
Googler Paul Adams Heads To Facebook - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/paul-adams-googler-whose-presentation-foretold-facebook-groups-heads-to-facebook/
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ssclafani
The discussion of Adams' presentation:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867807>

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apu
Yes, as mentioned in the very first line of the linked article.

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joshu
Great guy. Worked with him briefly at Google.

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olalonde
Why is it that every time there's an article about people leaving Google for
Facebook it makes it to HN's front page?

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alexgartrell
To answer your question generally (that is, not specifically related to this
particular departure)

Google was the coolest place to work for the last decade. All of the sudden,
high profile people are leaving for Facebook. I'm not arguing that this is
proof of some underlying flaw of Google or anything conspiratorial like that,
but it certainly qualifies as interesting to people who might end up making a
choice between the two companies (either as an employer or as a platform on
which to develop).

Additionally, it's not completely unlikely that there's a small group of
Facebook employees who are very happy when high-profile people join Facebook.
It certainly makes _me_ happy, and I haven't even started yet.

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nostrademons
I'm curious, though, why it's never reported when Googlers go to FaceBook and
then _back to Google_.

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mwerty
It is: [http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080818/the-curious-case-of-
face...](http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080818/the-curious-case-of-facebooks-
benjamin-ling-and-sheryl-sandberg/)

Do you know of others?

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oemera
Anyone out there who can tell if Google is a terrible place to work or is
Facebook just a awesome place to work? I really don't get it.

I would love to know why people are leaving Google for Facebook. I really
don't think it is because of the money.

Is just more interesting these days?

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nostrademons
Google is an awesome place to work, though like any big company, your
experience will vary a lot based on your manager.

FaceBook, I've heard, is also an awesome place to work.

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maxawaytoolong
What does a person in this type of position do on a day to day basis?

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poundy
Good question.. I am also eager to find out..

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nostrademons
I work with a bunch of them. A UX _designer's_ basic job is to figure out how
a product should work: who is the user, what do they want, how should they
interact with the product, and how should the product's UI be laid out to
accomplish that? They use a bunch of tools, from Macromedia Fireworks and
Photoshop on the static side down to JavaScript and Python/PHP on the dynamic
side. At Google at least, it's very common for UX designers to be able to code
in rapid prototyping languages, though they usually know nothing about large-
scale software engineering (beyond what engineers tell them).

A UX _researcher's_ basic job is to figure out how users behave and what they
want. This is basically applied social science. They work directly with users
- sometimes through usability studies and one-way glass, sometimes through
focus groups, sometimes through going out into the community and talking with
people who use the product, and sometimes through logs analysis and
quantitative data. This is not usually a technical position, but it requires
someone with familiarity with the scientific method, a curiosity about people,
and often good statistical/quantitative skills.

Since he's a UX _lead_ , however, my guess is his day job came down to two
things: hiring new UX people, and prioritizing requests for the skills of his
reportees.

