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The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

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Tom Johnson

The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

Interesting read on the history of computing.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge

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Russ Abbott

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

What I found interesting was that they do so much of their work pair programming. I find it difficult to imagine writing software in that kind of relationship. I would guess that when I'm working on code, I spend no more than 25% of the time actually typing things on the keyboard. The rest of the time is thinking, or pacing, or getting tea, or looking things up, etc. I don't know how that would work as part of a pair. And yet they are among the best coders at Google. Jeff Dean is legendary for his work. And the other guy is supposed to be just as good. How can they do that while bound together? Hard for me to understand.

On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 7:33 PM Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting read on the history of computing.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

I think it would depend on the project. Debugging something that is very complex that fails in an unpredictable way can be demoralizing. If experiments are expensive, other well-matched people could keep the ideas coming and either speed-up or slow-down the work as needed. More people could also mean that short term memory was effectively extended. Poorly-matched people would be a disaster – just breaking-up flow. I think it makes absolutely no sense to compare two veteran developers who know and trust each other, and are the best at what they do, to some random project where a manager is floundering about trying to improve productivity by applying a gimmick he read about in a magazine.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Russ Abbott <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>, The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Saturday, December 8, 2018 at 9:26 PM
To: FRIAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 7:33 PM Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting read on the history of computing.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Tom Johnson

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

I also would think it would depend on the project. I can imagine many where one of the team members would have deep knowledge of the subject at hand plus coding skills.

On Sat, Dec 8, 2018, 9:44 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email] wrote:

I think it would depend on the project. Debugging something that is very complex that fails in an unpredictable way can be demoralizing. If experiments are expensive, other well-matched people could keep the ideas coming and either speed-up or slow-down the work as needed. More people could also mean that short term memory was effectively extended. Poorly-matched people would be a disaster – just breaking-up flow. I think it makes absolutely no sense to compare two veteran developers who know and trust each other, and are the best at what they do, to some random project where a manager is floundering about trying to improve productivity by applying a gimmick he read about in a magazine.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Russ Abbott <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>, The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Saturday, December 8, 2018 at 9:26 PM
To: FRIAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

What I found interesting was that they do so much of their work pair programming. I find it difficult to imagine writing software in that kind of relationship. I would guess that when I'm working on code, I spend no more than 25% of the time actually typing things on the keyboard. The rest of the time is thinking, or pacing, or getting tea, or looking things up, etc. I don't know how that would work as part of a pair. And yet they are among the best coders at Google. Jeff Dean is legendary for his work. And the other guy is supposed to be just as good. How can they do that while bound together? Hard for me to understand.

On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 7:33 PM Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting read on the history of computing.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Jochen Fromm-5

Re: The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

In reply to this post by Russ Abbott

The "other guy" is Sanjay Ghemawat. Together they wrote MapReduce and have become legends. Unfortunately you hear much more about Jeff than about Sanjay. I would like to hear more from Sanjay.

I also doubt that pair programming is a solution for all problems. The really creative parts often happen if you work alone. Working in pairs can be helpful for intense code reviews, if you get stuck or if you want to improve the code quality.

I found the hierarchy of developers described in the article interesting: "Google’s engineers exist in a Great Chain of Being that begins at Level 1. At the bottom are the I.T. support staff. Level 2s are fresh out of college; Level 3s often have master’s degrees. Getting to Level 4 takes several years, or a Ph.D. Most progression stops at Level 5. Level 6 engineers—the top ten per cent—are so capable that they could be said to be the reason a project succeeds; Level 7s are Level 6s with a long track record. Principal Engineers, the Level 8s, are associated with a major product or piece of infrastructure. Distinguished Engineers, the Level 9s, are spoken of with reverence. To become a Google Fellow, a Level 10, is to win an honor that will follow you for life. Google Fellows are usually the world’s leading experts in their fields. Jeff and Sanjay are Google Senior Fellows—the company’s first and only Level 11s"

-Jochen

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Russ Abbott <[hidden email]>

Date: 12/9/18 05:25 (GMT+01:00)

To: FRIAM <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Friendship That Made Google Huge | The New Yorker

On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 7:33 PM Tom Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Interesting read on the history of computing.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship-that-made-google-huge
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove