

Google Hires Chris Messina - brennannovak
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/01/google-nets-another-highprofile-hire-for-open-web-strategy.html

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Perceval
My principal exposure to Chris Messina was his 50-minute long, rambling vlog
about Mozilla's future direction—one that seemed really poorly thought out and
ill-considered to me. It apparently irritated a number of folks at Mozilla as
well.

I wrote a long, rambling piece about the whole episode:
<http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2007/5/14/184745/679>

~~~
vibhavs
Link to said vlog: <http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2007/05/10/thoughts-on-
mozilla/>

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Mark_B
I have to wonder - does the high profile guy like Chris go though the same
rigorous Google interview process that they are so famous for or is it a
"simply hired" scenario?

~~~
sgk284
I don't know about Chris, but I know Guido van Rossum wasn't allowed to sign-
off on code reviews involving python until he passed Google's style test.

To put this into context, Google (at least as of 2007 when I was there) takes
the style of their code quite serious. In order to check code in, it needs to
be reviewed and signed off by at least two team members. The two people who
sign it off also have to be certified in that language though, according to
Google's internal style guidelines and usage policies.

When you start, you can't sign-off on code for any language, even if you
created the language (in all fairness, Google's internal style does vary from
PEP-8 slightly). The upside of this is that the entire code base is consistent
and more or less looks like it was all written by the same person.

In short, Google has a lot of famous people working for them. When I was there
I never saw that impact how they were treated.

~~~
hello_moto
I've worked with 2 different companies. One (big name, big time) has rigorous
build/commit processes, the other one (startup) uses "checkstyle" and
"findbugs" but lacking of code-reviews process and best-practices/standards.

During my time in the first company, I thought there were too many
bureaucracies/processes revolving code policies.I felt that those rules were
slowing me down. After I spent time with the second company, I took my words
back. We wasted time arguing about code-style and best practices/standards.
People checked-in code as if they were cowboys in the wild wild west. At first
it felt fun. Later on during the bug-fixing period, the pain and agony start.

I learned my lesson.

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btilly
Disclaimer, I started at Google this week.

Looking at the incoming orientation group there is no shortage of really smart
people just starting. Including Theodore Tso. (The ext4 maintainer for the
Linux kernel.)

There will always be turnover, but Google doesn't look like it has any trouble
attracting really smart people.

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aidenn0
What does it say about me that I parsed this sentence with "Google" as a verb
and Hires as Hi-Res?

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gojomo
I have a vague feeling a Mark Jen episode could be forthcoming.

