The man behind the Big Tech comics – with Manu Cornet

why do you think Google has such a problem naming things this is the bad consequence of a good company culture because if you are very bottom up and employees Engineers are really the powerful figures in the company people are going to start things and sometimes they'll start efforts that will end up being competing when I first interviewed for Google and I asked my interviewer what criticism would you say about Google or your job or you know what are some of the drawbacks and one of the guys that interviewed me and I asked him this question he said because it's so bottom up driven there ends up being some duplication people work on similar things or competing efforts and even that was in 2007 so it was even worse later on have you ever seen this comic making fun of the orc structure of Amazon Google Facebook Apple Oracle and Microsoft this comic was created more than 10 years ago and yet most of these are still spoton even today but who created these and how are they so accurate and funny today we reveal the cartoonist behind this comic and many other similar ones he is Manu cor who was a Google software iner for 14 years he worked on Gmail Android Chrome and Google search today we talk about the story behind the orgchart comic and how Manu almost did not publish it lots and lots of cartoons about Google but we also dig behind the meaning of them like why Google is so bad at naming products we look at our cartoon where Manu correctly predicted Google's cloud gaming console stadia would eventually be killed and he did this on the day that Google launched this console it's safe to say that Manu is the highest profile cartoonist in the tech world and I hope you enjoy him sharing the story behind some of his most famous Comics if you enjoy the show please subscribe to the podcast on any podcast platform on YouTube so let's jump in Manu welcome to the podcast thank you thank you for having me so one of your most referenced Comics is the orc structure one uh which I I I just sent over can we talk about when and how you created this and and why and it's it it's it's been a very heavily referenced one I've spent the last 10 years trying to prove that I'm not just a one trick pony with this one one cartoon that was successful um so just for anyone listening this is the uh this is an uh six panels of or charts of big TP companies and it was published in 2011 so I almost didn't publish this because um the um I didn't really find it funny it's it's always a big problem when you when you have an idea you find it funny on the moment and then you draw it and then you spend time on it um this one isn't too elaborate so it didn't take too much time to draw sometimes it takes a lot longer and by the time you're done drawing you have no idea whether it's it's funny or not uh you've you've been staring at it for too long and for this one I didn't really find it very funny by the time I was done um so I almost didn't publish it and the the the punchline which is the last company was supposed to be Oracle that has a large legal department and a tiny engineering department uh and initially I had I had written engineering improperly I have I had an e what I should be somewhere uh fix that later um I think it was at the time when uh Oracle and Google were battling on Java so that was really uh this was in 2011 20 of the one yeah yeah so the drawing is from 2011 um I I'm yeah I'm pretty sure there are some losses going on at that time so um but then so Amazon was like the base case like a very standard um uh tree likee structure very hierarchical the other ones were were kind of easy to think about Apple being very extens realized and initially I didn't have Microsoft but I couldn't really have only five companies because that would not have you know an even number of panels so I I thought about a sixth one which was Microsoft um and uh I looked um online on some Forums on what the Microsoft culture was and I heard people mentioning these uh battles between departments and that ended up being the more uh the panel that caught people's attention more than the others this is old Microsoft but but this comic was so talked about and and I still see it reference I I wonder if there's a are you finding to do any the updated version would you have inspiration I guess I could I'm I'm trying to look forward and not try to live off like surf off uh previous um previous waves but um I I I know that it was mentioned by the CEO in in his book without really um mentioning it name or anything but he described the drawing pretty clearly on the first page of his book which um was a nice hat tip even without um attribution this episode is brought to you by work OS if you're building a SAS app at some point your customers will start asking for Enterprise features like s medication skin provisioning and fine green authorization that's where work comes in making it fast and painless ad Enterprise features to your app their apis are easy to understand 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understand exactly how you stack up and then get you ready to a a system design coding and behavior interviews they assist in landing top tier roles and level up your composition through unlimited career coaching and Technical mentorship rigorous to drill problems that align with your personal skill gaps get unlimited mentorship to get unblocked do as many mocks as you need to Ace the real thing stop wasting time trying to figure out what to prep only to get to the interview and realize you had it wrong formation helps put your interview prep on autopilot ensuring you're always focusing on the right thing apply today at fm. deev pragmatic that is FM dodev pragmatic there's this comic that you also created also around probably like 2011 which is titled A much clearer insight into who Who's Who and there's this big you know diagram of like apple Google Amazon Samsung HTC Microsoft with like arrows one between the other and then on the on the bottom right corner uh there's Nokia by itself not sued by anyone not suing anyone just burning yes yeah this was almost um yeah I guess it's not any better right now um but it it felt like it was a big mess of who was suing whom um I don't really follow it uh closely any longer um but I don't even remember this one so closely oh I remember I I drew a Starbucks on the side because I thought oracl might be doing Starbucks because of java and the Java beans and then this was a height where Oracle was suing everyone because of java yes exactly so I don't think they ever really sued Starbucks um but I I thought I would make that um uh a thing and then yeah you're right Nokia was uh I think it it made a bit of a comeback since then uh I mean it's not any it's not one of the most popular smartphon makers but it used to be really popular with like uh feature phones and then it was really um yeah as you said like as it's in the drawing just by itself in it's little corner almost sad that it's not being sued by anyone it's like yeah I want to play too well plus I I don't know if you created this around that time but there was that famous Nokia's old CEO made this famous speech of Nokia being a burning platform so I I don't know if it was because of that but you can associate it with that as well it is burning by itself I don't I don't remember the details but it might be very well be one of the uh Inspirations for that yes and then you know we talked about like is there a followup for you know the tech uh structure what what companies are but recently I think only a few years ago you did this called Google versus Amazon which is which is not about all big tech companies Google on Amazon and it's it's with Guns and Roses there's this circle with with Google where like there's guns held to outside to customers and like roses to employees and Amazon is the opposite way where they hold roses to customers and guns towards employees yes uh this one didn't get quite it didn't get shared quite so much as the uh the initial work charts one um I think it was a little bit more complex as in harder to parse like you the the orc charts one you you take a glance and it immediately is obvious what's happening for this one you have to read you have to notice that the customers and employees are in different places and um but yeah I do think it was um it obviously oversimplifies which Comics always often do um but it it does feel like Google has always oh maybe not right now I'm not sure but I at least when I was there treating its employees insanely well and not really caring that much about the customers because you know they're they're not the one that's paying uh most people use back then Google products for free uh now it's there's a little bit more of an Enterprise business and Cloud business but uh most people are still just users of things like Gmail or search which are free products um so Google has really no immediate incen to be really nice to its customers I mean it it does it and it still and it did and it still does focus on the user as in trying to build features that are useful to the user and to make things nice and pretty and fast but um if as a user you are unhappy and you're looking for customer service uh good luck ever reaching out um and and reaching people from Google to help you out um in my experience I I I kept kind of joking to you know people that like you know as a as a business owner or like as a startup if I'm buying from a company like the company that I trust the most is Amazon because if if I have a problem like they bend over they've been backwards they like uh there's been so many stories an example of Steve Yi uh did an interview uh with the pragmatic engineer and he was saying that you he used to work at at Amazon and then he went later to uh well he worked at Google for a long time then sorry Amazon and then Google for a very long time and then he went to grab and when he worked at grab he uh they they were on Amazon AWS uh they used Services you know they were not the biggest customer by far but they were like you know midsize or something like that and the Amazon team meeting wanted to meet them and and he had the the PMS the the the PMS for several products that they were using in the room like in person meeting with them and he was just like blinking like you know why did they come here and they just wanted to talk to customers and again they were not the biggest customer and and that's uh like very specific to Amazon whereas on the other hand for Google when I was researching for example on call practices you know Amazon on call is like good luck like everyone's on call like you're you need to make sure your systems are there is very very tough if if you have a small team yeah you still have an on call and Google Google on call is probably as chill as it gets they have a dedicated team that takes the the majority of the on call yes on call load no other company does this cuz all the teams have it they they pay for on right sres actually step in and take that which is unheard of so as as an so as an employee if you're looking for like what is the the company that pays the most and I have the most chill place to work until last year this was definitely like Google or so it might as you said it might be changing a little bit but I I think I think this comic is still kind of it's interesting that the uh the approach of really bending over backwards to be nice to customers also translates to uh company customers like B2B for AWS and not just people who buy stuff from amazon.com I I was surprised to learn about and this was you know Steve Yi he used to work at Amazon he he was surprised he like what they they're still doing it was I made another uh I don't I I made another comic later on where showing the the um how confusing it is to do anything with Google products with all the different names and it shows a woman showing up in front of a Google employee or it's this one um and she wants to buy something and then the Google guy keeps correcting her because then it's not the right code name and then uh someone commented on this thing saying wait this shows a customer directly talking to a Google employee that can't be right yeah there there is this thing about I think still to this date like people make fun of Google's naming and for some part rightfully so so I I'll give you my example of you know Google when I I worked at Uber and we were rolling out uh Apple pay and an Android pay uh so so when I joined we had in like 2016 or so there was Apple pay and then there was Android pay and and and then Google came back and said okay we're retiring Android pay and there's going to be a new thing called Google Wallet yeah I think I think it was supposed to be called Google wallet or something like that and we're like fine or maybe Google pay I I'm all confused but it was interesting because it so in in 2010 or 11 when Uber started the first payment method was called Google Wallet then it became Android pay then I I think they said it's going to be Google pay yes so it was Google pay and then we you know we agreed we were partners and we needed to upgrade to this new thing and be part of the launch and about two weeks before the launch they they change the logo like they send a brand new Lo or a different logo to us and we're just kind of thinking like like is is like what's what's going on and then of course later I'm not sure I think Google pay means something else there's Google Wallet we have a comic about this even even right now yeah I have a comic about most things at Google um even right now there are two apps uh on Android that I have on my phone one is called gpay and the other one the other one is called Google pay maybe not anymore now at some point there was these two and one of them was functional and the other ones was was retired so um we were showing the the you know the deprecation um process to users even then but then there's also Google wallets and as you said it was Google pay Android pay um and yeah this is another comic that I'm showing now which shows a uh double entry like just the spreadsheet with rows being Google Chrome Android Nexus pixel play and of course the columns are yeah this sounds very spot on now you know jok's aside you've actually been inside Google why do you think why do you think Google has such a problem naming things because when I look at other companies you know they just seem to stick with it right like look at Apple like they they don't really change their naming I I I don't feel like I can point to any other large company that is so confusing obviously we can we can always have funny stories about one product here or there but at this level it seems like world record honestly so I I think this is I mean my interpretation and I I don't have enough of a of a birs ey view of things um uh this is above my pay rate but my interpretation is that this is the bad consequence of a good um company culture because if you have if you are very bottom up um and employees uh Engineers are really the the powerful figures in the company people are going to start things and sometimes they'll start efforts that will end up being competing um and this is actually funnily enough when I first interviewed for Google for my my job at Google in 200 uh end of 2006 early 2007 um sometimes I I like to be a bit uh sneaky and I asked my interviewer one day you know usually at the end of the interview they said do you have any questions for me and I said yeah what what uh what is uh what criticism would you say about Google or your job or you know what are some of the drawbacks and the the one of the guys that interviewed me and I asked him this question he said uh because it's so bottom up driven um there ends up being some duplication U people work on similar things or competing efforts and even that was in 2007 so it was even worse later on wow yeah it was so much smaller if you have you know different teams working on the same thing or similar things there isn't that much top down pressure um and this goes back to really being nice to employees and not so great about customers like if you want to be really nice with employees and let people work on stuff that matters to them you end up being a little bit you end end up shipping the or chart to the uh public and making consumers being a bit um confused and I don't think it's much better now even though the company is uh very top down but maybe because the CEO isn't he's not he's not like a Steve Jobs who would uh consolidate things he's more of an appeaser trying to you know arbitrate um all the different efforts and make people happy all that one this is interesting though if we think about I know you know we're looking at this whole thing through the lens of humor but if you if you had to draw something about Apple it will be probably a black box and or or just teams not talking about each other because again one thing that we do know about Apple it's pretty wellknown I mean i' one day I'm going to do a deep dive on on how Apple works but apple is so damn secretive to the point of teams will you like you work at a tech company like 99% of tech companies are 99 9% you know you work in a team you go have lunch uh you meet someone and you ask them hey what are you working on and then they tell you you know you talk about it you might get some ideas you might help each other or and obviously everything you talk about stays in the company right this is without saying an apple you go and have lunch you ask someone what are you working on and the first thing they're going to ask is like do you have like clearance they have a special word for and they're not going to talk to you because even though you're sitting next to each other it's just a very different design so my my point is just interesting how these trade-offs between you know like how how much Freedom do employees have how kind of are much is a company prioritizing their you know their their needs versus the like how centralized things are how much information flows how how how how much are we demanding from on call so that we please our customers they all they they might be connected you might not be able to have it all right yeah yeah it's a it's a difficult tradeoff and I do think Google has been moving in the direction of of of where apple is which is being more siloed and people not having access to other um pieces of the the company or the codebase I think if I was to I could update the the apple or chart it would I think it would look like a fog of War you know like in in games where you're starting somewhere and you're seeing what what's around you but you don't really everything else in the world in the map is is um blur or just obscured um I made fun of that that movement of Google to um move towards being more and more siloed but there is um that also doesn't come free it's like okay this one is it probably too too long to read um but it's especially ironical when Google's mission is supposed to organize the world information and when you're on a team you don't have access to the information of another team that could have helped you um but you need to prove that you need to know it in order to do your job and if you don't know it exists then you don't even know that you need to prove it so anyway um I as do saying Google is moving towards that siloing as well yeah well it's it might be a necessity one other thing that is kind of I guess internally known about Google's engineering culture but externally might be a bit surprising with migrations and and you did a comic about migrations can can can you explain what what this is I didn't really mean it's specifically about migrations but in general about um competing efforts um and it is the same thing that we were describing earlier we will play becoming Jep and so what you see in the comic here is your your um it's like a firstperson view of a car that is encountering a um a choice between two roads um and then top signs says welcome to Google and the the right hand side road says um Main Road and that's that's crossed out that's says deprecated and then don't even think about it and the road looks kind of um dirty and and old and the right hand side says New Road under construction and then there's a danger and then there's a construction cone um this was initially um I think this was initially a comment by the Zen CEO uh schmidth um I don't know if he's the one who said that or maybe johnon Rosenberg I I forgot one of the Google exec at that time who said uh there's two ways to do things at Google there's the um deprecated way and there's the way that doesn't work yet so uh this was like an illustration um of that of that line um and I do think that's actually quite relevant to lots of other companies um um people when I was at Twitter people asked me to Rebrand the welcome to Google to make it welcome to Twitter because it was the same thing so um I do think there's a tendency for specifically for engineers software Engineers but I think that might be even more General to try to make a new improved way and try to let get people to use it even before it is ready to replace the old way yeah and and to be fair I think you're right this is not specific to Google this is like any like midsize or larger tech company it just keeps happening and after a while you you go into the there's even the this sketch about microservices where which is which you know like the punchline is similar to this where the the one of the systems is not yet ready to handle some something and again it from the outside people working at startups or or small teams they're kind of rolling their eyes like how is this possible and it it is like you put together smart people people and stuff like this happens and obviously everyone's surprised you know this is one of the reasons why projects often not always but one of the reasons projects get delayed is oh yeah like we thought we thought this service would be ready and we could just use it but the existing one is being deprecated and the new one is not yet ready right another engineering culture related thing uh of course is if if you're at a midsize or large company is code reviews and of course you have a code you have a comic about code reviews as well yeah uh I have I have several um I have another comic where um uh I can describe it where there's two people in two different panels there's the um the author of the change who says oh I don't need to be too cautious about my code the uh if there's some problem the reviewer will catch it and the other panel is the reviewer who said oh I don't need to review this to carefully if you know the alter must know what he's doing or what she's doing um and yeah same thing here it's like um um the scene is um basically a table with two people um uh standing up on the table replacing a light bulb so this was a a pun on the on the how many people does it take to screwing in the light bulb which was uh um of not maybe not quite as popular as the knock knock jokes but similar you can you know have different different version of it so there's um there's a software engineer who is trying to replace a light bulb and has another software engineer uh also standing on the table because of the lamp is really high up uh that says code review who is uh who is commenting on how to screw in the light bulin that must be another way and then there's a PM who is uh holding the light bulb as a you know like um Shakespeare to be or not to be holding a skull kind of thing um and then there's the tlm the manager who is looking at his wristwatch cuz this is all taking too long and we need to ship now and then there's the SR the soft um site reliability engineer who is adding little um pieces of wood to make the table more stable and then there's a ux person who is bringing a light bulb with a hat and decorations around it make things prettier when you worked at a team that warrants a a TPM and and also like S I guess most companies will not have that but yeah that that that sounds about right it's it's more complex than it looks yeah of course of course these these Comics are always um over simplifying and uh and obviously the SRE uh has a beard and long hair which was a good stereotype at that time so some of your Comics it they weren't just limited to you know like making fun or or pulling some jokes there was there was a comic that ended up being printed on every single door at Google as I understand yeah that's right so at some point people noticed that things were being stolen from offices and that was because Google employees were letting people in behind them and I guess this being Disneyland or Wonderland because all the campuses are colorful and everything is free and and uh and nice and people are nice to each other you don't really question who is coming after you and you just hold the door for them um and they ended up calling this tailgating even though I I understand this is more of a uh a driving thing initially um so this first comic was um uh a pun on this initial thing uh so it shows a it shows a crocodile or an alligator who is Slithering its way into the office through um half closed door that has Google written on it and it says beware the tail Gator with a o r at the end and that um so that was the first one and then that U people liked it and because Google was trying to spread the word on increasing security and having people be aware that they should not let whoever is coming after them uh into the building without making sure that they're actually an employee um they used my they used this this drawing initially and then because they wanted to keep people's attention they asked me for refresh uh or reedition yeah um so they they printed this and it was whenever I was visiting a Google office elsewhere in the world there was the same my my same drawing on all doors which was uh really cool to see but um I ended up making yeah every every year I would make two or three versions um and it was like trying to say the same thing in different ways this episode is brought to you by for a personalized interview prep program for experienced software Engineers formation is built by xfang Engineers who've conducted thousands of interviews collectively so they know what it takes in 2024 they helped Engineers increase a comp by $110,000 on average they help you understand exactly how you stack up and then get you ready to a a system design coding and behavioral interviews they assist in landing top tier roles and level up your composition through unlimited career coaching and Technical mentorship rigorously drill problem that align with your personal skill gaps get unlimited mentorship to get unblocked do as many mocks as you need to Ace the real thing stop wasting time trying to figure out what to prep only to get to the interview and realize you had it wrong formation helps put your interview prep on autopilot ensuring you're always focusing on the right thing apply today at fm. deev pragmatic that is FM dodev pragmatic So 20% time uh this is something when you join Google it existed right can can can you tell us about what it was how you saw people use it what did you do in your 20% time and how did it change over time and obviously you have a comic about the change as well yes um so yes so 20% was I think one of the things when when you were back in maybe when I join maybe in 2010 or so or a bit before when you were at Google these were among the parks that you would tell about um you maybe would say things about the free food and about you you being able to walk up to the microphone and ask questions to the CEO stuff like this and one of them was being allowed to dedicate 20% of your time to a project of your choosing uh within you know within reason you're not going to uh you know tell your boss that you're going to learn guitar one day per week that's not relevant to your job but something that would be um you know a reasonable project for each work on something new um and and Google itself used to Pride itself on having so many of their Innovative projects that were started as 20% projects so as projects that were started that way um I think Gmail was one I think um Google News was probably one and there's a bunch of other projects that were started that way um but I this is the the part where I don't really understand where exactly the pressure to become a more traditional company with more um more siloed people um where that comes into um uh clash with that 20% project thing I never really quite understood how that manifested itself so that the drawing shows a a big tree with one big um Branch labeled 20% projects and then there's a woman uh sitting on this branch and the woman has a t-shirt labeled um Innovation and then there's a a guy with a toxedo and um uh a necktie and smoking a cigar and um sunglasses uh who is climbing on the ladder and starting to saw off that that that um Branch so my point was that really that was a source of innovation and if you if you cut those off if you if you um don't encourage people to have those projects which was the case more and more even though I don't remember it being called out um explicitly that that 20% projects are no longer a thing because that would be too obviously admitting that you're becoming a traditional or conventional company um but they were less and less encouraged and maybe more and more frowned upon but for so yeah I didn't really quite understand maybe they didn't care about Innovation that much they just were I mean Ju Just just bringing up a different angle I I'm not sure you you have a comic that made fun of how many how many products Google shut down but what one one of the things outside you know again Google has a lot of perceptions but one of the perception is like oh if Google ships something they're going to shut shut it down and I do Wonder just you know putting a little bit of Devil's Advocate in in in the sense that could it be like obviously 20% time we know brought a lot of really cool Innovation with Google famously uh the uh Gmail apparently started uh as a 20% project and there's going to be examples of other other products that started off but having too many of those products might just mean that some of them eventually will have no investment they'll have to be shut down so I wonder if it is connected that Google has more products resed than any other tech company and they're also the only company that allow 20% Innovation time for for many many years I I I I don't know this is a question to do you think there's a connection there might be I do think there's a there's a connection that's a a fair point I I would say then then it's um it should happen internally like you should be throwing things at the wall and you should should be experimenting without necessarily launching stuff publicly um I think you should I mean I'm uh if I knew how to run a company I would I would be a lot richer I wouldn't I wouldn't be here uh I wouldn't be Comics but but um I I do think it's good for companies to encourage Innovation and I think 20% projects were a good way of doing this but you could um you could you know let the the projects select themselves more organically by either um having you know employees test them internally without necessarily launching them um Gmail did something that was interesting at some point that I also worked on which was Gmail Labs so you had a um a special section in your settings with these things called labs and it was by the name but also the labeling it was pretty obvious that these were not going to be officially supported and they may go out at any point but that allowed people working on Gmail to launch with quotes launch something that was um uh you know with scrutiny and yeah yeah so so you knew I remember it was very clear that this is experimental it can go away like this you know use it at your own wrist but we love your feedback yes and I actually I remember as as a user like I I thought that was fair because it was just super clear like you know this is alpha alpha uh you get the latest Cutting Edge if and I think they also made it clear that if if gets enough usage it might make it right no promises so I think point there this probably could have been done differently yeah well so maybe Google could have some some sort of Google Labs which they probably do but it probably means something else to uh launch things that were um not actual products yet and to make the The Branding clear enough that people wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't uh complain if they they went away um and this comic that you created we talked about that you must have a comic about the Google graveyard which is also a website which has almost 300 products listed there now or so and this seem seems oddly prophetic because you created this when stadia was launched right Google stadia the the games console where you could play remotely it was a pretty cool concept and and then this comic uh shows a Google graveyard and a man and and a man so there's a a sign saying welcome stadia developers because Google had to um encourage people to actually develop for this platform make make games for stadia um so this guy was uh waving towards the nice roads with rainbows and stars and the unicorn um showing you look this way please but ignoring that on the side there's a huge graveyard or of of tombstones of all the the dead Google products so developers had to focus on the the nice things for stadia and and ignore all the risk um involved with all the dead products and yeah eventually was also uh discontinued I forgot exactly when uh it it came a little bit out of no it's it's hard to tell I I I you know there's different an analysis whether it actually it actually had Market fit or wasn't growing fast enough there's a lot of but it did take people by surprise in off Google did do one thing which they did they provided a full refund to anyone who asked as I understand so they ate the loss which was I guess a bit but still it just reinforces is that it's hard to trust Google outside of ads products especially like on areas that are not known for like like gaming this was my interpretation of why stadia failed uh so this comic is a a guy branded with a teacher branded stadia trying to launch something by firing a big big uh Cannon and then just in front of a cannon there's a big wall label Network effect with uh a bunch of uh previously failed cannon balls labeled um Google wave and Google+ and uh aloe which was one of Google's um instant messaging things that was my interpretation that that you need um critical mass uh you need some kind of network effect is your if your Google Plus even if your product is superior if everyone is already on Facebook then it's a lot it's a lot harder and I I believe stadia has um a similar issue if everyone is on Steam and steam isn't comp with st um then developers have to develop for your platform specifically that's that's a that's interesting because even if you think outside of Google if if you think about what are products that have become wildly successful that are related to large companies if I think of meta you know they bought them right like Instagram they they bought a platform that was getting that Network WhatsApp they also bought them and the only platform that you could argue has some level of like social network or like used by by hundreds of millions of consumers may be threads but that one you know there's there's existing distribution that Facebook can use and there's arguments of like how successful it it actually is compared to some of the other ones but it just shows how really difficult it is even for companies with billions of dollars to spend just crazy amounts yeah and that I I heard that that's a a comment that I want to make um pretty soon if I time I I heard that Mark Zuckerberg was criticizing Apple uh saying that um Apple hasn't really innovated since they launched the the iPhone they kind of made that Innovation and then and then sat on it for 20 years uh so I want to show him saying that and then saying we on the other hand have been acquiring innovating company every few years since then so not that they're being very Innovative themselves but as you said they just buy them so after 14 years at Google and creating all all all these Comics some some light-hearted some more critical uh you decided to leave the company and join this other social media company called Twitter at the time yes and obviously uh things happened that afterwards there but when you joined can can can you share what did it feel what did the culture feel like this was before ELO mus bought Twitter yes um how uh how did it comp especially for for such a long time at Google yeah um it was um yeah I ended up for for various reasons um leaving Google even though um it was a very nice uh stable job the the company was just being becoming less and less what it was in my naive dreams initially um and Twitter was at the time it felt a lot like a young version of Google so it was very similar to to what Google was when I joined um smaller company less R tape uh friendly culture uh Google is always friendly but you know less stying um the problem was that in a capitalist Society if you um if you're trying to be a nice the nice guy like I think T was but you don't have a huge U amount of Revenue then you are um uh at a threat um you're you're going to be threatened by all the sharks around including El musk and um that that happened Google had that nice um endless Cash Cow of the add Revenue which meant that it could pursue a whole bunch of really interesting projects even before they could be um profitable which Twitter in Twitter never really had that luxury um but but culturally it felt similar and and then you you had this very interesting time where almost as soon as you joined or a few months after uh rumors started to happen that Elon mus might buy Twitter and uh you started to make some comics about what I assume must it must have felt inside the company what what what did it feel and how much did these these Comics actually convey in what it was really like right yeah so I I thought I had made a pretty smart move to Twitter U but yeah six months after that so so just to confirm like did I correctly like you're you went to Twitter thinking okay this is going to be you can rewind time a little bit go back to an earlier version of Google like Focus build you know nice people chill not not not chill but like focus and and less corporate stuff right yeah yeah yeah chill in terms of of a nice atmosphere but you know not in in terms of slacking off everyone was working pretty hard um well you you actually were one of the just just speaking of the the work that you did just a brief mention what what kind of so you work you worked on different web products one thing I heard from people who I talked with is that you were very productive uh developer in terms of building stuff fixing code those kind of things can can you talk a little bit about with your work yeah so I worked mostly on the the web clients as opposed to the um iPhone app or Android app so like the the websites I like the product I like the team that makes it a lot easier to be working hard and um to be productive the um the developer experience was um pretty good I would say I was I was I had um when I left Google I was working on Google search which was um obviously the oldest part of the Google codebase and pretty hard to work on this is something I also make fun of um but it's um it felt like this is what it felt like this is like um trying trying to drive trying to ride a boat that looks like a house Moving Castle which lots of um that's what Google search codebase SE codebase and it's I mean not to blame anyone it's uh it's something project that that old would become like this I think um but moving from this uh and the comic on this one was really more about leadership trying to blame it on on people pull people rowing uh for not moving fast enough um but moving from this to to rather it felt um yeah the experience was a lot easier um you could make change and changes and iterate faster the the teams were awesome I yeah I felt and I was also becoming kind of a more senior person at that time so um um people also looked up to me in in a way that increased my uh imposter syndrome but I tried to be um yeah I try to be hardworking and productive and and um a good coworker and and Mentor I like that yeah someone told me who I talk with Twitter that you were the you were one of the most kind of highest output web developers uh at web developers in terms of front end at at at Twitter this just came after you're firing someone you're fing like oh well I guess you know they're also getting getting rid of people who are were actually pushing a lot of code and fixing a lot of things and also the one way we connected which we didn't even know each other is I I complained on the web uh on Twitter web about a bug on the web client and you just messaged me uh saying oh uh can you you know help me reproduce it and I'll try to fix it which I was really surprised about because uh Twitter at this time was already pretty big and I never had anyone reach out to me about anything and then you actually you went in uh debugged it and if I if I remember you might have fixed it I'm not sure about that part but you know like you actually somehow had time to uh you know monitor social media for you know people's problems and just go ahead and try to fix it I try this is something I had tried during even at the Gmail uh time there was uh there were Gmail user forums where Gil Engineers were would never never ever hang out um unless they were forced to by some um uh some like social program between Engineers um but this is something that I I had always been a little bit frustrated as Google and big companies in general you don't really get to meet your users um which is for me it it makes you know if you have a feedback loop that is just not closed at that time it's not a loop anymore if you you're being told what to do by your team or management who have done a bunch of studies and market research and they have metrics and I'm sure they they know better on what people want but still it feels like when you're not connecting directly to users it feels off to me so I I did a little bit of that on Gmail trying to ask um uh for what people's problems and future requests were and that led to a bunch of of improvements and yeah same thing with with Twitter um trying to see what the users were actually saying and trying to fix their issues so so was back to you know the news of like musk put making an offer for for Twitter and at that point no one knew if he would buy or not because it was not a binding offer it was all sorts of noise what was what was it like to to work through those months of like proper uncertain uncertainty right so this is what this this comic is about there's a bunch of other ones uh I'll show the after this one is really um when you work on Twitter You Are by because of your job you kind of stare at the news all day because even even though you might be testing on um synthetic data or testing data usually you you you know you test things with actual um actual feeds so you you see new stories coming in so uh when musk started trying to acquire um Twitter then this was all over Twitter so um even though as an employee you don't really know what's going to happen to you and mus not having a great reputation for uh how he treated workers at Tesla for example uh you would have good reasons to be concerned but the yeah management understandingly was trying to say hey don't don't worry about it we we we'll worry about it when we get there and just uh tune out the noise and try to do your job which is completely understandable but hard uh in this specific situation so the the the the comic is really a um it's like a sports field with a huge Arena around it and apparently um tens of thousands of people around it um but there's no sport there's just a bunch of um workers people sitting at their computer working um and uh the Maestro or whoever is the boss saying just tune out the noise and everyone is around cheering and there's banners and there's H even a helicopter and airplane and um uh fireworks so yeah it was oh and I made a sign with the uh the stock price at that time which was apparently $46.3 um so it it gets a bit hard to ignore the news when it's in your face and you are not only watching the news but you're the object of that news yeah and then what Elon mus did end up buying a Twitter there was really really massive firings I'm I'm not sure uh there there's any anything comparable unless a company is shutting down or like just you know properly going out of business uh what are some Comics that you you know like Drew to uh represent you know like how how you felt about this how people felt about it so uh let's see there's a bunch at at least 50% of people were let go within a matter of weeks right and then even more after I think it was I think it was 80% um yeah so that initially it was a rumor um that we had heard before he actually um finalized the deal that said something about 75% um and then that prompted me to draw these a bunch of references with these sort of V uh hanging on top of people's head saying 75% while while you're trying to work and and make your plans for next year um it we all thought I can't be right can't be that high eventually it ended up being more uh more like 80% oh this is one about him visiting the the office actually trying to find his best um the best location um um but yeah we were um it was pretty brutal so I do think that um it was a time just to just to be a bit cynical and not to be too uh dramatic it was a time when uh Silicon Valley in general had a whole bunch of layoffs meta had some um pretty big ones also and um I do think Twitter had over hired for a little while um and it was um I I do think firing some people or downsizing if you want to call it nicely was due was overdue at some point it may have been um not possible because of the deal that was ongoing with with musk so it sort of froze everything and people couldn't get fired during that time um so some layoffs were necessary but the way they were done was was um um really not not very nice to people at all so this comic here um yeah it's a a big dartboard with um the Twitter logo at the center of the circular dartboard and a big orc chart of all people working on Twitter and then you see dozens of darts with the label fired red darts uh hitting all those and let's see the bubbles say say uh shall we stop now and another guy says n this is fun and then another guy says your turn Elon so yeah it felt it felt random the reason I drew this is because well first everyone was getting fired but also it felt really random um I don't I don't want to um mention my own case I mean someone else who is on my team who was clearly the most productive guy I've ever met in my career in terms of not just you know commits and and pushing code um but also quality he was really really hardworking and he was fired so that felt really random to me it really felt like okay I understand they need to fire whole bunch of people but they're not doing it very nicely at all um and they're maybe not firing the right people and he ended up being rehired and he accepted because he had a v Visa issue um and uh so he he he really had a good reason to go back even though um most people wouldn't go back being treated yeah well Visa is powerful enough yeah so I mean it was a very clearly a very hard time both for Twitter obviously but also for the industry you did create a comic that I felt kind of looked at it from a different angle and and I heard that you mentioned that this was uh pretty well received by by people yeah um so this was uh this was let me see what the date on this one 7th of November um so yeah this shows uh playing on the on the sink idea of Elon Musk showing up with a big sink uh just for the sake of making a pun um he is basically uh in the comic he is emptying a large can containing a bunch of small blue birds into the sink and that's the uh the metaphor for siring people and the the blueb birds all the employees and then there's a there's a hole in the pipe below the sink and then all the um little birds they escape through that hole and they all fly away and they all look pretty happy so yeah it was um it was trying to inject a bit of a of happiness or um just trying to say maybe we Dodge the bullet because maybe we wouldn't have been treated really well anyway um I also spoke from a bit of a privileg um position because um I was yeah I had a a bunch of years under my belt um I had some more financial stability more seniority I was I didn't really have any um health insurance issues or or or VISA issues so I was really very lucky compared to other people so I felt like it was also my role to try and um uh have a some light-hearted comments as well yeah so I asked you earlier what's a comic that would kind of you know like be personal and like maybe reflect on your professional career and uh you pointed to to this one what what is this comic and H how would you reflect now on your professional career of like coming up closer to 20 years yeah um I would say I've been insanely Lucky in join this industry at the right time um I I hope uh it will get better again I'm pretty sure it will uh it seems it's a lot more rough right now than it was a few years ago um so initially I came from Academia I was really I was meant I was trained to be a teacher or um researcher so it wasn't an obvious move for me to to um go into uh big tech companies initially I was going to study Physics or um you know research physics or computer science or bioinformatics um and I I left my PhD program before I finished it because there was this company called Google that looked pretty awesome it looked like it wasn't really just only after profits it was trying to be a good neighbor um trying to be a good player in the world and making things to really for the betterment of of society which was bit of a naive view but that was my view at the time and to be fair I think Google was quite close to that ideal view of such a company at the time and then it took a long time for Google to slowly um move down into being more and more of a of a um traditional company even though the the Founder's letter initially said uh we are not a um what was the word we are not a traditional company or something like that or or it's probably another adjective we are not a h yeah traditional company and we don't intend to become one um uh I'll I'll look forur the word later so I I do think there are a pretty traditional company now even though if you compare Google to most other companies it's still much better on on average but it is not quite the naive ideal that I had but I still got away with working you know more than a decade for that company that was really a dream dream job um and I was trying to find some of that in Twitter also so the the comic shows um two drunk characters on a bench sitting on a bench at nighttime in a park um one of them is uh a a human with a Google t-shirt and the other one is the Twitter blue bird um and Google says uh the Google guy says it only took me 10 years before capitalism killed my ideals and there's a bunch of empty bottles of wine on the side and Twitter says good for you it took me three months so it felt like um a descent from the ideal company which I know if capitalism even makes this possible in general for such a company to be nice with its employees and also I mean it feels almost like an anomaly to for it to have so much of a cash inflow and being able to do all those awesome things um and I'm trying to find some of that also in Twitter um but that uh the the travel downwards was a lot faster yeah well it's it's it's it's it's it sounds like it's been an interesting ride for you oh yeah yeah yeah absolutely and I was uh even though uh people were not treated really well at Twitter I was U again I was insanely lucky compared to others and the cartoonist side of of uh of myself was having a great time witnessing that yeah and you you did I I got this book of your called twit Tunes where you actually summarize the story of you know what happened to Twitter via Comics it's it's actually it's very entertaining to to read because the the story uh I mean the story as we know it played out it it is something that sounds like it could be fiction right but it's actually based on real events yeah um it does sound like it would be I I I almost want Netflix to make something out of it we we'll see if they do so to wrap up I I just have a few rapid questions so I'll just shoot them out and then you answer whatever is on your mind what is your favorite programming language and why I I don't have one I feel like it is a means to an end it depends on what I'm building it whenever I I have interviews and people uh you know have this online coding platform before they paste in their templates of the interview question they say oh which language are you going to do and then I always say I think the only smart answer to this is it depends on your question um so people are always a little bit confused but yeah I don't I don't have a favorite language I I just use whatever is best suited for the job which which which languages have you used a lot in the past um I would say all the major ones so uh uh Java JavaScript python uh C++ um Objective C for Apple now would be more like Swift I'm trying to learn um rust um I did a bunch of C also when I worked on lower level um system um stuff and then I don't know if you would call these programming languages but things that look like uh programming like HTML or css or even latac you it's some kind of well I I I I like the right tool for the right job yeah what's uh book and a comic book that you liked and would recommend I always have this issue of of uh reverse indexing it's like when if I'm looking at a a bookshelf or or a library I say oh I love this one oh I love this one oh I love this one and then if you ask me oh what are your favorite ones I I missed the reverse index to have oh what are my three favorite so actually I have a web page that helps me remembering so so it is m.n which is my website SL faves as in favorites so wonderful so yeah you could get some ideas from them I would recommend for English speakers I would recommend um the there's a a comic book that is a series of of books that is really famous in Europe but not that much in the US but it's currently being translated I think pretty well and the English title is Gomer goof uh so it is the the name of a guy his last name is Goof so he Goofs all the time and he is the anti-hero um and it's really funny that's that that would be my um my choice what is your favorite comic that you've created of all all the ones or a a favorite comic um H that's always difficult it's like asking for the favorite Child uh you know I I I only I have one child so that's an easy question she's my favorite one uh this one is what I answered um earlier yeah I think this one yeah I I could stand by this this Choice my answer will probably depend on when you ask me so this one uh is more about engineering Jo me describe it yeah so this one has two panels and I think it's something um software Engineers can relate to um the first panel is lab the life of a software engineer and it shows a a guy in front of a um building that only has foundations um and looks nice and neat and clean and he says uh and he has a hammer and a handsaw and there's a bunch of woods um on the side he says clean slates solid foundations this time I will build things the right way and then the next panel says much later and then uh the is a big mess of buildings that all look completely different connected by a bunch of weird ladders and staircases and he says oh my I've done it again haven't I so this relates to at least my experience of trying to make things work and then you know you try to start from scratch or start AR fresh I'll do things differently is going to be a lot cleaner and then 6 months later it's even worse than it was before I as Engineers I think we can all relate to it if not you've just been not doing it for long enough that's a good that's a good point or or you're a genius software architect and you must be hired immediately by all those companies yeah so so saman thank you for helping go with all these stories behind the comics and and just talking about them this this was very interesting and pretty rare there's not many software cartoonists well thank you so much thanks for having me I I hope this was interesting or at least entertaining thank thank you to Manu for going through some of his favorite comics and the stories behind them to see more comics from Manu head over to his website at m.n that's a pretty clever name for more stories that Manu shared on creating Comics check out deep Dives in the pragmatic engineer link below in the show notes if you enjoy this podcast please do subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube thank you and see you in the next one