Google, software development culture and partnership

Steve Yegge writes entertainingly about how idea generation, the software development culture and project management works at Google. Google is a great company for idea generation, and I've no doubt that the culture described by Steve is a large part of that. But if your business depends on Google's launches to any extent, this can cause you trouble. We succumbed to an invitation to participate in a Google initiative which was originally scheduled to launch in Q4, 2005. A shakey first stage just launched this month. During that period there was almost nothing in the way of feedback. So that experience of Google's development process hacked me off, because I sold the Google partnership internally to my business and we invested, and then had to sit on our hands. And we'd think twice before doing the same again.

Not knowing what's going on with Google internally, nevertheless, the freedom given to engineers to switch projects seems to be enjoyed by Google management, too, with there being a pretty frequent switch between projects seemingly in focus. This is frustrating for partners, who often depend on dates in our own cycles.

So, maybe if you're part of the Google culture, it's great. If you have to work WITH the Google culture, but on the outside, not always so great. I still admire Google, but I don't trust them.