Software Engineering

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

- Albert Einstein

Writing software is a messy business. You come up with a solution that works. This is probably best exemplified by the Netflix Prize competition (see wikipedia article for a quick overview if you have not heard of it before).

One consensus I got at KDD Cup 2007 was a slight disappointment at the "hackish" nature of the leading team, which later won the 2007 progress prize. Their winning solution is described here.

It is easy to have bloat creep into code as bugs are fixed and features are added.

One positive plus of working in Google is the inclination to frown on code bloat, and engineers are recognized for coming up with simpler implementations. This philosophy of constant iteration of software engineering ensures that systems are capable of keeping up with features while being maintainable. (Unit testing is HUGE here too)

MOM

Doing a Google search on "mom" shows how overloaded the term is. Poor mothers... Not getting the mindshare of searches all over the world.

And of course, again we see evidence of Singaporeans' love for acronyms as Ministry of Manpower [mom.gov.sg] is such a high-ranking result.

We're having too much fun here

The article based on the interview with Straits Times is now available - Our Guys in Google [straitstimes.com].

I am now wondering if I remembered wrongly - is it supposed to be the 100 feet or 150 feet rule?

Oh well, hopefully this nugget of information does not become a circular reference like the Sacha Baron Cohen past job history factoid as featured on slashdot. :P

brain rules

The author of Brain Rules is giving a talk in Google next week. I'm going to attend the talk because he has the rules:

1. Exercise - Brain Rule #1
2. Sleep - Brain Rule #7

I already agree.

So what's up?

I went for dinner with some friends of my friends, and one of the 2nd degree friends asked me about the "layoffs" in Google lately. A little shocking, but I believe he was mistaken - he was probably confusing us with other search engine companies.

They were also curious about the atmosphere in Google (presumably due to the "layoffs"), but I think it's important to inform everyone about the ten things Google has found to be true.

Quite appropriately, #1 is "Focus on the user and all else will follow."

We focus on being a really good search engine, and do whatever we can to help the web ecosystem with our technology. We believe that stock price and market capitalization is incidental to being a great company doing great things.

p.s., to clarify in case there is any doubt, there are no "layoffs" in Google. The confusion arose because of the constant media focus on the negatives of the US economy lately. In addition, the perception of any form of exodus is, in my opinion, overplayed. People naturally come and go.

In fact, now is a good time to note that Google is always looking for great people to hire. So if you have what it takes, please apply for a Google job now!

Maybe in Newspaper?

I got interviewed last week by a reporter from Straits Times with several other Singaporeans - so I might be appearing in an article if they choose to use our group photo with Meng. Other than the fact that he is possibly the only person you can reliably depend on having a camera on him, he is, conveniently enough, possibly the most famous Singaporean Googler. 

Don't be too shocked at my hairstyle - and yes, my parents are asking me whether Google has any barbers (yes, there are on-site hairstylists, but they are not free). And no, I'm not cutting my hair anytime soon. :P

That's a big dog...

Only at Google.

Today I was walking across the hallway when I saw a lady hugging this really huge dog (think waist high), until I realized it was a pony! And there were also a few roosters and chickens around. I thought I was going bonkers.

So it turns out that this is a party for Googlers who help out in various ways outside of their normal job scope, and this was a way to (1) attract attention so that other Googlers know about this, and (2) entertain Googlers as there is some strange appeal to looking at farm animals gaze grass, poop, and walk around in the sun. In any case, there were also goats, bunnies, ducks, and a pig.

Only at Google.

New Tower of Drinks

Can you tell the difference?

Non-Noogler Update

I am a week away from being a three month-old Googler, and currently I call myself the "non-noogler" (but not yet a googler). Things that I have done so far:

• 151 unique drinks in Googleplex found and drank
  
• Have jogged, cycled and driven from home to Google
• Felt like I can change the world with my work after seeing the launch of my team's product
  
• Have zealously promoted Google products to friends until wife now rolls her eyes whenever I mention 1-800-Goog-411 but forget to mention yelp
• Commented that I "only" had halibut for lunch - ya'know, nothing special
• Changed to using ion3 as my windows manager
• Met Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, and Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts
• Got to know about 10 Singaporean googlers, including Meng
• Attended numerous meditation classes/sessions at Google
• Missed two company trips. One to Hawaii, and another to Disney Land
• Loving it here
  

Singapore's Existence

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, 2nd Minister of MICA, visited Google recently to learn and share insights on the development of IT and engineering in Singapore, US and globally. We had a fairly long discussion, about 2 hours, talking on issues ranging from how Google works to the rationale behind scholarships with bonds.

As the new guard of the Singapore government, I talked away with the impression that the minister had thought long about Singapore and its role in the global economy - a very poignant quote from him (paraphrased) "what why and how can Singapore, a place which logically does not deserve to exist, continue to thrive?"

Turning american

I caught the shopping bug, especially since Google gave out a $1000 holiday bonus to all full-time employees. Besides a Harman Kardon Soundsticks II (connected remotely to my ex-neglected airport express!) and iRobot Roomba, I got a bunch of DVDs and digital music from Amazon and iTunes. I actually thought to myself, "man, I'm turning american". (like how people turn japanese). At least I can still afford my credit card bills.

In other news, I helped to host teachers from the Singapore Sports School at Google. I found it highly commendable that the school funded these teachers to visit other schools in the US and multinational corporations like Apple and Google to learn about organizational culture, operations, etc. Now the onus is on them to spread the word and make real changes in Singapore.

I also attended the highly-coveted interviewer training classes by (1) drafting a response to attend the class before openings are available, (2) setting an alert to inform me when there are openings, (3) ???, (4) profit! Oh wait, I'm not on /.

Google really places a lot of emphasis on interviewing, and it is something that software engineers consider as an actual work activity, because interviewing well is tough - You have to take the time to prepare for the interview, actually conduct the interview, and finally write a detailed summary so that Google can make an informed decision on whether or not to hire a candidate.

On the other hand, when I told the Mrs that I attended interviewer training, she informed my mother that I "went to attend some nonsense course to skive"... ouch. That hurts.

When work is fun

First of all, to all those who did not understand my "Kool-aid" references, see this. I am not obsessed with Kool-aid.

Since my last blog post, I have moved desks so that the team now sits together, now have 90 bottles/cans in my collection, went for a talk by The Simpsons animators in Google (and got a free book!), bought a car (Toyota Corolla CE) and got rejected for a credit card.

But most importantly, I am working hard trying to get a system up at work, and have worked on weekends and weekdays until 10pm.

When work is fun, it becomes dangerous. :)

All the Drinks

I currently have 66 unique beverage cans/bottles on my cabinet, ranging from Guru Energy Lite 100% Natural (argh, cough syrup equivalent) to The Ginger People "Ginger Beer" (wow!) to Tejava Premium Iced Tea (Unsweetened).

And I just discovered that different buildings have slightly different sets of drinks. Looks like I might hit 100 unique drinks by the end of the month. Woe is my bladder.

Days of my Life

Reveille

Due to the time difference between Singapore and US, I wake up at around 6am PST while the Mrs stays up late (by our standards) to videoconference. This arrangement means that I normally sleep by around 10pm. As such, I normally get to work by 8ish, which brings us to the one frequently asked question is what the working hours are like. There are people here at this time of the day, but let's just say if someone is working at this time, it's being a looooong night. The working hours vary greatly from project to project, but people tend to incline towards starting around 10am and going home after dinner (it's free anyway).

After arriving at my desk, I normally throw down my bag at my desk, and think to myself how unfit I am to be this out of breath.

Self-Powered Commuting

I cycle to work daily as I live about 5-6 miles (depending on the route I take) away. This is apparently quite Googley, so for every 5 days you cycle to work, Google will donate $25 to a selected charity. See Forward Management and Sierra Club Mutual Funds Announce 2007 Green Leaders and Bike to Work Day [danvk.org].

Here today, Gone tomorrow

The first two weeks as a noogler involves a lot of learning and going for lectures. By the second week, I learnt how to ignore certain emails, what classes to attend or not (and what classes to try your darnest to get a place in), and, well, where to find out what you do not know.

I have a mentor who guides me, but it turns out that my group has gone to Hawaii this week, leaving me and a noogler who joined a week before me back in Googleplex.

I have a goal

I started a personal project to sample all non-alcoholic distinct canned and bottled drinks available at Googleplex. At last count, I had about 40 bottles and cans listed in my spreadsheet, and I reckon I am about half-way done (I still have not gotten to the Cokes and Pepsis).

My last marathon

I have a deal with the Mrs that I can run one more marathon, and I have my sights set on one in the Bay area. Definitely. And this time, it will be sub-4 hours. Oh yeah.

Does anyone have a good suggestion for marathons in the Bay area? Preferably as close as possible to Mountain View, California (don't have a car).

Perks

Friends and family keep asking me for what other perks Google has to offer. Let's see, you get $5000 off when you buy a green car (although that's about to change for 2008). Free laundry room with free washing powder/liquid. Did I mention the food? Free gym membership with subsidized personal training rates. Subsidized massage plus one-time free one-hour massage. On-site doctors. Medical, dental and vision coverage. High-end desktops with 30" monitors for software development plus a laptop (Mac, Windows or Linux). Nap pods (these are cool, basically they are sofas with screens and lounge music that allow you to take naps). Dog-friendly. Great talks (e.g. Obama visited Google). California weather.

It's a nice great almost-perfect place to work for, ok? :)

Life as a Noogler

Seeing this is the end of my first week as noogler, I thought I should relate some of my thoughts so that I may look back at them fondly in the future.

Feeling alive

First and foremost, this is an amazing place to work for. You feel completely appreciated and while most nooglers would allude to the amazing food that is all free here, I am completely blown away at the opportunities given to you here. What you do here in Google makes a difference to millions of people, and Google provides you the tools and support needed to do so.

Need a better ergonomic keyboard? Walk 2 minutes to a hardware depot and get one. No questions asked.

Need a vertical mouse? Yap. Same procedure.

New headphones? New laptop cable? Yes, Yes and Yes.

I exchanged my Mac Pro for a Linux box (don't ask why), and all I had to do was to go online, request for an exchange, and a technician comes down with the new machine and replaces it for me. I almost broke a sweat. So I went to the gym to get it out. (argh, that's terrible writing)

Gym with 20 treadmills which have televisions built-in? And infinite pools? And personal trainers? And monkeys that cheer you on as you exercise?

I made the last one up, but with free gym membership, what can I say?

Maybe you are asking, yes, so what - Google is just throwing money at engineers. What a waste! Well, everything is on a honor system, but I do not see people abusing this privilege and say, getting a fancy keyboard for their mother. These accessories are there for engineers to use and work with. You do not know how empowering this is. In school, I would have to go to my supervisor to request for something as mundane as a keyboard, and not to get a new fancy keyboard as my current one does not suit my posture, but because the current one is so full of biological material that spiders have taken residence in it. I felt beholden to the institution.

Here, I feel that I am part of a organism that is dynamic and growing. Things are a little chaotic, but it's managed chaos. I feel alive here.

Am I drinking the kool-aid? Maybe it's in the food, but hey, it's all true.

The Power

Google technology is crazy wow. The amount of API and libraries that an engineer has access to is mind-blowing. And everyone works out one source control tree. _ONE_. Everything any engineer writes (even an intern) is available to any other engineer for use. And these are not any engineer off the street, these are top-notch "best people I have ever worked with" engineers with top-quality code. Gee. I hope I do not humiliate myself here.

The collaborative nature of Google is outstanding - you think of something, and instead of worrying about the bits and pieces, and coding from scratch, you just have to piece together some of the most powerful technology you have ever seen and bam! Your sauce is done. No, wait. I mean, your program is parallelized and has access to TB of diskspace.

Be with me

If you know me, or even if you do not know me but feel that you are an excellent candidate, and feel like exploring opportunities with Google, please _please_ email me your resume and I will gladly refer you(It's on the main page of this domain). Such a referral can mean the difference between your resume being overlooked and tossed in the bin, and being placed on a priority list for interviews.

I will also love to take the time to talk to you about Google, and how you can be part of this adventure.

Noogler

I am a noogler!

All I can say is that I have received more emails in one day than I used to receive as a student in a whole month!

Newbie in CA Part 3

That went faster than I expected

I managed to subscribe to new services before even moving into my new apartment - The day I move in I will have local calling service, DSL, water, electricity and even my furniture from IKEA.

The only problems are items which require a social security number - driving license, savings accounts and credit cards.

What have you been doing?

I have been reading books like:

• Google's PageRank and Beyond: The Science of Search Engine Rankings


• Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications


• Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs (3rd Edition)


• Mining the Web: Discovering Knowledge from Hypertext Data

I am also execising and running every other day for an hour. Overall, my time is unstructured but I am feeling this period of rest is good as it relaxes and refocuses my mind.

Gmail now has IMAP

Stop the presses!

Gmail now has IMAP!

Newbie in CA Part 2

Don't pass Go, but do go to the bank

After all that adrenaline rush of being interrograted by border officers, I got my rental car and got on highway 101. Whoopie. I left the airport at 12:30pm and I managed to make it to corporate housing in Sunnyvale by 1:30pm.

I learnt that when the corporate housing confirmation letter says check-in time is 4pm. They do mean 4pm. As the apartment was locked and I had no where to go, I figured I would go to Citibank and withdraw money from the ATM (you know, the plan)

But despite having no social security, I still managed to open a Citibank account just with my Singapore passport and driving license. Nice. So I got my checking account on the first day in USA, while waiting to move into my temporary housing. I still need a social security number before I can get a savings account, but hey, that's fine by me.

So anyhoo, I am currently living in Sunnyvale, CA, which is one region of Silicon Valley.

"Credit History Required" Really Means

"Give us money and we won't need credit history".

For example, renting an apartment without a social security number means you put up a larger amount of deposit. Getting utilities and gas without a social security number means you place more deposit.

Newbie in CA Part 1

My major reservations of moving to california have, fortunately, not been realized. However, this makes for terrible blogging inspiration, but I will try. As always.

The Non-Form

I arrived in California an hour early for a reason. This occurred for a reason. I mean, there must be a reason why tail winds were really pushing hard that day such that we would arrive at 11am instead of 12:30pm.

See, this extra hour gave me ample time to get stuck at immigration puzzling why I did not present an I-797 petition.

Me: "I'm sorry. What?" (Dazed look you give after 18 hours of flying)

Officer #1: "An I-797 petition - you must always bring it along with you everytime you travel as a H-1B visa holder"

Me: "??? - That's all I have." (Pointing to H-1B1 visa in passport)

Officer #1: "Go to secondary."

Me: "???" (yeah, I'm going to know that refers to a secondary interview, and that I have to walk to the end of the hallway)

So I trot down hastily to a separate office and got interviewed by another border officer, who kept grilling me about my non-existent I-797 form. Images of me getting hurled back to Singapore in handcuffs flashed by my eyes - all because I did not bring this piece of paper. Sheeesh. As the interview continued, I felt quite of bad, because, frankly, I just had no idea what an I-797 form even looks like. I get a sense the border officer was half-expecting me to be an illegal immigrant, but got stuck with ... well, me.

I must have worn him down, either that or because a queue of people needing to undergo secondary interviews was forming. This "must have" document all of a sudden became not completely essential - I managed to get my visa approved after receiving a warning to always carry my I-797 form with me. I was extremely curious at this time in point what a "I-797" petition is, and the first thing I did after getting internet connection was to search for images relating to "I-797" on Google. That got me to this page - which, if you enlarge the photo, is a I-797 for a H-1B1.

No. I do not have that. What the heck is that?

As I was freaking out, I searched for "i797 h1b1" and got this, which states, "Unlike a traditional H-1B visa, the employer does not have to submit Form I-129, Petition for Nonimmigrant Worker, to the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (Department of Homeland Security) and you do not need to obtain a Notice of Action, Form I-797."

...

bah.

So yeah, I arrived early so that my schedule would not be disturbed by this non-form.

Strictly business

I just returned from US yesterday on a 180 degree Singapore Airlines seat. And no, I was not on the business or first class section.



I visited Google to meet the person (let's leave it at "a friend of a friend" because the real relationship is rather more complicated than that) who had initially forwarded my resume. Incidentally, I met another ex-NUS postdoctoral fellow who is now in Google Mountain View. Of course I had the free lunch (sushi) and walked around the campus (beautiful). It was a joy to be in Google campus as employees actually seem happy to be there. I'm really looking forward to starting work there.

Oh, also, the toilets have the self-cleaning devices that clean your ... posterior.

Google

In other news, I will be joining Google in its Mountain View, CA office as a Software Engineer towards the end of the year. In the meantime, I will be amending my thesis for submission (whoopie! graduating!), finishing up work, packing up, and going to apply for my US visa.