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For those who don't regularly follow rachelbythebay.com, this post is a Google allegory. I disagree with a couple points. First, Google really doesn't care as
by jmillikin 13y ago
For those who don't regularly follow rachelbythebay.com, this post is a Google allegory. I disagree with a couple points.
First, Google really doesn't care as much about education as people think they do. They do love experience. I never graduated high school, and was hired into an SRE position (= programmer writing large-scale sysadmin tools) based on previous work experience. Grades are only useful if you've got nothing else to show off.
Second, if you want employees to be loyal to a company with unusually good perks, taking them fresh out of school is a terrible approach. Many people working here indeed have no real idea what working at non-tech companies is like, and that means they assume every other company is like Google. I have heard stories of employees getting frustrated on some project, leaving to work at (e.g.) a bank or webdev shop, and not realizing until their first day that there's no free food, or gym, or weekly heckling of the CEO. I used to work at a defense contractor, I know what it's like being a programmer employed at a non-tech company, and I don't want to ever go back.
(In other words, Google might get better retention by implementing Rumspringa)
Third, the proprietary parts aren't as pervasive as the article portrays. Our Linux kernel has weird Google-specific interfaces, but they're always in some stage of upstreaming and will eventually be in Linus's trunk. Our RPC system uses the same protobuf rpc-stubs that are generated by the open-source protobuf compiler. Desktops and Laptops run stock {Ubuntu,Windows,MacOS} with a few extra binaries. MapReduce and BigTable were published and inspired dozens of open-source implementations. Many of our Python-based tools have web frontends written with Django. Many systems persist data in MySQL.
When Google engineers avoid particular in-fashion systems such as Rails or MongoDB or node.js, it's not because we're ignorant of them, it's because we think they're not good enough.
- leviself 13y agoJust curious, why is Mongo not good enough or do you just mean as opposed to BigTable?
- jmillikin 13y agoWe have BigTable and protobufs and real MapReduce, so there's no reason to use MongoDB with its JSON storage and Javascript-based mapReduce() function. It's like comparing CSV to SQLite.
- bhickey 13y agoTechnical points aside, MongoDB is licensed under the AGPL. Why would I use it when freer alternatives exist?
- btilly 13y agoA major need for a company like Google is visibility into their distributed architecture. When you make every component be built on their libraries running on their architecture, you have a common toolset across all of your properties to track any performance problem back to its root cause. MongoDB does not provide this type of visibility. Either within that common toolset or in any other way.
- ScottBurson 13y agoGoogle, huh? I was thinking of Palantir as I read that -- and Microsoft. I guess I have too many friends in their 40s and 50s who work at Google.
- hobs 13y agoThe constant inversion of evil is a clear reference.
- philwelch 13y agoIANAG but at large companies like Google, you're bound to see proprietary internal systems for handling a lot of problems like remote services, package management, deployment, load balancing, etc. Part of that is massive scale. Another part is that, while small generic programs and libraries do well in the wild, having a standardized, integrated system is more cost-effective inside a large business.
- michaelt 13y agoI, too, ANAG but I've heard 20% time projects only count towards performance reviews if they make it into production. That could easily create a bias towards using things made in 20% time in preference to industry-standard tooling. In reality I assume it's a combination of the two: Sometimes the internal tools really are the best for Google's specific needs; other times there's probably Not Invented Here Syndrome at work, same as anywhere else.
- spankalee 13y agoThere's no such rule.
- nostrademons 13y agoNo such rule, but you are generally judged on impact and not effort at Google. If your efforts don't make an impact, then they aren't going to be counted in your favor.
- philwelch 13y agoIsn't that how the world works? Effort without impact is just wasted effort.
- nostrademons 13y agoThe real world, yes. In many institutions (eg. the public school system, most giant megacorps) you get points for showing up and putting in the appearance of effort even if you don't accomplish anything.
- chetanahuja 13y agoWhile I'll accept your point about many google employees having no or un-cool degrees, there's no denying that google recruiters covet fresh college grads from well-known schools and your grades in school are an important factor. Not that google is unique is considering these factors in recruitment, but it's absolutely ridiculous to imply that google does not care about these factors. As for proprietary parts not being important, I have major disagreements with your characterization of how well the linux kernel upstreaming works (having worked in that team) and other assertions about stock desktops (Stock Ubuntu ? Really ?) but I suspect that discussion will quickly veer into areas of confidentiality (if it hasn't already). As for MapReduce and BigTable, I'm still wishing and hoping for the open-source world to catchup with the originals (Why do people keep writing enormous in-memory data stores in Java!??) Enough said.
- jmillikin 13y ago> there's no denying that google recruiters covet fresh > college grads from well-known schools and your grades in > school are an important factor. Sure, Google recruiters hit up Stanford and MIT just like every other tech company. But they don't reject candidates for having a non-ivy-league background. > I have major disagreements with your characterization > of how well the linux kernel upstreaming works (having > worked in that team) From within the team it may have seemed bad, from from nearby teams it's apparent that there's a lot of progress in upstreaming. All of the cgroup stuff, for example, seems to be going in relatively smoothly. > other assertions about stock desktops (Stock Ubuntu ? Really ?) Based on your LinkedIn you left in late 2012; there's been a lot of work with Canonical since then on reducing how much customization Google needs to do for its desktops.
- VLM 13y ago"For those who don't regularly follow rachelbythebay.com, this post is a Google allegory." LOL its about 10x funnier if you read it as a seminary allegory. It really does fit pretty well.
- rachelbythebay 13y agoRegarding NIH, some places have found an interesting way to have their cake and eat it too. First, they create something interesting. Then they release it to the world. That way, their formerly-proprietary thing becomes the standard, or at least, shows up in the marketplace. Protocol Buffers was this back in ... 2007? Too bad Thrift happened first, right? This is leading up to the kernel of another post: how to undercut the competition: hire the people who created their Secret Sauce, then have them build it again, but this time, release it to the world. Now the competition doesn't have their exclusive magic carpet to ride around on any more.
- throwawaykf 13y agoInterestingly, a senior Googler I once talked to derisively mentioned how competitors like Facebook were open sourcing projects that used to be proprietary Google technology, mostly based on work done by people FB poached from Google. I realize it's just another anecdote, but the word "we" was used enough during the dialog to indicate that it was a common view within Google. I guess it's a viable strategy, but nobody likes it when it's done to them.
- rachelbythebay 13y agoOh, sure, in 2007 when Thrift came out first, I was on board with that sentiment, too. "Oh, wow, they hired someone who was an intern here last year, and now they have their own Protocol Buffers, surprise surprise." It was easier to disparage it than it was to get concerned about our own well-being. Now, however, every time they release something like this, I just crack up laughing. The servers, the software-defined switched network, all of it. It just keeps going. The real magicians have moved on and are now sharing their creations with the rest of the world. If only I had a copy of that internal post which basically said "either we open-source our own stuff, or other people are going to do it for us, and we're going to be behind the eight ball". I want to say it was a Yegge Buzz post but I can't remember for sure. It's been three or four years. Leakers, you know how to find me. Contact info in profile.
- jrockway 13y agoPeople outside of Google have heard of Protocol Buffers?
- jholman 13y agoI strongly strongly agree with you about new-grad Googlers not knowing how good they have it (food/gym/tgif? TECH STOP!), and I agree with you about degrees too. As an amusing joke the article's close enough to home to be funny; as a serious criticism... well, it's far enough off to be funny. The proprietary thing is dead-on, though. I started listing major proprietary technologies, got close to twenty, and decided I wasn't sure how much of that was trade secret, and deleted it. Google technology looks like we're on a different Galapagos island from the rest of tech, and the landbridge sunk into the sea in 2003, and once in a while a bird in a windstorm carries a seed across. Usually Google tech is superior to comparable outside tech, sometimes it's inferior. As an aside for Googlers, have you seen that Facebook thing "Buck", that some ex-Googler named Michael Bolin "invented"? I don't even know what to say.
- x1024 13y agoHonestly? The difference between G and F is that F actually released the code. You saying "but we had this for years...as a proprietary system" kind of proves the author's point.
- jholman 13y agoWhich point of which author? Also, what did you think I was arguing?
- jjwiseman 13y agoThere's a tradition of ex-Googlers re-implementing the Google build system (it was definitely my favorite part of the Google infrastructure). See, e.g., twitter's pants: https://github.com/twitter/commons/blob/master/src/python/twitter/pants/README.md https://github.com/twitter/commons/blob/master/src/python/tw...