Putting down layers, not building monuments

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Last Google I/O (Google's annual developer conference) was an interesting one for me - my team had a launch which I was excited about, but a total of 3 things that I worked on at different times at Google launched at this I/O.

My and most of my colleagues work pretty hard - most of the time because we think, we believe and sometimes we just hope that what we're doing matters. So it was with mixed feelings that I received the news that two things that I'd worked on earlier in my career at Google were being shut down.

The news wasn't surprising to me - at least one of those decisions was the right one, but it still hurt. It meant stuff that I'd spent a lot of time working on - agonizing over, sweating over and sacrificing a lot of other things including family over... now just no longer existed - all the work didn't matter at all.

WTF!!

I got over it, but it rankled a bit. Then I saw this video over the weekend.


Its pretty great perspective.

Given what I work on, the best I can hope to do - really anyone can hope to do - with our work is affect people's lives for a few years - the hope is that the result of the work takes the industry forward - if you really got it right, takes humanity forward. You can hope that the failures are lessons that are applied by others or yourself, or that others learn from what was done and take it even further.

Comments

louisgray said…
Wait. I knew these already. :)
11:40 PM
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