Comment by zem

1 year ago

i got caught up in this :( really sad about the whole thing; this was by far the best job i've had in my 20-year career (including other teams at google), and i do not know if i will ever have another one as good. we were a chronically understaffed team supporting a large part of the python ecosystem at google, and we did some amazing work over the years.

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zem

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_giorgio_  1 year ago

Seriously, what is the reason for this move?

The language is so good and well known that they don't need a dedicated team to do these activites you talked about?

Or are they hiring cheaper workers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40171125#40176438

I don't understand such a move, because all AI is developed in pytorch. I think that google uses JAX and pytorch.

  • zem  1 year ago

    they are building a new python team from scratch in munich, for whatever reason. yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either.

    • joyboyluffy  1 year ago

      I am sure you will find another job that you really like. Well you said you guys were seriously understaffed but that makes it more nonsense to fire them. So were you guys working on a specific project and will those guys from munich continue on it.

      1 reply →

    • luckyrand  1 year ago

      I’m sorry to hear that.

      It does not make sense at all. Python cython is a complex ecosystem. It is very difficult for new engineers to pick up speed.

      Do you think there is some priority change? Like more focus on internal use case, instead of upstream contribution?

      2 replies →

  • Sleepful  1 year ago

    In my mind it would make sense if there are some laws to which they want to adhere, perhaps something EU-related (GDPR? IDK), and moving to Munich might be a good way of prioritizing. Perhaps something US-related they don't like, see for example that TikTok is an AI company and yeah, or the KYC-related stuff [1]. However, I am talking out of my ass, I don't really keep up with laws, upcoming bills or anything like that. :shrug:

    [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40158752

nicsu  1 year ago

@zem maybe you would be interested in what we do http://tektonic.ai please let me know at nic.surpatanu@tektonic.ai We are looking for an ML + DSL engineer to imagine and build our execution runtime and dev platform.

dartharva  1 year ago

Care to weigh in about what you reckon happened? Surely the company didn't suddenly lose its need of the Python ecosystem?

  • zem  1 year ago

    i reckon we simply got offshored, since they're now building a whole new python team in munich, though i don't know whether for cost reasons or to expand the languages presence in the munich office or both.