Steve Yegge, a longtime programmer who worked at Amazon, Google and Grab, writes about software engineering and big tech companies.
Commenters cite his post on Google Cloud's deprecation policy as strong evidence that Google kills products, and his interview advice post is quoted by Google recruiters.
>This behavior is explained by the fact that these departments within Google are looking at their “rivals” for inspiration, rather than the fundamental problems Google is rewarded for solving (Search, targeted advertising, IT infrastructure).
In Steve Yegge's post on why he left google: "You can look at Google’s entire portfolio of launches over the past decade, and trace nearly all of them to copying a competitor: Google+ (Facebook), Google Cloud (AWS), Google Home (Amazon Echo), Allo (WhatsApp), Android Instant Apps (Facebook, WeChat), Google Assistant (Apple/Siri), and on and on and on. They are stuck in me-too mode and have been for years. They simply don’t have innovation in their DNA any more. And it’s because their eyes are fixed on their competitors, not their customers."
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc0be84
>Nobody will remember it, but in eBay’s early days of success, Amazon spent a nontrivial amount of engineering effort into building an auction style marketplace. They actually built something that was better than eBay’s model by many accounts. Nobody cared and it was shut down, because Amazon is not where people go to sell things at auction. Just like google search is not where people go to do their shopping.
For more info on "Mr Tooth" and Amazon's quest to compete with eBay, see another Steve Yegge post here: https://medium.com/s/story/jeff-bezos-jack-ma-and-the-quest-to-kill-ebay-bb4992dc5020
"So, Life Lesson #2…
> Steve says Android is Google’s most important channel. That’s only if you don’t measure by money. From a business point of view, AdWords is five times more important than anything else.
Even that's misquoting Yegge, he in fact said:
>> Android is probably Google’s most important channel — if not today, then certainly over the next ten years.
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/who-will-steal-android-from-google-af3622b6252e
He's not even saying it's a more important channel than search today but something that has the potential to be in the next decade.
Additionally after rereading Yegge's post, I don't see anywhere he asserted AdWords is a channel either, which it clearly isn't. He states channels are merely a proxy for ads or it's "little sister" paid subscriptions.
And when you're speaking of channels, as something entirely distinct from ads/subscriptions, then it's clear they must be things customers want: positive experiences, good content, social gratification, etc. Aka, good products. Users are not just a faceless question mark before + "impressions for ads money = profit". It takes hard work to keep users happy in order to even have the opportunity to show them ads or sell them subs. So you're entirely correct here.
Google is very much in the business of customer happiness, as much as they are in the business of keeping advertisers happy on the other end. They are not merely middlemen for advertisers... they control plenty of channels.
Which I…
> You can continue to keep using applications in X11-mode for as long as those applications maintain that code path.
Notice that I never said applications. I'm aware that xwayland is actually quite good these days; the problem is accessibility and automation tools that it can't support.
> would you have expected Apple to support Carbon ad-infinitum?
> Look at the backwards-compatibility and new-framework-adoption-rate woes Windows has to deal with because Win32 exists and devs are lazy / expensive.
Yeah, devs are expensive, which is why backward compatibility is so important. Microsoft, for its many faults, seems to understand that breaking applications every few years and demanding that developers put in time in order to keep things working is poor form, leading to people making comments like
> I’ll also give a shout-out to our friends in the Operating Systems business: Windows, Linux, NOT APPLE FUCK YOU APPLE, FreeBSD, and so on, for doing such a great job of backwards compatibility on their successful platforms.
- https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-policy-is-killing-you-ee7525dc05dc
In fact, the rest of that essay is a great commentary on exactly why this kind of thing is bad and why Apple should be derided exactly for this kind of thing.
There are a number of blog posts by people such as Tim Bray, Steve Yegge, and others - as well as internal engineering blogs (at least there is one at Facebook and several at Google). I read these on a regular basis (Yegge's hasn't been updated in a while), but only to take away ideas and learn about new technologies.
Their approach is almost certainly not the right approach for you, because you are not Google ( https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb ). That said, if you are looking for a position at these places, then the blogs might help you, in a number of ways. If you want to work there though, focus on the sound engineering techniques applicable anywhere (maps, hashing, trees, graphs, algorithms) and build a reputation through Open Source contributions to the projects the companies are involved with.
* Tim Bray / Amazon / https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
* Steve Yegge / Ex-Googler / https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/ and https://medium.com/@steve.yegge
* Facebook Engineering Blog / https://code.fb.com/
* Google Developers Blog / https://developers.googleblog.com/
It's a phrase that tends to be used by people who consider themselves superior to 'the masses'. The phrase refers specifically to the lower-classes or those outside of elite circles[1]. Combined with Google's reputation of quiet arrogance[2], it's a phrase that I would have avoided.
[1] Pick a dictionary and you will find references to lower-classes, the not-elite or the common people. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20masses https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masses#English https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/masses
[2] Put in to words nicely here https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc0be84, but you can feel it in many of Google's products where they make all the major decisions because they don't believe users are as capable of making good decisions as Googlers.
Yet, google continues to show it'll deprecate it's APIs, Services, and Functionality at the detriment of your own business. I'm not sure enterprises will trust Google's LLM over the alternatives. Too many have been burned throughout the years, including GCP customers.
The fact GCP needs to have this page, and these lists are not 100% comprehensive is telling enough. https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/deprecations https://cloud.google.com/chronicle/docs/deprecations https://developers.google.com/maps/deprecations
Steve Yegge rightfully called this out, and yet no change has been made. https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-policy-is-killing-you-ee7525dc05dc