I worked at Google in 2015 and learned a great deal of things, I wrote this shortly after; now I think it\u2019s finally ready to publish.<\/p>\n\n
Failures need to be investigated so you can learn from them and avoid making the same mistake in the future. Any time you create a program there are eventually going to be human errors, perhaps a cavalcade of human errors. Firing the developer for a bug after code-review and QA approved their work isn\u2019t going to fix anything. If there\u2019s an error in the workflow that causes people to step on each other\u2019s toes or causes stress for the team it needs to be discussed to avoid repeating the same problem in the future. If somebody made a mistake they might not have even known, it\u2019s just not possible to predict everything software\u2019s going to face in the real world. Learn from your mistakes, don\u2019t point fingers to find a scapegoat, and shrug \u2014 fix it.<\/p>\n\n
Meetings need itineraries, start\/end times, and people need to stick to them. Creating an agenda for a meeting in a shared doc allows everybody to put a blurb\/links to their issues to discuss during the meeting. A meeting can go 5 minutes over, but shouldn\u2019t go much further, schedule additional meetings if more discussion is required. This agenda can even be edited any time during the meeting if something that warrants further discussion comes up. It\u2019s great for avoiding bad meeting formats like \u201cRandom Story Time or \u201cPages of Meaningless Numbers. The agenda keeps meetings from being a waste of time, if you want to waste time schedule a \u201cSync Up meeting with a small group and enjoy.<\/p>\n\n
Google is pretty much like every other company on the planet, except with more people and more money. They make a bunch of neat tools (for themselves first \u2013 eating their own dogfood) but don\u2019t have anything super special to prevent problems with clients, communication, workflow, or staffing. Managers and teams have opportunities to discuss and modify how things work, but everybody has their own style and they\u2019re allowed to work with it. There were no trick questions at my interview, they had me do FizzBuzz and some regexes.<\/p>\n\n
I\u2019ve read things before about the heirarchy of employees at the big G, but first-hand I saw FTEs, Interns, then there\u2019s TVCs (Temps, Vendors, Contractors) \u2014 each gets a different colored badge. Interns get a specific problem to solve. FTEs get to drink beers, ride scooters, invite guests, go to off-site events, and even get Christmas gifts. TVCs get none of that, for legal reasons. I was a contractor, not a Google employee, as part of their orientation I was told I worked \u201cat and for the benefit of Google, but very specifically not \u201cfor Google. At every single event that the entire office was invited to another TVC would ask if we were allowed to be there, We were never expelled.<\/p>\n\n
As a contractor, I had a pretty good idea of when a year contract would expire, but I didn\u2019t know if it\u2019d be renewed or not. I was mistaken in-so-much as my year contract was only scheduled to last 11 months, ending a little over a month before Christmas. I\u2019d seen contractors leave, and some return; so I wasn\u2019t sure what was going to happen. During my last 2 weeks the word was funding for the next year wasn\u2019t determined yet so my contract would not be renewed. My last week I received applause and gratitude for my work in our regular meetings. Not two weeks after my contract ended another staffing firm contacted me for the same position, this time earning a little over of half what I was making before \u2014 after all, it\u2019s just business.<\/p>\n\n
This post was originally published on jkirchartz.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n","category":["google","list"]},{"title":"Remember Mailto?","pubDate":"Sat, 11 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000","link":"https:\/\/dev.to\/jkirchartz\/remember-mailto-4mb","guid":"https:\/\/dev.to\/jkirchartz\/remember-mailto-4mb","description":" \u201cHow do I send this to my Mom\u2026\u201d she asked herself scrolling up and down the page; \u201c\u2026I can tweet or add it to pinterest,\u201d she sighed in resignation, opened a new tab, typed \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcgmail.com\u2019 and navigated all the way to the compose pane.<\/p>\n\n There\u2019s a bit of debate about what services to include when you want users to share your pages, but often the original ultimate app is forgotten, Email. Sending an email isn\u2019t hard, but it could be easier. It used to require a plugin or an external email app; If you didn\u2019t have either it would open any email app that just happens to be on your computer but probably not associated to any email account, and ask you to set it up. (which was super annoying) Firefox, Opera, and Chrome all reportedly to take you to your web-based e-mail provider; as of right now it looks like IE is the ugly duckling, again, but I always have high hopes for the future (which may have already occurred).<\/p>\n\n Anyhow\u2026 Back in the day we\u2019d use the And clicking that opened a new email, to But that assumes you know who you want to send the email URIs are already URI encoded so you don\u2019t have to do anything special to those. You may want to generate this server-side or via JavaScript because on some versions of iPhone the encoding may show up in the mail app and be ugly.<\/p>\n\n P.S. If you like this article you can always send me an email ;)<\/a><\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on jkirchartz.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n","category":["email","sharing"]},{"title":"The Most Innovative Checkout Form Ever","pubDate":"Mon, 02 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000","link":"https:\/\/dev.to\/jkirchartz\/the-most-innovative-checkout-form-ever","guid":"https:\/\/dev.to\/jkirchartz\/the-most-innovative-checkout-form-ever","description":" I don\u2019t know if you\u2019re ready for this - it might blow your mind\u2026<!--more--><\/p>\n\n Kablooie! That\u2019s all you need! Seriously - Don\u2019t take 6 pages and 23 forms - just get the sale & be done with it! One field is more than enough for each type of information, if you need it split out you can parse it on the backend (We have the technology<\/a>), it doesn\u2019t have to be a front-end issue. You can even help the user input this information in the appropriate format<\/a> if you want, just make sure you account for all possibilities (i.e. full zipcode: #####-####) Don\u2019t leave room for doubt, nobody has time for that, so don\u2019t forget to always be closing!<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on jkirchartz.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n","category":["ui","ux"]}]}}mailto:<\/code> URI scheme to let users send us emails (Uphill! Both ways! While fighting mastodons!) We\u2019d type (By hand! Onto the cave wall!) a link like
\n<\/p>\n\n<a href=\"mailto:webmaster@example.com?subject=Hello&body=I%20like%20your%20site\">\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nwebmaster@example.com<\/code> with the subjectHello<\/code> and a body of I like your site<\/code> but the mailto protocol is more versatile than that,there\u2019s cc<\/code> and bcc<\/code> and multiple recipients by separating addresses with commas.
\n<\/p>\n\nmailto:user@example.com,user2@example.com?cc=user3@example.com&bcc=user4@example.com\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nTo<\/code> which is impossible, even for Kreskin<\/a>, good thing it\u2019s not necessary. The protocol alone will suffice, but you should probably include a link, the title, maybe a byline or blurb. Watch out though, this is a URI so it generally has to be URI encoded so: %20<\/code> for space, %3F<\/code> for question mark, and so on.
\n<\/p>\n\nmailto:?subject=I%20thought%20you%20would%20like%20this&body=http:\/\/example.com\/some\/page\n<\/code><\/pre>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n links:\n<\/h2>\n\n
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