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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Not gonna lie, I couldn't make heads nor tails of this blog post until I reached the very end, and realized they were using "Googler" to mean "doing Google searches". I kept thinking "Why would being a good developer and being a Googler be mutually exclusive?!"

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I didn't read the article and I knew what he meant.

20 years ago I'd buy books to learn Java, Linux, etc. These days if I want to learn something, I just start Googling.

I still think organized and structured information is helpful. We just need to devise a better way. I'm using Github for some things:

https://github.com/melling/ComputerLanguages

And for Swift and iOS where I want to go deeper, I'm creating my own Cookbook, and perhaps my own search engine:

http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift_cookbook.html

That ComputerLanguages repo, wow! This is really awesome! And far, far superior to my own store/collection of helpful links by language by far :(. I may just stop altogether collecting helpful links on languages I may never, ever use, when there're such better lists and guides (like yours) out there that I can search if I ever need to. There are far more programming languages/ideas than there is time.

You didn't grok the point of my comment, so let me expand on it.

Someone who works at Google is called a "Googler". When you are used to constantly hearing a word used with meaning A, and almost never meaning B, it can be quite confusing when you hear it in a context where someone uses meaning B, especially when meaning A sort of fits. So you can imagine my confusion when I parsed the entire article as "Why would being a good software engineer and [working for Google] be mutually exclusive? They usually go hand-in-hand!"

I did understand your comment. I know someone who works at Google is called a Googler. However, from the context of the subject, I knew a person who worked at Google would not have such a worry, while someone who learned how to program by Googling would have such a worry. Many programmers are self-taught. It's gotta be quite common to wonder if you know enough to do a particular job if you're Google'ibg your way to proficiency.

Actually, imposter syndrome is more common at Google than most other companies. This makes sense; imposter syndrome comes from a mismatch of judging your own talents versus that you perceive from your peers, so you are more likely to feel unsure of your own abilities when your coworkers are world-class leaders of their field than if they are just random average engineers. A lot of attention is paid to raising awareness of imposter syndrome during new employee orientation, and all new employees are assigned a mentor to help guide them through their initial months, again with lots of emphasis placed on ensuring that people feel like they belong.

I did the same thing - didn't get it until "try programming for a day without Googling".

Was expecting some blog post about someone concerned he was just 'going through the motions' working at Google; not 'really developing anything'.. ha.

Yes, that is exactly how I interpreted it.

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