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I Worked at Microsoft Cloud and Google Mobile for 3 Years — Here Are the Differences in Ecosystems
Why working on cloud vs. mobile (Edge) is so different?
I recently hit my third work anniversary at Google!
It was on the 21st of May. I had a couple of colleagues and my wife congratulating me for this. That made me wonder if this is really something that deserves praise. Somewhere down the line, it took me on a retrospective journey, and here we are — with a long essay!
I joined Google on the 21st of May 2019 and before this, I spent three years working at Microsoft.
For me it wasn’t just a change of employer or tag, when I made the switch I:
- Moved from India to Singapore.
- Moved from working on the cloud to working on mobile / camera technologies.
- Moved from thinking about powerful distributed systems to thinking about low-powered edge devices.
- Moved from building for enterprise customers to building for end users.
- Moved from working more or less independently to leading others.
So in a way I just got 50–50% experience in all these verticals. Although I must confess, the second half benefitted greatly from all the experiences of the first.
In this article, I am going to take on the 2nd point
Moved from working on cloud to working on mobile and camera technologies
Upon retrospecting, I realized just how much difference there is in terms of the constraints we deal with, the thought process we carry while building the two, the nature of the release cycles, and the service level agreements we offer to the clients.
I’ll start with a bit more context into what I have been working on.
Important note
This is a long essay! Longer than any I have ever written. When I started I didn’t realise there was so much to say but there is.
I totally understand if you don’t wanna read for so long.
If you are interested in getting the key insights, move…
