I think it's just something that happens to companies that get a certain size. The Process becomes more important than the Product.
When I was younger, I wanted so badly, to work at Apple.
A few years ago, they actually approached me, and I found out that the culture seems to have drastically changed.
They ended up not wanting me anyway, so maybe it's just sour grapes, on my part.
I was told about e.g. multiple internal CI/build systems because one org didn't want to rely on the other, so they both built their own little software stacks.
That's a bit different than what I've heard from meta/google/amazon who seem to be more open to running centralized internal services
https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611
This was rather a long time ago now so I wouldn't be surprised if things have changed since then, though having never worked at Amazon I wouldn't know one way or the other.
But the software side? There seems to be a massive variance in both ability, and giving-a-shit across the software orgs, and no leadership filter on the output of these disparate groups.
Perhaps they have the opposite of the resting-on-laurels problem: a smattering of very senior people who are talented and care about the product/users, and a wide base of careerists who aren't very good and just want the money and the CV, users be damned.
The obvious thing to do then is to not change too many things around it. Or at least document the changes.
So then you get a bunch of processes that are designed to not rock the boat too much, in case the magic dies.
Can you explain in detail?
But I don't think that someone like me would be very welcome there.
That is both good and bad. I am certainly not God's Gift to Programming, so they may well be better off without folks like me. They certainly seem to be making a lot of green.
Wouldn't it be helpful to other people who are interested in working there?
This is a professional venue, and I don’t feel that slagging companies is a particularly professional thing to do. I like Apple, and wish them the best. I have no interest in throwing shade on them.
When I do say less-than-positive things, I find it best to stay vague, so people can easily write off what I say. I think that folks here, are perfectly capable of making their own decisions, and that I’m best off, letting them do so, unencumbered by my opinions.
I don't know if the process is more important, but at a certain size codified process becomes a requirement.
> I think it's just something that happens to companies that get a certain size. The Process becomes more important than the Product.
Why change it if it's working well? Keep doing what you are good at, keep being the best in the world/market at this, and the customers will reward you.
I seriously don't understand the common theme here in these threads saying that Google is basically stagnating. Why do they need to churn out a major new product every other year to stay relevant? They continuously re-vamp their entire stack, their data centers, their networks. Nothing ever stays as it is. As a user I actually find that things change too much. (But I'm not what counts, it's ad revenue that counts..)