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Comment by krosaen | Hacker News Reader

I was always impressed by how much code Guido wrote at Google, he definitely isn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

Wow if he really did contribute a lot (which I don't doubt at all) then how did Google let him get away? I'd imagine his lifestyle there was pretty nice.

What do you think Google could have done?

Figure out why he wanted to leave, and see if they could remedy it (e.g. more money; different challenges; etc).

Yeah but the problem is, reasons for a career change are highly personal, and by the time the employee wants to leave, it's usually already too late to keep them by sweetening the deal. The only way to know is to ask Guido himself.

Pretty sure someone like Guido is, at this point, not motivated by money. If there was a challenge he wanted to undertake at Google, I'm sure they'd give it to him already.

He probably wanted to participate in growing another new tech company that has a lot of potential. That's an opportunity Google would find hard to counter.

Sorry, my statement was more generic. I wasn't trying to say that Guido is motivated by money, just that these are common ways to get someone to stay if that is indeed the issue that makes them want to leave.

On the issue of challenges, maybe Guido has more pull on this, but there were recently some articles/discussion on HN about Google's hiring practices. They might hire you based on your PhD in databases, and then have you writing shell scripts for work because some randomized 'sorting hat' tells you what group you end up in. It's possible that even Guido doesn't have enough pull at Google to overcome this. :-\

If it's a sorting hat, maybe he could ask Tim to adjust it. ;)

If you want to move to another team at Google, it's really up to that team if they want you. As long as they have budget for you, and they want you working with them, then you're free to move.

The problem with new hires is that no other team has any idea whether you're any good, so it take a bit of tenure to prove yourself and make yourself known to others.

I'm quite sure Guido would be doing whatever he wanted at Google

The discussion I'm referring to represented ending up somewhere that you don't want to be as a bit of a trap.

E.g. if Guido ends up writing shell scripts, but his real skill-set/passion is for databases. It's quite possible for him to under-perform, and then that performance used as a reason for the 'database team' to not take him.

Except working for a small company. There's something to be said for that!

"It's possible that even Guido doesn't have enough pull at Google to overcome this."

I have enough pull at Google to overcome this, so I'd be pretty surprised if Guido doesn't.

Speculation: maybe Python advocacy matters to him and that isn't something Google is really up for anymore.

In any company there could be changes that are simply imposible to fulfil. Let's say that there is something on the company culture he don't like. You can't call upper management and say "I can't stand the level of politics on this company". Or the way we hire. Or the kind of products we are doing. Or the impact I have on the company (no single person is going to have a big impact at Google, no matter how great he is)...

There are also things related to company size. I am more confortable working for small companies than big ones, there are other people that is the other way around...

It's not as simple as saying: "please stay, whatever you want"

Probably nothing. I just find it interesting that an organization like Google with practically unlimited resources can't keep someone (who can probably get anything they want in terms of perks) around.

If someone wants to go, how could a company, even a great one like Google, keep them?

He was a core member of the app engine team, wrote ndb[1] (the next generation datamodel library for their schema-less datastore), wrote the code review web app tool that was awesome, and a bunch of python infrastructure AFAIK.

[1] https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/python/ndb/

Guido apparently wrote a web-based code review tool for Google:

http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2006/11/google-mondrian.htm...

http://code.google.com/p/rietveld/

I heard that this tool was not well received at Google; anybody else hear this?

Git is not well received at Google either.

Care to elaborate? I'm curious to hear why this might be.

This is not true. I use git practically every day, working within the main source tree. Google's a big company with thousands of engineers and multiple ways of doing things. Some use git, some don't. You use what works best for you.

Not true, a lot of people, including me, use git at Google. It's not a default options, but you can use it if you want to.

When I was there, everyone I knew used it and sang its praises.

But it is a large company with a lot of teams. I am sure there were people somewhere who thought it was awful.

When it worked, it was great. When it was down or slow (Friday at 4:15 PM, anyone?), it was miserable.

Hey wait, doesn't everybody at Google stay till 10:00 PM on Friday??!

Still need to beat the pre TGIF rush. Reviewing code after happy hour is a bad idea.

They kinda kick everybody out on Friday evenings, actually. (Not actually kick out, but make it easier to just go home, especially as compared with Mon-Thurs.) And, in fact, that's even more true now than it was two weeks ago, because of a change in food-service policy.

I use Rietveld (not in Google) and I'm not particularly impress. It makes the job, but I don't think is a GREAT tool. After all, there are not many ways you can do a code review...

I'd love something that will be more integrated with source control (git in particular), maybe I'm asking too much...

Try Gerrit. It's tightly coupled to git, it's quite easy to host, similar to Rietveld/Mondrian in style, and has good documentation.

Not true, it is a part of the required standard check-in process for the long time and just recently was replaced with the V2.

LGTM

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