Philip Greenspun writes after attending a Google event that Google has grown up to employ over 3000 people and occupies a large campus with recreational center built in providing the best of recreational and day care facilities. Larry Page, gave an inspiring talk about what a great time this is to be an engineer. He recalled how at one point Google had five employees and two million customers. Outside of Internet applications it is tough to imagine where that would be possible. The Google speakers made a persuasive case that there is no better place to be a programmer.
Startups:- No startup company is going to have a 5000-machine cluster available to launch a new service or a guaranteed first day audience of 100 million people. Page also talked about the enjoyment of launching something, getting feedback from users, and refining the service on the fly. We covered Joe Beda's perspective on this topic sometime back.
- Financially attractive to work for google as opposed to a startup.For teams of engineers who create a lot of value for Google the company is able to hand out $millions or tens of $millions in bonuses, to be shared among a group of 5-10 programmers.
Against Microsoft Or Oracle:
One of the anecdotes that Page related to was about something that he heard long back:" In the long run, every company is led by either marketing or sales; you just have to choose which it is going to be in Google's case." This indeed seems to to be true for the big tech companies. Microsoft never does anything because an engineer thinks it is fun or cool; they wait for the marketing department to notice a new product from a competitor and then go to work. Oracle seems to be led by their sales organization. They add features if customers are telling the sales people "this is what I need to make it worth buying the next release." Google remains an engineering-led company. They launch Google Maps with satellite imagery because they can.
Phillip notices the smartest and nicest of his former students inside Google – a clear confirmation that Google is perhaps trying to assemble the best possible team to meet all their future aspirations. No Doubt Google's DNA is really differnce and it is delivering results in good measure.
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