
Brin on Yegge's post: "I stopped reading it after the first 1,000 pages" - dporan
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-20122701-250/sergey-brin-i-was-wrong-about-google
======
mechanical_fish
_Battelle asked about the highly critical memo from a Google engineer that was
mistakenly made public. Gundotra's talking point on this: "Larry and Sergey
have fostered a culture that allows open debate. The outside world got a peek
into what it's like to work at Google. That's why we didn't fire him."

Brin was less diplomatic about the memo. "I stopped reading it after the first
1,000 pages or so," he said. "If you want to get a point across, limit it to a
paragraph or so."_

Are we ever going to have a social network run by people with sufficient
diplomatic skill to host a simple birthday party?

Having said that: Rather than analyzing these clunker quotes any further I'd
note that they are a journalist's paraphrase of what may well have been a
gotcha question asked by the very same journalist. That's a notoriously
treacherous process. So I'd like to avoid piling on. Let's just say that, if
the journalist was the one who pulled and slanted these quotes to make them
read like a barely-veiled _public_ threat and a not-at-all-veiled peremptory
brush-off, that journalist did a fine job.

If I were a Google recruiter I'd be prepping a better response right now. A
pity that the company blew the chance to deliver a kind _human_ response from
the podium, but you can't fix history.

~~~
pork
> Are we ever going to have a social network run by people with sufficient
> diplomatic skill to host a simple birthday party?

No, because engineers run social networks, and many engineers are ironically
socially lacking.

But that's besides the point. I thought Brin's response was HUMAN! Consider
that he could have gone the PR route with "we value all our employees'
opinions and are looking into the matter". I vastly prefer honesty over PR;
and I think many engineers do too.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I vastly prefer honesty over PR; and I think many engineers do too._

It is a mistake to equate "honesty" with "blurting out the first thing that
comes into one's head, no matter how rude, and no matter who is listening".

And it's one thing to take your employee aside for a blunt conversation, and
another to broadcast your criticism from a public stage, a stage where the
employee's pride is at stake and yet the realities of politics, PR, and media
ecology leave the employee effectively unable to respond in kind.

There's nothing dishonest about the phrase "no comment", just as there's
nothing dishonest about concealing your body by wearing clothes. It's about
privacy. Some things are appropriate for a press conference, some things are
appropriate for an all-company email, some things are appropriate for a one-
on-one with an employee, some things are appropriate for close friends, and
I'm afraid some thoughts are just inappropriate -- there's no shame in having
them, but you should show some restraint in sharing them.

And it's true that many people grapple with these principles in the way that
one grapples with a strange foreign language, and that engineering culture has
evolved to cope with that reality. But Google's not trying to build a social
network for engineers. They're trying to build a social network for the
_world_. And if appealing to people beyond the Google culture is business-
critical for Google, then politeness is business-critical for Google.

~~~
awj
I don't think that's what's going on here. Steve Yegge is _notorious_ for his
overly-long blog posts. I got a chuckle at the comment, and I think that kind
of offhand joke is what Brin intended.

This looks like an inside joke pulled out of context by the reporter. Maybe
Brin made an error in speaking to his audience, but I don't think this comment
was as damaging as you're making it out to be.

~~~
tptacek
The Internet peanut gallery has decided that any number of people are
_notorious_ for any number of things. That doesn't make it OK for someone's
employer to berate them about it on stage.

------
potatolicious
> _"If you want to get a point across, limit it to a paragraph or so."_

And, with that, Sergey Brin invalidates the entire human race's history of
long-form literature, short stories, essays, and plays...

... and his company's own Android launch yesterday, which I suspect was more
verbose than a few paragraphs.

~~~
jxi
You have no idea how many jokes he makes about the length of the Android
source code. They're hilarious too.

He was just trying to be funny. I don't know why one comment about a post that
wasn't even intended to be posted to the public is being nit-picked to such
detail.

Sergey is just a normal guy like all of us. Sure he's the CTO of a very
important company, but it'd be cool if he were treated like a normal person
too. Why should he have to be held to a higher standard of political
correctness at all times, even when commenting about something fairly
insignificant (in both mine and probably his opinion).

I don't want to argue about the importance of Steve Yegge's post, but let's
just assume that we've already made the assumption that it isn't too
significant.

~~~
0x12
With great power comes great responsibility. Once you are the CTO of the #1
web company you have to expect that you're going to be held to different
standards than J. Random Blogger.

The fact that you consider it 'fairly insignificant' is probably what drives
your view of this more than anything, consider the possibility that you are
wrong.

Yegge is anything but dumb and when people like that speak up, publicly or
otherwise and you employ them to further the goals of your company the smart
thing to do is to listen.

Nobody is all knowing.

If you hire such people to ignore them do them and yourself a favor and don't
waste their time. After all, what's the point of having talent like that on
board without at least hearing it out. Verbose or not.

~~~
jxi
By no means did I mean it was dumb. I meant that this kind of thing happens
almost every week inside of Google. There is a ton of discussion going on all
the time and Google is known to be a company where every employee's voice is
heard.

Steve's rant was a bit longer than usual rants, and he was just pointing that
out in his kind of lame way. What would be a satisfactory answer anyway? "I
thought it was a good idea, we are going think about making all of Google into
platforms right now"? Or, some no-op response that most CEO/CTO's tend to give
to things like this?

~~~
potatolicious
The funny thing is Brin's response is in direct contrast to Gundotra's - both
of whom were being interviewed _at the same time_.

Gundotra was diplomatic and used the question as an opportunity to brag about
Google's culture of openness. Brin used it as an opportunity to either:

A - crack a badly worded joke

B - slam Yegge

One can only _hope_ it was option A, though given the way it's worded I don't
doubt there is some venom in there.

------
0x12
Ok, just for mr. Brin then:

"Services should be composable or sooner or later we'll get a competitor that
gets this who will kill us."

I hope that accurately summarizes the essential bits, if you disagree or can
shorten it further feel free to correct.

If there was one thing that pre-saged the decline of any large entity then it
was probably the management being surrounded with people that agree with the
management, and having their ears closed to the rest.

Someone that disagrees with you, even if it is verbose is worth 10x more of
your attention than someone that agrees with you. Why? Because in disagreement
you will find knowledge, alternative viewpoints and advancement, in agreement
only confirmation.

Worst case he could have asked one of his underlings to summarize it for him
and hope that nothing of the message got lost.

------
rachelbythebay
Sergey Brin doesn't matter any more. He's been off in his own little world,
making acquisitions and having them report directly to him. They don't get
integrated into the normal engineering environment, and they wind up in _more_
buildings which normal badges won't open. Look up building 1489 for an
example.

When I heard about this non-integration, my interpretation was that normal eng
is where things go to die, so they were keeping the new things separate so
they would not die. Then I realized, hey wait, if the core engineering area is
sufficiently broken to where one of the founders is purposely keeping his own
toys away from it, what does that say about us?

~~~
donw
That sounds so fundamentally broken that it's hard to believe you're not
referencing a Joseph Heller novel.

As a non-Googler, I would love to hear more about this... if you won't write
the blog post, mind if I interview you so I can? :)

~~~
rachelbythebay
I'm also a non-Googler, although of the Xoogler persuasion. After nearly five
years I finally said "enough" and left earlier this year, although after
trying in vain to get people to realize just what was happening.

On the outside world, Buzz was seen as a joke, and it was for individual
accounts. However, on the inside, _corp_ Buzz was lively, and there were a
great many Yegge-rant-type posts flying around earlier this year. They didn't
get much done, given that G+ launched with the whole real names fiasco, even
after an unprecedented amount of push-back from inside.

You might find some of my writing on these topics enjoyable. A URL to them is
in my profile, and there is a contact link on those posts.

------
dporan
_Battelle asked about the highly critical memo from a Google engineer that was
mistakenly made public. . . . Brin was less diplomatic about the memo. "I
stopped reading it after the first 1,000 pages or so," he said. "If you want
to get a point across, limit it to a paragraph or so."_

Considering that Yegge seemed to make a compelling case, that peremptory
response doesn't reflect well on the Google executive team.

~~~
VonLipwig
Brin doesn't come off well. He criticises a well received and thought
provoking article calling it too long. How the hell would the guy squeeze what
he wrote into one paragraph?

~~~
statictype
He could have done it by cutting off all the material at the beginning about
Amazon and Jeff Bezos. It was interesting but not relevant to his point. He
certainly could have cut down the article to a more manageable length - he
just chose not to because it's not his style.

~~~
yannickt
The Amazon part was a very good bait though. Without it I think a lot fewer
people would have read the entire thing.

~~~
gujk
I have a feeling that people who invent entire sectors of he economy and
accumulate billions of dollars don't do it by taking "bait".

------
Jun8
Please, _please_ don't make comments to the effect that there are hundreds of
such postings within Google and that the management cannot read all of them.
Steve Yegge is not a hot shot new engineer with some cool ideas, when he talks
about SOA you _listen_. Just as if Peter Norvig (ever) rants about how AI
and/or NLP is handled in Google Search you listen or when or when Andy Tobin
talks about Android or when Matias Duarte talks about how UI is handled, well
you get my point. So the comment that Yegge's is just another comment is PR-
speak.

It seems Brin and others want to diffuse the situation with jokes, etc. It
would have been _much_ better if Brin would have said "Look, I don't agree
with Yegge and here's why..", giving strategical and technical reasons why
they are not doing what he's suggesting. In its place we get a sad, half-jokey
response that would have come from a peppy MBA-type.

Had it appeared in the HN discussion for Yegge's post, I would have downvoted
Brin's response, because it doesn't bring anything useful. Others probably
would have done the same.

------
Matt_Cutts
Sergey has a dry sense of humor that doesn't always come across well in
quotes. My sense is that plenty of execs and other people in Google read
Steve's post and gave it a lot of thought. Steve's post was long, but he made
a ton of great points.

~~~
angelbob
I'm never sure. I've been literally dismissed by execs for a six-page reason
written by multiple senior engineers why they shouldn't spend $20 million
buying another company with "this is too long. Bring it back under a page and
we'll read it."

 _shrug_

That wasn't at Google, though.

~~~
gamble
Write a long memo: "This is too long to read"

Write a short memo: "This is just your opinion"

I'm not going to try to parse Brin's response, but realistically, if Yegge had
just written a page-length summary of his argument on this subject no one
would have paid attention. Short-form writing lacks the scope to argue a point
on factual arguments. It tends to rely on the author's personal credibility.
In a large company, it's hard for people outside senior management to have the
personal relationship with the CEO that's required to be persuasive with a
short memo.

Engineering reports and academic papers get around the problem by including an
abstract. It's not really the style to include them in informal business
memos, but it might help in a situation like this.

~~~
Raphael
Exactly. People do what they do, and make the most convenient excuse.

------
statictype
Yegge's articles are interesting but they are also ridiculously long. He
writes a thousand words when a hundred will suffice.

There's nothing wrong with that - Neal Stephenson has made a name for himself
using that technique - but it's not for everyone.

I can imagine a lot of people who have a full inbox may not have time to go
through every article written about them or every complaint made by an
employee.

~~~
Goladus
Yeah the benefit is that Yegge's a good, humorous writer usually gets a large
audience. "Hardened interface" still cracks me up. His point is usually fairly
clear, and odds are good that plenty of other people will be capable of
providing the executive summary.

~~~
nimblegorilla
I find his "points" muddied by all of the extra words. His typical essay
starts out on a tangent and then slowly winds through some analogies tenuously
related to a main theme. Sometimes I don't mind the long-winded essays, but I
think almost all of his writing would be improved with a summary paragraph or
two at the top.

------
jroseattle
That is Brin's code for "I don't care what Steve Yegge thinks."

So, Sergey, you need things in a paragraph or less? Here you go:

If you're going to put the Google name on a product and release it, try doing
it in a manner that's not half-assed.

Sorry to be so curt, Sergey -- but I didn't want to lose your interest.

~~~
SkyMarshal
That doesn't really encapsulate Yegge's main point, about Google needing to
fully commit to becoming a platform company like Amazon and Facebook.

~~~
jroseattle
I was trying to go with his initial explanation of Google+ as a poor effort.

------
ordinary
Everyone seems to assume that he meant this in a serious fashion, but for all
we know he meant it in jest and had a huge grin on his face while he said it.
It's easy to jump to conclusions, the internet being what it is (the biggest
24/7 news network on the planet), but without at least the audio, and
preferably video as well, we shouldn't be so eager to take up pitchforks and
torches.

------
g123g
Based on the comments on Steve Yegge's post, hundreds of non Googlers read it
and appreciated it, I am not sure why a Google founder did not find it
worthwhile to go thru it. On the one hand they mentioned that Google has an
open culture and on the other hand they are dismissive of his ideas and
seemingly refuse to acknowledge them.

~~~
jarek
> I am not sure why a Google founder did not find it worthwhile to go thru it.

Because a Google founder and current executive doesn't have half an hour to
devote every time an employee writes a long post about the company. That's
what underlings and assistants are for.

edit: I see by the downvotes some of you disagree regarding workplace
organization. Fair enough, but consider: if someone at Apple had emailed a
letter this size to Steve Jobs, and he had responded with a trademark "don't
write it that way if you want busy people to read it," would you disagree? And
this post wasn't even aimed at Brin directly.

~~~
mindcrime
Because a Google founder and current executive doesn't have half an hour to
devote every time an employee writes a long post about the company.

I'm not downvoting you, but I disagree. If somebody took the time to write
something that long, there's probably a reason. Taking some time to suss out
that reason might just be a good idea. There's quite a bit of management
literature that advocates "managing by walking around" and that hammers home
the point that the "rank and file" actually have more knowledge about what
needs to be done, than the high-ranking execs, exactly because they are closer
to the problem(s) on a daily basis.

OK, granted, if _every_ employee is writing manifestos that take 30 minutes to
read, and doing so on a daily basis, then it would be hard for the CEO / CTO /
etc. to keep up. But is that really what we're talking about here?

> That's what underlings and assistants are for.

I'd argue that underlings and assistants don't (necessarily) obviate the need
for the CEO to read things himself... maybe they should act as a filter, but
if the "underling" reads something and realize "Oh, shit, this is good stuff"
then he/she should probably hand it to their boss and go "You really need to
read this."

------
jrockway
It's depressing, for someone considering working at Google, that all Brin can
do is attack the form of a well-respected team member's rant. He should have
said something like, "We encourage open debate at Google. Right now, I think
that developing everything as a service will restrict the independence of
teams and slow down our quick development cycle." Instead he says, "TLDR".

If there's one thing that Google should not let any of their higher-ups do,
it's talk in public. They are really, really bad at it.

~~~
statictype
So you're saying he should have made an empty PR statement instead of
something with more character in it?

It's funny how that works. On one hand, when someone says 'We value your
inputs and are looking into the matter' we dismiss it as PR speak. When
someone comes out and says something a little less politically-correct we jump
on him for not running it through the PR department.

~~~
prodigal_erik
"tl;dr" does have a little more character, but it's a lazy and dim-witted kind
many of us disrespect.

~~~
jrockway
I just find it to be mean. If he said, "this rant is dumb", that would be
fine. But all he said is "if you want to say something, make it shorter".

Maybe good advice, but you look like an idiot when everyone who reads social
news site made it through Yegge's rant, but your couldn't bother reading your
own employee's letter.

~~~
statictype
Really? I would have considered 'this rant is dumb' to be meaner than 'make it
shorter'. 'Make it shorter' is, on the whole, pretty good advice for anyone
who's trying to get their point across.

------
moomin
If Steve Yegge put an executive summary at the top of his posts, I doubt I'd
find them half as entertaining. Part of the joy is always trying to figure out
what exactly it is that you're reading. Gets particularly good when he just
puts a random piece of creative fiction on his blog.

~~~
colin_jack
Definitely agree. If anyone else wrote rambling posts that are as long as his
I'd end up giving up part way through, but his rants/articles are a real joy
to read and they usually give you real food for thought.

~~~
jemfinch
Most of the time I _do_ give up part way through, and I don't find his
articles a joy to read at all.

Yegge needs to learn _brevity_. He makes good points, and still even _I_ feel
like I'm wasting my time reading his articles; I can only imagine how Brin
feels.

~~~
moomin
I don't agree. I'm not claiming it's for everyone, but his style wouldn't be
nearly as much fun in bullet points.

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-
theory-201-...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-
theory-201-size-does-matter.html)

------
egiva
I think Sergie Brin comes across as cocky in this interview and Steve Yegge's
memo about Google's failure to create platforms is more valid then ever- Brin
himself has treated Google+ as an afterthought and I don't think that bodes
well for the service.

~~~
statictype
That's generally their style - Even AdSense and Gmail - two successful Google
products - were initially met with skepticism and disinterest.

(Not that I have first-hand knowledge - I read this in "In the Plex")

~~~
philipDS
Not entirely true. While there was a lot of skepticism on AdSense and Gmail
within Google, Brin was really enthusiastic about both products. If I recall
correctly, Brin was even the promotor and driver of AdSense ("Let's get this
puppy launched", a famous quote by Brin on the launch of AdSense). Both Page
and Brin were also the first users of Gmail and tested the product intensively
within the company after Buchheit got approval for launching Gmail internally.

------
atarian
I feel pretty bad for Yegge because he always talks about how excited he is to
work at Google and this is the kind of response he gets for being progressive.

~~~
queensnake
You have to think that Brin was sort of 'stung' by Yegge's airing Google's
laundry in public like that so he's zinging back, but still, he's had time to
process it and come up with a more politic response. If he'd softened it with
' ... but he raises some good points and it's provoked discussion ...' it'd be
ok but as it is it's a blowoff and diss. In Yegge's place I might leave.

~~~
SkyMarshal
It might even have been a missed opportunity. Brin (or better yet Page) could
have posted a public reply that said, to the effect of:

 _Yegge is absolutely right, I've been thinking along similar lines recently,
and now is a great opportunity to do something about it. I'm issuing the same
edict as Bezos - every Google product must expose its full functionality via
public API. From today, Yegge is in charge of coordinating and making it
happen. etc etc_

One of the issues that Google seems to face is that a form of technical debt
is catching up with them. They've had the same three officially approved
languages for a decade now - C++, Java, Python - with Go on the way to
becoming a fourth. But that rules out interesting new ones like Scala,
Clojure, Erlang, Haskell that might 1) be good tools for particular projects,
and 2) attract great developers.

Requiring all their products to interact via published API only might enable
increased polyglot programming and a more diverse and interesting tech
ecosystem.

Just speculating on all this, but I do wonder...

~~~
MrMan
Must take issue with one point - whatever technical debt they may have amassed
has little to do, I suspect, with holding on to the same boring old
programming languages too long.

The shareholders should fire Brin if he suggests re-writing boring old
"legacy" code in a sexy new language!

~~~
SkyMarshal
Haha, I certainly didn't mean to imply any of Google's current stuff should be
rewritten. It's all very high quality, performant. Rather, I was thinking of
new projects that might benefit from other languages or platforms.

------
vogonj
this is either hilarious (if he's just kidding around for PR's sake, and in
reality he read the thing and took it to heart) or tragic (if he's really as
dismissive as he suggests.)

~~~
pjin

      "But I was being sarcastic at the time," Brin said.
      One thing the Google founder and the Google+ VP do agree
      on: the Circle feature. "I love them, I have dozens of
      circles," Brin said.
    

Somehow I don't think Sergey takes this very seriously.

------
athst
Seems bizarre to me that he would be so dismissive, I didn't think Brin had
that kind of attitude. Even as an outsider I found the memo compelling enough
to read all the way through.

But it also brings up a point about Google+ that it seems to encourage long
posts like this - most of the Google+ posts I come across tend to look like
huge walls of text.

------
miked
Brin is simply alluding to something that's annoyed me many times about
Yegge's posts, however insightful they sometimes are: Steve Yegge loves to
hear himself write.

~~~
0x12
Which bits would you leave out?

~~~
jacques_chester
The last third of Yegge's essay (I just read it) could be substantially cut,
IMO. It's mostly restatements of earlier material.

Here's the basic structure:

1\. "I worked at Amazon, they introduced company-wide platforms. Microsoft and
Facebook have these too."

2\. "Now I work at Google. We have no such platform."

3\. "Platforms are awesome and we should have one."

aaaaaaand the rest is details.

------
ajennings
Here's a Yegge blog post from 2008 where he defends his verbosity (in
general):

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-
theory-201-...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-
theory-201-size-does-matter.html)

Summary: If your writing is too short, then it doesn't spill over into
people's long-term memory and they will forget it all too soon.

Having said that, you should go read the blog post so you can remember it.

------
pgroves
This whole fiasco is just a standard example of the mismatch between the
sales/marketing/pr view of a product that the world normally sees and the what
engineers think of it.

PR people talk about what's good about a product all day. That's their job,
and it's whose words you normally read in the press. Engineers' jobs are to
focus on what's bad about the product and to improve it. People saw Yegge's
post and it was an engineer's view and they're flipping out. If Brin has ever
talked to an engineer in his life he knows it's no big deal.

I personally have seen sales people who have been touting the virtues of a
product for months have a single meeting with the engineers and come back
absolutely devastated that things aren't all roses and unicorns.

I've also seen engineers brought into sales meetings and then talk about
everything that's wrong with the product he's supposed to be helping to sell.
(The engineer typically then gets his ass handed to him by the senior
salesperson as soon as they're out of the customer's earshot.)

------
kb101
Cnet's article calls the memo "highly critical" but it seems pretty clear that
he wasn't trying to rant so much as issue what he sees as a clarion call to
action at a company he loves... and he took care to begin by praising Google
for doing "everything right" and end by apologizing for any ruffled feathers
or misrepresentations he might have made.

He might not be too comfortable at work right now, but his post did have the
intended effect: people are still talking about it, and his company management
is getting asked about it. And Sergey Brin is cracking jokes about it. And
here we are talking about it.

If anyone is entitled to get their feathers ruffled by all this, it is Amazon.
He really pulled no punches with them. My favorites were the description of
his former employer as a "dirt-smeared cube farm" and the characterization of
his former CEO as "Dread Pirate Bezos" who "makes ordinary control freaks look
like stoned hippies". That is some good material there.

~~~
Raphael
Yes, I hope Amazon stops torturing engineers, but they did master the art of
APIs.

------
bokchoi
I completely agree with Brin -- I can't stand Yegge's rants because they take
far too long to get to the point.

------
voidr
It would have been funnier if Brin would have said to limit these points to a
tweet.

------
Tichy
He gets some good advice from Brin himself, where is the problem? I don't
think Yegge-rants work for everyone.

~~~
TheoLib
Early in my programming career, my team leader took me aside and explained how
to write an effective and persuasive memo that would get through to
management. It was valuable advice as the rant I had written got nowhere. And
management is not the only target audience with short attention spans; same-
level colleagues have been equally challenged by having to read an E-mail
longer than 1 paragraph, even when it concerns technical details of the
project they're working on. Consequently, I dumb down E-mails in an effort to
get the attention of as many of the recipients as I can. Condescending? No.
Realistic? Yes. (Given my druthers, I'm normally prone to writing Yegge-length
E-mails and memos; I've just learned that less is better when trying to
through to the most people.)

------
brlewis
It speaks well of Google's openness that Brin's response is a quip about how
long it was, not a serious comment about how such discussions should stay
internal.

If Google were to fire Yegge, it would be for (voluntarily) deleting the post,
not for accidentally making it public. When he publicly posted it, everybody
was talking about what a great work environment Google must have for people to
be able to talk so openly. After he deleted it, lots of people inferred
censorship and Google's reputation suffered.

------
tptacek
"That's why we didn't fire him"?

Classy.

~~~
brlewis
That illustrates the hazards of speaking off the cuff. If he integrated that
into the earlier sentences it would have sounded a lot better, e.g.: "Larry
and Sergey have fostered a culture that allows open debate, not a culture
where people get fired for things like this."

~~~
tptacek
Yeah, I don't want to foment yet more fake controversy. I think you're right
about what he meant to communicate. I'd just suggest not joking in public
about firing people.

------
Mvandenbergh
Before we call Brin's attitude dismissive, let's not forget that at almost any
other company Yegge would have been fired.

~~~
Andys
I don't understand why he hasn't just quit

~~~
davidw
The same reason, to a lesser degree, that in a marriage you try and work
through problems before you get a divorce. Nobody and no company is perfect,
but Yegge apparently feels strongly that 1) Google is a good company, by and
large, and that 2) by talking about a problem, it may get fixed.

------
jdefarge
LOL, Brin was right on target. I ask myself how on earth can I guy write SO
MUCH of a blog post and still have time to get things done. If Yegge is not
not able to summarize his POVs in one page or two then it's better not to try
at all.

------
swah
Now, instead of talking about the points that Yegge raised, everyone is
talking about how cool Google is for not firing. But for me the important
thing is the content of his rant...

------
zby
Finally! Yegge has some fine points and I would like to learn about them - but
not for this price. And by the way - I really hate his strategy of flattening
CS graduates by adding something about how real programming requires writing a
parser a year.

------
kleiba
I'm getting:

 _The page isn't redirecting properly

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this
address in a way that will never complete._

Does anyone have a copy of Brin's post?

EDIT: Works now for me, too.

------
wlievens
For those who have read the Commonwealth Saga: is Ozzie=Sergey and Nigel=Larry
or the other way around?

------
Havoc
>"He was intimately behind pushing us"

A poor choice of words perhaps...

------
sabat
This strikes me as pure arrogance. If that's Serg's general attitude about
what Google does, I fear for its future.

------
dreww
Here you go, Sergey: "You're being a dick."

------
StrawberryFrog
In pg's Hierarchy of arguments <http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html> , "I
stopped reading after x pages" is "DH2: Responding to Tone" and therefore
always unconvincing.

~~~
cma
If you read the entire library of Babel, you will find an elegant counter-
argument to this. Please don't dismiss this argument until you are done
reading it, or your dismissal will be unconvincing.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
Maybe, but I enjoyed reading all of Steve Yegge's rant. It was informative and
funny. And I don't even work for google. And it wasn't really even 10 pages
long. The criticism of its length is fatuous and flippant, and not
substantive.

