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A comment on Design Docs at Google. Parent comment

Re:Design Docs at Google by brotchie on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @10:25AM (#40285857)
Used to feel this way on other teams. Almost as if you were expected to write them for the sake of writing them (cargo cult engineering).

Now on a team of many OG Googlers (15+ years tenure) and Design Docs only exist when they’re needed (something that touches multiple systems, something that’s obviously complicated with many trade offs, etc) Otherwise it’s just “write the CLS.”

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Re:Design Docs at Google by dataflow on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @12:08PM (#40287527)
> Now on a team of many OG Googlers (15+ years tenure) and Design Docs only exist when they’re needed

This almost certainly has nothing to do with the team or tenure, but everything to do with what levels they are(n't) trying to get promoted to. Have you controlled for that and still seen a distinction?

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Re:Design Docs at Google by andrekandre on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @10:50AM (#40286229) 

  > Otherwise it’s just “write the CLS.
(apologies for the noob question) but what is cls in this instance?
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Re:Design Docs at Google by lupire on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @11:08AM (#40286566)
Change Lists (Pull Requests, Change Sets)
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Re:Design Docs at Google by lupire on Tuesday May 07, 2024 @11:10AM (#40286585)
One presumes in those simple CL cases, there is already a doc for the system being edited, and the new code followes the design.
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