Thanks. I have actually for many years and up to 150k head count, but never learned to properly deal with it. Moved onto a mid-sized company which is growing into a conglomerate of its own. I did like Erik Dietrich's Developer Hegemony, but his style of dealing with big co felt a bit too cynical.
Great job, Jonathan! Can't agree more about Waze's creative (and overly optimistic!) guidance and Google's general all-roundedness. Tell y'all a story, but take it with a bunch of salt because I generally resist updating apps and even OS until they stop working, for all the UI "improvements".
Every year, entire Munich traffic grinds to a halt once the first 5 snowflakes hit the ground. I guess the drivers of expensive German cars must be rather afraid to bump their precious new bumpers. Anyway, this is use-case #1 for Waze. It will guide you past the traffic using all nooks and crannies, and one-lane farmer's roads around town. Use-case #2 is reports of accidents AKA traffic police, who will block a major artery for any imaginable reason, past present or future, and for as long as they god damn please.
Now Google, great-and-all. One winter I drove to the nearby mountainous region of Czech Republic, before the EU anti-roaming-fee-law, so I whipped out my corporate phone with super strict mandatory software update policy. I thought I knew Google Maps so I followed the guidance with complete confidence. Half hour into the Republic, the icy serpentine road gets worse by the kilometer, but my SUV would surely handle that as long as I'm patient and careful. Next thing I know, my destination's on the right! But it's only a stop-over and the blue line goes ALL THE WAY BACK the dangerous, unsalted and completely unnecessary road, adding an hour of grief to the already delayed getting-there. I swear I never touched the screen to agree to stop over at that restaurant, the suggestion must have either confirmed itself upon a timeout or the touchscreen must have bumped against something in the compartment under the windshield. And I never heard about Google Maps making suggestions in the middle of a trip anyway. This was the last time I used an up-to-date Google Maps, the old version's just fine, thank you very much. The newer one could have killed my whole family that night.
Alright, I don't hate Google or Munich or even the local police quite as much as I might sound like. Ads are broken though, which means a huge potential for distraction-free marketing.
btw Fontainebleau rules! I have a couple of friends who are avid climbers earning money by programming, or like me, born with a VR headset on, and only getting back into the body by bouldering.
Good climbing and good coding require / nurture similar skill sets: choosing a problem wisely, working slow and steady, recovering from setbacks.
https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony