What is Digg?23 Comments
- Insolence, on 10/12/2007, -2/+32@Alegis
Veil Of Shadow gives +3 to Virginity. - LegendarySock, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19"pays 630 students to stay home and code over the summer"
While their parents are yelling at them to go get some fresh air and stop staring at the damn computer screen all day. - Alegis, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Because sunlight is so much fun ... I prefer the veil of shadow.
- babbling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Well, these aren't exactly internships, but they are more or less the FLOSS equivalent of internships. It's wonderful that Google is doing this.
- UnConeD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It's different from a plain internship because it's a) open to any student in the world, b) for a very reasonable amount of money and c) benefitting open-source projects rather than just Google itself.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Not really. Right now in the tech industry, Google is the company that every nerd can look up to and fantasize about someday working for- mainly because it's literally the last bastion of the dot.com dream.
Most of these people are so young, or so clueless, that they really have no clue that Google makes 99.999% of its money by selling advertising. They have this vague vision that Google writes cool applications like Google Earth (which was purchased, not written) and Google Maps (gets all its data from NavTeq) and somehow makes money from all those freeware applications.
They don't think Larry and Sergey buying a 767 "party jet" is wrong, because they hope to do the same thing someday.
They literally have no idea that almost every employee at Google works on vending advertisements. These little side projects take up less than a few percent of Google's workforce- but everyone else spends all day trying to figure out how to get people to click on little text ads.
Here's another hint- only 6 percent of employees who worked at google from its founding to the the IPO in 2003 are still employed there. In other words, they all cashed out and QUIT. Even the rock-star gourmet chef cashed out 30 million dollars worth of options and quit last year to start his own restaurant chain. - fulldecent, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I'm in the SoC project (see http://code.google.com/soc/kde/appinfo.html?csaid=F40E76143F822382). And I have to say it's a cool opportunity. The money is good for an internship and the experience of working for large projects is great.
Everyone's got a bug report we've submitted and voted for and then told all our friends to vote for. This is the chance to have enough time and help to finally squash that mother *****. - endersadvocate, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3its amazing that people given this huge of an opportunity are throwing it away
- marnaq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Do you expect anything else than mod down?
- elvirs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2yes, google's main busyness is putting ads next to it's not-brilliant-anymore search engine results. and because it is not killer anymore they are looking for ways to get sth brilliant again and invest in research of everything related to software and especially to the net.
that 6% part is quite normal. from the early days of company, founders were giving shares to its employees as a presents and when shares owned even by chief were 30 milion dollars share workers(share dolders at the sametime) started to leave company to start their own business and live more luxiary life. would you still cook for programmers at google if you had 30 millions? - JohnnySoftware, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"They literally have no idea that almost every employee at Google works on vending advertisements. These little side projects take up less than a few percent of Google's workforce- but everyone else spends all day trying to figure out how to get people to click on little text ads."
I am going to have to call B.S. on this.
I read an interview of a guy who worked on early version of Google AdSense and it was not created by a huge team. It sounded like a rather small team.
Google has a rule that 20 percent (maybe just 10%, I cannot recall for sure offhand but a LOT more than a few percent) of its programmers time each week be spent on side-projects of their own devising.
There is a ton of evidence that programmers at Google are doing a lot more than think about how to get people to click on ads or even creating ads for them to click on.
What is the source of your information that "everyone" at Google does nothing all day but "figure out" how to "get people to click on little text ads"?
How do you account for the fact there is so much open source code written by Google employees at work at http://code.google.com/ ?
The code looks like extremely unlikely work products coming from people who spend all their time trying to think of ways to get people to click on little text ads.
"Here's another hint- only 6 percent of employees who worked at google from its founding to the the IPO in 2003 are still employed there. In other words, they all cashed out and QUIT. Even the rock-star gourmet chef cashed out 30 million dollars worth of options and quit last year to start his own restaurant chain."
Just last year, Google hired some superstar computer programmers. There are more out there than in there, and Google is flush with cash. There is no reason to believe they have a hard time finding them - they do not exactly have secret identities, especially the ones running major open source projects like the Python programming language. Conversely, they do not have a problem getting these gurus to hear about Google.
Average stay of a computer programmer at an employer used to be 2 years. These days, with all the temping, off-shoring, quick changes in technology, and extremely short software product lifetimes - it is sure to be somewhat less than 2 years.
Since 2003 was 3 years ago, I would expect quite a bit of the staff at Google that long ago would be gone due to industry-standard attrition alone.
What percentage of the programmers that were at YOUR company that were with it 3 years ago are still with it now?
Pointing out that the world class chef left to start his own company hardly seems like a fact you could generalize from and apply to the whole company.
I guess if the head cook at the U.S. Senate cafeteria quit, you would assume the whole United States government is going down the tubes?
If the cook was _that_ important, naval conflicts would all be settled by hiring a battleship's cook away instead of exchanging missiles and diplomatic treaties.
I think you are distorting both what programmers at Google spend their time doing, and the status/health of Google as a company and employer.
The conclusions you are drawing are not supported by the facts you are asserting. Try to fit what you said into the framework of a syllogism and see if you do not come up with a few holes.
Take some guidance from Wikipedia on setting forth a logical argument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllogism - lianliming, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Glad to see another SoCer here. To me who is also accepted this year, it is really a good chance to work with experts in opensource project, and the payment is also attractive.
- DruSam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm a college student, and my parents still tell me to stop "staring at that darn computer screen".
- JohnnySoftware, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2" People and 'industry experts' make assumptions based on nothing but their own experiences."
People make a lot of assumptions based on a lot of things other than their _own_ experiences. For instance:
a.) what other people tell them
b.) what they have learned how to do, but never applied
c.) inferences drawn from what they know or think they know
d.) recognition of patterns
e.) generalization
f.) deduction
Unless you count every thought and idea, not just everything done and directly perceived first hand through one of the 5 senses, your assertion does not hold up.
As for "you have no idea about the internal workings of Google, and Google likes it that way" - untrue.
Google programmers have been interviewed before, and they have described a lot of concrete & significant things about Google. These things include:
1. Google uses a variety of computer programming languages.
2. Google uses Java
3. Google has upgraded to JDK 1.5
4. Google programmers created a number of toolkits prior to JDK 1.5 to do things that JDK 1.5 came with - such as thread pooling, and lots more
5. The name of the Google programmer who planned out and acted as point-man for the JDK 1.5 conversion
6. The name of the Google programmer behind the Google ad-sense programming.
7. The fact that Google has toolkits that use generative programming techniques on there server in order to emit the compact bursts of logic & content you see embedded in certain Google web pages. In other words, Google uses its own dynamic code generation tools on at least some of their web pages.
8. The fact that some or all of Blogger and/or Blogspot is written in Python
9. The names of a couple people who worked on a big overhaul of Blogger/Blogspot around the time Google bought the company that makes it.
10. Some of the factors used in the proprietary Google "page rank" calculation.
11. The fact that the Google page rank calculation formula is very, very long.
12. The fact that every day, Google deals with web pages created by people who try to "game" their page(s)' page rank calculation using inappropriate methods to get an inappropriate ranking.
13. The fact that Google's top dog thinks that semantic web is too complicated for most people creating web sites to comprehend/use.
14. The fact that a lot of web pages are constructed from faulty HTML.
15. The fact that Google uses clusters of inexpensive personal computers architected around fault-tolerant computing principles, rather than big/expensive mainframe like computers in order to execute their operational code for public-facing sites.
16. The fact that Google is building a huge, new facility in/near a small town in the U.S.
17. The fact that electricity costs for Google are really huge, far exceeding the costs of their computers themselves.
18. The names of the founders, where they went to school, what their specialty is.
19. The philosophy of the founders.
20. Names of a number of well-known computer industry luminaries and open source project leaders that have gone to work for Google as programmers or managers.
Google also reveals all sorts of information in the URLs of their web pages. When you see .py, you know that page is dynamically generated on the server (barring any subterfuge on Google's part, which is unlikely).
There have been at least several - maybe tons - of articles written about technology used in Google's web pages: for instance, there have been articles detailing what technologies are used in the Google Maps pages.
Google's http://code.google.com/ website _publishes_ code used in their web sites/services that they think is generally useful enough to help other organizations/individuals create websites. Glancing at one tells: something functionally that Google is doing, what language Google programmed it in, something about at least one Google programmer's styles. Looking at a number of them in the same language by different authors could reveal what coding standards, conventions, or styles are in effect in at least part of the company.
Here is an example of one of many, many articles that "spills the beans" on one aspect of Google's computing empire:
http://www.internetnews.com/xSP/article.php/3487041
It details a lot of aspects of how Google's web searching service works.
Their various Google service APIs each provide access to a facet of their publicly available functionality.
"Lets face facts here, you have no idea about the internal workings of Google, and Google likes it that way."
C'mon, you are making that up, right. I mean, you have got to be kidding.
Not only has Google informed the public of some basic things about how their site(s) work, they consistently keep us abreast of what they are doing now and how they are doing it.
You make it sound like Google is some kind of corporate commercial secret society. Reading what you said, if I did not know better, I would think that Google is some kind of computing priesthood.
Looking at the facts I have listed above, nothing could be farther from the truth. Google tells a LOT about the inner workings of Google. And Google likes it THAT way. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thread over?
- CircleFusion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Tell them you will take a break from your computer screen as soon as your first $100,000 salary kicks in.
- babbling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Google seem to release some source code as proprietary and some source code as free software. You're right that they do seem to be inconsistent about this.
I have no idea why they do this, but I think they're doing more good than harm, for now. - Spathiinc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1You make a lot of claims there, I don't suppose you have any facts to back them up. People and 'industry experts' make assumptions based on nothing but their own experiences. I don't know if you are making this up, or reading what 'journalists' have written and taking it at face value, but I feel a slight amount of pity for you either way. I especially like your comment that Google Maps gets all its data from NavTeq, since it is 100% false. Scroll around the world, take a look at the copyright strings. Not to mention NavTeq does not provide aerial or satellite imagery. Lets face facts here, you have no idea about the internal workings of Google, and Google likes it that way.
- h0zae, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"and improving Mozilla's integration with the Linux desk.".. maybe Google OS?
- -dXs-, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3I'm pretty sure the students are likely studying at college or university. They really shouldn't still be listening to their parents or have to put up with telling them what to do.
I doubt there would be more than a select handful of high school students coding open source applications on an open source platform. Most elementary, and secondary schools are using a Windows based platform for everything. - pbjorge12, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4I can't wait to do this in a few years!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+4Isn't it nice how Google is all for open source, except when it comes to their own code?
I think there's a word for that... its called "hypocrisy" - Burmask, on 10/12/2007, -13/+1YO-Internships at big software companies have been going on for years now so why is it news when Google is hiring them?
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