Developer productivity with Dr. Nicole Forsgren (creator of DORA, co-creator of SPACE)

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In This Episode

Have you seen this comic before about the org structure of Big Tech companies?

Longtime readers will recall that the author of this comic is Manu Cornet — who previously shared details on how this comic came about (and he almost did not publish it, thinking it would not be funny). For today’s episode, I sat down with him, to go through more comics, why he created them, and the deeper meaning behind several of these.

Manu spent over a decade at Google, doing both backend and frontend development. He also spent a year and a half at Twitter before Elon Musk purchased it and rebranded it to X. But what Manu is most known for are his hilarious internet comics about the tech world, including his famous org chart comic from 2011 about Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft.

In today’s conversation, we explore many of his comics, discuss the meaning behind them, and talk about the following topics:

• The viral org chart comic that captured the structure of Big Tech companies

• Why Google is notorious for confusing product names

• The comic that ended up on every door at Google

• How Google’s 20% time fostered innovation—and what projects came from it

• How one of Manu’s comics predicted Google Stadia’s failure—and the reasons behind it

• The value of connecting to users directly

• Twitter’s climate before and after Elon Musk’s acquisition and the mass layoffs that followed

• And more!

This is an unusually visual episode, offering the story behind several comics about Big Tech, Google and Twitter that you might have seen. With Manu, we discuss the deeper meaning behind several of these — ones that are pretty obvious to those who worked inside these companies, but might be less intuitive if you’re only seeing them for the first time.

The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode

• How Manu creates comics

• Consolidating technologies

• Is Big Tech becoming more cutthroat?

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(02:01) Manu’s org structure comic

(07:10) Manu’s “Who Sues Who” comic

(09:15) Google vs. Amazon comic

(14:10) Confusing names at Google

(20:00) Different approaches to sharing information within companies

(22:20) The two ways of doing things at Google

(25:15) Manu’s code reviews comic

(27:45) The comic that was printed on every single door of Google

(30:55) An explanation of 20% at Google

(36:00) Gmail Labs and Google Stadia

(41:36) Manu’s time at Twitter and the threat of Elon Musk buying

(47:07) How Manu helped Gergely with a bug on Twitter

(49:05) Musk’s acquirement of Twitter and the resulting layoffs

(59:00) Manu’s comic about his disillusionment with Twitter and Google

(1:02:37) Rapid fire round

A summary of the conversation

The org chart comic

• Manu created this comic in 2011 featuring the org charts of big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft.

  • Manu almost didn't publish the comic because he didn't find it funny by the time he finished drawing it. The punchline was Oracle having a large legal department and a tiny engineering department.

  • The comic became very popular and has been referenced heavily.

The culture inside Google

• Google has a problem naming things, which Manu attributes to its bottom-up culture and engineers starting competing projects.

  • There isn't much top-down pressure to consolidate efforts, leading to consumer confusion.

  • An example of Google's naming issues is the evolution from Google Wallet to Android Pay to Google Pay, with logo changes causing confusion for partners like Uber.

• Manu created a comic about this: how confusing it is to interact with Google products due to the different names.

• The “Google Graveyard comic” was prophetic: it predicted that Google's cloud gaming console Stadia would eventually be killed.

Google vs Amazon

• Manu created a comic contrasting Google and Amazon in their engineering culture, and how they treat customers

  • Amazon is known for bending over backwards for customers, including AWS clients.

  • Google focuses on building useful features but lacks strong customer service.

  • Amazon's on-call practices are tough, while Google's are more relaxed, with SREs taking on much of the on-call load.

Google’s engineering culture

• The comic about migrations at Google: shows the challenges of adopting new systems before they are ready. One Google exec said, "There's two ways to do things at Google. There's the deprecated way and there's the way that doesn't work yet".

• One on code reviews: shows the software engineer trying to replace a light bulb while being critiqued on how to screw it in.

• Another comic depicts the author of the change who says, "Oh, I don't need to be too cautious about my code. If there's some problem, the reviewer will catch it," and the reviewer who says, "Oh, I don't need to review this too carefully if the author must've know what he's doing or what she's doing".

• Google used Manu's "Beware the Tailgator" comic on office doors to prevent theft by reminding employees not to let unverified people into the building. He created updated versions each year.

• Google's 20% time allowed employees to dedicate a portion of their time to projects of their choosing.

  • Gmail and Google News were started as 20% projects.

  • The company has become more traditional and less encouraging of 20% projects.

  • There may be a connection between Google's 20% time and the high number of products it shuts down.

  • Google could experiment internally without necessarily launching everything publicly.

  • Gmail Labs allowed people to launch things with lower scrutiny and made it clear that these were not officially supported and they may go out at any point.

  • Manu created a comic about ending of this practice as well

Move to Twitter and Musk’s takeover

• Manu left Google and joined Twitter because it felt like a younger version of Google, with a friendly culture and less red tape.

• Shortly after Manu joined Twitter, Elon Musk began his attempt to acquire the company, creating uncertainty.

• After Musk bought Twitter, there were massive firings, with at least 50% and ultimately around 80% of employees being let go.

• Manu created a bunch of comics about the events at Twitter – and later also published a comic book about it

• While Manu was also let go from Twitter: the cartoonist side of himself was having a great time witnessing the events at Twitter.

As a fun fact, Manu doesn't have a favorite programming language. He chooses the best tool for the job, and has been coding with Java, JavaScript, Python, C++, Objective-C, Swift, Rust, and C. He also built a site with all his book, movie and music recommendations.

Where to find Manu Cornet:

• Mastodon: https://twit.social/@manu

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manucornet/

• Website: https://ma.nu/

Mentions during the episode:

• Code Review on Printed Paper: an Excerpt from the Twitoons Comic Book: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/code-review-on-printed-paper-an-excerpt

• A much clearer insight into who sues who: https://bonkersworld.net/who-sues-who

• CEO's "Burning Platform" Memo Highlights Nokia's Woes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/02/09/ceos-burning-platform-memo-highlights-nokias-woes/

• Guns and Roses: https://bonkersworld.net/guns-and-roses

• The Full Circle on Developer Productivity with Steve Yegge: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/steve-yegge

• Grab: https://www.grab.careers/en/

• Comic about the confusing Google names: https://goomics.net/207

• Naming dashboard: https://goomics.net/239

• Access: https://goomics.net/370

• Welcome to Google: https://goomics.net/50

• Eric Schmidt on X: https://x.com/ericschmidt

• Jonathan Rosenberg on X: https://x.com/jjrosenberg

• Code Reviews: https://bonkersworld.net/code-reviews

• Beware the Tailgator: https://goomics.net/56

• 20% time: https://goomics.net/343

• Where did Gmail labs go?: https://zapier.com/blog/gmail-labs-missing/

• Google Stadia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Stadia

• Google engineer who criticized the company in viral comics on why he finally quit: https://mashable.com/article/google-engineer-manu-cornet-comics-critique

• Network effect: https://goomics.net/324

• The Twitter Worker Who Captured Elon Musk’s Takeover in All Its Cartoonish Glory: https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/elon-musk-twitter-cartoons-manu-cortnet.html

• Howl’s Moving Castle: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0347149/

• Tesla: https://www.tesla.com/

• Twittoons: One employee's cartoon chronicle of Twitter's accelerated descent: https://www.amazon.com/Twittoons-employees-chronicle-Twitters-accelerated/dp/1952629020

• Javascript: https://www.javascript.com/

• C++: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B

• Python: https://www.python.org/

• Swift: https://www.swift.org/

• Rust: https://www.rust-lang.org/

• CSS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS

• Manu’s favorites: https://ma.nu/faves/

• Mind the Goof (Gomer Goof #1): https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Goof-Gomer-Franquin/dp/1849183589

• Building Software: https://bonkersworld.net/building-software

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