18 ms·

Leaving Google

210 points by blearyeyed 13y ago

igorgue 13y ago
Weird, I thought the Bay Area was the perfect place to live! </sarcasm>. I also agree with this "Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced."
varelse 13y ago
So my first response was who the $^!% is Tim Bray? Then I read. TLDR: famous enough to merit an article about his departure but not famous enough for Google to give an inch to retain him (see Hinton, Geoffrey for a counterexample). No surprises here. Google is setting the stage for its own disruption. But that event is a total black swan much like paying $16B for a messaging company.
- theoh 13y ago
  It does seem that he left on better terms that Brian Reid, but possibly for similar fundamental reasons...
  - varelse 13y ago
    Brian Reid was kicked out of Google by Urs Holzle ahead of the IPO after helping to build the company (so much for don't be evil and all that). I don't think the issue here is age discrimination - Geoffrey Hinton is in his late 60s - but rather that his skillset is not sufficiently critical to Google's flavor of the week to merit special treatment. But as an ex-googler myself, they have become amazingly rigid and bureaucratic compared to who they were even 5 years ago. And end-user experiences of services like GMail and youtube are atrocious. I have a love/hate relationship with Android, but to stay in that relationship I had to ditch 2-year device contracts so I could keep up with whatever brand new shiny gets 6-12 months of tech support before being brickified. Microsoft disrupted IBM. Google disrupted Microsoft. Who's going to ruin Google's day and relegate them to a 2nd tier player?
    - obi-nine 13y ago
      I was worried for a while that it might be FaceBook but after yesterday's overpriced acquisition of WhatsApp that fear has subsided.
    - CompleteMoron2 13y ago
      no one. they are covering that base with AI and Robots. We're all doomed.
    - sixothree 13y ago
      Hopefully it will be someone who values privacy. I look at the generally negative reaction to Google buying nest and can't help but think if it had happened a year or two earlier the reaction would have been completely opposite.
    - yuhong 13y ago
      I am trying to trace some of the problems. For example, I believe Vic Gundotra should probably be fired.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- tvon 13y ago
  > famous enough to merit an article about his departure but not famous enough for Google to give an inch to retain him I do not work at Google, but I suspect there is a bit more involved in these decisions.
  - varelse 13y ago
    I have friends at Google at remote offices who are experiencing increasing pressure to move to Silicon Valley (which the cost of living rules out) as they consolidate distributed teams. Add in Google's disdain for telecommuting that I experienced myself during my stint there and their rope cutting here does not surprise me. Sure, Google's culture favors the young. But their futurist agenda is being driven by Ray Kurzweil and Geoffrey Hinton, both old fogies by Silicon Valley standards.
    - mark_l_watson 13y ago
      I experienced the same disdain for telecommuting there. I accepted a contracting job on a specific pilot project, always hoping to eventually being able to work perhaps 1/2 time from my home in Arizona. That didn't work out and I left. Anyway, I very much appreciated the experience but I didn't want to live long term in Silicon Valley.
- officemonkey 13y ago
  Co-authoring the XML spec probably didn't make him a household word, but I knew who he was from that. People choose "quality-of-life" over "job" all the time, especially when you remove the need to make money from the equation.
  - varelse 13y ago
    I think he made the right call. It's hard for me to imagine him having trouble finding work with 4 years of Google on his resume. That's the tech industry equivalent of being a made man IMO.
    - zem 13y ago
      he was a very well-known and admired figure in the tech world long before he joined google. in fact his four years there are close to being the least impressive thing on his resume.
psbp 13y ago
Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vUUVmJEowEEJ:https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/02/19/Leaving-Google+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vUUVmJE...
Rantenki 13y ago
Site down for me: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vUUVmJEowEEJ:https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/02/19/Leaving-Google+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vUUVmJE...
psbp 13y ago
"Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced." I like this guy.
- Xdes 13y ago
  I am also of the same opinion. Plus he probably doesn't want to lose his Canadian healthcare.
  - eloisant 13y ago
    Congested and overpriced yes, but racist and incestuous? Why so?
    - bane 13y ago
      think about living in the weird Bay Area bubble and how that doesn't translate at all to the rest of the world and Oakland.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        Oakland is no longer part of the Bay Area?
        awj 13y ago
        Have you been to the Bay Area? The general sentiment amongst the other cities is that Oakland is decidedly "not one of us".
        dllthomas 13y ago
        I live in Oakland. It's "East Bay", but that's still "Bay Area". There's clearly differences, but much more of the bay is bordered by Oakland than SF. Oakland is more like SF than either is like Marin, which is also still "Bay Area".
        bane 13y ago
michaelochurch 13y ago
Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced. Isn't Vancouver equally overpriced or worse? It's a beautiful city and seems like an amazing place to live, but I thought Vancouver's house prices were into the millions as well. In what way is the Bay Area racist? I'm not a fan of that region, but I've never had that particular impression (except among upper-tier VCs, who aren't specifically racist so much as they hate everyone not like them).
- kohanz 13y ago
  Yes, Vancouver housing is incredibly overpriced. Perhaps more-so than the Bay Area because wages have kept up even less (supposedly due to Vancouver's desirability as a destination). That doesn't mean there aren't good, well-paying jobs there, but on average, wages in Vancouver are much lower than, say Toronto. As for the racism aspect, I think the choice of word is a bit hyperbolic. That being said, as a Canadian who has lived and worked in SV, I think there are major differences between the way visible minorities are integrated in Canadian and American society. California is probably one of the less jarring transitions for a Canadian (fairly liberal society), but even then, you can't help but notice. Note that I'm not saying it's better or worse (that is a matter of opinion), but that it's just very different.
  - bane 13y ago
    As an American East Coaster, where we have longer social experience with massive immigration (and with our own share of racism and segregation), lots of CA seems like a throwback to an even more highly segregated and almost racist time period. It's not quite the Deep South, but it's definitely uncomfortable with minority groups that tend not to be involved in tech or finance. People lament the dying of ethnic enclaves like Chinatowns, but what it really means is that those ethnic groups are starting to integrate with the majority ethnic group.
  - cromwellian 13y ago
    Can you give a particular example? I live in the South Bay/Santa Clara and my neighborhood is a diverse collection of Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Europeans immigrants, and African Americans. SV segregation in my area isn't primarily racial, but classist. Most if not all of the people in my neighborhood are white collar professionals -- engineers, lawyers, doctors. There are concentrated ethnic enclaves in the area like Cupertino, but these are primarily based on school district preferences.
fidotron 13y ago
Wasn't he doing PR on the Android side? Another one biting the dust.
habosa 13y ago
For those who don't know, Tim Bray was one of the original inventors of the XML spec and has been a Developer Advocate at Google for a while. Shame to see him go, I am joining DevRel at Google in the fall and I thought it was awesome to have someone as experience as Tim working kinda-sorta-near me. Hopefully he goes on to do something great.
- rasur 13y ago
  Implying XML is not great? ;)
  - cbaleanu 13y ago
    Ahhh, you can write webpages in it.
  - habosa 13y ago
    I guess I should have said more great things, as Tim has already accomplished a lot.
  - ithkuil 13y ago
    Great men make great mistakes :-)
- ebbv 13y ago
  > Tim Bray was one of the original inventors of the XML spec That son of a bitch... ;)
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    Remove some DTDs. Then remove the completely-silly need to put the tag name in the closing tag, and hey, it's a nice format. At least it has comments and is suitable as a config file format, unlike JSON.
- wglb 13y ago
  He is also a serial founder, and, among other interesting things, wrote one of the very first web crawlers. See http://www.textuality.com/ http://www.textuality.com/ for some of his fun stuff.
drawkbox 13y ago
Google not able to get remote working working? Seems flawed that a system requires everyone to move to one location to work, and a broken system that lives on from the past (why take hours of employees days commuting?). There are times when that is needed, there are other times when that is bad and external insight is easier remotely. Yahoo and possibly Google doing this, leading to more congestion in the Bay Area, and not spreading the innovation around to other cities. Google can do better. Maybe their next move is a Costco sized open office where everyone can sit right next to one another, no need for Hangouts.
- syntern 13y ago
  The problem is not that they couldn't, but they wouldn't. Most of the large bay area companies believe that there is more value in the chit-chat and overheard conversations at the micro kitchen, than in solving the remote work problems.
  - scelerat 13y ago
    Most of my work is remote and yet I agree with this. It's part of the reason I visit the office at least once a week, despite a 2-hour commute. There is value in casual conversation. Work topics can be raised in informal ways. People share more of their personal lives and come to know each other better, fostering understanding and relieving some of the tension that can arise from misunderstood or poorly-worded emails. Working remotely requires a lot of attention to relationships in ways and over channels that most people aren't accustomed to. It can be difficult even for people who are very good at it. I enjoy working remotely but I value the personal face-to-face time I get with co-workers very highly.
- outside1234 13y ago
  Google has no problems recruiting. They will have 100 resumes to fill his shoes in hours. So they get to set the rules still. It won't always be like this for them but it is right now.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
IE5point5 13y ago
Probably should be on fisteggplant.com
adeptus 13y ago
"[I] haven’t seen a new technology in a while that struck me as a real life-changer-at-scale" C'mon dude... Dogecoin!
typicalrunt 13y ago
On the topic of living costs for Vancouver, coincidentally enough WorkSafeBC (Vancouver's version of OSHA) just released a cost of living calculator for the BC region. You can see that housing will eat up the majority of your paycheque for an average wage (maybe not rockstar IT devs) [1]. http://www.costofliving.welcomebc.ca/ http://www.costofliving.welcomebc.ca/ [1] Median family income in BC is $69,150 as of 2011. Source: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/famil108a-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/f...
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  Interesting that the median price for a detached single family home in Vancouver is now $929,700 [1] and in Santa Clara county (which is San Jose and the cities around it) is "only" $754,400 [2], of course a house in San Francisco is like over a million dollars. [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/house-prices-still-rising-in-toronto-vancouver-1.2524167 http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/house-prices-still-rising-in... [2] http://www.zillow.com/santa-clara-county-ca/home-values/ http://www.zillow.com/santa-clara-county-ca/home-values/
  - typicalrunt 13y ago
    $929,000 in Vancouver means the east side, which is traditionally the lower priced and income area of Vancouver. If you want anything close to downtown or the West side, it is well over $1.5M. A lot of detached homes in Vancouver at the $900k price range look like they are in bad condition and reflect the land value. So while it is expensive to purchase at $900k+, consider the renovations that will be needed to bring the house up to a livable condition.
    - dmunoz 13y ago
      > A lot of detached homes in Vancouver at the $900k price range look like they are in bad condition and reflect the land value. So much so, that a game has been made about this, Crack Shack or Mansion [0]. [0] http://www.crackshackormansion.com/index.html http://www.crackshackormansion.com/index.html
MrZongle2 13y ago
I thought this was interesting: "Now you can say it: Google is actually evil, right? · I don’t think so; but get back to me later. I shouldn’t write too much about Google in-the-large until I’ve got more perspective." At best, it sounds like he's a bit doubtful of Google's white-hat status but is trying to remain professional, doesn't have a specific incident to point to, or both. It will be interesting to see what he says in a year or so.
- jypku 13y ago
  You're interpreting things too literally.
sshconnection 13y ago
While there are plenty of perfectly valid reasons to not want to move to the bay area, I'm not sure that I would list exceptionally pervasive racism among them.
skywhopper 13y ago
As someone who works 97% remotely from a mostly-colocated office, I have to agree that it's a terribly inefficient way to work. If everyone were remote, it could probably work, but if it's just one or two out of a dozen or a hundred, it's very difficult. On balance, my current job is still the best choice for me, but there's a constant background of frustration mostly surrounding communication failures.
- jjwiseman 13y ago
  In my experience, teams or companies that have significant problems communicating with remote workers just aren't very good communicators. Physical proximity is a crutch that can help them overcome their disability/dysfunction, but they almost always still have major communication problems--they just have more problems with remote employees. A team that's good at communicating with remote employees is usually just good at communication in general.
  - skywhopper 13y ago
    Oh, I definitely agree. Certainly my employer has plenty of communications problems. But whatever communications roadblocks exist are amplified tenfold from 800 miles away.
aridiculous 13y ago
I visited Seattle and Vancouver for the first time recently. I was surprised at how similar they were. I was expecting Vancouver to be a lot different than it was. Vancouver was even more high-rise, glass-everything, gated-community than Seattle. I spoke with the locals who informed me that was Vancouver's MO, and if I wanted a culturally interesting Canadian city, I should head over to Toronto.
- fidotron 13y ago
  [Insert obligatory Montrealer condescension regarding culture in the rest of Canada here - it's about all we've got] I love aspects of Vancouver, especially the Indian food, but damn it gets boring fast. (Not the Indian food, the place).
- canistr 13y ago
  The fascinating part about living in Toronto compared to Vancouver (or even another city, say New York), is how we view foreigners/immigrants. A few weeks ago I randomly spoke with a man from Egypt. My immediate assumption, even though he had an accent, was that he lived in one of the various multicultural neighbourhoods in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). Only after speaking with him a while longer did I truly realized that this was his first visit to Toronto and that he was not actually living in the GTA. I would hazard a guess that most Torontonians would make the assumption that any visible minority or person with an accent is an immigrant living in the GTA. Tourists and visitors walk invisibly through the city. I compare this to my experience in Vancouver where, even though I may be a visible minority myself who only speaks English, I was treated as a foreigner. In New York, people were shouting racial slurs at me as I walked down the street. Seattle/Bay Area however, I was treated like your typical tech worker.
- randallsquared 13y ago
  Is "culturally interesting" code for dirty and run down? ;)
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    Only in the USA. One of the fundamental differences between Canada and the US is that ethnic diversity and immigration do not immediately imply poverty. Visit Toronto sometime. Tons of ethnic enclaves that are legitimately interesting, and not in the "look at how the poor people live!" way - solidly middle class and not at all run-down. In my experience in the US "ethnic enclave", "culturally interesting", "racially vibrant" more often than not really is code for dirty and run down.
Patrick_Devine 13y ago
As someone who moved to the Bay Area from Vancouver, it definitely was a bit of a shock. In Vancouver you're very used to seeing white people work in low income jobs, and that just doesn't happen a lot here. Calling the Bay Area congested, incestuous and overpriced compared to Vancouver is a little like the pot calling the kettle black, however. Yes, transit is a million times better in Vancouver. Yes, the cycling infrastructure is at least twice as good as SF and the peninsula. But try driving to or from North Vancouver during rush hour and you will experience some world class congestion. The recent run-up in housing prices, particularly on the west side of Vancouver, where people have speculated in the housing market has left that part of the city half vacant. It's the same thing you see in London; wealthy foreigners come in, buy a place and use it for only a few weeks/months of the year. It totally wrecks communities. That said, yeah, I still love Vancouver, but I love working in tech. If you're a software engineer, you really ought to be living in the Bay Area. There's no other place like it.
- togasystems 13y ago
  I commute daily from Squamish to Vancouver. I am originally from Toronto and found commuting around that city a lot more challenging than Vancouver.
  - Patrick_Devine 13y ago
    Either you ride the seabus, or you're figured out the secret to teleportation. I've sat in more traffic lineups* on Taylor Way than any sane person should ever have to endure. The same can be said for the Massey tunnel, the Port Mann (before it was rebuilt) or half a dozen other spots in the lower mainland.
- robbyking 13y ago
  If you don't see white people working low-income jobs in SF, you need to get out and explore. Nearly everyone working retails jobs in the Castro, Noe Valley, Hayes Valley, and a half dozen other neighborhoods is white.
  - 13y ago
rackoons44 13y ago
It's interesting to see how he states that his remote work arrangement would not have been as productive as him moving.
- voidlogic 13y ago
  I found this interesting too, maybe it is due to his role as a developer advocate? I find when I am not working remote, I have to put in 4 more hrs/day to get the same amount of work done...
  - bmj 13y ago
    I think it may have much to do with his role. See the job posting: https://developers.google.com/jobs/ https://developers.google.com/jobs/ If your job is to be an advocate for employees at your employer, it is likely better to be around those people, rather than just at the other end of a Hangout. I'm guessing that interacting with people around the office is a critical part of that role.
- mrkurt 13y ago
  I think that's company culture friction ... if a group of people primarily works from an office, it takes a serious effort to accommodate remote workers.
codr 13y ago
This seems to be more about telecommuting than about Google.
yawz 13y ago
"Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced." Now... I've never lived in the Bay Area. I travel there once or twice a year but visiting is nothing like living in a place. So, I can relate to the adjectives above except the "racist" part. Is the Bay Area really more racist than any other large metropolitan area?
arecurrence 13y ago
You'd be surprised how many people that I've seen leave Valley-based companies to live in Vancouver. It's especially prevalent over the last few years. Likely why Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter are growing teams here. Honestly, you made the right call. As a technologist, you can make an impact from anywhere but places like Vancouver take a very very long time to build and develop (Good Luck Mountain View :) ). I know, I've lived around several of Google's most prolific offices.

210 points by blearyeyed 13y ago

Weird, I thought the Bay Area was the perfect place to live! </sarcasm>. I also agree with this "Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced."

varelse 13y ago

So my first response was who the $^!% is Tim Bray? Then I read. TLDR: famous enough to merit an article about his departure but not famous enough for Google to give an inch to retain him (see Hinton, Geoffrey for a counterexample). No surprises here. Google is setting the stage for its own disruption. But that event is a total black swan much like paying $16B for a messaging company.

theoh 13y ago
It does seem that he left on better terms that Brian Reid, but possibly for similar fundamental reasons...
- varelse 13y ago
  Brian Reid was kicked out of Google by Urs Holzle ahead of the IPO after helping to build the company (so much for don't be evil and all that). I don't think the issue here is age discrimination - Geoffrey Hinton is in his late 60s - but rather that his skillset is not sufficiently critical to Google's flavor of the week to merit special treatment. But as an ex-googler myself, they have become amazingly rigid and bureaucratic compared to who they were even 5 years ago. And end-user experiences of services like GMail and youtube are atrocious. I have a love/hate relationship with Android, but to stay in that relationship I had to ditch 2-year device contracts so I could keep up with whatever brand new shiny gets 6-12 months of tech support before being brickified. Microsoft disrupted IBM. Google disrupted Microsoft. Who's going to ruin Google's day and relegate them to a 2nd tier player?
  - obi-nine 13y ago
    I was worried for a while that it might be FaceBook but after yesterday's overpriced acquisition of WhatsApp that fear has subsided.
  - CompleteMoron2 13y ago
    no one. they are covering that base with AI and Robots. We're all doomed.
  - sixothree 13y ago
    Hopefully it will be someone who values privacy. I look at the generally negative reaction to Google buying nest and can't help but think if it had happened a year or two earlier the reaction would have been completely opposite.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    I am trying to trace some of the problems. For example, I believe Vic Gundotra should probably be fired.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
tvon 13y ago
> famous enough to merit an article about his departure but not famous enough for Google to give an inch to retain him I do not work at Google, but I suspect there is a bit more involved in these decisions.
- varelse 13y ago
  I have friends at Google at remote offices who are experiencing increasing pressure to move to Silicon Valley (which the cost of living rules out) as they consolidate distributed teams. Add in Google's disdain for telecommuting that I experienced myself during my stint there and their rope cutting here does not surprise me. Sure, Google's culture favors the young. But their futurist agenda is being driven by Ray Kurzweil and Geoffrey Hinton, both old fogies by Silicon Valley standards.
  - mark_l_watson 13y ago
    I experienced the same disdain for telecommuting there. I accepted a contracting job on a specific pilot project, always hoping to eventually being able to work perhaps 1/2 time from my home in Arizona. That didn't work out and I left. Anyway, I very much appreciated the experience but I didn't want to live long term in Silicon Valley.
officemonkey 13y ago
Co-authoring the XML spec probably didn't make him a household word, but I knew who he was from that. People choose "quality-of-life" over "job" all the time, especially when you remove the need to make money from the equation.
- varelse 13y ago
  I think he made the right call. It's hard for me to imagine him having trouble finding work with 4 years of Google on his resume. That's the tech industry equivalent of being a made man IMO.
  - zem 13y ago
    he was a very well-known and admired figure in the tech world long before he joined google. in fact his four years there are close to being the least impressive thing on his resume.

psbp 13y ago

Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vUUVmJEowEEJ:https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/02/19/Leaving-Google+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vUUVmJE...

Rantenki 13y ago

Site down for me: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vUUVmJEowEEJ:https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/02/19/Leaving-Google+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vUUVmJE...

psbp 13y ago

"Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced." I like this guy.

Xdes 13y ago
I am also of the same opinion. Plus he probably doesn't want to lose his Canadian healthcare.
- eloisant 13y ago
  Congested and overpriced yes, but racist and incestuous? Why so?
  - bane 13y ago
    think about living in the weird Bay Area bubble and how that doesn't translate at all to the rest of the world and Oakland.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      Oakland is no longer part of the Bay Area?
      - awj 13y ago
        Have you been to the Bay Area? The general sentiment amongst the other cities is that Oakland is decidedly "not one of us".
        dllthomas 13y ago
        I live in Oakland. It's "East Bay", but that's still "Bay Area". There's clearly differences, but much more of the bay is bordered by Oakland than SF. Oakland is more like SF than either is like Marin, which is also still "Bay Area".
      - bane 13y ago

michaelochurch 13y ago

Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced. Isn't Vancouver equally overpriced or worse? It's a beautiful city and seems like an amazing place to live, but I thought Vancouver's house prices were into the millions as well. In what way is the Bay Area racist? I'm not a fan of that region, but I've never had that particular impression (except among upper-tier VCs, who aren't specifically racist so much as they hate everyone not like them).

kohanz 13y ago
Yes, Vancouver housing is incredibly overpriced. Perhaps more-so than the Bay Area because wages have kept up even less (supposedly due to Vancouver's desirability as a destination). That doesn't mean there aren't good, well-paying jobs there, but on average, wages in Vancouver are much lower than, say Toronto. As for the racism aspect, I think the choice of word is a bit hyperbolic. That being said, as a Canadian who has lived and worked in SV, I think there are major differences between the way visible minorities are integrated in Canadian and American society. California is probably one of the less jarring transitions for a Canadian (fairly liberal society), but even then, you can't help but notice. Note that I'm not saying it's better or worse (that is a matter of opinion), but that it's just very different.
- bane 13y ago
  As an American East Coaster, where we have longer social experience with massive immigration (and with our own share of racism and segregation), lots of CA seems like a throwback to an even more highly segregated and almost racist time period. It's not quite the Deep South, but it's definitely uncomfortable with minority groups that tend not to be involved in tech or finance. People lament the dying of ethnic enclaves like Chinatowns, but what it really means is that those ethnic groups are starting to integrate with the majority ethnic group.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  Can you give a particular example? I live in the South Bay/Santa Clara and my neighborhood is a diverse collection of Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Europeans immigrants, and African Americans. SV segregation in my area isn't primarily racial, but classist. Most if not all of the people in my neighborhood are white collar professionals -- engineers, lawyers, doctors. There are concentrated ethnic enclaves in the area like Cupertino, but these are primarily based on school district preferences.

fidotron 13y ago

Wasn't he doing PR on the Android side? Another one biting the dust.

habosa 13y ago

For those who don't know, Tim Bray was one of the original inventors of the XML spec and has been a Developer Advocate at Google for a while. Shame to see him go, I am joining DevRel at Google in the fall and I thought it was awesome to have someone as experience as Tim working kinda-sorta-near me. Hopefully he goes on to do something great.

rasur 13y ago
Implying XML is not great? ;)
- cbaleanu 13y ago
  Ahhh, you can write webpages in it.
- habosa 13y ago
  I guess I should have said more great things, as Tim has already accomplished a lot.
- ithkuil 13y ago
  Great men make great mistakes :-)
ebbv 13y ago
> Tim Bray was one of the original inventors of the XML spec That son of a bitch... ;)
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Remove some DTDs. Then remove the completely-silly need to put the tag name in the closing tag, and hey, it's a nice format. At least it has comments and is suitable as a config file format, unlike JSON.
wglb 13y ago
He is also a serial founder, and, among other interesting things, wrote one of the very first web crawlers. See http://www.textuality.com/ http://www.textuality.com/ for some of his fun stuff.

drawkbox 13y ago

Google not able to get remote working working? Seems flawed that a system requires everyone to move to one location to work, and a broken system that lives on from the past (why take hours of employees days commuting?). There are times when that is needed, there are other times when that is bad and external insight is easier remotely. Yahoo and possibly Google doing this, leading to more congestion in the Bay Area, and not spreading the innovation around to other cities. Google can do better. Maybe their next move is a Costco sized open office where everyone can sit right next to one another, no need for Hangouts.

syntern 13y ago
The problem is not that they couldn't, but they wouldn't. Most of the large bay area companies believe that there is more value in the chit-chat and overheard conversations at the micro kitchen, than in solving the remote work problems.
- scelerat 13y ago
  Most of my work is remote and yet I agree with this. It's part of the reason I visit the office at least once a week, despite a 2-hour commute. There is value in casual conversation. Work topics can be raised in informal ways. People share more of their personal lives and come to know each other better, fostering understanding and relieving some of the tension that can arise from misunderstood or poorly-worded emails. Working remotely requires a lot of attention to relationships in ways and over channels that most people aren't accustomed to. It can be difficult even for people who are very good at it. I enjoy working remotely but I value the personal face-to-face time I get with co-workers very highly.
outside1234 13y ago
Google has no problems recruiting. They will have 100 resumes to fill his shoes in hours. So they get to set the rules still. It won't always be like this for them but it is right now.
- MichaelGG 13y ago

IE5point5 13y ago

Probably should be on fisteggplant.com

adeptus 13y ago

"[I] haven’t seen a new technology in a while that struck me as a real life-changer-at-scale" C'mon dude... Dogecoin!

typicalrunt 13y ago

On the topic of living costs for Vancouver, coincidentally enough WorkSafeBC (Vancouver's version of OSHA) just released a cost of living calculator for the BC region. You can see that housing will eat up the majority of your paycheque for an average wage (maybe not rockstar IT devs) [1]. http://www.costofliving.welcomebc.ca/ http://www.costofliving.welcomebc.ca/ [1] Median family income in BC is $69,150 as of 2011. Source: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/famil108a-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/f...

ChuckMcM 13y ago
Interesting that the median price for a detached single family home in Vancouver is now $929,700 [1] and in Santa Clara county (which is San Jose and the cities around it) is "only" $754,400 [2], of course a house in San Francisco is like over a million dollars. [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/house-prices-still-rising-in-toronto-vancouver-1.2524167 http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/house-prices-still-rising-in... [2] http://www.zillow.com/santa-clara-county-ca/home-values/ http://www.zillow.com/santa-clara-county-ca/home-values/
- typicalrunt 13y ago
  $929,000 in Vancouver means the east side, which is traditionally the lower priced and income area of Vancouver. If you want anything close to downtown or the West side, it is well over $1.5M. A lot of detached homes in Vancouver at the $900k price range look like they are in bad condition and reflect the land value. So while it is expensive to purchase at $900k+, consider the renovations that will be needed to bring the house up to a livable condition.
  - dmunoz 13y ago
    > A lot of detached homes in Vancouver at the $900k price range look like they are in bad condition and reflect the land value. So much so, that a game has been made about this, Crack Shack or Mansion [0]. [0] http://www.crackshackormansion.com/index.html http://www.crackshackormansion.com/index.html

MrZongle2 13y ago

I thought this was interesting: "Now you can say it: Google is actually evil, right? · I don’t think so; but get back to me later. I shouldn’t write too much about Google in-the-large until I’ve got more perspective." At best, it sounds like he's a bit doubtful of Google's white-hat status but is trying to remain professional, doesn't have a specific incident to point to, or both. It will be interesting to see what he says in a year or so.

jypku 13y ago
You're interpreting things too literally.

sshconnection 13y ago

While there are plenty of perfectly valid reasons to not want to move to the bay area, I'm not sure that I would list exceptionally pervasive racism among them.

skywhopper 13y ago

As someone who works 97% remotely from a mostly-colocated office, I have to agree that it's a terribly inefficient way to work. If everyone were remote, it could probably work, but if it's just one or two out of a dozen or a hundred, it's very difficult. On balance, my current job is still the best choice for me, but there's a constant background of frustration mostly surrounding communication failures.

jjwiseman 13y ago
In my experience, teams or companies that have significant problems communicating with remote workers just aren't very good communicators. Physical proximity is a crutch that can help them overcome their disability/dysfunction, but they almost always still have major communication problems--they just have more problems with remote employees. A team that's good at communicating with remote employees is usually just good at communication in general.
- skywhopper 13y ago
  Oh, I definitely agree. Certainly my employer has plenty of communications problems. But whatever communications roadblocks exist are amplified tenfold from 800 miles away.

aridiculous 13y ago

I visited Seattle and Vancouver for the first time recently. I was surprised at how similar they were. I was expecting Vancouver to be a lot different than it was. Vancouver was even more high-rise, glass-everything, gated-community than Seattle. I spoke with the locals who informed me that was Vancouver's MO, and if I wanted a culturally interesting Canadian city, I should head over to Toronto.

fidotron 13y ago
[Insert obligatory Montrealer condescension regarding culture in the rest of Canada here - it's about all we've got] I love aspects of Vancouver, especially the Indian food, but damn it gets boring fast. (Not the Indian food, the place).
canistr 13y ago
The fascinating part about living in Toronto compared to Vancouver (or even another city, say New York), is how we view foreigners/immigrants. A few weeks ago I randomly spoke with a man from Egypt. My immediate assumption, even though he had an accent, was that he lived in one of the various multicultural neighbourhoods in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area). Only after speaking with him a while longer did I truly realized that this was his first visit to Toronto and that he was not actually living in the GTA. I would hazard a guess that most Torontonians would make the assumption that any visible minority or person with an accent is an immigrant living in the GTA. Tourists and visitors walk invisibly through the city. I compare this to my experience in Vancouver where, even though I may be a visible minority myself who only speaks English, I was treated as a foreigner. In New York, people were shouting racial slurs at me as I walked down the street. Seattle/Bay Area however, I was treated like your typical tech worker.
randallsquared 13y ago
Is "culturally interesting" code for dirty and run down? ;)
- potatolicious 13y ago
  Only in the USA. One of the fundamental differences between Canada and the US is that ethnic diversity and immigration do not immediately imply poverty. Visit Toronto sometime. Tons of ethnic enclaves that are legitimately interesting, and not in the "look at how the poor people live!" way - solidly middle class and not at all run-down. In my experience in the US "ethnic enclave", "culturally interesting", "racially vibrant" more often than not really is code for dirty and run down.

Patrick_Devine 13y ago

As someone who moved to the Bay Area from Vancouver, it definitely was a bit of a shock. In Vancouver you're very used to seeing white people work in low income jobs, and that just doesn't happen a lot here. Calling the Bay Area congested, incestuous and overpriced compared to Vancouver is a little like the pot calling the kettle black, however. Yes, transit is a million times better in Vancouver. Yes, the cycling infrastructure is at least twice as good as SF and the peninsula. But try driving to or from North Vancouver during rush hour and you will experience some world class congestion. The recent run-up in housing prices, particularly on the west side of Vancouver, where people have speculated in the housing market has left that part of the city half vacant. It's the same thing you see in London; wealthy foreigners come in, buy a place and use it for only a few weeks/months of the year. It totally wrecks communities. That said, yeah, I still love Vancouver, but I love working in tech. If you're a software engineer, you really ought to be living in the Bay Area. There's no other place like it.

togasystems 13y ago
I commute daily from Squamish to Vancouver. I am originally from Toronto and found commuting around that city a lot more challenging than Vancouver.
- Patrick_Devine 13y ago
  Either you ride the seabus, or you're figured out the secret to teleportation. I've sat in more traffic lineups* on Taylor Way than any sane person should ever have to endure. The same can be said for the Massey tunnel, the Port Mann (before it was rebuilt) or half a dozen other spots in the lower mainland.
robbyking 13y ago
If you don't see white people working low-income jobs in SF, you need to get out and explore. Nearly everyone working retails jobs in the Castro, Noe Valley, Hayes Valley, and a half dozen other neighborhoods is white.
- 13y ago

rackoons44 13y ago

It's interesting to see how he states that his remote work arrangement would not have been as productive as him moving.

voidlogic 13y ago
I found this interesting too, maybe it is due to his role as a developer advocate? I find when I am not working remote, I have to put in 4 more hrs/day to get the same amount of work done...
- bmj 13y ago
  I think it may have much to do with his role. See the job posting: https://developers.google.com/jobs/ https://developers.google.com/jobs/ If your job is to be an advocate for employees at your employer, it is likely better to be around those people, rather than just at the other end of a Hangout. I'm guessing that interacting with people around the office is a critical part of that role.
mrkurt 13y ago
I think that's company culture friction ... if a group of people primarily works from an office, it takes a serious effort to accommodate remote workers.

codr 13y ago

This seems to be more about telecommuting than about Google.

yawz 13y ago

"Plus I find the Bay Area congested, racist, incestuous, and overpriced." Now... I've never lived in the Bay Area. I travel there once or twice a year but visiting is nothing like living in a place. So, I can relate to the adjectives above except the "racist" part. Is the Bay Area really more racist than any other large metropolitan area?

arecurrence 13y ago

You'd be surprised how many people that I've seen leave Valley-based companies to live in Vancouver. It's especially prevalent over the last few years. Likely why Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter are growing teams here. Honestly, you made the right call. As a technologist, you can make an impact from anywhere but places like Vancouver take a very very long time to build and develop (Good Luck Mountain View :) ). I know, I've lived around several of Google's most prolific offices.