I think the more appropriate analogy is "shit filter."<p>I really appreciate project managers that know when the customer is full of shit and can filter that out from our discussions, keeping me and my colleagues focused on the things that actually matter.<p>On the other hand, when I did front-end work, I was really annoyed that the management would keep the secrets of customer feedback to themselves and only let through the things that aligned with their own "vision." Honest feedback and actual usability testing never seemed to be something that the higher-ups cared about; they simply wanted to go through the motions. I wished they could just let some of this information through.
The revelation that Buzz was produced by a team of 30 engineers and one product person, who only ever meet to give product demos, explains much about that launch.<p>I'm not a mindless Google-basher. They have many brilliant products. But Buzz was a pointless product that looked terrible and broke user expectations, produced entirely on a "because the data would be fun to have" basis -- something you'd expect from engineers who aren't thinking about the customer.<p>Engineers <i>can</i> build great, customer-focussed products (heck, that's the idea behind most of YCombinator). But this group did not.
<i>> Internally, the Google Buzz team was known as “Team Taco Town”</i><p>So apt: <a href="http://www.hulu.com/watch/1447/saturday-night-live-taco-town" rel="nofollow">http://www.hulu.com/watch/1447/saturday-night-live-taco-town</a> — It's 15 great tastes all rolled into one!
I love this article, I showed this to some of my associates at my last job and they fell on the floor. With one of them exclaiming "Dude you are a shit Umbrella" and I had such noble descriptions of the position like "Shielding the developers" and "The gate keeper". Well at lest I know what my job title is now, I guess I should see if Google is hiring for any Shit Umbrella positions, I am pretty good at it.
I found this line interesting: "There are several hundred thousands lines of javascript in Gmail – one of the biggest in the world".<p>I'd like to see what the engineers have to say on managing that much JavaScript.
> Google uses Gmail internally (obviously), switched over from Microsoft Outlook at launch (about 6 years ago)<p>I was under the impression that pine was a popular client at Google.