
Developer Tropes: “Google Does It” - mothsonasloth
https://tomaytotomato.com/developer-tropes/
======
tylerl
Having worked at a few places that aren't Google as well as a few places that
are Google, here's what I think the meaningful difference is that makes the
Google offices more productive.

1: The people are smarter. It's sort of cheating I suppose; better inputs make
better outputs. Google doesn't have all the smartest people, but it's one of
the few companies that get top-tier talent in a way that is meaningful.
Everything else hinges on this.

2: Your manager (and their manager) cares a lot about you. That's a pretty
broad statement and definitely not universal, but it's more often true than
not. Managers are explicitly trained to focus on the needs of their employees,
and the ones who don't are largely viewed as failures. No other success
compensates for poor treatment of your reports. Again, there are plenty of bad
managers, but they're widely seen as bad managers; justification like
"demanding but fair" or "knows how to get results" or "evil genius" have
little effect.

3: It's easy to move. There is no pay difference no matter what project you
work on and internal mobility is encouraged and supported. People do what they
want to do, and they tend to be extremely motivated as a result. It also helps
remove bad managers: sinking ships get abandoned really, really fast. This is
arguably the company's greatest weakness as well as it's hard to get people to
work on something soul-consuming. But it's great for the employees and it's
great for innovation.

~~~
ryandrake
> 1: The people are smarter.

I’d phrase this a little differently: the people there can be relied upon to
at least have some “baseline” technical ability. Having worked at both FAANG
and more mediocre companies, one thing that stands out is that while not
everyone at FAANG are super-wizards, you’ll never have to sit there and
explain things like “what is a stack trace” and “what happens when you write
past the end of an array” and “what is the difference between O(n log n) and
O(log n)”. You’ll never have to argue whether using source control is a good
idea. You’ll never have people who spend weeks just trying to get Hello
Project” to compile. All of which I’ve seen in other companies.

The big guys hiring processes might not be great but unlike most companies
they seem to be able to filter out the complete know-nothings, and that alone
is probably what raises the average.

TLDR: it’s not that they hire smarter people—they just avoid hiring way-below-
average people.

~~~
catacombs
> You’ll never have people who spend weeks just trying to get Hello Project”
> to compile. All of which I’ve seen in other companies.

I'd love to read the back story on this. Was it really a "hello world"
project?

~~~
seventhtiger
Not OP, but FizzBuzz interview questions are famous for eliminating
significant numbers of applicants.

I've learned that once you're in a large and complex corporate structure,
judging your value becomes difficult. In every job I've been I've found
professional slackers who truly optimize to do the minimum. They can send all
the right value signals while they keep their true lack of value hidden behind
a complex maze.

The only way I can think of to minimize them is to set up high barriers of
entry that require on the spot proof of ability: coding tests and programming
problems. Everything else can be and has been bulshitted through.

~~~
scarface74
Algorithmic Coding tests and programming problems don’t tell you too much
about whether they can translate business rules into code or their ability to
work in complex code bases.

~~~
seventhtiger
They may not be great at differentiating the top from the very top but they
are great at establishing a minimum qualification.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
It's important that this be a _minimal_ qualification...the temptation is
equate "can solve harder algo problems on the spot=brings more value," but
that's not a great signal, and according it too much reverence overshadows
other important traits (knowing _which_ problems to solve ranking high among
them)

~~~
seventhtiger
It doesn't matter.

I've read and heard many accounts of college admission officers and hiring
managers who say that among the top 30%, it is essentially random. They don't
know how or even need to differentiate between the 30%, 20%, and 10%.

So what it comes down to is selecting a random differentiator that can stand
up against nepotism (objective and measurable), legal scrutiny (fair), audits
(easy to comply with) and so on.

Essentially everyone who answers those questions reasonably well passes. But
the one who answered best gets hired because at that point we don't even have
a good differentiating signal.

------
duxup
Certainly what environment you have should be a sort of organic / self
developed / self serving kinda system. Make it your own.

I do think when folks talk about little perks and the environment they're not
talking about how having the right kind of cake, or three kinds of cake vs two
kinds of cake available (just a generic example) is important. What they are
really saying is "I see this company has put some resources into making this
environment better, and that reflects their values and makes ME feel valued."
Heck even if you don't eat the cake it is a sign.

It's akin to the story (I can't find it) where a company stopped providing
free soda (or maybe they stopped subsidizing the price, I forget). The
engineers were very upset, but it was just soda and god knows they could
afford it.... but really it wasn't soda, the fact that management thought it
was worth their time to pull resources from soda of all things was a very
worrisome sign that indicated the company's values and possibly their future.
Soda was the canary in the coal mine.

~~~
JohnFen
On the other hand, there are companies that decide to put effort into little
employee "perks" like that rather than putting effort into improving the
things that really matter, because it's cheaper and easier to stock a soda
machine than to solve institutional problems.

For this reason, I don't consider the existence of stuff like that to be a
reliable indicator of anything at all. When a company does this, it neither
impresses me nor puts me off.

~~~
rightbyte
Not really, I belive it's important. I worked as a teacher and we had to the
handle coffee machine ourselfs. Every week there was a coffee teacher and we
put money in a jar. Alot of energy and frustration was caused by this and most
likely no money saved for the school.

------
helmsb
I’m always wary of the hip companies that offer all the perks and try and seem
cool. It’s not altruistic. They expect in return to work you like crazy. I
would much rather work somewhere boring where I work a solid day and go home,
don’t have to think about work on the weekends with solid monetary
compensation. Free donuts and coffee can’t make up for lost personal time nor
can it pay for a mortgage. I’m a professional, treat me like one.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Different strokes for different folks. Some people (by which I mean me)
honestly don't like the "work a solid day and go home" model; I don't have the
kind of mental switches to stop thinking about personal stuff at 9 am and stop
thinking about work stuff at 5 pm. My current company gets 50+ hours a week
out of me, but nobody complains when I watch a Youtube video and I don't need
permission to leave early when it's necessary - I consider that a fair trade.

~~~
wil421
Are you married? Do you have kids? Do you have a dog? Do you have hobbies that
require you to be away from computers?

If you don’t answer yes to one of my questions I suggest you try one or more.
I’ve gone through lots of hobbies outside my house (preferably outdoors) over
the years including running, working out, walking my dog, and now kayaking.

If your able to get your work done you should swap the YouTube time for
someone else outside work.

~~~
nostrademons
Speaking as someone who is now married with a kid who worked a whole lot when
I was younger, I'd advise the opposite for the OP. Work as much as you can,
and ideally get your employer (or customers) to pay you as much as possible
for that work. Save that money, and invest it well.

Because you won't be able to do that when you have kids. The period from 0-5
years old is just brutal on all of time, attention, and finances. Having a
financial cushion is pretty critical if, for example, you get hit with $50K in
hospital bills while also needing to figure out daycare and baby supplies and
your wife is spending 6-8 hours/day nursing and you're both sleeping 3-4
hours/night. Many new parent problems can be solved with money, and most of
the rest are a lot easier if you're not worried how to get the money.

~~~
robin_reala
Does the US system not seem crazy to the people who are stuck inside it? I
mean, I guess this is a low-effort comment etc, but I’m still staggered that
pulling massive overtime in advance, and $50k for medical bills is seen as a
potential part of having a kid.

~~~
nostrademons
Yes, yes it does. But not something I could do anything about, other than
voting for single-payer if it ever came up for a vote, which it won't.

~~~
Moru
It always feel like grinding in salt in open wounds when discussing US medical
and family building. For example when we had our daughter 10 years ago, we had
more than 300 days (can't remember exact) to share between us of paid time off
work. All medical treatment and dentist is absolutely free up to 20-ish, as
are schools. Child care is about 60 eur per month depending on salary of both
parents. 70 eur is about max.

~~~
whatshisface
In the long run everyone will live in a society like that, not because America
will suddenly become child-friendly, but because any country that massively
discourages childcare will drop to zero population.

~~~
blub
It seems to me that the US is importing people from other countries en masse,
so that's not likely to be a problem, especially if said people had lower
standards of living and can cope with lacking child care through other means,
like large families.

------
bluedino
Way back in 2007/2008, Google did a study on HDD failures not increasing when
they had 80+ degree server rooms.

Someone at a company I used to work for, read that study in 2013, and removed
the air conditioners from our server rooms.

We ran at almost 90 degrees from that point on, inside the racks it was much
hotter. We lost a couple battery backups, internal fans, and power supplies
before I could convince them to turn the air back on.

~~~
AceJohnny2
Was the person/process that led to that decision _corrected_ ?

~~~
bluedino
It was the owners son. He's been promoted and continues making ill-advised
decisions to this day.

------
VBprogrammer
I'm constantly amazed by how self-entitled my fellow developers can be when it
comes to anything offered as a perk. The coffee machine on a floor breaks and
you'd think someone had asked them to take a 20% pay cut by their reaction.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

~~~
baud147258
A coffee machine breakage would be treated as a work-stopping issue where I
work, considering our consumption. But I don't think it would be treated like
a 20% cut (which would most likely impossible here), it would be just a big
annoyance.

~~~
bcrosby95
Its weird how it's socially acceptable to admit you're reliant upon this
specific drug to get work done. But any others and it's bad.

~~~
wccrawford
I was strongly anti-caffeine for most of my life. Then, in my 30s, I started
getting so sleep at work that I'd fall asleep at my desk.

I went to the doctor and got drugs and vitamins. One of the drugs was supposed
to be for erectile dysfunction, but had the side effect of keeping people
awake. I tried it anyhow. They didn't work.

I ended up drinking a little caffeine to fix it. It worked really well.

Now I drink a _lot_ of caffeine to fix it, and if I stop, I go back to falling
asleep in the middle of the day.

If I could, I'd gladly just take a nap in the middle of the day to "fix" this
problem. I get plenty of sleep at night, and I have a regular schedule. I
don't work overtime and my job isn't abusive on my work-life balance.

But now I just _need_ caffeine to keep going all day. And so I deal with that
instead, and I no longer tell people that I don't like caffeine.

When someone says that they need caffeine to wake up, I certainly don't tell
them that they should get off caffeine... And I don't even _think_ it anymore.
They might actually need it.

~~~
freedomben
I've had a similar experience. Caffeine is probably the greatest tool in my
belt.

Something you may want to look into is how many carbs you are eating for
lunch, and whether your blood sugar is being affected. An amazing number of
people have minor hypoglycemia and a carb-heavy lunch can leave them falling
asleep at their desk. When I switched to a low/no-carb breakfast/lunch it did
help (tho did not cure).

~~~
wccrawford
In the last few years, I've started getting migraines from sugar. That caused
me to look at carbs and start reducing them as well. I still consume more
carbs than I'd like, but I think I'm definitely below average on that scale.

That said, you've made me think and it's worth seeing if I can't further move
my intake towards proteins safely and cost-effectively. And then maybe next
time I try to reduce caffeine, it'll actually work.

Thanks!

~~~
Moru
I had the same idea and tried lchf and it works great. Caffeine never did
anything for me.

------
stcredzero
I'm surprised no one else has said it yet, but isn't, "We are going to make
this environment more like a Google office," just the 20-teens version of, "No
one ever got fired for buying IBM?" It was also what the article terms, "Lazy
management thinking." It's imitating the surface level of big company success,
without analyzing the how and why, and seeing if the cost/benefit factors also
work out for yourself.

------
CoolGuySteve
> "We are going to make this environment more like a Google office"

> "I saw this presentation by a Google developer and I think we need to copy
> their release process"

One of these is very different from the other. Fancy coffee and whatnot
affects your environment but release processes, frameworks, interview methods,
etc, change your productivity and are all made to fit an organization of
Google's size and bureaucracy. They're a terrible fit for most small/medium
sized companies.

I also always find it weird how nobody picks other giant companies to emulate,
nobody's like "Well JP Morgan has great employee mortgage rates!" or whatever.

~~~
stcredzero
_The latter is rarely effective for a small company imo and is way more of a
dangerous cargo cult in my experience. It 's like trying to swim while wearing
shackles._

One principle I think about when refactoring, is reversibility. If something
turns out to be wrong, can you change your mind with minimal cost? To
generalize, when trying something, can it be tried and backed out for minimal
cost, while providing good information?

 _I also always find it weird how nobody picks other giant companies to
emulate, nobody 's like "Well JP Morgan has great employee mortgage rates!" or
whatever._

For the answer, I think one can analyze their marketing and how the culture
once perceived SV and the startup scene.

------
OliverJones
Policies like "one-click deploy and one-click rollback" or "no long meetings"
are the result of years of hard work.

An executive can't just decree "no long meetings" and have it stick. Avoiding
long meetings takes a culture of preparation and transparency. It takes clear
agendas. It takes people showing up to the meeting knowing the agenda and the
material, and being ready to approve, review, brainstorm, or do whatever the
agenda calls for. It's hard--and worthwhile--to work on developing that
culture.

An executive can't decree "one-click deploy" either. Obviously. It too takes a
particular culture and a lot of time.

As for the perks: it takes a "no magic" culture. If the coffee runs out, some
real human has to get more. In a big company, maybe that work can be
outsourced. In a pre-revenue startup, there's no magic. You want coffee? Go
get some. (They sell it at Starbucks and Costco, you know.) If you have an
intern who will tolerate being asked to go fer coffee, send the intern.

Dirty bathroom, small company? No magic. Clean the bathroom.

------
w0mbat
I can tell you that this line does not work at Apple. If I ever questioned
Apple's weirdly bureaucratic ways of doing things my manager would yell at me
"I don't give a fuck what you did at Google!".

------
GiorgioG
Microservices...because scalability...that you'll never need.

~~~
nailer
The amount of otherwise-sane developers that have created their own cloud
provider on top of an existing cloud provider 'because Docker/k8s' scares me.

------
ppod
>It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people cant
be governed at all

~~~
HillaryBriss
When I see the Google employee walkouts I begin to wonder what it takes to
govern good people. Sundar Pichai must feel like the walkouts are a real
headache sometimes.

~~~
a1369209993
It requires very little. The catch is that it requires _specifically_ very
little: not nothing, and also not more than very little.

------
mothsonasloth
Here's an archive link

[http://archive.fo/TcUsg](http://archive.fo/TcUsg)

------
fapjacks
This is why I'm bearish on Kubernetes for most organizations. Not because it
doesn't work great, but because its complexity is so high. I have this adage
about not solving problems you don't have, but it's the same concept in the
article. Kubernetes is for Google. And I guess Netflix could use kube. Amazon.
Facebook, sure. But the complexity overhead is so enormous that you are
probably causing more problems than you're solving, _especially_ if you're
already using something that works (since this is the same exact thing as
rewriting the software from scratch, but for sysops).

Alas. New and shiny is a powerful temptation.

------
outworlder
> "I saw this presentation by a Google developer and I think we need to copy
> their release process"

I heard exactly the opposite from some Googlers. That you DON'T want to copy
their release process. At least, not without a good reason.

------
HillaryBriss
These companies should be much more skeptical of the desire to make code
quality similar to that of Google. It must have been different in Google's
early years, but now there's reason to suspect that Google succeeds in spite
of their code/product quality, not because of it.

------
lostmymind66
I interviewed for a position last year where the company had a very successful
product and was growing, but still small. They wanted to restructure
everything (the way they code, teams, management style) to be more like
Google.

I made it to the last interview stage, which would have been a 4 hour remote
white-boarding session, where they would give me something to code and a team
of developers would watch me. I turned it turned it down and found a much
better position the next day.

The first stage of the interview was light technical and almost all a
psychological test to see if I would be a good 'culture' fit.

The interviewer was a first-time 20-something manager that wanted to make a
name for himself and had read a few silicon valley books about technical
interviews. He actually told me this.

Most companies aren't Google and shouldn't be emulating much of anything
there.

~~~
lacampbell
> The interviewer was a first-time 20-something manager that wanted to make a
> name for himself and had read a few silicon valley books about technical
> interviews. He actually told me this.

Haha what a champ. I respect the hell out of that.

~~~
lostmymind66
yeah, well, I didn't want to be managed by this person.

------
pbreit
No exactly what I expected. I was thinking it would be more technical.

Either way, there is very little, possibly nothing, that a company not named
Google can borrow from Google. The scale and venue that Google operates in too
different.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Nah, there's plenty of things that would be cool to borrow.

Generous (by US standards) parental leave, lots of holidays, excellent 401k
plan, work flexibility, ease of job transfers, open/critical internal culture,
blameless post-mortems as a standard thing, and of course, free food and gym.

~~~
pbreit
I probably should have left out the "either way" since I mainly meant
technical topics.

Since you mention them though, many are not Google things. And others I would
reject (ex: free food & gym).

~~~
TulliusCicero
> Since you mention them though, many are not Google things.

What does this even mean? Most of the technical process stuff Google does
isn't completely unique to Google either.

> And others I would reject (ex: free food & gym).

Why though? Honestly, having worked here, it'd be hard for me to go to a place
that didn't have these things. It's just so convenient and awesome!

------
rolltiide
so are we finally going to retire OKRs or not

because that it the most mindnumbingly ridiculous and timewasting fad I've
ever put up with on a development team or company "because Google does it"

maybe C-level management should just do it amongst themselves and just put
their results on a list and it would be the same as a random directive coming
down from high that nobody questions. most of your startup's "passionate team
members" are lying about it and do not care if they the understood the
direction the OKR process went or if they just did what was told, skipping the
whole thing.

------
JohnFen
If my employer were to decide that we needed to be more like Google, my only
thought would be "if I wanted to work for a company that resembles Google, I'd
be working for Google."

------
AceJohnny2
The author's insight of viewing a company/office as an _ecosystem_ is really
useful.

(I was ready to dismiss this article based on the title being too tropey,
ironically)

