Re:Ask HN: What Have You Learned at Google as a Software Eng...
by Zach_the_Lizard on Sunday September 08, 2019 @03:26PM
(#20912778)
> I am sad that top tier software engineering environments have lost sight of the value of simplicity.
I agree, but a more charitable reading is that they want you to demonstrate that you can deliver a complex solution if that's the only way to get things done.
Complexity is highly subjective, of course.
Suppose I need a distributed atomic counter service. After doing a lot of research, I come to the conclusion that the best solution is to write a wrapper around something in AWS or GCP but structure things in a way that other teams can use it.
Other teams are now less likely to need to do that research and can just get stuff done.
But the actual implementation is very simple.
Is that complex?
Maybe, maybe not.
This does provide a perverse incentive to continuously reinvent the wheel, though, which is the worst part of it.
Why not re-implement the low level goodies in DynamoDB if that'll increase the odds of promotion? Many engineers think along those lines.
I agree, but a more charitable reading is that they want you to demonstrate that you can deliver a complex solution if that's the only way to get things done.
Complexity is highly subjective, of course.
Suppose I need a distributed atomic counter service. After doing a lot of research, I come to the conclusion that the best solution is to write a wrapper around something in AWS or GCP but structure things in a way that other teams can use it.
Other teams are now less likely to need to do that research and can just get stuff done.
But the actual implementation is very simple.
Is that complex?
Maybe, maybe not.
This does provide a perverse incentive to continuously reinvent the wheel, though, which is the worst part of it.
Why not re-implement the low level goodies in DynamoDB if that'll increase the odds of promotion? Many engineers think along those lines.