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The Google Caste System
managedcode writes "Google doesn't like to do things traditionally. Right from their IPO, when they dumped Goldman Sachs for secretly trying to deal with their big investor, Kleiner Perkins. Business Week covers the Google Caste System, 'in which business types are second-class citizens to Google's valued code jockeys [..] They deem the corporate development team as underpowered in the company, with engineers and product managers tending to carry more clout than salesmen and dealmakers.' At last a company is shouting at the top of it's voice, engineers make the world."
I hadn't heard that Goldy refused to play by the rules from the Google founders. The rules were typical Google: no backroom deals that favor big institutional investors over smaller investors.
But Goldy wanted to get some easy money, they got caught and shut out of the deal. That makes my night. If you've dealt with bankers (esp. "New York" bankers), you'll know why.
Here's a nice article on this.
Perhaps this also explains the "Google will fail" articles that appeared before the IPO; the powers-that-be were peeved that Google did the IPO their way, and wanted it to fail.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
That's actually a command you can use to compile FreeBSD for yourself.
I'm not sure if that was the parent's joke or not, but whether it was or not, I'm sure there are some linux-only folk on here that wouldn't have gotten that.
I'd be completely behind your comment except for the code words "New York" bankers -- meaning Jews.
Ruined it for me.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Of course you then realise that without engineers there is nothing to sell so it is really the engineers who have the sales people by the short and curlies.
I think this is the right way to describe it: the engineering/product management group provides lots of options. Management allocates people/machines/resources to the various options. But nothing happens without that initial impetus from engineering.
:-)
Case in point: I asked Eric Schmidt about a potential project based on some comments he made at an all-hands meeting. He point-blank told me, "Don't ask me about getting that going, find some coworkers and make it happen. I'm the wrong person to ask."
Projects don't come from the top. It is entirely bottoms-up. And the nice thing is that top-to-bottom agrees this is the best model.
Damn, I love working there
It reminds me that "it's" is short for "it is" and that direct speech should be encased in quotes.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
If you've never heard the phrase "software engineer", you've just admitted that you've no industrial experience.
As a software engineer in safety-related software for the last 10 years (first job was power station controls, current job is car engine controllers), I can assure you that we are *very* serious about responsibility for mistakes. You screw up, people die. As a result, only about 10% of our time is spent actually coding; around 30% of the rest is spent on requirements capture and design; and the other 60% is spent testing the living shit out of it until we're sure what we're putting out is safe.
On projects that don't have safety implications, there isn't anything like as much testing. But this is an engineering judgement based on the impact of bugs on the customer - if your car radio bugs out for example, it's annoying but it doesn't kill you. Same in any other engineering discipline - you don't think that the mechanical engineers who design plastic toys use the same level of testing that engine designers would, do you?
Grab.
Screwed up the link: The Venture Capital Squeeze
Ballmer didn't mis-contract "it's", however.
Before you design for reuse, make sure to design it for use.
I work in the semi industry. My company is so fucked up that marketing lies and promises customers products that DON'T EXIST, and somehow RND (my dept) is held to a timeline that someone literally invented.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
It is interesting that, of all that TFA talks about, the poster decided to spin it towards the supposed Google caste system, which occupies that final 1/5 of the article. The other 80% of the article focuses more on how the hugimongousness of Google has altered the way of doing business in Silicon Valley: the venture capitalists, the MBAs who think they know how to capitalize on a good idea when they see one, the risk-taking technologists and start-ups, the ambitious entrepeneur who just wants to make a shitload of money selling an idea to someone larger, and the fact that Google has yet to shell out serious money to buy out a majoy company like AOL, but seem willing to acquire the long-odds small companies that have sprouted up in their wake. The focus of TFA is how Google's bucking the trend in the world of mergers and acquisition and venture capital, which has in turn ruffled the feathers of more entrenched high-tech business interests.
Judaism is a religion, not a race. You can be anti-Jewish and a racist, but you can also be a racist and not anti-Jewish.