| There is a lot of nuance to their point. They are saying, in the long run, career wise, focusing on the actual user matters and makes your projects better. Google UX is decent and the author was not trying to comment on UX as a thing at Google. More that, if you follow the user what you are doing can be grounded and it makes your project way more likely to succeed. I would even argue that in many cases it bucks the trend. The author even pointed out, in essence there is a graveyard of internal projects that failed to last because they seemed cool but did nothing for the user. |
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| ▲ | bitexploder 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Read their point 1 carefully. They are saying, when you are building something or trying to solve a problem (for internal or external users) if you follow the user obsessively you will have a far better outcome that aligns with having impact and long term success. This does imply thinking about UX, but transitively, IMO. | | |
| ▲ | hansmayer 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I am not sure I follow - is he, or is he not, writing about his experiences from 14 years at Google? The title suggests he does, yet you suggest that he does not? | | |
| ▲ | bitexploder 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Oh, I have no doubt they are at Google. I was just trying to say that the author was not really making a commentary on UX directly. The author was trying to make the point that understanding what sort of products and problems users have is a valid long term strategy for solving meaningful problems and attaching yourself to projects, within Google, that are more likely to yield good results. And if you, yourself, are doing this within Google it benefits you directly. A lot of arguments win and die on data, so if you can make a data driven argument about how users are using a system, or what the ground reality of usage in a particular system is and can pair that with anecdotal user feedback it can take you a long way to steering your own, and your orgs work, towards things that align well with internal goals and or help reset and re-prioritize internal goals. | |
| ▲ | d0gbread 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | His learnings from 14 years at Google. Surely we've all learned things working for employers or with engineers that don't do a thing well. In 14 years he probably also experienced great engineers come and go and start other successful businesses they very likely did not run exactly like Google. |
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