By far, the most frustrating thing about working at Google is not being able to talk much about the technology we use internally – especially the scale of some of the things we do. I’m really glad to see that Jeff Dean gave an interesting talk at the I/O conference and that, among other things, it has numbers! There’s a video and slides, so here you go: Underneath the Covers at Google: Current Systems and Future Directions.

Who the heck is Jeff Dean?! I hear you ask. He’s a Google Fellow (I believe that’s the highest engineering distinction you can have here), and so famous that somebody built a Chuck Norris-style “Jeff Dean facts” site for last year’s April fools. Here’s 3 of my favorite facts:

• During his own Google interview, Jeff Dean was asked the implications if P=NP were true. He said “P = 0 or N = 1.” Then, before the interviewer had even finished laughing, Jeff examined Google’s public certificate and wrote the private key on the whiteboard.
• Compilers don’t warn Jeff Dean. Jeff Dean warns compilers.
• The rate at which Jeff Dean produces code jumped by a factor of 40 in late 2000 when he upgraded his keyboard to USB2.0.