
Acquisition and maintenance of a band of minions - ericedge
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/06/15/campus/
======
jmillikin
For those who don't regularly follow rachelbythebay.com, this post is a Google
allegory. I disagree with a couple points.

First, Google really doesn't care as much about education as people think they
do. They do love experience. I never graduated high school, and was hired into
an SRE position (= programmer writing large-scale sysadmin tools) based on
previous work experience. Grades are only useful if you've got nothing else to
show off.

Second, if you want employees to be loyal to a company with unusually good
perks, taking them fresh out of school is a terrible approach. Many people
working here indeed have no real idea what working at non-tech companies is
like, and that means they assume every other company is like Google. I have
heard stories of employees getting frustrated on some project, leaving to work
at (e.g.) a bank or webdev shop, and not realizing until their first day that
there's no free food, or gym, or weekly heckling of the CEO. I used to work at
a defense contractor, I know what it's like being a programmer employed at a
non-tech company, and I don't want to ever go back.

(In other words, Google might get better retention by implementing Rumspringa)

Third, the proprietary parts aren't as pervasive as the article portrays. Our
Linux kernel has weird Google-specific interfaces, but they're always in some
stage of upstreaming and will eventually be in Linus's trunk. Our RPC system
uses the same protobuf rpc-stubs that are generated by the open-source
protobuf compiler. Desktops and Laptops run stock {Ubuntu,Windows,MacOS} with
a few extra binaries. MapReduce and BigTable were published and inspired
dozens of open-source implementations. Many of our Python-based tools have web
frontends written with Django. Many systems persist data in MySQL.

When Google engineers avoid particular in-fashion systems such as Rails or
MongoDB or node.js, it's not because we're ignorant of them, it's because we
think they're not good enough.

~~~
rachelbythebay
Regarding NIH, some places have found an interesting way to have their cake
and eat it too. First, they create something interesting. Then they release it
to the world. That way, their formerly-proprietary thing _becomes_ the
standard, or at least, shows up in the marketplace.

Protocol Buffers was this back in ... 2007? Too bad Thrift happened first,
right?

This is leading up to the kernel of another post: how to undercut the
competition: hire the people who created their Secret Sauce, then have them
build it again, but this time, release it to the world. Now the competition
doesn't have their exclusive magic carpet to ride around on any more.

~~~
throwawaykf
Interestingly, a senior Googler I once talked to derisively mentioned how
competitors like Facebook were open sourcing projects that used to be
proprietary Google technology, mostly based on work done by people FB poached
from Google. I realize it's just another anecdote, but the word "we" was used
enough during the dialog to indicate that it was a common view within Google.

I guess it's a viable strategy, but nobody likes it when it's done to them.

~~~
rachelbythebay
Oh, sure, in 2007 when Thrift came out first, I was on board with that
sentiment, too. "Oh, wow, they hired someone who was an intern here last year,
and now they have their own Protocol Buffers, surprise surprise." It was
easier to disparage it than it was to get concerned about our own well-being.

Now, however, every time they release something like this, I just crack up
laughing. The servers, the software-defined switched network, all of it. It
just keeps going. The real magicians have moved on and are now sharing their
creations with the rest of the world.

If only I had a copy of that internal post which basically said "either we
open-source our own stuff, or other people are going to do it for us, and
we're going to be behind the eight ball". I want to say it was a Yegge Buzz
post but I can't remember for sure. It's been three or four years.

Leakers, you know how to find me. Contact info in profile.

------
ender7
Nit: I know we like to be all anti-intellectual here at HN, but Rachel's claim
that "having a PhD" correlates strongly with "lacking the ability for
independence of thought or action" is pretty ridiculous. Undergraduate and
masters programs may be fairly structured, but once you get into a PhD program
you are shockingly, horrifyingly alone. Those without the ability to act,
plan, or motivate themselves independently do not make it through the 4-8 year
(depending on your domain) process. Very occasionally, you'll find an advisor
or a lab that will hold your hand through the entire multi-year process, but
those experiences are a rarity.

~~~
gammarator
Earning a PhD certainly requires independent thought and action, but those are
directed towards goals imposed by someone else, typically an adviser or one's
committee, and the typical grad student rarely questions those goals.

This capacity for creative work in pursuit of others' ends is exactly why
Rachel says PhDs are such valuable minions.

The book "Disciplined Minds" [1] makes this point in a radical way. I didn't
agree with everything it said, but its point is that higher education selects
for people willing to jump through arbitrary hoops for nebulous returns, and
that that conformism is valuable to employers.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-
Professiona...](http://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-
Professionals-Soul-battering/dp/0742516857)

~~~
HarryHirsch
> Earning a PhD certainly requires independent thought and action, but those
> are directed towards goals imposed by someone else, typically an adviser or
> one's committee, and the typical grad student rarely questions those goals.

They don't question the advisor's goals? Do they now? I found that learning
how to manage your boss is the one most important soft skill to have doing
one's PhD. Compare that to your garden-variety BSc program, where the only
thing you do is dutifully attend lectures and hand in homework.

I do wonder what kind of people makes that sort of statement. It can only be
those with nothing more than a BSc - they have attended a university but don't
know how the sausage is made.

~~~
calibraxis
"Disciplined Minds" was written by someone knowledgeable. From ch. 15:

 _" Remember also that profesional training is preceded by at least 16 years
of preparatory socialization in the schools. Students who go on to
professional training tend to be the "best" students—those who, among other
things, excel at playing by the rules. [...]_

 _" Alone in a large program designed to mold you, you cannot uphold an
independent outlook for long. By yourself you can't even maintain a point of
reference against which to sense that your outlook is drifting and to gauge
how far it has drifted, because the training system, so as not to sabotage
itself, excludes sources of critical distance."_

It even meshes with what ender7 said. He wrote, "once you get into a PhD
program you are shockingly, horrifyingly alone." And he pointed out the
preparatory programs.

The book also delves into your point about "learning how to manage your boss".
Many cynically "play the game" and generally do a bit better than those who
don't. But even that's part of the system. You know the rules and still
subordinate yourself, ironically believing you're in control of Big Boss.
Remember, a boss is defined as someone who gives you commands which you obey.
An inherently pathetic position, which many frankly call (wage) slavery. The
court may plot and scheme, but the king is still their king.

~~~
njbooher
> The court may plot and scheme, but the king is still their king.

Try watching some Game of Thrones.

------
sxp
Disclaimer: I work for Google but the following is my personal opinion.

FWIW, the part about never deviating from the "One True Way" or the
description of Google as "a rigid environment with adherence to arbitrary
guidelines" is simply not true. One of the things that is brought up in the
initial orientation is that Google is meant to be fault-tolerant and flexible
across the board. From an engineering aspect this means that if a single
server crashes due to bad code, the system should be flexible enough take
steps to recover. From an employee aspect, if the employee isn't happy with
their job, they should be able to flexible enough to take steps to recover.

However, since Google doesn't micromanage its employees, the employee might
forget that this is an option and remain unhappy. In my case, I realized that
I wasn't happy with my position a few months after joining the company,
remembered what I was told in orientation, talked to HR, and moved to a
different position where I was much happier.

If I thought the rules were actually inflexible, then I would have stayed in
my original position, got burned out, quit after a few months, and probably
complained about the company to others. Google is flexible, but requires the
person to actually take advantage of this flexibility.

~~~
jrockway
Indeed. I think Google is a better place for people that make their own rules
than for those that blindly do everything they're told.

------
philwelch
As someone who's never worked at Google, this blog post gives me the same kind
of curious discomfort I used to have reading michaelochurch comments. Reading
ex-Googlers denouncing Google feels a lot like watching a married couple
fight. You know there's a history and a relationship there, and one party
feels the need to vent at the other, but there's nothing to be gained by
witnessing it from the outside.

~~~
Estragon
There's plenty to be gained if you're thinking of dating the party being
complained about. :)

~~~
nostrademons
True, but only if you remember that some 50,000 or so people have "dated" the
party being complained about and you're reading the complaints of 2 of them,
who also tend to complain about most of the other parties they've "dated".

------
throwawaykf
Anecdotal evidence regarding the proprietary technology trap:

1\. At another large (but not XXL) "Internet" company, none of the Google SREs
have made the SRE hiring bar, precisely because half their answers to "How
would you solve problem XYZ?" are "Oh, I'd just use
$ProprietaryTechnologyGHJ", to which the response is, "Well, but we don't have
$ProprietaryTechnologyGHJ", to which the response is "Uhhh..."

2\. Of the couple Google (non-SRE) software engineer interviewees I am
directly aware of, nobody has made it through either, partially for similar
reasons (reliance on opaque external services). To be fair, their other
shortcomings were more significant.

3\. One Googler that I know confided that they are terrified of leaving
Google, because they wouldn't (paraphrasing) "know how to code in the outside
world."

4\. Yet another Googler I talked to said that their stack is unimaginably
huge, and nobody knows how all of it works, which was (quoting) "probably by
design." Make of that what you will.

~~~
jrockway
OK... throwaway account, unnamed company, unverified anecdotes... I should
really not reply. Oh well.

I'm not sure I believe any of this. Very little of the work we do at Google
involves feeding data to some tool and sitting back and watching the results.
It's software engineering and problem solving as usual, just with some nice
libraries and tools to save time for the hard parts.

I'm especially confounded as to what SRE tools would cause someone to "not
meet the hiring bar" by responding to a question by saying "I'd just use some
proprietary technology". I can't think of any tools that are useful enough to
be the singular answer to an open-ended question, and I can't imagine anyone
wanting a job saying "just use this tool you've never seen before" in an
interview. It's unbelieveable.

Being used to certain tools is not specific to Google, either. If you ask a
Python programmer trivia questions about Ruby, he's not going to know the
answer. But given a week, he'll probably know the answer.

 _Another Googler I talked to said that their stack is unimaginably huge, and
nobody knows how all of it works, which was (quoting) "probably by design."
Make of that what you will._

The stack is big but there is nothing preventing one from understanding other
than that it mostly works and so one is not _forced_ to understand it. The
code is there and you can start it all up locally on your machine, so I don't
really see the problem. It's not huge to keep unhappy Googlers from finding
other employment opportunities, as you imply.

Anyway, I can't believe I replied to this post and am now going to click the
reply button, but here goes...

~~~
throwawaykf
I have no reason to make this up :-/

I comment very infrequently, but only use throwaway accounts as a personal
policy based in part on HN-the-community's response to my opinions and HN-the-
website's aggressive response to downvotes. (I'm actually re-using a previous
throwaway because my last throwaway was autodead-on-arrival. Flagged IP
maybe?)

Anonymity is not really the point; In fact, there are HN members who might
figure out my identity simply because they were directly involved in these
experiences.

The SRE anecdote may seem unbelievable, but why would this have been the case
with _multiple_ Google SREs? I did not imply that their work at Google
consists of waving a magic wand and things getting done; it's more likely that
the basic building blocks of Google's infrastructure are very powerful, and
you don't have to worry about a bunch of things that other SREs have to. "Nice
libraries and tools" is an understatement. Seems it's not only that they are
reliant on $ProprietaryTechnologyG, they could not explain how
$ProprietaryTechnologyG works or even describe alternative methods they'd use
instead.

On the other hand, it is possible that it's only been the lesser SREs that
have been interviewing around.

Also: The two Googlers I talked about (one of whom has been there longer than
you, if I remember your HN comment history correctly), are doing very
interesting work, and are very happy at their jobs. As a disclaimer, I know
one well and the other I met only once. Nonetheless, they, in no unclear
terms, said what I paraphrased and quoted above.

I didn't mean to imply that the stack was made so huge to keep unhappy
employees in. In fact, I did not mean to imply any intent at all. However, as
you said, since employees are not forced to understand it, most of them don't,
and this becomes just another factor to consider when thinking of changing
jobs. Not knowing the whole stack is perfectly fine, but when critical pieces
have no comparable equivalent in the outside world, your skills become less
transferable. (Plus, you might not feel like leaving all that good stuff
behind!)

As I said in another comment upthread, the "proprietary stack" aspect at
Google seems to be more pronounced than at other companies like Microsoft. I
mean, come on, it's a commonly accepted fact that it takes a year to become
productive after you start at Google. What reasonable conclusion about the
stack can one draw from that?

------
smurph
In my experience, this is how the big defense contractors approach software.
They will gravitate towards the most expensive proprietary tools in hopes that
their engineers will pigeon hole themselves into that environment. I honestly
had people tell me that I wasn't allowed to use anything open source (even
through the military uses open source all the time) and that ClearCase is the
most dominant version control system in the software industry.

------
epochwolf
In case anyone missed it, she's talking about Google. :)

~~~
yareally
I think you're reading way too far into it being about a specific company. A
number of companies people love to like/hate could fall into the specifics she
lists, depending on one's views. It's like a crystal ball or clouds in the sky
--one sees what they wish to see.

Guessing the actual company, if there is one, is kind of disingenuous to the
article's message itself though, since it is good depiction of the "ideal"
company most of us would want to avoid.

~~~
sses
Context is everything here. There may be a number of companies that fit the
pattern, and she could be speaking hypothetically, but Rachel worked at Google
and has an axe to grind.

------
gyardley
I wouldn't use such a pejorative term, but if you want to employ 'minions',
you don't need to do anything particularly elaborate - just hire people who
want to be minions. You can select for this in your interview process.

There's plenty of people out there who want to be told what to do and don't
care to spend time thinking about the moral ramifications of their employment,
including a great many skilled and experienced programmers. As long as they
can choose _how_ to implement what you want, they'll happily implement what
you want, collect their paychecks, and go home.

Of course, that means you'll have to write extremely detailed specifications,
which is a big pain in the ass. And you'll be the only one trying to figure
out whether your product is actually something people want, so you damn well
better be right.

------
brudgers
Proper minions are attracted by the prospect of wielding petty power in an
arbitrary manner - a proper minion must enjoy being mean, otherwise, you'll
wind up with true piety rather than its pretence.

Minions don't play hackysack unless they can exclude someone.

~~~
throwawaykf
How about the famed "pretentious interviewer with a superiority complex"
stereotype? (Disclaimer: Non-googler, and I have _never_ met any such
interviewers at Google. A couple of them came close, though...)

------
ChuckMcM
Seems pretty far fetched, I mean can you imagine what ridiculous lengths you
would have to go to in order to maintain the loyalty of the minions? I mean
seriously if they woke up to the reality of their situation, who knows what
would happen :-) Seems like a common problem explored in literature as well,
minor discontent, then an awakening, and then failure as the evil empire fails
under more and more egregious attempts to maintain order ...

------
andrewcooke
i don't think you need the last sentence, fwiw.

also, early on (before the backpacks and logos), talking about capturing them
young reminded me of
[http://www.nsa.gov/kids/home.shtml](http://www.nsa.gov/kids/home.shtml)

------
norswap
What would the point of the band of minion be? To what (possibly evil) purpose
will they be used?

~~~
pbiggar
If I read the subcontext correctly, the band of minions will build software to
serve contextual ads to the rest of humanity. Muhahahahahaha!

------
overgard
Maybe I'm crazy, but I didn't see this as being specifically about google. It
seems more like an illustration of how many modern corporations operate (a
great one at that!)

------
Pitarou
Up to the point where she started talking about Master's degrees, I thought
she was talking about Japan.

