September 15, 2011
Today is the first day Rat heart light air is crisp, the rare good weather in Shanghai, a rare blue sky.
noon from MountView over the Google PageRank algorithm to do a friend Yang Meng, and we went for dumplings. Traditional industries than those of the Internet industry tradition, even if we have begun to work, the restaurant also adhere to the tradition of those who work the eighth day, has caused around the National Chiao Tung University a week before we found one open restaurant. During the dinner, we chatted about the inevitable Google, of course, Microsoft.
infrastructure
Google and Microsoft, the big perspective, they like: They are all software companies. However, more software companies, Oracle is also a software company, Adobe is, Netscape is, there are many, many software companies, Google and Microsoft and they have not the same, it is very different. From the industry, Microsoft is the main operating system and office suite, Google search on the Internet focused, it seems the industry is not the same, but they point in different industries have the same.
This is the same place, that they are platform provider.
platform difficult at this abuse of words to express the exact meaning I want to express. I want to say is that they want to do something, let someone else do the development on the basis of their own, not just to meet other people with their own in the application itself. As a company, they treat external customers and partners, but more importantly, they also treat their employees.
such as Windows, begin by saying that he is a good application, otherwise it will not do the platform envy. But his real success is to allow developers to develop applications on top. If we see a Microsoft internal, within the various departments to provide each other a lot of programming interface, which many of the achievements of the company internal innovation. Within Microsoft, we are scrambling for other departments to provide better “programming interface” so that they can use their services. In other words, Microsoft, which, in its own development on the “platform”, so it can make things better.
Google search of course good, but to see him behind, but also a great platform for Google engineers to develop more efficient procedures. Such as the GFS (Google File System), provides a cheap, huge, high fault-tolerant, high performance storage. This platform, estimates that the worldwide small. There Mapreduce, this allows a program running in the tens of thousands of concurrent computer program framework for a just joined the company tens of thousands of programmers can manipulate the computer one night to several Terabyte of data handling; Another example Bigtable This stuff, huge storage structure.
these things, to borrow Yang Meng, in fact, available to employees of a company infrastructure.
enlarge the power of individuals
in the Microsoft and Google, who, perhaps, and in many large companies in the success of the people, are Fortunately, a kind of intertwined with the sense and sense of loss, at least I have. Fortunately you is that this environment is so perfect, do have a lot of tools, a lot of knowledge, there are many supporters of their team. One division of labor is so fine, each division has the most professional person on the most efficient way to provide support.
such as Microsoft, like most of an internal Web site is http://toolkit, a small variety of internal tools, all on the Microsoft platform, engineers solve their own problems to write ; If you want to build a new e-mail address, just anybody can apply immediately in a abc@microsoft.com autogroup which such messages, three minutes do not, you can go to the internet, receive mail; to solve the problem, nearly one million Knowledge Base article to find what what sense; want to learn something, like more than internal training materials are released out of more than 1000, see also endless; even find someone, a handful of people to let cattle you ask. In short, many people will find an engineer in the company to do really well.
but also in this sense of loss. The company is a good system, which in the system, everyone great, left the system, left to support their own head of the ring immediately disappear, only to find Why are so hard to do, what things are not readily available to support herself. The so-called Orange Health Huainan was orange, trifoliate orange and for the Health Huaibei. Have self-knowledge should know, he was just that one orange, and truly great soil.
Yang Meng had a similar feeling. Google internal resources are too many good, some outside, Linux camp there, Google will own internal implementation again, to feel everything here, he built on top of these platforms can do out of something than they do not have these resources not to a hundred times larger output. It feels like something written in assembly can also be used in Visual Basic for Windows can also write something, but with a good platform and tools, flower painting as a window of time is completely different. This also proves that Windows VB chip assembly is much better platform. But the problem is that all these good things, with no way out.
to do addition or multiplication of the company
a good company, the company can not do addition. Not to say that a person can produce a dollar, ten dollars is a personal company can produce. A department produces a dollar, plus a new department have two dollars.
good company will do the multiplication of the company. 4 individual can produce four dollars, five dollars a person a person can produce 8. The multiplication on the basis that we are doing infrastructure, they stand on the shoulders of others, and let stand on his shoulders.
Microsoft and Google different
, but it is clear that Microsoft and Google infrastructure or support staff have a very clear distinction.
Microsoft more or packaged software level. This accumulation of Microsoft for the past 30 years. Where a tool such as Microsoft, you can easily make a stand-alone or local area network environment, a good system – Microsoft tools are the industry rapid development is commendable, but there is no way to staff their own data centers to open, because, in essence speaking, Microsoft is not around the data center started a company, Microsoft data center costs, not enough to support this system. After all, Microsoft was born in the years, and now the concept of the size of the data center can not imagine.
while Google is more of a service above. Google is built from the first day on the basis of the data center companies, his infrastructure is obviously open to all employees. Obtain an ordinary engineer support, not a piece of code, but ran a service of thousands of computers. There was a saying, Google has become the world first several PC manufacturers, and PC are just their own use, rather than selling it.
If from this point of view, Microsoft support is a battery, an engine can be assembled into a toy car; and Google support is more like a communication network, a telephone system, you can do out based on these network applications. The people who do not support these modules, like in the forest to find a stick of unarmed.
so Microsoft will still be in his good software with great success, whether it is installed on the table in the computer, the software on hardware devices, and Google will be in data centers around the Internet areas of success. These are available on the company DNA inside.
inspiration to us
, whether the program or company structure is very important, is how the staff and resources barricaded ladder, and culturally greater orientation to others, so that a person who has just joined the company, can be done quickly to other companies than his peers to get more support, this is the structure of a company success.
good company, especially the very successful and long-term success of the company, it must be the basis of institutional capital to invest in the largest companies; a good company, be sure to let employees stand on our own shoulders. Posted by Jian Shuo Wang at February 13, 2008 09:33 PM