Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by alberth 1 day ago
Sorry to hear your story.

Since I’ve never work at FAANG, does Google have strict procedures (and approvals) before launching a product? And if so, did this go through that process?

3 comments

> does Google have strict procedures (and approvals) before launching a product?

I worked at Google in the past, most recently ending in early 2015, and can confirm that the answer to this question was yes when I was there - presumably still the case today with different details.

I have no idea whether the procedures were followed in this case, nor do I have any other inside information on this story, nor am I speaking for Google or Alphabet here.

It was certainly the case for me back circa... I can barely remember, 2008/2009?

Everyone just launched tools internally, although it was pretty easy to get approval to launch something externally, although most people didn't bother. The environment back then had tons of internal tools all over the place.

Oh yeah, I'm referring to external launches, not to internal launches.
Their process is a well-known template other organizations look at when creating their own:

https://opensource.google/documentation/reference/releasing

I’ve been gone a few years, but there was a process for contributing OSS code outside the company, and another for releasing company code externally, etc

It seemed to mostly work. Some people complained it was too slow, others seemed to manage fine.

I think Chris DiBonas’ team ran all of that.

DiBona definitely started the OSS group and process, and ran it for many years.