1415T1g1 Silicon Valley/Participant Information/Reflection/11 Dec
Today, we learn about the product development lifecycle of Google. They used quite a bit of time planning before writing code. Code can be written pretty quickly, and with modern tools such as CakePHP code is written for you instead. However, while the planning is done there will still be changes – and google engineers easily change it(after all, they are good programmers) however, it is interesting to note that there has been little done to ensure that the documents are not updated frequently. I like the fact that they believe that rigorous testing – I saw a poster in the toilet that said something along these lines: the more time spent testing the lesser time debugging. I think this is true. A lot of time spent doing the different testing(unit, integration) would save a lot of time debugging.
What’s interesting also is that they have an internal google testing before a product is launched that reaches over 50 000 users. That’s a good number of users to really test the service in terms of being able to load the number of users and bug testing.
It is also interesting to note that for the ‘average task’ such as version control and issue tracking, google uses a proprietary solution – while it’s understandable that they may have greater requirement as compared to smaller software shops, it is quite a mystery that they do not themselves share with the world their solutions – afterall, the produce solutions for the world, and their inspiration for new products are simple – I believe there’s a better email solution etc.
One thing however, is that google is moving away from having internal teams build new products. There has been a recent trend of buying over companies to break into a new market(like android). Could this spell the end for google’s rapid growth and it’s position as a kingpin? What does this mean for the employees of google?
The news that we’re going to Google was received with much excitement. Google is one of the companies that almost every engineer or developer wants to work at. Of course, it’s natural to dream of working at a company that ranks top for best workplaces, great salary, great employee benefits and free food. Google’s work place is structured much like a university with buildings (a.k.a complexes) with facilities such as meeting rooms, work stations, quite rooms, etc. for the staff to book and utilize. Such a workplace is immortalized in the tech world and is adopted by many tech companies and startups.
My thought that Google have managed to allow its employees to generate ideas and thus, retain the startup culture was wrong. Because according to the discussion at Google, the company has grown too large and is facing difficulties in churning out new projects. The current CEO, Larry Page has taken initiatives to shut down unsuccessful projects. This may mean that Googlers will become less willing to propose new projects. Since new projects give the company an opportunity to avoid being stagnant and keep up with the upcoming trends, Google’s strategy is to invest in successful startups that deal with the fields Google is interested in. This strategy can be seen in the company’s acquisition of robotic firms recently. Therefore, this may be a sign that the company might cut down on internal project proposition and adopt the aforementioned investment strategy.
It is interesting and humbling to hear how people get hired into Google. How Google stays fair in it’s hiring efforts is something I respect about the company. As a young secondary school student who had joined the school’s IT Club, I was excited to learn programming and go for competitions. It is unfortunate that at that young age, I didn't had much guidance and had to be independent both in learning and participating in IT competitions. I used to join National Olympiad of Informatics (NOI) organized by NUS during my secondary school times and always wondered how people could program an algorithm so fast and efficient. I had to learn coding, data structures, problem solving myself. I had no idea that a field called computational thinking existed back then. Perhaps, I would have had a chance to win one of the many NOI competitions I joined if I had formal training. Nevertheless, I am glad to have shared this connection of participating in NOI with Yan Hao, our host at Google.
