
Evaluating the effectiveness of Google's “Testing on the Toilet” program [pdf] - ingve
https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/00e67690ad147ab03479b9ddbc7f242ed85b5133.pdf
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dang
Scientific papers are gradually partaking from the stash of clickbait title
tricks. We've edited the one above to make it less activating.

If you post in this thread, can you please check that it's about the
interesting aspects of the article? Poop jokes get old pretty quickly.

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jedberg
For those that don't want to read the article, it is about the program Google
has to post little newsletters about programming tools in their bathrooms.
They hang them over the urinals too.

I was at Google for an event recently and found it interesting to read as I
used the urinal. It was about an internal tool though so it didn't mean much
to me.

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birdyrooster
Facebook seems to do this also.

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brg
Facebook's similar program was started by an ex-Googler

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imafish
Most of my best thinking at work happens on the toilet.

Don’t know exactly what I should take from that. Except that probably
something is wrong about open plan offices.

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blarg1
That and the shower.

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loquor
It's weird. Going for a walk doesn't make ideas pop up in my mind. Nor does
sitting still on a couch bring up ideas. But sitting in the static toilet
environment does.

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jolmg
Because it's an enclosed space devoid of distractions?

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OneMoreGoogler
I saw these during my 18 months at Google. They were never relevant to my
work.

Working at Google you are bombarded with "nudges." The garbage cans have stop
smoking signs. The plentiful candy is famously placed into jars to reduce
consumption. There's signs telling you not to sit on the loo for too long.
You'll get emails comparing your travel and server expenses to the average.
All of this stuff is well-intentioned, but there's clearly part of the company
seeking ways to manipulate its workforce.

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nine_k
During my ~60 months inside Google, these nuggets sometimes proved to be
useful, telling about a newly available tools (e.g screenshot diffing in UI
tests), common pitfalls (like mixing up dates from different systems with and
without timezone), common best practices (don't use `now()` in test, instead,
imitate the flow of time using...). These are just off the top of my head
after several years outside Google.

Nothing mind-blowing or earth-shattering. A number of useful things to learn
at these 30-60 seconds when you can't read anything more interesting, though.

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natrik
Could you expand more on not using now()

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jumpingmice
Using the real-time clock makes your test impossible to reproduce. Using a
mock clock leads to reproducible tests. Same with calls to PRNGs: these should
be injected so your test failures can be reproduced.

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quux
I was at Google for 2 years and liked "Testing on the Toilet" plus it's
spinoffs "Programming on the Potty" and "Localization on the Loo" pretty
useful. Especially for someone like me who came from much smaller companies
where a lot of best practices or tools they wrote don't exist.

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jdoliner
This is the closest we're going to get on HN to a shitpost. Speaking
personally: I know one developer who discovers lots of new tools on the
toilet: me.

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benbristow
I used to work in the head-office of a well-known car dealership firm in the
UK. In the bathrooms they had a quote along the lines of 'the best ideas come
when we least expect them'.

I found that I ended up thinking more about that quote than coming up with
ideas. Kind of counter-intuitive.

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lez
I understand we're all different, but I prefer to clear my mind on the toilet.

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SmellyOnions
All I'm imagining right now is some posters promoting some tool/library beside
those mental health awareness posters you usually see in the stall...

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madengr
I miss bathroom humor scribbled on the wall, such as:

What are you laughing at? The joke is in your hand.

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m3kw9
You misspelled Stools

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imhelpingu
The title is "Do Developers Discover New Tools On The Toilet?" but an
overbearing mod changed it because he thinks he's Etiquette Secretary of the
Internet, and probably also so he can plausibly pretend this isn't a website
dedicated to Alphabet's PR.

