work

I realized that it’s been quite a while since my last update. Unfortunately it seems like the amount of interesting stuff I have to write about is inversely proportional to the spare time I have available for writing… ;) Anyway, I figure I’ll try to get back into the habit of publishing smaller posts, but hopefully more regularly. Let’s see how it goes… Ever since I went back into startup life four months ago, I’ve had the chance to play with a lot of exciting technologies, so there’s plenty of stuff to write about....

As some of you may know, I have decided to leave Google and go back into the startup world. Friday was my last day at Google, and even though I normally don’t blog much about my job, I figured I was due for an update. First off, Google is an amazing company. Especially for a company of this size (and impact), it is highly impressive that they have managed to maintain this kind of work environment, company culture, and integrity....

I’ve been negligent about updating my blog for the past two months… I’ve also been told that I really need to post an update about my new job, so here you go: A few weeks ago, I joined Google! Due to the sheer size of the company and the corresponding infrastructure, there’s a huge learning curve, so I can’t post anything specific about my concrete job yet. However, the environment is truly fantastic....

Joel Spolsky recently posted an excellent series of articles about hiring software engineers. I don’t always agree with Joel’s opinions (particularly on topics like Ruby on Rails or agile development), but he definitely has a strong perspective on hiring software engineers. Click on the headings below to get to the original articles on the Joel on Software website. Joel convincingly argues that the great developers are never on the market, whereas the bad programmers are always looking for new jobs....

The first two weeks at my new job have passed very quickly. I am still very happy and confident that I have made the right choice. The people are smart and pretty easy to get along with, both on my team and in the rest of the company (at least as far as I can tell so far). I attended the first bi-weekly company meeting on Friday and was reminded of the fact that we are still a small startup, where the CEO updates the company every week or two, the entire company discusses new products, shares other news, etc....