Then and now

First in a series of "An update on David" retrospectives, looking back on the last 11 years at Google.

When I started at Google NYC we only had the 4th & 6th floors of 111 8th/76 9th. Hemi's wasn't even open yet! We only got lunch; after a month or so we got bagels for breakfast in 5BB on Fridays. Sometime later we got dinner but I can count on one hand the number of times I've eaten dinner in the NYC office.

When I started we used gconfig and make-dbg (or mach), both of which were slow and cumbersome. We didn't have Blaze, Forge, SrcFS, CITC, Cider or Critique. The Intelli/J vs Eclipse vs Emacs vs vi(m) debate was in full force (the more things change...) You still had to "build the world" to build anything. (The more things change...)

When I started there were about 10k FTEs worldwide. Now we have 9K in NYC alone (unclear how many are FTEs and how many are TVCs), and 82K FTEs worldwide.

When I started Eric was CEO and Larry and Sergey were (?) Presidents of things. I miss Eric. And Alan. But I digress. In fall of '06 we had just bought YouTube. Everyone thought $1.6 billion for cat videos was insane - how are we going to ever make money off this thing? Now Alphabet is..., well, Alphabet.

When I interviewed there were posters saying "Dogfood is coming!" This meant "stop using SMTP/POP3 for email and Oracle Calendar and use GMail and Google Calendar". Can you imagine? GMail has gone through several revisions since (anyone remember the Kennedy brouhaha?) and Calendar is finally world-class.

When I started, we used Java, GWT and GXPs. (Go look them up if you've never heard of those TLAs). Now, I don't think anyone uses Java for their UI.

That's all I can think of for now. Feel free to AMA regarding then-and-now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHYYYY???

Seventh in a series of "An update on David" retrospectives, looking back on the last 11 years at Google: "WHYYYY???". [Cue memes] Last night was the NYC TI holiday party and I met nearly all the significant others of people on my team. Often my teammate would mention "Tomorrow is David's last day" and a few SOs replied with "Wow, why are you leaving Google???" Why indeed. For many years I always thought that people were crazy to leave Google. Even my wife, when I would tell her so-and-so was leaving, would ask "why???" So here's the big reveal: I never felt like I fit in here. This isn't impostor syndrome, as in, "they'll know I'm a fraud ". It's more like "WTF am I doing here? All my teammates/coworkers/other Googlers are smarter than me, learn faster, think deeper, anticipate problems and plan with more strategy than I do." Sometimes it's debilitating, and I've gone ...
Read more

On "Guys"

Fourth in a series of "An update on David" retrospectives, looking back on the last 11 years at Google: "On \"Guys\"" A lot of people use "guys" to mean "plural humans". This bothers the FUCK out of me, and I hear it all the time - at home (wife referring to our adult son and adult daughter); at work (co-workers referring to a mixed-gender set of other co-workers); on YouTube (don't get me started); etc. etc. etc. "But I consider guys to be gender neutral". Bullshit. You wouldn't call a female a "guy" - why would you call a group of people "guys" if they're not all guys? This makes no sense to me and is like chalk on a blackboard when I hear it. GUYS. IS. GENDER. SPECIFIC. Period. Stop calling a group of people "guys". Not everyone in the group is a "guy" and you're ( explicitly ) excluding them from the conversation. It's yet another small cut (as in, death by a th...
Read more

Things I'm proud of

Sixth in a series of "An update on David" retrospectives, looking back on the last 11 years at Google: "Things I'm proud of". I'm proud of getting this job, obvs. My career trajectory (not just at Google) has been quite...wobbly. I've been a consultant (working for a consulting company), Director of Software Development at a startup (eventually with a dozen software engineers and a couple hundred employees), a consultant, and back to software engineer. When I got the call from Google I figured it was a long shot, but when Google calls, you answer. Before I knew it I was on a plane to Mountain View and every few days after that the recruiting coordinator said I was progressing in the pipeline. I got the offer on a Friday. That weekend I went to Atlantic City with friends and at dinner announced the offer. "I'm not sure what do to." I think I said. I was worried - would I fit in? Would I be able to keep up? Do I have the world-sized vision...
Read more