January 4, 2026
Bug fans, blank pages, and LLM shade!
Lessons from 14 Years at Google
Ship fast, be boring, stop being “too clever” — and the comments are on fire
TLDR: A longtime Googler shared 21 hard-won lessons about focusing on users, shipping fast, and choosing boring tech. Commenters cheered the “ship it” mantra, joked that even bugs get fans, and sparred over whether AI writing tools hurt clarity—making this a must-read playbook for real-world software work
A 14-year Google veteran just dropped 21 blunt lessons, and the internet is nodding so hard it hurts. Fans called the advice “banal but shimmeringly true,” especially the warning that novelty is a loan you pay back in outages and stress. The vibe? Less wizard code, more clear, boring wins that help real people.
The line that lit up the thread: “Ship it”. One commenter echoed, “You can’t edit a blank page,” adding you need something published before advice helps—a motivational slap heard ’round dev-land. Meanwhile, a hilarious war story rolled in: “At scale, even your bugs have users.” Yes, people literally depend on mistakes. One maintainer backed it up and dropped an xkcd for comic relief.
Then came the drama. The post nods to AI helping momentum, but a spicy reply warned that “writing forces clarity”—a skill some folks lose when they lean on LLMs (large language models) to churn text. Others swooned over the crisp prose itself, saying great writing matched the message. Verdict from the crowd: obsess over users, ship the messy MVP (first simple version), keep tech choices boring—and maybe don’t let a robot write your thoughts
Key Points
- •The article compiles 21 lessons from roughly 14 years of engineering experience at Google.
- •Engineers who create the most value start with deep user problem understanding rather than technology-first solutions.
- •Effective collaboration prioritizes alignment and openness over winning technical arguments.
- •Bias toward action is encouraged: ship prototypes and MVPs to learn from real feedback; momentum clarifies decisions.
- •Clarity in code is preferred over cleverness, and novelty should be limited to areas where unique innovation is justified.