo agoOne day I'm gonna build some sort of product in Elixir. I was super interested in LiveView when it was announced and I think the component story has gotten a lot better than when I tried back in pre-1.0 days. This video by Sasa Juric is still the gold standard (imo) of Elixir demos for anyone who hasn't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvBT4XBdoUE
- neya 9mo agoDefinitely give it a shot. It's a wonderful language and the rewards are immense for the little effort you put in. I promise you, you'll never look back once you fall in love with it!