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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

TL;DR Google is awesome. Agile is bad and stupid and for stupid people, but when Google does it it's great, because Google can do no wrong and is NOT EVIL and did I mention awesome?

I agree that "Methodologies" with a capital M are probably a scam, and that Google is probably full of super-smart developers that do fantastic work when left to their own devices — but I knew that already...

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TL;DR If you have billions in cash in the bank you can pay armies of engineers to work on whatever fancies them and deliver it whenever they feel like it. Who needs Agile? Burn your calendar. Party on.

I think that's the key piece. Yes, Google can operate the way they do because they have world class talent. Literally some of the best developers in the world. If you find yourself in that situation, then yes, you too can do things the way Google does.

Being a contractor and working in the bowels of Fortune 500 software divisions has taught me that this is a pipe dream for almost every other company. The methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, whatever) were no doubt created in order to help teams of poor to middling developers actually accomplish something while fighting through the corporate red tape and their own stagnation.

I've seen the kind of "Bad Agile" he talks about work at big inflexible organizations, and I've seen the "let everyone work on what they want" style of development go catastrophically wrong. Yegge's post seems to be more about him congratulating himself on how awesome he is for working at Google.

It's not just about the level of talent but about what Google can afford to do. Google banks so much cash from search advertising that it can bankroll all of these other internal projects that might not impact revenue at all, and their cashflow and stock price is so high that no one is stressed about costs or deadlines. As Mel Brooks's said, it's good to be the king. If Google was pressured by competitors and falling stock prices you would quickly see the whole picture revert to the traditional management-says-get-this-shit-done-now project management.

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