Steve Yegge
medium.com/@steve.yegge · Personal blog · on HN since 2018
Steve Yegge, a longtime programmer who worked at Amazon, Google and Grab, writes about software engineering and big tech companies.
What HN saysCommenters cite his post on Google Cloud's deprecation policy as strong evidence that Google kills products, and his interview advice post is quoted by Google recruiters.
58HN people shared it
29linked it in comments
29stories submitted
1.5Kstory points
2 years agolast shared
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Most-shared posts
- 1Why I left Google to join Grab13 people · 315 points · first shared 2018 · 178 comments on HN
- 2Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You10 people · 662 points · first shared 2020 · 403 comments on HN
- 3Steve Yegge: Saying Goodbye to the Best Gig I Ever Had6 people · 30 points · first shared 2020 · 2 comments on HN
- 4Google to Grab: One Year Later (Steve Yegge)5 people · 6 points · first shared 2019 · 3 comments on HN
- 5Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, and the Quest to Kill EBay4 people · 27 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 6Google doesn't necessarily need innovation4 people · 11 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 7Homepage4 people · first shared 2018
- 8Who will steal Android from Google?3 people · 183 points · first shared 2018 · 158 comments on HN
- 9Did you know how to count?3 people · 6 points · first shared 2018 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Honestly I can’t stand k8s3 people · 3 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 11Your biggest problem right now is denial2 people · 27 points · first shared 2020 · 12 comments on HN
- 12Google doesn’t necessarily need innovation1 people · 208 points · first shared 2018 · 163 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
john-shaffer · 2021-03-04
The best one is the Googler article linked in a sibling: https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-pol…
That alone is more than enough to substantiate what I'm saying, but if you need more examples than just search or read HN a bit, due diligence, etc. I was personally lucky in that I got burned in the planning stages and didn't have to get burned in production, but I still wasted all that planning time and ended up having to use AWS instead.
solosoyokaze · 2021-03-03
They kill all kinds of stuff. I still remember dealing with this one:
https://cloud.google.com/network-connectivity/docs/vpn/deprecations/cl…
Here's a take from an ex-googler:
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-pol…
loosetypes · 2018-11-11
I recently interviewed with Google and their recruiter's, presumably copy-and-pasted, spiel included the following footnote:
"Steve Yegge (former Googler) talks about his interview experience and "How to Get that Job at Google" in his blog post here[0]."
Which I found strange given that (A) Steve wrote it 10 years ago and (B) he's more recently written[1] that "The main reason [for leaving] Google is that they can no longer innovate."
[0] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html
[1] https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc…
pjmlp · 2018-09-20
Every year at Google IO Android APIs get partially rebooted, the NDK already got three build systems, Android Studio is being rebuilt from version to version.
Good luck to those that jump today into Android without the background how it grew up since the early days.
Documentation is outdated and many of the still documented best practices have long been replaced by Medium posts and SO answers about the new best practices that replaced them.
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/who-will-steal-android-from-google-af3…
yjftsjthsd-h · 2023-12-19
> You can continue to keep using applications in X11-mode for as long as those applications maintain that code path.
Notice that I never said applications. I'm aware that xwayland is actually quite good these days; the problem is accessibility and automation tools that it can't support.
> would you have expected Apple to support Carbon ad-infinitum?
> Look at the backwards-compatibility and new-framework-adoption-rate woes Windows has to deal with because Win32 exists and devs are lazy / expensive.
Yeah, devs are expensive, which is why backward compatibility is so important. Microsoft, for its many faults, seems to understand that breaking applications every few years and demanding that developers put in time in order to keep things working is poor form, leading to people making comments like
> I’ll also give a shout-out to our friends in the Operating Systems business: Windows, Linux, NOT APPLE FUCK YOU APPLE, FreeBSD, and so on, for doing such a great job of backwards compatibility on their successful platforms.
- https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-pol…
In fact, the rest of that essay is a great commentary on exactly why this kind of thing is bad and why Apple should be derided exactly for this kind of thing.
bushbaba · 2024-12-11
Yet, google continues to show it'll deprecate it's APIs, Services, and Functionality at the detriment of your own business. I'm not sure enterprises will trust Google's LLM over the alternatives. Too many have been burned throughout the years, including GCP customers.
The fact GCP needs to have this page, and these lists are not 100% comprehensive is telling enough. https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/deprecations https://cloud.google.com/chronicle/docs/deprecations https://developers.google.com/maps/deprecations
Steve Yegge rightfully called this out, and yet no change has been made. https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-pol…
foobiekr · 2021-01-17
GCP's potential for product abandonment and their terrible customer support are their primary weaknesses. And then there's the issues well-described in [1].
[1] https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-pol…
disgruntledphd2 · 2020-10-31
In general, most of these companies have automated tools to accomplish things like this. If you look at Steve Yegge's recent rant about GCP, you'll note that he mentions this as a use case for his tool, Grok. Link: https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-pol…
baskire · 2020-10-28
Steve Yegge, a former Googler & GCP Customer begs to differ. From my experience GCP does deprecate a lot of libraries, SDKs, and APIs. None of which are covered in the SLA policy.
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-pol…
lazyant · 2020-09-21
Confirming over and over: https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-pol…
langitbiru · 2020-09-21
I concur. His writing is funny. https://medium.com/@steve.yegge
rctay89 · 2019-10-02
...you were saying? :) https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/google-to-grab-one-year-later-3e1e4df3…
solidasparagus · 2019-08-03
It's a phrase that tends to be used by people who consider themselves superior to 'the masses'. The phrase refers specifically to the lower-classes or those outside of elite circles[1]. Combined with Google's reputation of quiet arrogance[2], it's a phrase that I would have avoided.
[1] Pick a dictionary and you will find references to lower-classes, the not-elite or the common people. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the%20masses https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/masses#English https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/masses
[2] Put in to words nicely here https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc… but you can feel it in many of Google's products where they make all the major decisions because they don't believe users are as capable of making good decisions as Googlers.
jsmeaton · 2019-05-21
He just wrote a blog post that refers to it briefly, tongue in cheek.
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/google-to-grab-one-year-later-3e1e4df3…
markusbk · 2019-04-29
Steve Yegge, high profile developer previously at Google and Amazon, now head of engineering for Data Insights at Grab, wrote a nice blog post about why he quit his job at Google to join Grab:
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc…
tjpnz · 2018-07-19
>It’s googles attitude to customers that is the ingrained and deep problem. Google has built into its DNA from the beginning that it does not want to be in contact with you, that you cannot get emergency attention, and that you are probably wrong.
Of all the tech companies I've interacted with I've never dealt with one that has come off as uniquely elitist and tone-deaf as Google.
Steve Yegge (former Googler) makes some very good points on this.
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc…
atulatul · 2018-06-13
Please remove if it is a repost.
Reminds me of this Steve Yegge post: Why I left Google to join Grab
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc…
daxfohl · 2018-05-07
But there's this from a fairly influential former googler: https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/honestly-i-cant-stand-k8s-48c9a600e405
It's a quick read, but to summarise: it's almost as complex as google's internal borg system but the benefit isn't even close (partially because nobody else has google problems). I can't down K8s personally, as I've never used it myself. But I wonder if there's the possibility of a system that's more 80/20 of google's borg rather than the seeming 20/80 coming from k8s. And I wonder if Grab will release it next year.
bajsejohannes · 2018-05-01
You are correct.
> [kubernetes is] a simplified clone of Google’s internal borg system
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/honestly-i-cant-stand-k8s-48c9a600e405
trisimix · 2018-03-25
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc…
That guy would disagree I think.
Pyxl101 · 2018-03-09
FYI: Grab is the company that Steve Yegge moved to. He wrote about leaving his last company for it in a recent blog post:
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc…
hosh · 2018-02-01
Huh, interesting. I wonder what happened, after reading this: https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc… (Steve Yegge talking about joining Grab, and the meal-delivery boom)
icebraining · 2018-01-26
I wouldn't blame your reader; Medium only puts the RSS tag on the main blog page (https://medium.com/@steve.yegge) and not on each post, which is IMO not a good practice.
acover · 2018-01-24
Blog post the article is about:
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc…
alasdair_ · 2020-04-21
>This behavior is explained by the fact that these departments within Google are looking at their “rivals” for inspiration, rather than the fundamental problems Google is rewarded for solving (Search, targeted advertising, IT infrastructure).
In Steve Yegge's post on why he left google: "You can look at Google’s entire portfolio of launches over the past decade, and trace nearly all of them to copying a competitor: Google+ (Facebook), Google Cloud (AWS), Google Home (Amazon Echo), Allo (WhatsApp), Android Instant Apps (Facebook, WeChat), Google Assistant (Apple/Siri), and on and on and on. They are stuck in me-too mode and have been for years. They simply don’t have innovation in their DNA any more. And it’s because their eyes are fixed on their competitors, not their customers."
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc…
>Nobody will remember it, but in eBay’s early days of success, Amazon spent a nontrivial amount of engineering effort into building an auction style marketplace. They actually built something that was better than eBay’s model by many accounts. Nobody cared and it was shut down, because Amazon is not where people go to sell things at auction. Just like google search is not where people go to do their shopping.
For more info on "Mr Tooth" and Amazon's quest to compete with eBay, see another Steve Yegge post here: https://medium.com/s/story/jeff-bezos-jack-ma-and-the-quest-to-kill-eb…
"So, Life Lesson #2…
dmix · 2018-03-26
> Steve says Android is Google’s most important channel. That’s only if you don’t measure by money. From a business point of view, AdWords is five times more important than anything else.
Even that's misquoting Yegge, he in fact said:
>> Android is probably Google’s most important channel — if not today, then certainly over the next ten years.
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/who-will-steal-android-from-google-af3…
He's not even saying it's a more important channel than search today but something that has the potential to be in the next decade.
Additionally after rereading Yegge's post, I don't see anywhere he asserted AdWords is a channel either, which it clearly isn't. He states channels are merely a proxy for ads or it's "little sister" paid subscriptions.
And when you're speaking of channels, as something entirely distinct from ads/subscriptions, then it's clear they must be things customers want: positive experiences, good content, social gratification, etc. Aka, good products. Users are not just a faceless question mark before + "impressions for ads money = profit". It takes hard work to keep users happy in order to even have the opportunity to show them ads or sell them subs. So you're entirely correct here.
Google is very much in the business of customer happiness, as much as they are in the business of keeping advertisers happy on the other end. They are not merely middlemen for advertisers... they control plenty of channels.
Which I…
earenndil · 2019-02-19
https://danluu.com/
https://www.stilldrinking.org/
Steve yegge's various blogs (https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/blog-rants, https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/, https://medium.com/@steve.yegge)
https://waitbutwhy.com/ (bit cheesy but alright).
Communitivity · 2019-05-29
There are a number of blog posts by people such as Tim Bray, Steve Yegge, and others - as well as internal engineering blogs (at least there is one at Facebook and several at Google). I read these on a regular basis (Yegge's hasn't been updated in a while), but only to take away ideas and learn about new technologies.
Their approach is almost certainly not the right approach for you, because you are not Google ( https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb ). That said, if you are looking for a position at these places, then the blogs might help you, in a number of ways. If you want to work there though, focus on the sound engineering techniques applicable anywhere (maps, hashing, trees, graphs, algorithms) and build a reputation through Open Source contributions to the projects the companies are involved with.
* Tim Bray / Amazon / https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/
* Steve Yegge / Ex-Googler / https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/ and https://medium.com/@steve.yegge
* Facebook Engineering Blog / https://code.fb.com/
* Google Developers Blog / https://developers.googleblog.com/