Excellent choice of colour and tasteful use of animations =)
88 karma · joined April 7, 2012
- their tagline and what they do "$0 commission stock brokerage"
- why I should sign up "stop paying $10 for every trade"
- clear call to action "get early access"
- giant iPhone graphic gets cutoff and leads you to scroll down
>I don't see why there is a reason to etch the flaws out in everything.
>> Then you will forever be a terrible engineer. We seek out flaws!
I understand and fully embrace this! As hard as it is to believe, I choose when to and not to be a cynic. However, I've found that I often focus too much on the negatives at times and need to brighten up.
> And I want you to consider that your internship has been a product as much as it is an opportunity for you.
I ABSOLUTELY agree with this. In my mind Google did a damn good job of it. But why point this out specifically?
An employee's experience at any company is manufactured regardless of position or industry - pay, hours, office environment, management structure... These are all factors of the job. What I'm saying is that Google does a better job of manufacturing this than many others do.
> Your employer is not your friend. I don't believe in this. What about the startup CEOs that literally recruit (and hire) their friends? What about the small businesses of the world that closely maintain relationships with their employees?
I think the point you are trying to hint at is more in line with "HEY. This Big Tech Company created an experience for you just to make you think one way about them but really doesn't care about you at the end of the day. WAKE UP SHEEPLE!"
And I totally understand that. But you also understand that it is an opportunity - you said so yourself! All I'm trying to do with this post is encourage others to consider this opportunity for themselves as well.
Does this mean your opinion about my opinion is almost certainly wrong as well?
Snide comments aside, thanks for reading!
I'm not sure why you feel it necessary to be a cynic. I don't see why there is a reason to etch the flaws out in everything. I could caveat everything I say but what would be the point of that? Especially in a section labelled: "What I liked about working at Google".
I also don't see the point in you playing fortune teller - so what if my blog has 1 post? Why does it matter to you what I do or do not do with my life after its been read?
I appreciate your criticism of my writing, and certainly welcome more of it, but if you're going to be passive aggressive about it I'm afraid I don't see the point in it either. From your reply it seems like your suggestion is to "add cynicism".
Lastly, your thinly veiled insults do not make your post more palatable to me.
However from the perspective of someone who has worked in something like investment banking, I stand by my comment that Google's approach to transparency (at least internally) is headed in the right direction.
Often one arm of the organization does not know what the other is doing, although I am sure Google is constantly trying to improve their internal communications in order to prevent exactly this.
As for your point about the black list... I would say it would likely be closer to a note that has been placed in your recruiting profile instead.
I've heard great things about the New York offices as well as the Zurich, Tokyo, and London offices though!
Personally, I've talked to Googlers all over the world and there seems to be a consistency in openness and passion.
But even discounting this (naysayers will cry foul at the fact that it technically is a separate company), I think organizing the world's information is certainly an extremely difficult problem. And certainly one that Google is attempting to solve in more ways than search.
Also - self driving cars? Certainly you will agree that is not trivial.
Certainly correct, although I have worked at a number of other companies (an investment bank, Microsoft, a startup, and in management consulting) so I was using those as benchmarks.
Thanks for reading!
In all seriousness, great work here. I especially like the point you make about not fighting back. Too often the HN hivemind will try to take someone down just for submitting something opinionated ("Why would I learn PostgreSQL so late into my web development stream?!??!"). Let people say what they have to say and stay your ground.
Keep it up!
As someone aptly mentioned though, the problem is you are just redesigning the email inbox and giving it some quick reply buttons (ala the Gmail canned responses).
I suggest you take a look at AOL's Alto for an example of something that is trying to tackle something similar largely through UX design. http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/10/18/aol-alto-email-applica...
All that being said, the design is cool. And you have a kickass domain name.
From a product standpoint - mindlog looks like Pocket meets Pinterest meets Evernote. Is that the intent? If it isn't you need to rethink your copy.
I would say one of the major things is that you should move the "registration" module to somewhere above the fold and focus on it more.
Also I suggest you make the tagline bigger and feature it more prominently in the middle of the cover image. This way, you can take off the "Q: What can mindlog be used for?" from the overlay and just have something like "Jack uses mindlog to...."
Last thing: the far left hover screenshot popup was broken for me, the other 3 worked perfectly fine.
Good luck!
Also I love the hover feature on the bookmarklet when you first see it.
Other than the design aspect - Yahoo!'s web technology is largely, for the lack of a better word, 'adequate'. Their search bar searches well (powered by Bing), their mail client sends mail, and Flickr is still a great service for image consumption and storage.
What of their 'lifestyle' or 'media' portals? For instance Yahoo! Answers, Finance, Auto, Sports (Fantasy Sports as well as Sports news) etc? These are all great Yahoo! product areas in their own right. What do you think users would say to Yahoo! making a media play similar to what AOL has done?
One gripe of mine is Match.com, another Yahoo! property. It seems largely untapped. It isn't widely branded as part of the Yahoo! portfolio (lacking the trademark Yahoo! Purple design scheme, for one), and it seems it has largely operated independent of its parent company in the past. I think Yahoo! should either choose to do something with this website and have it mean something to the rest of the Yahoo! family of products, or sell it off and use the money to fund other ventures.