Cranky and eloquent Google engineer's rant about what's wrong with Google+ (bonus: and Amazon)

Google engineer Steve Yegge posted a long, impassioned, and blunt rant to Google+ about what he felt were problems with Google+. One of those problems, it seems, manifested in the fact that Yegge accidentally made that post public, instead of an internal share for fellow Googlers. You may as well go read it now. It's here, too. Apart from the Google and Amazon specifics, it is a great read for insight about architecture, IT management, and factors that cause otherwise talented engineers to get totally bummed out.

• [OtherMichael]

  The HackerNews reposting has a lot of great comments, mostly pertaining to working at Amazon.

• [Charlie B]

  But I’ll argue that Accessibility is actually more important than Security because dialing Accessibility to zero means you have no product at all, whereas dialing
  Security to zero can still get you a reasonably successful product such as the Playstation Network.

  Lots of priceless nuggets in there.

• [Cowicide]

  Lots of priceless nuggets in there.

  In the 90′s and beyond, I theoretically had access to even more frank rants like this from deep within powerful Washington D.C. political circles where no one thought anyone else was looking.  Combine that with handling the RNC account at the bank I worked at among many other huge accounts where I saw all the money they took in and spent, and it gives you a whole ‘nudder perspective on the evil and good in people’s hearts and what makes elements of society “tick”.

  Fascinating and damning stuff that can teach you much about life and “how things work and don’t work”.

  Business people, read his rant and read it well.  Then read it three times more.  Some of this is worth more than gold if you know how to tap into it.

  What’s also pretty telling is how much Wikileaks’ data hauls have been ignored by the media and how they lasered in on Assange’s perceived (or otherwise) faults and tribulations instead. Swept under the rug. If you want to realize what some of the best, more important things there are to examine… just look at what they are obviously trying to distract you from paying attention to.

  • [Cowicide]

    And this….

• [Cicada Mania]

  Steve gave a pretty interesting talk at OSCON http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKmQW_Nkfk8 this year — so interesting it seemed like he quit Google during the talk, but apparently not. The man speaks his mind, that’s for sure. The word on the street is Google is making him develop cute kitty cat apps for Google+.

• [Jorpho]

  I’m really quite amazed that someone can be so bitter (?) and yet retain such astonishing eloquence.  How does one do that?

  • [RyonRyon]

    thanks for that post xj, really informative, and really makes me think about the overall picture of web development. Jorpho, I dunno that he’s bitter so much as…  just frustrated when you can see how things could be better.

• [fnc]

  I’ve noticed this…thing Google seems to lack that other companies have, but had never been able to understand why I sensed it until I read that. From an outside perspective, they have a few shining products that stand like towers above the plain, but between those towers the landscape is all owned by somebody else.

  An odd thing to consider when you look at the way Android works, the utter malleability of the system for 3rd party developers is, shocking really. A helluva platform.

• [tyrsalvia]

  This is a really worthwhile piece of writing, glad I read it. I really hope this doesn’t cause him trouble at work for having this get out. It’s a very wise post.

• [wrybread]

  That is indeed one seriously phenomenal read.

• [brillow]

  Amazon does everything wrong?  Is he joking?

• [gd23]

  SOA 4 Life

• [Kutuzof]

  You can’t change the default font in Chrome? How could that be intentional? What kind of SE would think that’s even remotely acceptable.

• [Jeremy Wilson]

  As a long time IT professional, I have to say this rant is spot on.  I especially enjoyed the “Monitoring is QA” portion.