

Ask HN: does everything known by Google engineers exist in books? - mrwnmonm

not just Google, but any great company with really good engineers, is everything they know (i don&#x27;t mean about their products, i mean their knowledge as developers) anyone can find it in books or any other material. i just sometimes feel that they have some kind of knowledge above everyone else, and you can&#x27;t find it except by learning it directly from them. for example: building high scale service. where you can learn to build something like that? and to be good as google&#x27;s?
======
mindcrime
Foundational knowledge? Yes, pretty much, especially if you take an expansive
view of "books" to include all written / textual media (ie, including journal
articles, web pages, etc.)

But in the case of Google, it's pretty clear that they are constantly pushing
the boundaries, sometimes doing original research, and creating new knowledge
as they go. So, no, I don't think you could say that _everything_ they know is
in "the literature".

If I had to break it down percentage wise, my subjective feeling would be that
it's something like 90% "broadly known stuff" and "10% unique in-house
knowledge", or something along those lines.

At the least, I would urge you not to ascribe god-like / superhuman
powers/knowledge to the engineers at Google, or Facebook, or Yahoo, or
Microsoft or Amazon or whoever. They're all working off the same core CS
principles everyone is, they're just smart people working on hard problems and
sometimes they discover some new interesting things. But, if you, as a smart
person, work on hard and interesting problems, you're also going to discover
some new and interesting things as well.

 _for example: building high scale service. where you can learn to build
something like that?_

A lot of knowledge about building "web scale" services is moving so fast that
it's not necessarily in _dead tree_ books, but that doesn't mean it isn't
documented somewhere. That said, a lot of good stuff _is_ in dead tree books.
Try looking at [http://highscalability.com/](http://highscalability.com/) for
example, and peruse the "real world architectures" section, then look at their
Amazon AStore for a good list of useful books.
[http://astore.amazon.com/possiboutpos-20](http://astore.amazon.com/possiboutpos-20)

But if you want the very latest developments on various technologies - load
balancers, web servers, big-data stuff, databases, a lot of the newest stuff
is going to be on mailing lists, in blog posts, web pages and the like. Books
tend to lag.

~~~
mrwnmonm
thanks, i really appreciate your answer

------
grueful
Books are typically quite a bit out of date if it's a rapidly progressing
field.

More stuff ends up in journal articles, but about a year or so behind the
actual work, and at a level of detail which is often problematic to reproduce.
You typically have to treat it as a reverse engineering problem - but once you
know the core ideas, that's often possible.

Then there's the mountain of "trade secrets" which never get published
anywhere. A lot of compelling work in e.g. graphics falls under this case -
although you might see a demo and overview at SIGGRAPH.

Publishing tends to be a net positive for serious commercial research work,
even if the release has to be delayed. It's a solid process for documenting
internal knowledge. It's also one of the main things that's going to interest
other researchers in working for you.

------
ttctciyf
Consider 2 types of knowledge:

\- knowing that XYZ is the case, knowledge of facts, or "propsitional
knowledge" as a philosopher might call it - probably a heck of a lot of Google
engineers' knowledge of this type (except stuff which is personal to them,
like what they did last tuesday or the content of some private source code) is
in books.

\- knowing how to do XYZ or "performative" or "procedural knowledge" \- this
sort of knowledge you can try and convey in literature, but often some lived
experience is necessary to acquire it. Practising martial arts for 20 years
might produce a different order of "knowing kung fu" than reading about it
without the practice (Neo notwithstanding, the lived experience was
artificially implanted there.)

I don't know, but I'd guess the knowledge you're impressed by is largely of
the second type.

------
epoxyhockey
Many large engineering organizations have internal document collections that
detail past research and lessons learned. Google may be the most visible
engineering organization, but many quiet financial and defense-oriented
organizations have a wealth of information available, once you are inside.
This info is commonly very specialized, so it would be unlikely to help you
build the most scalable website or awesome mobile app, but might be useful in
creating a toaster-oven that can survive a 100ft drop, being run over by a
tank and lasting for 200 years.

Any engineering firm can develop a world-class knowledge base. But, that
involves an engineering process, like starting projects with statements of
work and conducting internal engineering reviews at certain milestones (all
documented in whitepapers), not just by creating a Trello card or JIRA issue.

------
jonjacky
Google staff members sometimes publish papers about their recent work:
[http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html)

------
wmf
Every industry has operational knowledge that is passed from person to person;
that's why you'll often see younger companies hiring experienced people from
older companies. In many cases you could rediscover that knowledge from first-
hand experience, but it would take 10-15 years.

------
Collizo4sky
It a matter of collective synergy of brains and thinking by the vastly
experience engineers that results to the wonder u see. Books are hard
particalarly technical and programming books thats why u cant get the
knowledge from book. #imho

~~~
mrwnmonm
so how to be as good as they are?

~~~
mindcrime
Learn the fundamentals, then work on hard problems. Hang out with as many
really smart people - also working on hard problems - as you can. Read
obsessively. Experiment and don't be afraid to fail from time to time.

------
joeldidit
Perhaps. But there is also knowledge from experience, which may not always be
written down. But having knowledge from experience is not limited to Google
Engineers.

