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Inside the Google-Plex

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the belly-of-the-beast dept.

tappytibbins writes "Baseline magazine has an in-depth story about how Google manages its own IT infrastructure. From the article: 'In general, Google has a split personality when it comes to questions about its back-end systems. To the media, its answer is, "Sorry, we don't talk about our infrastructure." Yet, Google engineers crack the door open wider when addressing computer science audiences, such as rooms full of graduate students whom it is interested in recruiting.'"

8 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. That makes perfect sense by Flavio · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Most journalists and business analysts are notable for doing a half-assed job and taking credit for cut & paste jobs. Journalists who actually spend time researching their stories are a dying breed, so my take on this is that Google would rather not waste their time answering stupid questions from people who don't even understand what they're publishing. Their time is much better spent recruiting smart people or just talking to grad students in some sort of academic goodwill.

  2. Post-Beta by Kesch · · Score: 3, Insightful
    From TFA:
    On the other hand, Google doesn't hesitate to create applications for internal use and put them on its own server grid. If the company's software engineers think they can tinker up something to make themselves more productive--for example, a custom-built project tracking system--Merrill doesn't stand in their way.


    If it is anything like their web-presence, half the stuff must have 'Beta' appended to it.

    New GPayRoll-Beta!
    --
    If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
  3. Re:A Google Lecture Experience by SoCalChris · · Score: 5, Insightful
    On the otherhand, I was very unimpressed with certain issues concerning lack of professionalism in the lecture. As one example, though this is only an impression, it seemed that he felt he could just get away with wearing jeans and a Google t-shirt for the few days that he was with us because he worked at the ever prestigious Google. It seemed a bit arrogant.
    Why does he have to wear anything more than jeans & a Google shirt? A computer guy in a shirt & tie is not a happy computer guy.

    It's been my experience that the companies who worried most about what their IT staff was wearing were the worst to work for.
  4. Re:A Google Lecture Experience by Dun+Malg · · Score: 4, Insightful
    On the otherhand, I was very unimpressed with certain issues concerning lack of professionalism in the lecture. As one example, though this is only an impression, it seemed that he felt he could just get away with wearing jeans and a Google t-shirt for the few days that he was with us because he worked at the ever prestigious Google. It seemed a bit arrogant.
    Shock. Horror. The man was dressed comfortably in clean, casual clothes. That's your only complaint? Where are you from, Victorian England? Come join the rest of us in the 21st century. Arrogant? Arrogance would be whipping his thingy out and pissing on the front row. For casual dress to be arrogance it would be necessary for him to believe that a suit and tie is the only appropriate dress for such an occasion, and then intentionally not wear them as an insult. I doubt this was the case. Sounds to me more like the problem's with you and your slavish adherence to an increasingly outdated dress code.
    --
    If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  5. Re:A Google Lecture Experience by Phishcast · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Perhaps "arrogant" wasn't the right word for the poster to use, but I can see where he's coming from with this. If you're presenting at a prestigious institution (or one that considers itself such) you should show a little respect for that institution by dressing it up a bit. A tie wouldn't be necessary, but ditching the jeans and wearing a button up shirt (or a polo shirt even) seems like it would be in order.

    I'm a computer guy, I wear jeans to work every day, and I'm happy that way. If I'm being asked to speak in front of a large group of people I don't grab something out of the hamper, y'know?

  6. Re:Also... by The+Cydonian · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Isn't PageRank based on a voting system? OK, in an intranet full of PDFs and Word docs, who votes? Yup, that's right, PageRank doesn't work in an enterprise context.
    I think it is fairly obvious that Google does not use PageRank for some of its specialized searches, such as for gmail, Google video and so on; they simply use some text-matching algorithm in those apps. Not that hard to imagine that this would be the case with Google Enterprise (or whatever they call their app).
    Come to think of it, why do they need that many? Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, and everyone else index the web with far fewer I'll bet
    Unless you're trolling, (or think Google should be a search engine alone), you would know that Google does a lot more than plain-vanilla web search.
    Don't get me started. 5,000 PhDs and their efforts to combat Click Fraud amount to -erm- not a whole hill o'beans.
    Try reading that ZDNet article, instead of forming opinions just by looking at headlines.
    --
    More than mere navel gazing.
  7. Re:It's hard to believe... by kevlarman · · Score: 2, Insightful
    ..that a single search engine runs on hundreds of servers. What do they need all of those machines for?
    you dropped a few zeros there
    --
    A mouse is a device used to point to the xterm you want to type in
  8. Re:A Google Lecture Experience by mdfst13 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "However, when dealing with the outside world, I believe it to be most respective and professional to wear professional attire that is appropriate to that correspondence."

    In this case, his primary purpose was recruiting. In particular, he wanted to recruit really smart people. Really smart people know that clothes are irrelevant to the job (unless the job is to model clothes or work at IBM). Thus, the appropriate professional attire is (drum roll please) jeans and a t-shirt. Those are the clothes most likely to be appealing to the kind of people that are at a university and that Google wants.

    Another way of looking at it is that Google is really interested in hiring from the same group of people who might want to become professors. Such people are notoriously uninterested in the wrapping. As such, it may be more valuable to Google to project a casual attitude (and attire) than to be respectfully professional. In fact, they might even find it advantageous to not hire people like you who are over impressed by clothes. Why? Because you may look down on your scruffily dressed but brilliant colleagues. Maybe Google would be better off if you went to IBM (famous for their uptight dress; in part because they are professionals who deal with business people).

    I think that your insight (dressing appropriately is best) is correct. I think that you are misinterpreting what was appropriate to the situation.