
Amazon is More Interesting than Google - abtinf
http://www.abtinforouzandeh.com/2011/09/07/Amazon-is-More-Interesting-than-Google.html
======
jmillikin

      They decide that you are an elite engineer primarily
      based on whether you went to an elite school. Elite code.
      Elite engineers. Elite schools. Elite company. How very
      elitist.
    

This whole "Google is elitist" meme is silly. They hired me as an SRE, and yet
I didn't attend high school, went to a state college, and had something like a
3.2 GPA.

Stop being so afraid of failure that you never try to succeed.

~~~
plinkplonk
"This whole "Google is elitist" meme is silly. They hired me as an SRE, and
yet I didn't attend high school, went to a state college, and had something
like a 3.2 GPA."

Would changing the OP's sentence to "Google is mostly elitist" help? (Genuine
Question). You _might_ (please note the emphasis on 'might') be the exception
that proves the rule. Here in Bangalore, for example, it is known that Google
has a strong _bias_ towards IIT grads and academic performance.

Whether such a strong preference for such schools/academic scores etc should
be labelled "elitist" is a different debate. Fwiw, my gut feel is that if you
are a strong enough engineer, you can get Google to override this bias.

~~~
goombastic
Like I mentioned in an earlier post on Yahoo's selection process, most
companies in India are very biased towards your certificates. The other thing
that seems to really push their swing is their insistence on company loyalty.
They come at you with questions like why did you quit after 2 years? Simple
answer:no growth inside, better growth outside.

In fact entire teams of HR thrive on being able to say "We havent found anyone
yet." Despite HR, I 've managed to look outside the box and instantly gotten
the kind of people I wanted to work with. They havent been blue-chip grads or
people with 10 years of PPT pushing experience in a large firm. They have been
people who have been enthused by a good problem. There is a ton of talent out
there on the streets of Bangalore, they dont all have certificates, but many
seem to have demos of products they have built. In my rule book, thats good
enough. If you look for designers ask for an online portfolio, if you are
looking for devs, ask for side projects, if you are looking for sales guys
figure out if they understand tech well enough to sell. In short I need to see
demonstrated value.

If you are big company, hire all the certificate holders and thank you for
cleaning up the streets.

~~~
kamaal
Company loyalty is one thing, but ultra fast jumping is an another thing. I
know some in my team who have jumped something like 6 companies in 5 years.
That's like an average of 9 months of stay in a company. Given the joining
formalities, getting a project, knowledge transfer and a good start. The
person hardly spends 5 months working in a company. That's plainly
insufficient by any measure.

Recently we hired a girl, who has all brands next to her name. Hopped like 6
companies in 5 years. Endless projects to her resume and everything looks fine
and dandy. After hiring her we figured she was fit for nothing. Every day she
reads interview questions for about 1-2 hours. Makes calls to her friends.
When asked to work, she just slacks around, force her too much and she throws
in the 'harassing the girl' card. Now she wants all foreign travel
opportunities to herself.

We know for sure she will quit in another 4 months, and she will get a good
job too. Remember she is an expert reading those interview questions for an
hour daily.

This is the regular crowd here in India that hops jobs too often. So its
perfectly acceptable for the HR to ask for _solid experience_ on a persons
resume.

~~~
goombastic
Ahhh, these are the types that will never have a side project. Ask for side
projects at the next interview and you shall find those that love solving
problems. What your interview process is selecting for currently is the
traditional salary hopper.

~~~
kamaal
I don't consider side projects a good metric either. I hardly have side
project for a simple reasons because, I get pretty much burnt out by the daily
work itself.

Unfortunately salary hoppers are so common among the job hopping crowd, that
its sufficient enough to say the most and nearly all job hoppers are salary
hoppers.

~~~
goombastic
If you won't change your filters, you will continue to get your usual stuff
and hope against hope that you get someone who will be "loyal." Ain't gonna
happen and you need to maintain a team of "HR loyalty maintainers" who fill
your inboxes with peppy mails about morale ...

I just told you about what works for some of us. Sure it might cost us a
couple of good people who don't have a side project, but all of the people we
end up getting are the problem solving type.

------
pigbucket
I recognize that this is a soundbite version of recent history and tangential
to the main point of the article, but just for the sake of contrarianism:
Google is the company that pulled out of China in opposition to government-
sponsored censorship; Amazon is the company that cut Wikileaks loose in
response to government-requested censorship. There's more to judging a
company's "interestingness" than its apparent antipathy to elitism.

~~~
0x12
Google is the company that first played ball with the Chinese government first
and pulled out after the Chinese hacked them.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8455712.stm>

It had nothing to do with 'government-sponsored censorship', in fact, google
showed different results to Chinese nationals on the other side of the line
and the rest of the world for specific queries for a long time.

~~~
watty
The hacks were an attempt at surveillance, most likely from the government.

"These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the
attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led
us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business
operations in China." [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-
china...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html)

------
bambax
There are two different angles in this story: Google is "elitist" and Amazon
empowers its users much more than Google.

The elitist part is, I think, irrelevant, difficult to prove and ambiguous. "
_Google has invented something very cool, but they won’t show it to you unless
they think you are among the world’s elite engineers._ " Would it be better if
Google was only willing to show the best of its technology only to beer
buddies of the janitor? Then it wouldn't be "elitist" (maybe) but it still
would be pointless.

The problem here is that Google's blog post does not discuss how "petasorts"
benefit Google's users; an engineering feat, certainly, but why should we
care? This sounds a little like Microsoft R&D of which very little ever came
out (at least in proportion to the hundreds of billions poured into it).

In contrast, what Amazon does is always, always geared toward its users /
customers. The thing is, Amazon HAS customers, and serves them well (they
answer to email, even pick up the phone).

I don't think Google thinks about their users as customers.

~~~
gaius
_a little like Microsoft R &D of which very little ever came out_

ClearType? Kinect? SongSmith? PhotoSynth? And F# for us geeks. MSR does LOADS
of cool stuff.

~~~
evilduck
ClearType didn't come out of MSR, Kinect was an acquisition, SongSmith has
gone nowhere since it's mild viral success a couple years back, and Photosynth
was based on an acquired project and company.

F# might be the only item you listed that originated in the MSR division and
has moderate success.

~~~
Dn_Ab
This video <http://techtalks.tv/talks/54443/> on machine learning by Bishop
talks about the research they applied to kinect. There was much work done
beyond the acquisition.

Anyways watch the video, its real good and worth watching for its own sake.

------
notahacker
Is it just me that doesn't grok any argument at all here; there are many
criticisms that could be levelled at Google but this apples and oranges
comparison is a million miles wide of the mark

Google wants the best engineers to work for them; I'm pretty sure the same
applies to Amazon. They're not going to let you near the bottom of the AWS
stack without you proving that you're towards the extreme of the smart side of
the bell curve and signing an employment contract with them.

Amazon provides its platform to anyone that wants to develop on it: last time
I checked there was no obstacle in the way of signing up for AppEngine, using
Google's many APIs to build a sexy looking searchable dynamic local social
mobile website which you can then distribute via their webstore, or as a
plugin for their browser or app on their mobile operating system. Maps are
really cool and useful for that sort of thing. Perhaps you'd like to borrow
their semantic matching technology and bidding platform to acquire some
customers or make a little money on AdSense; that's not too difficult either
and plenty of people have made millions on the back of both. Just want to make
your mark on the web? There are many neat _little_ things your average web-
savvy teenager can get creative with like their web fonts. Their free code
hosting and tutorials go a lot further than just helping you use Google
services more effectively. Show me a successful online startup which has never
used anything from Google and I'll show you a liar.

But yeah, web hosting is a little further from Google's core business than
Amazon's or Rackspace's. Does that make them elitist and irrelevant? Tell that
to the millions of people running searches every day with less barrier to
overcome than buying a book from Amazon

~~~
zmitri
It's not about web hosting, in this artcle "interesting" is about enabling
developers to leverage technology and learn from the ground up.

From your username it seems as though you would not be in a position to
compare the merits of appengine vs. aws, but as someone who has used both
platforms I totally agree with the article. Maybe "working" at Google has a
bit more "allure" to notahacker, but he is right on that Amazon has totally
empowered a new generation of engineers in a way that Google has not --
engineers who want to build on their on, not just sit on fun APIs.

~~~
notahacker
For the record, despite the fact that I choose to celebrate my inability to
hack my way out of a paper bag with my moniker, I've experimented with both
AppEngine and AWS (albeit Heroku-flavoured AWS).

So I'll happily agree that when it comes to hosting web applications, Amazon
has a much broader offering and actually attempts customer service, but I
pointed out a whole load of other ways Google services empower independent
developers. Including building operating systems, browers and other types of
platforms which aren't on Amazon's radar.

To deny that Google offers developers much because Amazon's core competency
AWS beats AppEngine beta to a bloody pulp is like saying Amazon offers
consumers nothing because the experimental public A9 search engine bombed.

~~~
zmitri
Building new browsers and OSes give developers more choice, it doesn't change
the game. AWS has completely changed the game. The only thing I could think of
Google doing to be on the same level, is opening up a search api (even at a
cost).

Heroku does not offer you even close to the same flexibility as AWS does, but
it's still a pretty sweet product in the same way that app engine is.

~~~
Locke1689
Android seems to have obviously changed the game in mobile development.

------
buff-a
GAE was more interesting to me because it promised to be efficient and
scalable if I learned their platform. Turns out that MBAs uploading django
onto it are getting more reasonable cost increases than my custom built apps.

It was interesting. But if learning these interesting systems doesn't actually
result in efficiency - as demonstrated by the numbers showing up in my billing
panel - then they aren't really interesting at all. I'm not interesting in
pointless hoop jumping.

So now I'm learning how to port my GAE app to EC2 or maybe even Heroku (if I
can reconcile that with the fact that I've spent the last two years persuading
my Heroku friends that its expensive compared to GAE).

~~~
skrebbel
> _MBAs uploading django onto it_

Wow, your MBAs got _skills_!

------
danmaz74
How can you compare a company as an employer to a different company as a
service provider?

It's pretty obvious to me that for Amazon their public cloud computing offer
is much more strategic than it is for Google, so if you want that kind of
service AWS is most likely more interesting than GAE. But that's about that.

------
ender7
(disclaimer: I work for Google)

I really don't understand this post. The author's argument seems to be:

1\. Google won't share its trade secrets with me

2\. ???

3\. Hey guys, I hear Amazon has some great cloud services you can pay for!

Amazon provides cloud services. Google doesn't (except for the GAE). I fail to
see how this fact becomes personally insulting to this guy.

~~~
mcantelon
Yeah, I enjoyed the irony of the phrase "Its like they are stoned and watching
the world pass them by in a daze". Android? G+? This guy doesn't get that
Google isn't focussed on cloud computing as a product (App Engine never seemed
anything more than a token offering to me).

------
d2
You're linking to commercial services touting them as examples of Amazon being
more open than Google? Services linked to are: MapReduce, S3, EC2, SQS, SES
and MechTurk.

 _sigh_

~~~
zobzu
I think what the article means here is that with Amazon, you can just use it.
It's not free or open.. _source_ but you can just access it, understand how it
works and use it.

Google just tout they have XX and ZZ but only so-called elite can play with it
or even just know more about it. It might end up being crap, no one else than
Google engineers will know.

~~~
rryan
> understand how it works

So... care to tell me how EC2 works? :P

The only way you are going to learn how these proprietary systems work are by
working at Google or Amazon. What makes the EC2, S3, etc. APIs different from
AppEngine or the 100s of other Google APIs there are? They're all just APIs to
proprietary systems (well, except when writing apps for Chrome and Android).
You are learning "how they work" only in the most superficial meaning of the
phrase.

------
jrockway
I don't see the difference. Google pays smart people to write proprietary
software that they sell users access to. Amazon pays smart people to write
proprietary software that they sell users access to.

The difference is that the author read a Google recruiting ad and is comparing
it to Amazon's publicly-available products. Yeah, they're different. Users
don't care about petasort. Recently-graduated PhDs looking for work do. And
that's who that copy is targeting.

"Nothing to see here: move along."

~~~
reemrevnivek
No, you're missing the point. Google pays smart people to write proprietary
software that they _don't_ sell users access to. Are you confusing the sale of
ads with the sale of the software that allows the ads to be effective?
Google's sale of their products would be analogous to Amazon allowing sellers
other than Amazon.com to sell stuff through their web store. And they do!

The point of the article is that Amazon also sells the web store itself.
Google has interesting, proprietary software, but they don't sell search
engines, sorting tools, or scalable web hosting.

~~~
mdwrigh2
> Google has interesting, proprietary software, but they don't sell search
> engines

<http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/gsa.html>
<http://code.google.com/apis/customsearch/>

> , sorting tools

Okay, so they don't sell sorting tools. But to be fair, they've published a
number of papers on different technologies which have furthered the creation
of a number of tools, including sorting tools.

> or scalable web hosting.

<http://code.google.com/appengine/>

------
mark_l_watson
Although I am generally a Google fan (I still like AppEngine, even with higher
costs, I use GMail + GDocs + Calendar hourly in my consulting business, and I
enjoy G+) I wrote a blog a few months ago rating Amazon as a more interesting
company than Google, technology-wise.

Part of it is that Amazon is not a black box. I have read most of the relavent
papers published by Googlers and Amazonians, and I feel like Amazon
technologies are so much more approachable and generally useful.

Top level: both Google and Amazon have developed great technology that they
needed to run their companies and then decided to make a subset of their
technologies available to outside developers and companies.

Still Google does some very nice things for developers like Google Code, and
little things like releasing Wave in a Box (which is great!) when they
announced the termination of Wave services.

------
jimfl

      Check, check, and check.
    

Amazon also takes Visa and MasterCard.

------
swah
Not having Amazon (either as the find-everything, ship-in-one-day store with
great customer service, or the webservices) is one of those things that
reminds me I'm in a third world country.

------
abtinf
Followup: Openness is Overrated <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2974037>

------
magicalist
I'm finding myself really interested in color spaces recently.

Maybe you forgot to title this "I like Amazon Web Services, not App Engine"?

------
antics
Maybe Amazon is more interesting than Google, but the only thing you have
demonstrated here, OP, is that it is not you who will be demonstrating this
for us. And the real miracle of your screed is that there are _dozens_ of
issues that you could have raised, but by God almighty and all that is holy
under the sun, you have managed to avoid every single one of them, except one.
And the one you got is not important by itself.

Let's have some examples. You write, "They decide that you are an elite
engineer primarily based on whether you went to an elite school." Yeah, OP?
According to who? You? Maybe there's a place where it's acceptable to get up
and air vague, unsubstantiated conjecture about something you don't
understand, but in the real world, you have to qualify your argumentation. I
might add that even if it is the case that Google hires primarily from
prestigious universities, you are not accounting for the fact that they could
actually just be better on average.

There are other examples, too, but rather than point out the withered
editorial you serve up for literally the first 2/5ths of the article, I think
I'll do us all a favor by pointing out that your first actual fact is that
Amazon makes tools -- and that this fact appears more than halfway into the
article. And more critically, that it is delivered without any real impacts.
Even if Amazon delivers more tools, WHO CARES? HOW DOES THIS DEMONSTRATE YOUR
POINT? And actually, while I'm here, what IS your point?

Strong claims demand strong evidence, and if you're going to drop a line like
"But the world has changed, and Google can’t seem to keep up", then you'd
better damn well be prepared to back it up.

~~~
plinkplonk
You probably have a reasonable argument somewhere in there. Less "shouting"
(use of block letters), attacking the poster (vs his argument) and empty
rhetorical flourishes ("but by God almighty and all that is holy under the
sun") would help the rest of us actually understand your argument.

I think the useful bits of your comment can be summed up as (your sentence)
"Strong claims demand strong evidence" without all the accompanying
histrionics.

~~~
antics
Yes, you're probably right. I'm a classically trained debater, and I tend to
talk and write the way I was trained.

Also I tend to post only when I'm annoyed, and I turn more into a speechmaker
the more I get annoyed. It's maybe a weakness and I'll consider making a
conscious effort if other people seem to agree.

EDIT: I'm going to mark this as the first time in my life that people in
general disapprove of honest personal inventory. What it is that they would
have rather heard (a lie?) is unclear.

~~~
plinkplonk
I suspect you are being downvoted (I didn't downvote you fwiw) for "I'm a
classically trained debater, and I tend to talk and write the way I was
trained." and "It's maybe a weakness" .

The first is downright silly. Debate training helps you in a formal debate. It
isn't meant to be the guide for generic speaking or writing. Do you speak at
the dinner table or to friends or family "in the manner you were trained" for
debate? That would lead to you being an interesting companion ;) (As an aside,
whether your OP is a good example for "classical debating style" is open to
question)

A debate is an artifical situation where "scoring points" with a variety of
content lite tricks (e.g: attacking the person or his style, or his mannerisms
vs his arguments) are valid tactical maneuvers. Scoring points is more
important in a formal debate than exploring a topic or seeking nuance and
truth. You see this in political debates all the time where substance is
minimal, complex issues are reduced to soundbites and rhetoric and style
dominate. Most normal life conversations, including internet conversations are
not formal "debates". Especially here.

On HN, namecalling etc are frowned on. A sharp and insightful comment using
the minimum of empty flourishes would serve you well here if you want to
maximize karma reward. As a classically trained debater, you are no doubt used
to changing your style to suit the audience.

As to "It is maybe a weakness", _if_ you talk "debatese" in real life anytime
someone makes an argument that annoys you , there is no "maybe" about "it is a
weakness".

You also implicitly asked for people's judgement on your writing style ("I'll
consider making a conscious effort if other people seem to agree").

Consider the downvotes to be feedback on your writing style and your defense
of it vs "disapprove of personal inventory" (leaving aside the question of
whether HN is the right forum to make personal inventory).

~~~
antics
> A debate is an artifical situation where "scoring points" with a variety of
> dubious tactics e.g: attacking the person (or his style, or his mannerisms)
> are valid tactical maneuvers. Scoring points is more important in a formal
> debate than exploring a topic or seeking nuance and truth. [...] Most normal
> life conversations, including internet conversations are not formal
> "debates". Especially here.

Debate is about scoring points via dubious tactics? Says who? You? I don't
mean to be a burden to talk to, but while you're presenting the noble argument
that HN community is a pack of discerning, objective truth-seekers, what
you've said is patently and unquestionably wrong, and if you get upvoted, then
the _real_ message that I should take away is that such dubious and pandering
tactics are only acceptable in contexts where the community agrees with you _a
priori_.

> Debate training helps you in a formal debate. It isn't meant to be the guide
> for generic "speaking or writing". Do you speak at the dinner table or to
> friends or family "in the manner you were trained" for debate?

You're wrong, and this is wrong. The point of debate is to learn to build
consensus in an audience in a variety of scenarios. If you're talking at
length, or writing an essay, you will change what you do to be more effective
in those cases. If you are answering questions in cross examination, or
shouting over someone in a crowded room, then you will again alter your
presentation accordingly. And generally, if you were trained properly, then
you will have developed a specific communication style for a huge swath of
activities that require it.

Including conversation. Including letters. Including posts on the Internet. If
I'm wrong, it's in practice, not form, and to dispute this, you have some
heavy lifting to do, particularly in the first passage I note in this post.
The fact that you are well-spoken and well-adjusted in the community is
certainly appreciable, and while your advice is probably not completely wrong,
that doesn't make you right either.

~~~
gfodor
Here, I re-wrote your post to be in a normal, respectful voice. You'll notice
that not only does it manage to get your point across, but people will read it
without wincing and being offended:

The OP may be right, but I'm afraid they do a poor job of providing clear
examples of why Amazon is really more interesting than Google. They do manage
to name one, but that one turns out to not be very important.

So, what are some examples? You write, "They decide that you are an elite
engineer primarily based on whether you went to an elite school." The problem
is it's pretty subjective what counts as an 'elite' school. It could just mean
that, on average, Google hires from more prestigious universities, but this
doesn't really prove elitism since it's likely they hire folks from many other
universities as well.

Here's an example of a difference between the two companies that I think does
serve the OP's point: Amazon is a toolmaker. This is mentioned, but the OP
fails to really explain _why_ this property really serves to make Amazon a
more interesting company.

Overall, there are some pretty broad claims about the two companies in this
post, and I'm not seeing a strong argument for why we should think Google is
in 'catchup' mode as the OP claims. If you're going to say something about one
of the worlds most valuable companies playing catchup, you definitely need
strong evidence if you expect people to agree with you.

\--

No personal attacks, less words, and more impact on the mind of your reader.
(I just wrote this quickly, so please excuse its lack of brevity and any other
obvious mistakes!)

