Harvard Professor Matt Welsh: Working for Google | Hacker News Reader

Harvard Professor Matt Welsh: Working for Google

matt-welsh.blogspot.com

58 pointsrxin22 comments

[academia : toy boats in bathtubs :: industry : aircraft carriers] is the most memorable distinction between academia and industry I've heard. In the end, your slice of the pie will be as big as you can handle, but the overall size of the pie (and thus your percentage of control) determines whether you choose academia or startups or established companies.

At the risk of looking stupid, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that [academia : industry :: toy boats in bathtubs : aircraft carriers] ?

I would read this aloud as: "academia is to industry as toy boats in bathtubs is to aircraft carriers", which seems to make more sense to me as an analogy. So do I have it right, do I not understand analogies, or do I not understand the notation you're using?

I read it as "if academia were toy boats, industry would be aircraft carriers."

Edit - the blog post clears this up:

The way I think of it, being in academia is a lot like building toy boats and playing with them in your bathtub.

...

Whereas being at Google is like working on an aircraft carrier at sea.

Now I can see why mathematics is so formal

As you can tell by the date, it's about a month old. He has a follow up blog post titled "First week at Google": http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/07/first-week-at-google.....

"There are few people over 40 wandering the halls. " -- Oh yeah. I wonder what happens to an engineer at google when he turns 40. Does he go to Valhalla or something?

He invents one of:

a.) A programming language.

b.) A distributed database.

watch the movie Logan's Run

There are no portholes on the poop deck! Every sailor knows that :-)

What! And I was kinda angry with Google that after all my degrees they still consider me for "software engineering" position. This prof gets the same title. Hmm.

iirc, almost every technical person there who does coding is a 'software engineer' ... even ken thompson, rob pike, guido, etc.

EDIT: k nevermind about ken thompson and rob pike ... but there must be other big-shot hackers whose title is still 'software engineer'

Ken Thompson and Rob Pike are designated as Distinguished Engineers - sources - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson http://research.google.com/people/r/index.html

Yep. It's like calling Michelangelo a painter. It's true, but...

AFAIK, their SW engineer positions have five levels, so not everybody's equal really.

Well, if Michelangelo had a business card, I think he'd write "painter" or "artist" on it. There isn't much else to say.

What should they be using besides "software engineer"?

Senior Software Engineer, Team Lead, Architect, CTO and many other buzzwords.

It's more than five levels. And there're titles for the levels above Senior Software Engineer, but many of the best programmers keep on using plain old "software engineer" because they'd rather be known by their code than by their titles. (Or they make jokes about them, eg. one that I know is officially titled a Principal Engineer, but goes by the title Engineer in Principle.)

At my last job, where I was one of the few non-PhDs, everyone had the title software engineer.

I think Bell Labs had it best, their only job title was "member of the technical staff". If it was good enough for them, it's good enough for anyone.

I don't know titles used by Bell Labs in their old glory days but currently what you say is not correct: They have also distinguished member of technical staff and fellow titles, e.g. see http://www.colloquial.com/carp/mts.html.

The titles "member of technical staff" or "member of research staff" used by most corporate labs sound better to PhD ears than "software engineer", I guess, although for some companies they mean (roughly) the same thing.

What about the title "software engineer" offends you? Would you not be engineering software? Does your title matter to you?

It's not an offending title in itself. However, virtually all other companies I know of use that title for entry level positions, i.e. for positions that have very little or no initiative. Google's different stance causes confusion among PhDs that apply there, as I have heard from many friends who get irked by the SW engineer title.

Those who care about titles are those that should become politicians. I respect engineers for what they do, not for what they're called.

Well, people look at titles not just because it boosts their ego: They usually show salary range you expect and the job function you will perform. A "software engineer" position's responsibility would differ greatly if you are applying to, say IBM Research or HP Labs as opposed to what Google takes it to mean.

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