The Wave release was the event that really kicked off my starting to rethink my own framing of what Google's engineering culture actually produces. I was so excited for its release, possibly moreso than any major innovation before then, & what was delivered was pure crap
implementation wise. The idea was brilliant, & open, so theoretically someone could have done it well, but Google poisoned the well by releasing such a turd.
Throughout it's existence Google has been revered as a company for its engineering output, but if you interrogate that even a little bit, you end up with a very small minority of gems among a massive ocean of over engineered crap. Even the huge objective open successes like k8s are to this day sold with the massive caveat of "it's heavy & over engineered, but": nobody's calling k8s elegant. Pretty much all of their good products are acquisitions, many of which they've subsequently degraded.
One can certainly make this argument about almost any large corporation, but I do think there's very few with such a stark divide between how the quality of their engineering work is revered & the reality.
Throughout it's existence Google has been revered as a company for its engineering output, but if you interrogate that even a little bit, you end up with a very small minority of gems among a massive ocean of over engineered crap. Even the huge objective open successes like k8s are to this day sold with the massive caveat of "it's heavy & over engineered, but": nobody's calling k8s elegant. Pretty much all of their good products are acquisitions, many of which they've subsequently degraded.
One can certainly make this argument about almost any large corporation, but I do think there's very few with such a stark divide between how the quality of their engineering work is revered & the reality.