---
layout: post
title: On perception.
---
[1]: https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX
[2]: /img/2011-10-12/iStock_000006115351Small.jpg
[3]: /img/2011-10-12/iStock_000014058131Small.jpg
[4]: http://code.google.com/more/
[5]: http://developer.android.com
[6]: http://developer.google.com
[7]: http://code.google.com
[8]: https://github.com/facebook/hiphop-php

[Steve Yegge's post][1] about Google not getting platforms is making the rounds
on Twitter and Hacker News and such today. 

Despite him very clearly taking about the *platform* of Google+, not the
*product*, the distinction seems to be lost on the majority of pundits and
journalists I've seen talking about the "exposé" since the post went live.
If it were about the product, that would be an argument I'd have little vested
in, but what's really disappointing to me is how little research Steve did
about Google's developer platform strategies at all.

One of Steve's most significant complaints focuses on the lackluster content
available on [developer.google.com][6].  That is pretty confounding, because 
anyone who has worked with Google platforms for longer than a month understands
that that site is an isolated world almost exclusively dedicated to Google+.
The actual [code.google.com][7], with its [dozens of APIs][4],
is not even mentioned in his post, much 
less the developer site for Google's most successful platform to date - 
[Android][5]. 

My closing thought is for anyone who skimmed through Steve's post and is using
it to come to any sort of conclusion about the platform or product at all- this
is obviously a talented engineer blowing off steam, and nothing much more
significant than that. Before I started at Google, everything the company
built seemed like this:

![3]

But after seeing how things worked inside, products often felt like this:

![2] 

Which isn't an indictment of Google at all - so far it's been true of
every company I've worked in, and from Steve's description of Amazon, true
there as well.  I have no idea about Facebook, but any company which writes
[C via PHP][8] has *got* to have its own share of ugliness too.

So next time you see an engineer write a big ranty post about a tech company
consider that it's probably written by someone who has been looking at
the code equivalent of the latter image for a long, long time.  It may not
be all sunshine and roses, but the sky *probably* isn't falling as fast at it
may seem.(1)

(1) Except for Yahoo, of course.  That place is *fucked*.