oaktowner

We didn't talk about it -- but teaching surfing was definitely his full-time employment. But a quick Craigslist scan finds tons of apartments for less than $1,000 a month. He said that he leads a fairly simple life.

I took a surfing lesson in Hawaii last week from a guy who has a degree from Florida State (business, if I'm not mistaken, but I'm also not positive).

After graduating, he realized that he'd rather live in Hawaii and spend his days in the ocean than sitting at a desk. Yes, he could earn more money...but he's very happy doing what he does. He keeps in touch with friends that he graduated with, and while many of them would like to switch places with him, he says he wouldn't switch places with any.

Of course, they may be setting themselves up for a better retirement, etc. But he has realized that a simple life that makes him happy is what he wants. Good on him.

There was a year or two where virtually the entire internet had flat gray backgrounds.

Those textured gray ones were a fancy new addition.

I'm old.

I know this sounds mean-spirited, but it's not. I'd be interested to know how this was developed as an example of what not to do. I wonder what the architecture is (and how it could/should be improved).

Off-topic, but: yes! One of my big annoyances with autocorrect is it auto-uncorrecting "its" to "it's", "well" to "we'll", etc. Not sure what algorithm is used, but it seems to be fairly horrible (BTW - I'm on a Moto X now and used to have an iPhone; I've seen it in both).

The only way to do this would be to wait until enough of the sentence has been written to get context. Failing that, though...I just don't want it to touch those words at all.

Weird, check out Brittany.

http://rhiever.github.io/name-age-calculator/index.html?Gend...

I don't think that's a correction. You are being more specific, but Lily is definitely "an unmanned aircraft or ship that can navigate autonomously"...which is what a drone is[1].

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/drone

During negotiations with a startup once, when I asked about the number of shares outstanding (and, thus, what percentage I was being offered), they told me: "Don't think about it that way..."

But: that's the only way I can imagine thinking about it.

I was being offered, say, 0.1% of the firm. If it ends up being valued at $100M at acquisition, that means my stake is worth $100K. Assuming we go public and it's a $500M valuation, my stake would be worth ~$500K (assuming no dilution, which probably isn't realistic).

I can see why they didn't want me to look at it that way. They were asking me to take a pretty large reduction in my annual compensation because of the equity...unfortunately, the equity they were offering me wasn't going to be very valuable even in the optimistic case (and that's ignoring the substantial risk that the equity could also end up being worth nothing, or considerably less).

Thank you!

I either squeeze it myself or buy juice that was squeezed in my (local) grocery store. No store-bought brand comes close to the taste.

Wow. I never knew that.

I do know that I far prefer the taste of fresh-squeezed (and, in fact, won't buy anything that is not). But I never really knew why.

I kind of assumed the laser cannons were on flying ostriches.

Actually, I just filed a bug internally to fix docs. You're right -- alpha/beta is not clearly shown consistently enough (I missed at least one in going through that list).

In some cases, there are GA products with alpha/beta features & languages, so it may be difficult to figure out the best way to communicate at the top level (e.g., the examples pointed out for a given feature in a given language, or HTTP load balancing vs Network Load balancing).

But in cases where it's clearly a beta product, it should be clear.

Google Product Manager here.

Not sure why you think most Google Cloud Services are in beta.

The Google Cloud products page [1] lists 17 main products. Two are in alpha (Container Engine, Deployment Manager), one is in beta (Pub/Sub).

The rest are fully supported. There are some beta features here and there...but saying "most" are in beta is certainly not correct.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/products/

Apologies for the negative snark.

Right. "Phone" was the thing the iPhone did worst of all.

When I got my first iPhone (after a Blackberry Curve), one thing I noticed: everything my Curve did, it did better than the iPhone. It was a better phone, it was better for email, it was better for texting. (Ok, it technically had "apps", but they were so bad I never used any).

But my iPhone did a million things that my Blackberry didn't do (via apps).

Was it a worse phone? Absolutely. Did I love it much, much more than I ever loved my Blackberry? Absolutely.

Don't think of this as a "watch."

[slight edit for clarity]

Maybe in Palo Alto.

Now I know where the rapper got his name.

+1 to Megadonk as the currency of choice for my next job.

I definitely agree with your observation that empathy is important, and an interviewer has responsibility for creating an environment in which the interviewee is comfortable.

I also agree with the commentor that interviewers can be very arbitrary, and that is not good.

I only took issue with "That means you didn't get along because the interviewer brought their own baggage or narrow mindedness into the interview. This is very common and shows the interview process was incompetent."

Commentor doesn't know what went on in that room, and doesn't know that this is what happened in this case.

In general, our product managers are technical -- almost all have a computer science degree, many have worked as engineers. When going through the initial interviews you are usually not interviewing for a particular position, but rather as a "generalist."

After the hiring committee has decided whether or not to hire you, your specific background will be matched with specific openings around Google. Naturally, some products require less technical expertise than others.

You seem to have an incredible grasp on what went on in that interview, along with how common it is.

Of course. Because what is the alternative? "We guarantee that we will operate this service for the next 1000 years, regardless of global warming, pestilence, famine and war?"

Nothing lives forever. No company lives forever. Amazon, Microsoft, Google...may all go away some day.

And, of course, they may change their business focus and decide to go a different way. I would expect any of them to provide notice and let people get their data out...but one should always assume that a service will go away at some point.

Well, I don't think the writer proved the importance of UI.

But I think it serves as an excellent reminder that, for a cmdline program, the flags and arguments are the UI, they impact how people perceive your software and how productive they will be with it.

Hmm. What OS?

Works for me (Chrome 41.0.2272.89, OS X 10.9.5)

Well...it was a secret.

Googler here.

Depends on the project. github.com/grpc is being developed github first (and accepting contributions), as are several of the projects on github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform.

Yes, I agree. I never give a site like LinkedIn access to any of my accounts, but I have noticed that it will suggest a connection with someone whom I've ever had one email interaction.

At first, I was bewildered, then I realized it must be because theotherparty granted access to their contacts.

There are companies that reserve parking for mid-level managers?!?

I agree: that sends a terrible message.