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Why the 'Ex-Googlers' in the title. Is it like a seal of approval or something?
by rabino 12y ago
Why the 'Ex-Googlers' in the title. Is it like a seal of approval or something?
- calpaterson 12y agoYeah, I feel a bit uncomfortable about using the brand of a previous employer so prominently to promote a different project
- quotemstr 12y agoHaven't you noticed the pedigree obsession of some in our field?
- wslh 12y agoIn this context it adds more signal than noise. There are zillions of open source projects but when you need to use them in production a very small subset of this universe is ready.
- sigzero 12y agoDoes it? I don't think ex-Googlers gives anything of value here.
- svisser 12y agoIt indicates that the project is worth a closer look rather than waiting or dismissing it outright.
- hueving 12y agoWhy? Being an ex-googler could just as easily imply they were incompetent and fired.
- melling 12y agoSo, you're assuming that half of all ex-googlers were fired? Otherwise, there aren't equal probabilities.
- BinaryIdiot 12y ago> It indicates that the project is worth a closer look rather than waiting or dismissing it outright. reply I'm curious, could you explain why? Google is an incredibly large company with many developers who never even touch their data systems so to me saying ex-Googler really doesn't mean anything beyond that they're probably a senior developer considering how rigorous (and honestly some old hat) their interview process is. But that doesn't change my viewpoint of the project at all.
- wslh 12y agoYou can take a look at the project author profiles.
- angrymouse 12y agoI think that refers to the Wired article http://www.wired.com/2014/07/cockroachdb/ http://www.wired.com/2014/07/cockroachdb/ With the tag being sign of pedigree. "A scalable DB from people who worked at a place with huge scale DBs". Whether it is very convincing or not is another matter, but I am sure it gets more clicks/attention
- eng_monkey 12y agoIt is a pretty strange title. Some might interpret it as they started this project after being fired from Google.
- bojo 12y agoThat's kind of how I read it.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- melling 12y agoYes, it's called social proof. If you're observant you'll notice that people use it everywhere. Of course, social proof doesn't mean guarantees.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- peterwwillis 12y agoNah, it's honor-by-association fallacy. Social proof is a behavioral thing, not false reasoning.
- datashovel 12y agoI don't think it matters how you try to promote an open source project. The code will ultimately be the determining factor whether the project can support a following. And everyone has access to the code to make that determination independently.
- acjohnson55 12y agoThat seems rather naive to me. No one is scouring GitHub looking for quality code and bringing unrecognized projects to light.
- datashovel 12y agoMy point is not that unfound projects will necessarily become found. No matter how good they are. Instead the idea is that no matter how a project is promoted, ultimately they only have their code-base to back their claims.
- acveilleux 12y agoA requirement of a successful project/product is visibility. Ex-Googlers does not imply much more then "used to work there" but if it drives more attention to them, it's good MarCom.
- kfcm 12y agoName-dropping has been common since the first salesman.
- Blackthorn 12y agoThis was based on an internal Google technology, so the "Ex-Googlers" label is actually quite relevant.
- ryandrake 12y agoI was kind of put off by this as well. Does where they worked in the past have anything to do with how useful the project is now or how talented the people are? What if they're doing it on their own because Google thought the project was useless? What if they were fired from Google, or only worked at Google for a month? How does the founders' past involvement with Google mark this project as any more interesting than any other random "Show HN" project?