View in: Desktop
Copyright @2024 TigerDroppings.com. All rights reserved.
- My Forums
- Tiger Rant
- LSU Recruiting
- SEC Rant
- Saints Talk
- Pelicans Talk
- More Sports Board
- Fantasy Sports
- Golf Board
- Soccer Board
- O-T Lounge
- Tech Board
- Home/Garden Board
- Outdoor Board
- Health/Fitness Board
- Movie/TV Board
- Book Board
- Music Board
- Political Talk
- Money Talk
- Fark Board
- Gaming Board
- Travel Board
- Food/Drink Board
- Ticket Exchange
- TD Help Board
Customize My Forums- View All Forums
- Show Left Links
- Topic Sort Options
- Trending Topics
- Recent Topics
- Active Topics
Posted by
Message
Google Employee Sounds off on Amazon
Posted by lynxcat on 11/14/11 at 12:53 am00
I don't remember seeing this on the board...this is a classic letter:
LINK
LINK
quote:
This long letter from Steve Yegge (who used to work at Amazon and is now at Google), is supposedly an internal document about the differences between working at Amazon and Google. It’s an incredibly insightful read, especially if you compare it against your own workplace. What surprised me is how Steve makes references to issues and problems which happen in many offices around the world – and highlights some things which you wouldn’t imagine happen at ‘modern/trendy/technologically-astute’ internet icons such as Google and Amazon. I guess we tend to think of these sorts of companies as incredibly intelligent, forward-thinking, almost perfect…
quote:
Stevey's Google Platforms Rant
I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right. Sure, it's a sweeping generalization, but a surprisingly accurate one. It's pretty crazy. There are probably a hundred or even two hundred different ways you can compare the two companies, and Google is superior in all but three of them, if I recall correctly. I actually did a spreadsheet at one point but Legal wouldn't let me show it to anyone, even though recruiting loved it.
I mean, just to give you a very brief taste: Amazon's recruiting process is fundamentally flawed by having teams hire for themselves, so their hiring bar is incredibly inconsistent across teams, despite various efforts they've made to level it out. And their operations are a mess; they don't really have SREs and they make engineers pretty much do everything, which leaves almost no time for coding - though again this varies by group, so it's luck of the draw. They don't give a single shite about charity or helping the needy or community contributions or anything like that. Never comes up there, except maybe to laugh about it. Their facilities are dirt-smeared cube farms without a dime spent on decor or common meeting areas. Their pay and benefits suck, although much less so lately due to local competition from Google and Facebook. But they don't have any of our perks or extras -- they just try to match the offer-letter numbers, and that's the end of it. Their code base is a disaster, with no engineering standards whatsoever except what individual teams choose to put in place.
To be fair, they do have a nice versioned-library system that we really ought to emulate, and a nice publish-subscribe system that we also have no equivalent for. But for the most part they just have a bunch of crappy tools that read and write state machine information into relational databases. We wouldn't take most of it even if it were free.
I think the pubsub system and their library-shelf system were two out of the grand total of three things Amazon does better than google.
I guess you could make an argument that their bias for launching early and iterating like mad is also something they do well, but you can argue it either way. They prioritize launching early over everything else, including retention and engineering discipline and a bunch of other stuff that turns out to matter in the long run. So even though it's given them some competitive advantages in the marketplace, it's created enough other problems to make it something less than a slam-dunk.
But there's one thing they do really really well that pretty much makes up for ALL of their political, philosophical and technical screw-ups.
Jeff Bezos is an infamous micro-manager. He micro-manages every single pixel of Amazon's retail site. He hired Larry Tesler, Apple's Chief Scientist and probably the very most famous and respected human-computer interaction expert in the entire world, and then ignored every goddamn thing Larry said for three years until Larry finally -- wisely -- left the company. Larry would do these big usability studies and demonstrate beyond any shred of doubt that nobody can understand that frigging website, but Bezos just couldn't let go of those pixels, all those millions of semantics-packed pixels on the landing page. They were like millions of his own precious children. So they're all still there, and Larry is not.
Micro-managing isn't that third thing that Amazon does better than us, by the way. I mean, yeah, they micro-manage really well, but I wouldn't list it as a strength or anything. I'm just trying to set the context here, to help you understand what happened. We're talking about a guy who in all seriousness has said on many public occasions that people should be paying him to work at Amazon. He hands out little yellow stickies with his name on them, reminding people "who runs the company" when they disagree with him. The guy is a regular... well, Steve Jobs, I guess. Except without the fashion or design sense. Bezos is super smart; don't get me wrong. He just makes ordinary control freaks look like stoned hippies.
So one day Jeff Bezos issued a mandate. He's doing that all the time, of course, and people scramble like ants being pounded with a rubber mallet whenever it happens. But on one occasion -- back around 2002 I think, plus or minus a year -- he issued a mandate that was so out there, so huge and eye-bulgingly ponderous, that it made all of his other mandates look like unsolicited peer bonuses.
His Big Mandate went something along these lines:
1) All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.
2) Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.
3) There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team's data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network.
4) It doesn't matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols -- doesn't matter. Bezos doesn't care.
5) All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.
6) Anyone who doesn't do this will be fired.
7) Thank you; have a nice day!
Ha, ha! You 150-odd ex-Amazon folks here will of course realize immediately that #7 was a little joke I threw in, because Bezos most definitely does not give a shite about your day.
This post was edited on 11/14 at 12:58 am
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by rickgrimes on 11/14/11 at 2:29 am to lynxcat
Cliff notes?
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by LurkerIndeed on 11/14/11 at 8:47 am to rickgrimes
quote:
Cliff notes?
In a nutshell, Google needs to open up their software platform more to developers, both internally and externally...he's right.
Yegge supposedly didn't mean to expose this to the world on Google+; it's the only reason I ever used my Plus account in the first place...well, that and the oatmeal comics.
This post was edited on 11/14 at 8:49 am
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by cjared036 on 11/14/11 at 9:13 am to LurkerIndeed
He mad.
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by o0 ecdysis 0o on 11/14/11 at 9:15 am to LurkerIndeed
was courted and offered by google. people who work for that company are so disallusioned about "the workplace" it's not even funny. (see bitching and complaining about common corporate problems)
articles and blog posts like this are a hilarious example of the cultures of these internet companies.
articles and blog posts like this are a hilarious example of the cultures of these internet companies.
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by lynxcat on 11/14/11 at 9:17 am to o0 ecdysis 0o
quote:
was courted and offered by google.
What did you decide to do over Google? Not many people would pass up that opportunity...
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by o0 ecdysis 0o on 11/14/11 at 9:21 am to lynxcat
trust me...that was their biggest 'sales pitch'. "everyone LOVES google"
stay with current company. oil major.
google's great and all, but only if you're straight out of college or get caught up in their foosball tables and free food.
pay is below par given the cost of living out there.
stay with current company. oil major.
google's great and all, but only if you're straight out of college or get caught up in their foosball tables and free food.
pay is below par given the cost of living out there.
This post was edited on 11/14 at 9:23 am
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by LurkerIndeed on 11/14/11 at 9:39 am to o0 ecdysis 0o
quote:
google's great and all, but only if you're straight out of college or get caught up in their foosball tables and free food.
It's GOOGLE!
EVERYONE there is super-awesome MEGA-ROCK STAR, and everything they touch turns to gold...
Right?
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by o0 ecdysis 0o on 11/14/11 at 9:46 am to LurkerIndeed
quote:
It's GOOGLE!
EVERYONE there is super-awesome MEGA-ROCK STAR, and everything they touch turns to gold...
Right?
exactly - just ask them.
my favorite sales pitch was when i was being sold on the culture, food, and music out in the valley....while i was sitting at jazzfest.
they have no clue.
TD SponsorTD Fan
USA
Member since 2001
USA
Member since 2001
Thank you for supporting our sponsors Posted by Site Sponsor to Everyone
Advertisement
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by kfizzle85 on 11/14/11 at 10:32 am to LurkerIndeed
FWIW I know one person that works at Google. She had a 4.0 coming out of LSU, worked in Cali then moved to the Chicago office, now enrolled in the UChicago MBA program. Easily one of the smartest people I know. Easily.
It is amazing how much where you work can open doors at the top MBA programs. My office has sent 1 guy to HBS and 2 to Kellogg in the last 5 years. I was surprised to learn of it -- tough way to lose top talent though.
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by TulaneTigerFan on 11/14/11 at 11:12 am to Tiger JJ
Amazon seems to be one of the highest paying companies in the Seattle area, at least out of the large companies like Boeing, Starbucks, Microsoft, etc.
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by notiger1997 on 11/14/11 at 11:20 am to Tiger JJ
I have a family member that works for Amazon. He was recruited by them from a top tier company. He has a damn good resume and a MBA from a great school. He loves Amazon and believes in them a hell of alot.
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by TigerinATL on 11/14/11 at 11:23 am to lynxcat
Thanks for the link. I've always found it interesting how little Amazon changed their interface over the years and assumed it had to do with data telling them the simpler, older interface worked best. It's kind of shocking that they would ignore data telling them how to improve the site.
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by o0 ecdysis 0o on 11/14/11 at 11:47 am to kfizzle85
quote:
FWIW I know one person that works at Google. She had a 4.0 coming out of LSU, worked in Cali then moved to the Chicago office, now enrolled in the UChicago MBA program. Easily one of the smartest people I know. Easily.
know this person. she was one of the ones recruiting me.
nice person - google has some great people. but it's true that "all that glitters is not gold".
re: Google Employee Sounds off on AmazonPosted by kfizzle85 on 11/14/11 at 11:55 am to o0 ecdysis 0o
Not suggesting you're wrong.
Back to top
Follow TigerDroppings for LSU Football News