Top all-time · #3080
Piaw's Blog
Personal blog · piaw.blogspot.com · on HN as piawcareerbusinessprogramming
Piaw's Blog is a personal blog at piaw.blogspot.com about career, business and programming. Since 2008, 25 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “Tips for Noogler Engineers (Noogler = New at Google)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite this ex-Googler's blog as a source on Google's engineering culture, promotion systems, performance reviews and management, including posts on the 2010-era Google management changes.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
I'm a husband, father, author, cyclist, sailor, travel addict, and Silicon Valley software engineer. I've written 4 books and actively review books on this blog. Comments on this blog are aggressively moderated against link-spam and rude or meaningless comments.
Most-linked posts?
- Tips for Noogler Engineers (Noogler = New at Google)4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-08-02
- Promotion Systems3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-11-03
- 5 Google Engineering Management Mistakes2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-11-01
- /2010/05/promotion-systems-redux.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-11-03
- Stock Compensation at Startups2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-01-24
- Indexing Googles source code2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-09-18
- Organizational Thinking (about social at Google) (2010)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-05-24
- Google Hiring Committee Stories2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-04-05
- The Counter-offer Conundrum2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-11-16
What Hacker News says?
To understand why Google isn't what it used to be, one has to understand what happened in 2009-2011. This is the era when Google decided to get "real managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM, and Intel. If Google had told them to wipe their fucking feet off before tracking shitty culture into the place, it might have survived. It didn't. Google has an immense amount of talent "unde…
Comment linking /2010/04/promotion-systems.html
on “Why I Left Google”Submitted Tips for Noogler Engineers (Noogler = New at Google) as a story · 182 points
HN discussionFrom what I gather, Google deliberately uses silo management (or whatever it is called). An engineer's performance reviews are based almost entirely on tangible work (lines of code) on his assigned product. Work on intangibles (mentoring, marketing strategy), or on tangibles outside the project (cross-product integration, future proofing) count against him. Ex-Googler Piaw Na has an interesting post about this: http…
Comment linking /2010/08/tips-for-noogler-engineers.html
on “Google Kills Wave”Submitted Google Hiring Committee Stories as a story · 82 points
HN discussionThe slide deck was part of a blog post. It's not my fault that news.ycombinator.com only linked to the slide deck and did not provide context: http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/10/facebook-and-google.html
Comment linking /2010/10/facebook-and-google.html
on “Google Engineering Management Mistakes”Submitted Tips for Tech Leads as a story · 79 points
HN discussion"Curious, why does he end the presentation saying that a tech ladder is bad?" From the blog post which provides some context to the presentation ( http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/10/facebook-and-google.html ), "Many consider Google's #1 mistake to be having a tech ladder in the first place. I covered that topic in my post on Promotion Systems ( http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/04/promotion-systems.html ) , so did not fee…
Comment linking /2010/05/promotion-systems-redux.html
on “Google Engineering Management Mistakes”Submitted 5 Google Engineering Management Mistakes as a story · 13 points
HN discussionContext: http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/10/facebook-and-google.html
Comment linking /2010/10/facebook-and-google.html
on “Google Engineering Management Mistakes”Submitted Google Infrastructure as a story · 11 points
HN discussionThose statements aren't "terrifying" in the least once you consider that your relationship with the employer is a _business_ relationship. If the employer didn't want career games, they wouldn't reward them. As simple as that. If your company's official party line diverges from its reward structure, the best thing you can do for yourself is to follow the reward structure and ignore the exhortations to be doing thing…
Comment linking /2010/08/tips-for-noogler-engineers.html
on “I Quit Google to Work for Myself (2018)”Submitted The Counter-offer Conundrum as a story · 10 points
HN discussionIt's hard to tell on a group-by-group basis. If you work at Google, keep your head down for 12-18 months. Don't pay attention to big-company politics and (unlike me) stay the fuck away from eng-misc. Work hard and (unless you're on a good project) figure out what transfer opportunities will be available, and which ones will be good. At the 18-month point, try for a promotion. It makes it easier to transfer. If you d…
Comment linking /2010/08/tips-for-noogler-engineers.html
on “I burned out at BigCo. Am I a fool for thinking I can avoid this at a startup?”Submitted 5 Google Engineering Management Mistakes as a story · 7 points
HN discussionAttitudes like this is why I had to write a book about startups. In 2003, people said the same thing about Google. It turned out that yes, joining Google in 2003 had a very good chance of making you a millionaire, even if you weren't a star hire. Guess what? Facebook is in the same situation Google was in 2003 today. 2 links: http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/05/compensation-thought-experi... http://piaw.blogspot.com/20…
Comment linking /2010/04/facebook-google-redux.html
on “Google to give staff 10% raise”Submitted Five Google Engineering management mistakes as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThat is, nobody is going to say, "You're only an L4, therefore you can't work on this project." Someone said exactly that to me when I was at Google. That's kinda how closed allocation works. What I always tell people: If you want to get promoted, just start acting like someone at the next level up. At any company, that's the quickest way to get fired. Getting into a turf war with someone with a much higher title? N…
Comment linking /2010/04/promotion-systems.html
on “The Google career path, Part 3: Performance reviews and promotions”Submitted Indexing Googles source code as a story · 5 points
HN discussionOn Pref, from http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/05/promotion-systems-redux.htm... : “In any case, I think it’s very healthy for Google to have an internal discussion about this. But do I expect the system to change? No. The super-star rule I referred to in that previous post would prevent that. I did have a discussion with a VP about this. He told me that when he first joined Google, he tried to change the promotion cri…
Comment linking /2010/05/promotion-systems-redux.html
on “Today is Goof Off at Work Day”Submitted The Money doesn't Matter Myth as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSince Theodore brought this up: "(And those stories about Google paying $3.5 million and $7 million to keep an engineer from defecting to Facebook? As far as I know, total bull. I bet it’s something made up by some Facebook recruiter who needed to explain how she let a live prospect get away. :-)" I'm pretty sure it's real. Someone who either posts on here or who is frequently submitted -- I think piaw, or something…
Comment linking /2010/11/counter-offer-conundrum.html
on “Google has a problem retaining great engineers? Bullcrap.”Submitted Compensation is hard, let's go shopping as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI've heard great things about the battery life on windows mobile phones. http://piaw.blogspot.com/2014/09/windows-phone-vs-android-ec...
Comment linking /2014/09/windows-phone-vs-android-ecosystem.html
on “Why I am happy downgrading from a $500 to a $75 smartphone”Submitted Location still matters as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIf you want to work at those companies, your time is better spent with something like Cracking the Coding Interview and reviewing it on the weekend. If you actually go through the entire book, you'd stand a pretty good chance at doing really well on all of your interviews as far as stuff you don't use on the job frequently questions go. This former googler who's interviewed a lot agrees with me: "For instance, if yo…
Comment linking /2014/10/gaming-coding-interview.html
on “Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?”Submitted Reflections on Social Networks and How People Use Them as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Promotion Systems as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Exploitation as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Organizational Thinking (about social at Google) (2010) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Execution strategy and business strategy as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
