Yeah, you can't talk about the deterioration of Google without talking about the deterioration of the culture at Google.
I didn't like working at AWS for the most part, but I have never seen Google-level dysfunction there. There were a lot of times I disagreed with decision, but I could always understand the reasoning behind it. On the contrary, I can't explain most of the decision being made at Google. The enshittification from the very top has been amazing to watch, even for someone like me who joined only 3.5 years ago. Both senior and mid-level leadership lack a clear vision and the execution has obviously been horrible. Google needs a hard reset if they want to be successful again. I'm not buying the "too-big-to-fail" bullshit.
The best workaround (imho) is just using virtual cards. My Venture X allows me to create a virtual card on the spot restricted to that merchant where I can also enter an optional lock date. If I want to try something, I just create a new card and set the lock date to the next day. Even if I forget to cancel, good luck charging my card :)
As a Google engineer, it's really saddening to see the Welchism completely taking over Google. There are more than enough examples showing focusing on bottomline to increase shareholder value doesn't work in the long run, but it's obvious the current leadership doesn't care.
This was one of the best books I've ever read. I'll actually go ahead and say this is probably the only book I can confidently say that every professional programmer* should read.
You know how sometimes you can "smell" something doesn't seem right? Or seems a lot harder [to understand] than it should be? Yeah all those little intuitions we develop through experience is explained using "brain science" in this book.
*: More specifically anyone that writes code in a collaborative environment.
It indeed is hard, and a good code search platform makes life so much easier. If I ever leave Google, the internal code search is for sure going to be the thing I miss the most. It's so well integrated into how everything else works (blaze target finding, guice bindings etc), I can't imagine my life without it.
I remember to appreciate it even more every time I use Github's search. Not that it's bad, it's just inherently so much harder to build a generalized code search platform.
I'm torn about this. I've been in FAANG for a while now, and while I do think I'd be more successful/happier at a smaller company (and I actually was), I don't think "smaller" tech is necessarily going to be better, especially right now.
Maybe we should just accept that these are just jobs, and no glamour is necessary -- so maybe big tech jobs losing it is not the worst thing. Let the talent spread and create more "glamorous" jobs.
I'm still reading this book, but so far it's been one of the few books I'd recommend to anyone. I try to be as stoic as possible, but contents of this book has managed to actually anger me. It makes it so clear that how much corruption and bad policies impact our lives.
Kudos for being so open -- after seeing numerous "incidents" at AWS and GCE I can say that two rules always hold with respect to observability:
- You don't have enough.
- You have too much.
Usually either something will be missing or some red herring will cost you valuable time. You're already doing much better than most people by taking it seriously :)
I'm not surprised a bit given how hostile Twitch has become to users. Completely irrelevant ads, ads playing at worst times (who the hell thought it'd be a good idea to show an ad before the actual stream??), apps abandoned(at least apple tv app). I literally stopped watching some streamers because of Twitch itself.
This is in-line with Amazon's departure from "customer obsession" overall. I can't wait for bigger tournaments to move to a better platform.
I don't know if it's the tool honestly. I've recently switched teams and I'm in the process of getting java readability. The whole experience so far has been much worse than getting my C++ readability. I even get "nit" comments on the code I haven't changed. I have had multiple comments where reviewer basically "preferred" one style over another. It's been still mostly helpful, but I've had my share of frustration.
C++ readability was a much, much better experience. All the comments were about actually making the code better, eg, "use THIS_MACRO() instead of THAT_MACRO(), because go/...".
I guess I think it's much more about the reviewer, and based on my anecdotal experience, the language :)
I didn't like working at AWS for the most part, but I have never seen Google-level dysfunction there. There were a lot of times I disagreed with decision, but I could always understand the reasoning behind it. On the contrary, I can't explain most of the decision being made at Google. The enshittification from the very top has been amazing to watch, even for someone like me who joined only 3.5 years ago. Both senior and mid-level leadership lack a clear vision and the execution has obviously been horrible. Google needs a hard reset if they want to be successful again. I'm not buying the "too-big-to-fail" bullshit.