8 ms·

There's lots of interesting projects going on at Google and an internal system for applying to other teams, and usually no shortage of teams asking for people.

There's lots of interesting projects going on at Google and an internal system for applying to other teams, and usually no shortage of teams asking for people. There's not a lot of CRUD apps with the exception of Corp-IT stuff.

AznHisoka 13y ago
Google Webmaster Tools - CRUD Adwords console - CRUD Google+ pages - CRUD Google Analytics dashboard - CRUD Google Merchants console - CRUD DoubleClick dashboard - CRUD
- cromwellian 13y ago
  Tiny sliver. Hangouts, Chrome, Android, DevTools, Dart/GWT/Closure/Go, V8, Search/Knowledge, Google Maps, Google Now, Gmail, Docs, G+ photo processing, Shopping Express, etc Even if you take Google's ad platforms, they use machine learning techiques on the backend, as does YouTube.
- jmduke 13y ago
  This is an obtuse way of proving that "CRUD app" and "interesting problem/opportunity" are not two separate sets.
timburus 13y ago
I cannot make general statements, but it's really hard to move when you are assigned to a project where you unhappy. I tried to transfer to several other teams in my area of expertise. I was quite close in a couple of places, but they usually run out of 'head count' at the last moment. There was just one team that could have taken me, but it was the same kind of boring custom coded BI I was doing in my project. Finally, I just had to give up. The bad part is that I did many 20% projects for these other teams, which hurt my chances for promotion.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  It could be that the type of project one is one influences. I'm pretty sure if I tried to join the maps team, I'd be rejected, I have no experience in geo/gis. But I have had the experience of co-workers transferring off my team to other teams and semi-regular turnover, so it may be a matter of finding the right place at the right time.
  - VLM 13y ago
    "I'm pretty sure if I tried to join the maps team, I'd be rejected, I have no experience in geo/gis." Ah but from the linked article, if the only selection criteria is ability to answer weird 5-minute-depth trivia questions about data structures, not actually knowing anything about GEO/GIS wouldn't even be discovered, much less an impediment. Of course, they might have a totally different, less pathological system for internal transfers than for external hiring...
Aqueous 13y ago
It seems like everything they do are CRUD apps, in the sense that they are concerned with creating, updating, reading, and destroying database records. They are just massively parallelized on the backend to deal with all the traffic. Sometimes I wonder what all these engineers do every day. Their main apps are not getting exponentially better, and they have fewer of them. Why is all this algorithmic knowledge really needed? Do they spend all day optimizing or engineering and planning new features? Not trying to insult Google, but I'm not seeing a ton of new features that would justify this kind of indepth theoretical knowledge. The ability to actually code, to do so efficiently and quickly, and to properly unit test and profile it, seems more important than any algorithmic knowledge. Mastery of the toolchain and the language, and that comes down to - "What have you produced?" Maybe this is why Google hasn't had a new hit product in what seems like awhile. It doesn't need one as long as they maintain their position as search leader, but it doesn't seem like they have one.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  I think this is being relatively unfair in assessment. Google hasn't had a hit product in a while? Search and Ads are dominant. Android is the #1 mobile smartphone OS with 80% of the market. Chrome is now the #1 browser. Google Maps is the #1 mapping application. Gmail is now #1 in active users. G+ now has 190 million active posters now monthly now (Twitter only has 110 million active posters) YouTube is the top video site. Most of these apps listed above are not CRUD apps. The service based ones have significant and non-trivial data processing on the backend, lots of machine-learning, or algorithmic data processing. Google apps have been getting better over the years, but Google updates them almost continuously and incrementally because they are web based, and so most of the changes go unnoticed like a frog slowly being boiled in water. Is Google Search the same as it was 5 years ago? No, it has Google Instant, voice search, Knowledge Graph, direct answers, better spam filtering, it's index is far fresher, etc. For example, just the interactive chart knowledge panels (https://www.google.com/#fp=9a975e048e4bd6d6&q=population+of+india https://www.google.com/#fp=9a975e048e4bd6d6&q=population+of+...) Google Maps has gotten radically better, and the latest beta maps is probably the most complex and sophisticated web application ever engineered. Google search within G+ and Drive actually does object recognition with neural networks. (http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2013/06/improving-photo-search-step-across.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2013/06/improving-photo-s...) This is a huge improvement in image search, and most people are totally unaware of it. It just works and they don't notice that it found it image without even needing descriptive text or tags. Google apps are slowly getting smarter each and everyday but there's no "Jobsnote" to laud them, so the improvements are invisible.

AznHisoka 13y ago

Google Webmaster Tools - CRUD Adwords console - CRUD Google+ pages - CRUD Google Analytics dashboard - CRUD Google Merchants console - CRUD DoubleClick dashboard - CRUD

cromwellian 13y ago
Tiny sliver. Hangouts, Chrome, Android, DevTools, Dart/GWT/Closure/Go, V8, Search/Knowledge, Google Maps, Google Now, Gmail, Docs, G+ photo processing, Shopping Express, etc Even if you take Google's ad platforms, they use machine learning techiques on the backend, as does YouTube.
jmduke 13y ago
This is an obtuse way of proving that "CRUD app" and "interesting problem/opportunity" are not two separate sets.

timburus 13y ago

I cannot make general statements, but it's really hard to move when you are assigned to a project where you unhappy. I tried to transfer to several other teams in my area of expertise. I was quite close in a couple of places, but they usually run out of 'head count' at the last moment. There was just one team that could have taken me, but it was the same kind of boring custom coded BI I was doing in my project. Finally, I just had to give up. The bad part is that I did many 20% projects for these other teams, which hurt my chances for promotion.

cromwellian 13y ago
It could be that the type of project one is one influences. I'm pretty sure if I tried to join the maps team, I'd be rejected, I have no experience in geo/gis. But I have had the experience of co-workers transferring off my team to other teams and semi-regular turnover, so it may be a matter of finding the right place at the right time.
- VLM 13y ago
  "I'm pretty sure if I tried to join the maps team, I'd be rejected, I have no experience in geo/gis." Ah but from the linked article, if the only selection criteria is ability to answer weird 5-minute-depth trivia questions about data structures, not actually knowing anything about GEO/GIS wouldn't even be discovered, much less an impediment. Of course, they might have a totally different, less pathological system for internal transfers than for external hiring...

Aqueous 13y ago

It seems like everything they do are CRUD apps, in the sense that they are concerned with creating, updating, reading, and destroying database records. They are just massively parallelized on the backend to deal with all the traffic. Sometimes I wonder what all these engineers do every day. Their main apps are not getting exponentially better, and they have fewer of them. Why is all this algorithmic knowledge really needed? Do they spend all day optimizing or engineering and planning new features? Not trying to insult Google, but I'm not seeing a ton of new features that would justify this kind of indepth theoretical knowledge. The ability to actually code, to do so efficiently and quickly, and to properly unit test and profile it, seems more important than any algorithmic knowledge. Mastery of the toolchain and the language, and that comes down to - "What have you produced?" Maybe this is why Google hasn't had a new hit product in what seems like awhile. It doesn't need one as long as they maintain their position as search leader, but it doesn't seem like they have one.

cromwellian 13y ago
I think this is being relatively unfair in assessment. Google hasn't had a hit product in a while? Search and Ads are dominant. Android is the #1 mobile smartphone OS with 80% of the market. Chrome is now the #1 browser. Google Maps is the #1 mapping application. Gmail is now #1 in active users. G+ now has 190 million active posters now monthly now (Twitter only has 110 million active posters) YouTube is the top video site. Most of these apps listed above are not CRUD apps. The service based ones have significant and non-trivial data processing on the backend, lots of machine-learning, or algorithmic data processing. Google apps have been getting better over the years, but Google updates them almost continuously and incrementally because they are web based, and so most of the changes go unnoticed like a frog slowly being boiled in water. Is Google Search the same as it was 5 years ago? No, it has Google Instant, voice search, Knowledge Graph, direct answers, better spam filtering, it's index is far fresher, etc. For example, just the interactive chart knowledge panels (https://www.google.com/#fp=9a975e048e4bd6d6&q=population+of+india https://www.google.com/#fp=9a975e048e4bd6d6&q=population+of+...) Google Maps has gotten radically better, and the latest beta maps is probably the most complex and sophisticated web application ever engineered. Google search within G+ and Drive actually does object recognition with neural networks. (http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2013/06/improving-photo-search-step-across.html http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2013/06/improving-photo-s...) This is a huge improvement in image search, and most people are totally unaware of it. It just works and they don't notice that it found it image without even needing descriptive text or tags. Google apps are slowly getting smarter each and everyday but there's no "Jobsnote" to laud them, so the improvements are invisible.