The Pragmatic Engineer
00:08:49 · Gergely Orosz, Titus Winters
[00:08:49] S0: Onboarding process at least a. [00:08:51] S1: That was a little rough because, like I said, the things that I'm interested in are, like, developer efficiency, problem solve. Like, I have a background in networks. I have a background in, like, API design, those sorts of things. They said, oh, you know networks. So let's put you on this team that monitors the amount of traffic and where that is crossing the edge of the Google network, which is actually a databases problem with networks as the topic of all of the data that you're doing. I'm like, I don't know anything about databases. That was never my thing. That wasn't a great fit. And then almost immediately after that, like two or But I I wanna push a [00:09:32] S0: little bit back here already. It's like, come on. Like, you're you're joining Google, you have like, what like... You you had college, you had Yeah. Four or five years of experience. When like you joined a company, especially like a hot company, they said like, alright, do x and you're like, I'm not really there. Like, would you not wanna say like, let let me just go deep into this to see why the... What's important for the business? I am I am pushing back on you Yeah. [00:09:57] S1: Please do. Always. I did what I could to learn, you know, from that team for sure. There was a little, like, interpersonal tension in some of those things. [00:10:06] S0: Okay. So it already started a bit like that. Yeah. This nagging feeling.
00:10:06 · Gergely Orosz, Titus Winters
[00:10:06] S0: Okay. So it already started a bit like that. Yeah. This nagging feeling. [00:10:09] S1: Yeah. Like, it was just like, this wasn't quite right. And then there was a, like, email that went out to all the engineers in New York saying like, hey. We're thinking about spinning up a new team that handles all of the old, like, c plus plus nuts and bolts infrastructure code that was written by people whose employee IDs are, like, two digits. They have more important things to do than to handle, like, patch requests for all of those, you know, components. So we would like people to maintain that. And me and, I don't know, nine or 10 other people, like, raised their hands, and I was the only person that showed up to, like, the second meeting. So I just kinda got onto that team. [00:10:49] S0: Oh oh, I get it. So so, basically, I think the context is just important because I think, you know, folks here, oh, I'm joining this team. Like, I didn't really like the the first thing. I think the difference... The context that was missing is, like, first of all, Google was growing really quickly. New teams were starting up left and right. And also like moving teams was kind of fine. Right? And and you are more looking for like, alright, like you knew that this team both for the... What they were doing and also sometimes there's not a great people fit. It would probably not be the one where you're gonna be staying for many years. [00:11:19] S1: Yeah.
00:11:19 · Titus Winters, Gergely Orosz
[00:11:19] S1: Yeah. [00:11:19] S0: You did the best you can. And then when you saw an opportunity, you knew it was better for your strengths. You're like, let's go for it. So so for you, c plus plus low level stuff? [00:11:27] S1: Yeah. I mean, back when I had been doing the consulting at DIRECTV, there was stuff like build an API to do UPnP, like universal plug and plays. Was like local network RPC sorts of stuff. Remote processor you call? Yeah. Right. And so it had been a lot of people... Teams were manually assembling, like, the XML structure for every request to, like, implement a single client call or something like that. It was like, we could do better, folks. And, like, I was probably a little too clever in the way that I assembled all of that API, but it was like, yeah. Like, that was a thing that I liked. [00:12:05] S0: This team, what what was it more of of initiative of like, hey, Google has a bunch of C plus plus here and there, kind of like roots up, like, you know, let's get together and initially in our free time, let's see if we can do something, or was it more some manager typeset, like, I'm actually thinking of assembling a team, a full time team on this? So this was, I
00:12:05 · Gergely Orosz, Titus Winters
[00:12:05] S0: This team, what what was it more of of initiative of like, hey, Google has a bunch of C plus plus here and there, kind of like roots up, like, you know, let's get together and initially in our free time, let's see if we can do something, or was it more some manager typeset, like, I'm actually thinking of assembling a team, a full time team on this? So this was, I [00:12:23] S1: think, like, the last year before Google got actually pretty formal about your embedded to a particular team and headcount is limited, it was a little chaotic. It's a little loosey goosey about how those things work. Oh, okay. I could actually be wrong about that because I was still, you know, new enough that the internals of how headcount works might have been just not clear. But, yeah, like, moved over pretty quick and boy, that that was exactly the place for me.
00:12:23 · Titus Winters, Gergely Orosz
[00:12:23] S1: think, like, the last year before Google got actually pretty formal about your embedded to a particular team and headcount is limited, it was a little chaotic. It's a little loosey goosey about how those things work. Oh, okay. I could actually be wrong about that because I was still, you know, new enough that the internals of how headcount works might have been just not clear. But, yeah, like, moved over pretty quick and boy, that that was exactly the place for me. [00:12:49] S0: Alright. Then so tell me about it. Why why was it the place? What what kind of work can we imagine of like... I mean, because it sounds like when you describe to me, like, taking random c plus plus stuff that people wrote at Google, that sounds like the version of hell for me. Like, you know, like as an engineer, especially pre AI. Right? Like understanding what another engineer at some point wrote who might have left and a team is using and it's working for them like the... It sounds like it's a lose lose because if you take it over and you make a change and you break someone, they'll be mad at you. And if you do it and you do a great job, they'll probably not even think about it because it just it's always worked. [00:13:24] S1: It still works great. Luckily, the fear and the the safety net for making changes had been pretty well established a couple years before this played out. Specifically, and, like, this goes to topics that we'll get to in a second, I'm sure. Specifically, like, Google already went through the phase of, yes, you have to write tests.
00:13:24 · Titus Winters, Gergely Orosz
[00:13:24] S1: It still works great. Luckily, the fear and the the safety net for making changes had been pretty well established a couple years before this played out. Specifically, and, like, this goes to topics that we'll get to in a second, I'm sure. Specifically, like, Google already went through the phase of, yes, you have to write tests. [00:13:45] S0: Right? In 2010, this was not an obvious thing in the industry. [00:13:49] S1: Right. But, like, I think the story is 2006, 2007, search lost the ability to push a release on a regular cadence. Like, it was down to... Like, we were trying for monthly, and they were maybe only get once a quarter because [00:14:08] S0: Oh, so so so this is why is Google obsession with tests and quality and Uh-huh. So the the the core money making product was kind of handcuff not being able to push the