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Xooglers - Google Discussed by Ex-Googlers
perler writes to tell us that Xooglers, a relatively new website created so that ex-Google employees could reminisce and share, has been gaining a great deal of popularity recently. The website shares what went wrong, what went right, and all of the funny happenings in between. Quite an interesting piece of Google history.
I assume that being a Google employee represents the highpoint of your career and you would never want to leave...like one of the xooglers says, why become a boring specialized cell when you can be a stem-cell and take on any and every challenge thrown at you?
If *I* get a Google job, I am never leaving!
"How long does it take the sauna to get hot? You think it's okay to go in the women's locker room to get some towels since we're out in here?"
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results" - Winston Churchill
So how is this news? this is just publicity for a blog. It's not because there is the word google in the story that you have to post it. You can mod me down if you want but this is true... maybe if the blog was something new ok but it's old... it's been around for a while...
to the "Let's get a real database" comment. It's nice to see such a good comment over MySQL by pros. Back in 2001/2, when I was considering to start a DB project for my own amusement, I heard almost nothing but bad things over MySQL by PostSQLers or Oraclers due to missing features though I went with it anyway.
BTW, it's not a slam on those others systems, but I feel the missing feautures debate usually gets out of proportion to actual use of said feautures by the average project by a small/mid-size business.
No ScuttleMonkey- it's what a bunch (more specifically: TWO. "Doug" and Ron") of ex-employees think went wrong, think went right. I've seen ex-employee websites/mailing lists and been on them. They're petty, rarely accurate (I saw wild claims made I knew were false) and so on.
I am no fan of Google, but why is anyone giving ANY credence to what two guys have to say? I see nothing to verify they are who they say they are.
Please help metamoderate.
I browsed through the whole damn blog trying to figure out why each of the two guys that write the blog quit. One said "I guess the #1 FAQ for people who have left Google is why did you leave. My main reason for leaving was that I was commuting from Los Angeles. I'd fly up on Southwest early Monday morning, fly back on Thursday evening, and telecommute on Fridays and weekends. That regimen was pretty stressful even under the best of circumstances, but when 9/11 happened it became completely untenable. I had already given my notice before 9/11, but I don't think I could have stayed on after that even if I had wanted to. But I'm getting ahead of myself." From what I could tell, the other one, "Doug", made a decent chunk of change in stock options and doesn't have to work anymore. Probably the same is true for the first guy also.
I understand Google is a seemingly great company to work for and a pioneer in the search engine world. But why did I even waste the time to read though that "Back in ought one when I was still at Google.." garbage? I think I was hoping for some juicy tidbit that only blog readers would be privvy to, something secretive that I would never expect to happen to the employees of Google. Instead, I got a nice voyage down memory lane - getting to listen to people reminisce about things I was never there for in the first place.
I don't know if this qualifys as either "News for Nerds." or "Stuff that Matters."
hi mom!
Well LAAA-DEEE-DAAAAA. Excuse the rest of us who couldn't get past the 3rd round of interviews! We'll just continue in our windowless labs/cubicles here, sucking down on 35 cent coffee from a vending machine perpetually on the fritz.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
You'll see there's a lisper who left JPL because managers decided to follow "best practices" of industry and move to C++. This is despite the fact that programming a space mission isn't a "standard" problem -- it is, in fact, a problem that a language like LISP is excellently suited, because people can deal with unclear/dynamic requirements as a project evolves.
So he goes to Google because they have some LISP guys there (not using LISP -- just smart guys) -- and then he gets told to do the first Java project. And later he gets told that LISP is out of the question.
And in fact, he details how a race condition in the C++ memory management leads to them billing clients nonsense amounts -- a problem that simply couldn't happen if they'd used a language like LISP (or Java) -- because the GC wouldn't reclaim something if the thing was still in use.
So Google can yet be beat -- they are not perfect. Of course, that doesn't mean there is anyone to beat them, yet.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Read the best of all of Slash: seenonslash.com
From the blog (Ron's first post [blogspot.com])
So that's why Ron left, I'm pretty sure Doug hasn't said why he left yet. So no, Ron wasn't fired.
A lot of you are pointing out that these are just random ex-Google people (or even that we have no proof they ever worked there) but there are some good points brought out in the articles. I think the majority of posters who are complaining about the blog or the accuracy of a blog are just randomly posting in hopes of points/Google-whoring rather than actually reading what was linked to. That being said,...
While those outside Google might disagree with the ultimate decisions the company has made, they should know that those decisions were not made without reflection on the consequences. One of my goals with Xooglers is to expose the nature of that debate. I agree with Matt that providing more transparency into how difficult decisions get made within the Googleplex can only enhance the brand. It's not enough to say you're not evil; you need to show the world how you define evil and how you choose to avoid it.
Well put don't you think? Indeed a large portion of slashdotters tend to believe Google is the messiah and that they are not an 'evil' company. But let's face it, 'evil' is different from person to person and to vaguely portray one company as evil and another as not is ridiculous. To many, MS won't seem evil - after all, a lot of people use their products and are damn satisfied with them. To still others, the fact that Google supports OSS means nothing and they want only excellence of product (BTW don't start a tangential reply about MS products not being excellent blah blah).
The moral of the story is that sometimes, and in particular with free software, you get more than what you pay for. There are a lot of companies out there paying dearly for commercial databases (and operating systems for that matter). As far as I'm concerned they might as well be flushing that money down the toilet. Actually, they might be better off. We certainly would have been. As an aside, there is a raging debate in the hacker community about the overall economic merit of the open source model. (Making money producing free software is quite a challenge.) I am not taking sides in that debate here. All I am saying is that from the end user's point of view free software is often much better than the producers of commercial software would like people to think.
Again, a good point - there are some OSS that are good, others that aren't. But what I want to point out is that Google did go for non-OSS software at one point - suddenly, it seems like Google was making a decision from the standpoint of "What would be best for us?" (the fact that the ACTUAL decision they made was wrong and they returned to OSS later is irrelevant BTW) correct? Indeed, they are a business. While no one here can likely say for certain, we certainly shouldn't assume that because of Summer of Code or other opened material that Google is supporting OSS (btw I am not an advocate of OSS nor am I an opponent, so please don't think I am being biased) or that it is "not evil".
My 2 cents
PS: When people bring up databases and talk about MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Oracle, they often ignore some other big players: MS's SQL Server and IBM's DB2. Don't start a thread about the different relational databases half-assedly plz.
Get real. That guy signed an NDA and posted sensitive financial information on his blog that was cleary marked as confidential. He deserved everything he got. This wasn't typical "my free latte was so great this morning", this was material information.
Random is the New Order.
If they'd gone private instead of going public, they could have been a very profitable near-monopoly, sustained by the fact that it doesn't really cost that much to run a search engine, and thus, their ad content can be minimal. But now they have to produce a reasonable return on investment for their overblown market cap. So they have to add more and more advertising-oriented services, from catalogs to classifieds. This dooms them to become more like their competitors in those spaces.
It's not going to be fun to work there as the profitabilty vise closes.
Google is doing a fine job sucking up talent. Not just the big fish like Cerf, but the more clued individuals in our industry. Working at Google has become something of a status symbol, something akin to having a CCIE. Oh, you worked at Google? You must be good. I've noticed one thing that results from this. There seem to be more senior positions open in the Bay Area, New York, everywhere Google has significant footprint. Too, the annual salaries for these positions has risen about 20%, presumedly out of demand.
For that, I can say ... thank you Google!