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Are Googlers Too Smart For Their Own Good?
theodp writes "If you're a mere mortal, don't be surprised if your first reaction to Google Storage for Developers is 'WTF?!' Offering the kind of 'user-friendly' API one might expect from a bunch of computer science Ph.D.s, Google Storage even manages to overcomplicate the simple act of copying files. Which raises the question: Are Googlers with 'world-class programming skills' capable of producing straightforward, simple-to-use programming interfaces for ordinary humans?"
The API is for developers, not Apple fanatics.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
A truly "smart" person knows that almost everyone he meets is "dumber" than him. So he spends his life talking to people who are "dumber" which causes one of two reactions. He either becomes arrogant or he becomes humble. Arrogant is easy to explain. This arrogance is born of the knowledge that you are "better" than most of the people you work with.
Humble is harder. The humility comes from years of seeing what the "best" path is and trying to save people from their own stupidity and finally realizing that all the genius in the world is worthless if it doesn't help anyone. Humility is the knowledge that no matter how genius you are it is pointless if your genius is consumed in a self-serving intellectual Ouroboros.
I test in the top 2% for intelligence. This means 98% of the people I meet are "dumber" than I am. There are also a vast array of people far more intelligent than I am. People that make me look like a total moron. From this vantage I can see that without making my intelligence available or useful then all of my talents are a "chasing after the wind" and only so much "sound and fury" amounting to nothing. Such a rating is worthless and meaningless unless it yields a result in some context (evolutionarily or otherwise).
This last step toward humility requires a tiny bit more intelligence and wisdom than arrogance does.
Let's say Google hires the smartest 2% of programmers on the planet. The reaction will probably either be arrogance or humility. So if this is the product of genius what is it? Inaccessible arrogance? Then they are using the wrong metric for intelligence and don't have programmers that are smart enough in the right ways.
Humility is harder. Humility is precious. Humility requires real intelligence.
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