Google code quality

Amazon
IlIllIIl

Go to company page Amazon

IlIllIIl
Dec 10, 2019 10 Comments

I’ve always been curious about this:

At every company I’ve ever worked, there’s never enough time to code everything “right”.

By “right” I mean, the whole codebase has great abstractions, every corner case is handled, great error handling, etc...

Is google the exception to this? Is everything high quality? Or do Googlers still look at their codebases and think “hmm thats kinda hacky”.

And as a follow up: what happens when there’s a deadline crunch at Google? Does code quality take a hit or is every project extended until “Google” quality code is reached.

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TOP 10 Comments
  • Google
    PES2019

    Go to company page Google

    PES2019
    Yes, Google is a big exception to this. There is an unbelievable emphasis on quality in terms of readability, performance, using the right data structures and algorithms, reusing existing code, testing, debuggability, etc.

    It is not unreasonable to be asked to reimplement your feature in another way because it is cleaner or makes the design more extensible. You also write 50 lines of feature code and support it with 200 lines of unit and integration tests

    It is also not uncommon for others to rewrite your code two years later to conform to new coding guidelines, replace deprecated components or for any other reason and it is a very highly valued contribution that can get you promoted if done on a large scale.

    This affects feature velocity and puts a lot of toil on devs but once you get used to it you produce 10x better code than what you would normally do outside Google
    Dec 10, 2019 5
  • Google / Eng
    cloudy sky

    Go to company page Google Eng

    cloudy sky
    In general code is good quality. Caveat: it is over-engineered and over-complex usually. But it is well-tested (eg if you submit code, you also submit tests for that code at the same time)

    Deadlines? Those get missed very often, unless they coincide with something publicly announced (eg stadia launch, GML event, etc)
    Dec 10, 2019 0
  • Google
    AngelPriya

    Go to company page Google

    PRE
    Amazon
    AngelPriya
    This was a shock for me when I moved from amazon to google. The way it works is Google misses deadlines by 1-2 quarters. while at amazon you are handed pip if you don’t deliver on time (or explain why you missed).
    Dec 10, 2019 0
  • Can Cloud afford to be so stringent?
    Dec 10, 2019 1
    • Google
      PES2019

      Go to company page Google

      PES2019
      I am in Cloud and the emphasis on quality is not less than other parts of Google. I came from Microsoft. Feature velocity at Azure is miles better and code quality at GCP is way better. In the end Azure is winning, at least for now
      Dec 10, 2019