This guy gets it. It's a deep temptation to abstract engineering away from humanism, but the idea that code can solve problems is an immature understanding of software. People have the problems; people provide the solutions. Code is a tool & intermediary, and hardly essential to the act of problem-solving.
In general, I feel if I am talking about a product from Google, I could expect a lot of very clever technology, but kinda basic UX. Sometimes it works - e.g. search works with basic UX just fine, that's what most people need. Sometimes people would just take the technology and add their own UX and that'd work fine too. But I personally get a feeling that Google's core competence is exactly in places that you are calling "hardly essential". Am I wrong?
Anyway, how can you even compare UX/UI design decisions with the companies ability to handle work-place environment and stuff diversity?
So yes... You are wrong like lightyears away wrong.
Depends on what you mean by "this discussion". The manifesto which originated it - certainly not. The broader point raised about interaction between technology and sociological/humanitarian aspect of technology - I think yes.
> Secondly it's just your personal opinion that the Android is ugly.
It's not about "ugly", it's about... being very engineer-like in it's UI? As for my personal opinion, I don't mind it that much - I live in command line, after all. But I kinda learned that UI that engineer is comfortable with and UI that end-user is comfortable with are somewhat different things...
> Anyway, how can you even compare UX/UI design decisions with the companies ability to handle work-place environment and stuff diversity?
I don't and I think you completely misunderstood my point. Or, more precisely, you completely understood nothing about my point. I'm sorry I couldn't explain it better.
If you mean borderline in terms of success, there are only four or five meaningfully used web browsers. Of those, Chrome has the largest desktop and mobile marketshare, respectively.[1]
If you mean borderline in terms of Google's ability to release a product that appeals to a sense of usability and design aesthetic instead of just raw technical excellence, I would say that Chrome handily accomplishes that. In my opinion, the Chrome user interface very clearly resonates well with people, and one of the biggest reasons for its continued success is Google's understanding of what users want and how they like the use web browsers, not just Chrome's capabilities and performance.
Web browsers have a lot of surface area for "user interaction", and I think Chrome's interface really streamlines a lot of what people organically do when they're browsing. It's not just excellence under the hood, it's a studiousness that carries over into empowering users. As a specific example: I don't think that Chrome is a technically superlative application platform, but the ability to use it as a platform for running other apps has made life much easier on Linux when there are no native apps for certain things.
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1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#...
Gmail - the dominant webmail platform that made pioneering use of AJAX; before it you had to refresh the page to check if you had new email. And whose inbuilt chat client crushed Yahoo Messenger/MSN/AOL. People came for the 1GB of free storage, stayed for the friends they made on chat.
YouTube - Video juggernaut that has a pretty good community and mobile app. Sure it was an acquisition but it's been a Google property far longer than it was independent. If they weren't good at design or community-building they might have easily screwed it up; it's happened with Yahoo's Flicker acquisition.
Google Productivity Suite - The UX on these is hit-or-miss actually; the Google Drive web UI is a massive fail for me. But you can't deny the success of these very consumer-focused applications. They've been executed very well and clearly enough people like them that the opinion of someone like me is irrelevant.
Orkut - You might laugh but it absolutely ruled social in India and Brazil till Facebook caught on.
Chromecast - it's done all right; 30 million sold so far
Not to mention this one
> Search driven by algorithms
also misses the mark. Google Search's user experience was also revolutionary. Their homepage was (and still is) sparse and uncluttered; laser-focused on providing the user with the best search results and absolutely nothing else. They didn't try to become a "portal" like Yahoo even though everyone told them they were crazy to not capitalize on the popularity of their homepage.
Gmail:
From my hazy memory of the time it was released: 1. Best usage of AJAX and providing complex interaction without refreshing the page. 2. More storage space than any other provider.
Both, technical feats of excellence?
Youtube:
It was an acquired product, and there were quite a few points at which the YouTube community reacted angrily to Google driven changes, prominently when they made Google+ mandatory for comments.
GPS, Orkut, Chromecast and Homepage decisions: I agree on your point here.
In other words, we eliminate UX (folders, etc.) with superior technology (just search for whatever thing you need). Of course, people still use folders (renamed labels - that btw I think is a win, but most people afaik don't use that aspect too much). And BTW Inbox - their attempt to redesign the whole experience - is not that popular as I understand?
> And most of all it was very fast.
Technology! :)
You might quibble about this but recognizing that fast search is better than foldering is also UX. It seems obvious to us now but maybe it wasn't that obvious in 2006 (or maybe it was, I didn't know anything about UX or design back then). Yes making the search go fast is a technical feat and without good tech you can't have a good user experience even if the design is good (see WebOS).
> Gmail
This one gained popularity when promising a whopping for free 1Gb was crazy good offer. People seriously thought it's a gimmick that won't last. Now that you can pretty much buy 1TB drives with pocket change it sounds funny, but back then it was spectacular. UX had very little to do with it, and frankly I still kinda avoid using gmail website, much preferring to use mail client.
> Youtube
Excellent idea, and excellent decision whoever decided to buy it. Social aspect is not that clear - youtube comments are notorious for being utter garbage, and while everybody is using youtube, nobody does social networking on youtube. UX is ok, not spectacular.
> Google Productivity Suite
Google drive and google photos are UX epic fail, IMHO. I'm still pissed about them killing Picasa, it wasn't excellent but at least useful.
> Orkut
Yeah, this is an undeniable success in social networking, and everybody I heard from in Google are equally surprised and have no idea what happened there and why it took off. I suspect it's one of those "right place, right time" moments.
> Chromecast
That works reasonably well, but does it have any UX to speak of? Then again, maybe it's exactly Google's forte - the products that don't need any UX beyond plugging them in and turning them on. That, however, I think would also kind of play to my point of technology being stronger then UX.
> They didn't try to become a "portal" like Yahoo
Yes, they avoided a dumb mistake, which is a plus for them, but I'm not sure that this qualifies as being strong at UX. Unless you say that there is to be no UX anymore beyond the very basics - which, again, works for some tasks, but far from all.
Err...there's some reasonably complex setup there that they've smoothed out. The onboarding for a new Chromecast is flawless; you plug it in, type in your Wi-fi password and off it goes. Good design doesn't get in your way; it lets you do what you need to do, fast. The affordances for casting anything from your phone or tablet are obvious, and everything "just works". That's pretty darn good design, backed up by monstrously talented engineering to execute it well.
> This one gained popularity when promising a whopping for free 1Gb was crazy good offer.
I did point this out in my post. Other email providers quickly caught up though; Yahoo mail started offering 100MB that same year (2004) then soon increased it to 1GB[1]. So it wasn't the storage that made people stay. It was (as other people have pointed out) a more responsive interface, fast searching, conversation threads, and (IMO) integrated Google Chat.
Doesn't this support the idea that Google needs to improve their people-interaction? And one way to do that is to hire for people who are better at it?
Search is the problem of understanding what a person is looking for, and finding a resource which provides it. That is 100% about people and human factors. There's a reason why people look at google search frequencies to understand social trends; why we read meaning into the 'suggested search completions' google provides for certain terms; why an unfortunate first-placed search result for a term can make global news headlines. Search is so much more than an algorithmic problem.
True. But what I think the grandparent was getting at is that some people see Google as having a bad track record understanding how humans interact. See also: messenger fragmentations - Allo vs Duo vs Hangouts...
> If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I’m very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to.
This industry seems to have a problem with socially maladjusted young men who actually believe this. Then when the reality of their careers doesn't match the tech-shut-in fantasia, they lash out, like the manifesto author has done.
If you are able to manage them well, and let them do low level technical stuff, you can get amazing things out of them.
If you make sure they only need to interface with other technical people, they can work pretty well in such an environment. And the technical colleagues sometimes like working with geniuses where they can learn a lot from.
Nobody, even other technical people, deserves to work with assholes. Period.
Before joining armchair HR quarterbacking, it might help you to consider that Google is one of the most successful IT companies and the post you read is by a successful and well-respected ex-Googler. If you can think up something in 30 seconds, they've thought about that.
They look for basic social competency but technical excellence.
I think you got the wrong impression from my post. I am not criticizing Google's HR department here. I am simply pointing out that it is in opposition to the medium article's assertions.
In your actual career at Google pure technical ability it is very little of what Google "looks for"; that's necessary but not sufficient at all. Very few engineers are promoted for pure technical prowess; more often it's a combination of technical ability and EQ, or even just EQ.
Mostly it's a function of impact, which requires getting shit done, which requires working well with others. The top engineers at Google (Jeff Dean, Sanjay, Yonatan, etc.) are known for being phenomenal mentors, managers, and leaders--not just phenomenal engineers.
It's easy to be cynical and focus on instances where this is not true, but in my experience I agree with the parent that on the whole Google is quite good at managing its engineering org. In a XX,XXX person engineering org you're going to have some anomalies. And those are the ones that make these sorts of manifestos that are picked up by the media. Remember that Michael O. Church also worked at Google for a while and had a similarly controversial impact during his time there (look it up if you're unfamiliar).
Source: I'm a xoogler.