

Harvard Professor Matt Welsh: Working for Google - rxin
http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/06/working-for-google.html

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chadaustin
[academia : toy boats in bathtubs :: industry : aircraft carriers] is the most
memorable distinction between academia and industry I've heard. In the end,
your slice of the pie will be as big as you can handle, but the overall size
of the pie (and thus your percentage of control) determines whether you choose
academia or startups or established companies.

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ryanwaggoner
At the risk of looking stupid, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that
[academia : industry :: toy boats in bathtubs : aircraft carriers] ?

I would read this aloud as: "academia is to industry as toy boats in bathtubs
is to aircraft carriers", which seems to make more sense to me as an analogy.
So do I have it right, do I not understand analogies, or do I not understand
the notation you're using?

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ehsanul
I read it as "if academia were toy boats, industry would be aircraft
carriers."

Edit - the blog post clears this up:

 _The way I think of it, being in academia is a lot like building toy boats
and playing with them in your bathtub.

...

Whereas being at Google is like working on an aircraft carrier at sea._

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shadowfox
Now I can see why mathematics is so formal

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vibhavs
As you can tell by the date, it's about a month old. He has a follow up blog
post titled "First week at Google": [http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2010/07/first-week-at-google....](http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2010/07/first-week-at-google.html).

~~~
ardit33
"There are few people over 40 wandering the halls. " -- Oh yeah. I wonder what
happens to an engineer at google when he turns 40. Does he go to Valhalla or
something?

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nostrademons
He invents one of:

a.) A programming language.

b.) A distributed database.

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gaius
There are no portholes on the poop deck! Every sailor knows that :-)

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Jun8
What! And I was kinda angry with Google that after all my degrees they still
consider me for "software engineering" position. This prof gets the same
title. Hmm.

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pgbovine
iirc, almost every technical person there who does coding is a 'software
engineer' ... even ken thompson, rob pike, guido, etc.

EDIT: k nevermind about ken thompson and rob pike ... but there must be other
big-shot hackers whose title is still 'software engineer'

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Jun8
Yep. It's like calling Michelangelo a painter. It's true, but...

AFAIK, their SW engineer positions have five levels, so not everybody's equal
really.

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ramchip
Well, if Michelangelo had a business card, I think he'd write "painter" or
"artist" on it. There isn't much else to say.

What should they be using besides "software engineer"?

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ciupicri
Senior Software Engineer, Team Lead, Architect, CTO and many other buzzwords.

