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.
Jeff Dean wrote an O(n^2) algorithm once. It was for the Traveling Salesman Problem
I read it more as a parody of The Most Interesting Man in the World as opposed to Chuck Norris.
> When Jeff Dean goes on vacation, production services across Google mysteriously stop working within a few days. This is actually true. ... It's not clear whether this fact is really true, or whether this line is simply part of the joke, so I've omitted the usual (TRUE) identifier here. Interpret this as you see fit :)
I think this one's true-ish. Back in the day when Google didn't have good cron services for the corp and production domains [1], Jeff Dean's workstation ran a job that made something called (iirc) the "protocol buffer debug database". Basically, a big file (probably an sstable) with compiled .proto introspection data for a huge number of checked-in protobufs. You could use it to produce human-readable debug output from what was otherwise a fairly indecipherable blob. I don't think it was ever intended for production use, but some things that shouldn't have ended up using it. I think after Jeff had been on vacation for a while, his `prodaccess` credentials expired, the job stopped working, maybe the output became unavailable, and some things broke.
Here's a related story I know is true: when I was running Google Reader, I got paged frequently for Bigtable replication delay, and I eventually traced it to trouble accessing files that shared GFS chunkservers with this database. I mentioned it on some mailing list, and almost immediately afterward Jeff Dean CCed me on a code review changing the file's replication from r=3 to r=12. The problem went away.
My 3
When Graham Bell invented the telephone, he saw a missed call from Jeff Dean.
Jeff Dean's PIN is the last 4 digits of pi.
As a young boy, Jeff Dean reprogrammed his Etch A Sketch to play Tetris.
Hey! I created Jeff Dean Facts! Not the jokes themselves, but the site that collected them.
It was in 2008 I think (give or take a year, can't remember). I worked at Google at the time. Chunk Norris Facts was a popular Internet meme (which I think later faded when he came out as MAGA, but I digress...). A colleague (who wishes to remain anonymous) thought the idea of Jeff Dean Facts would be funny, and April 1st was coming up.
At the time, there was a team working on an experimental web app hosting platform code named Prometheus -- it was later released as App Engine. Using an early, internal build I put together a web site where people could submit "facts" about Jeff Dean, rate each other's facts on a five-star scale, and see the top-rated facts. Everything was anonymous. I had a few coworkers who are funnier than me populate some initial facts.
I found a few bugs in Prometheus in the process, which the team rapidly fixed to meet my "launch date" of April 1st. :)
On the day, which I think was a Sunday, early in the morning, I sent an email to the company-wide "misc" mailing list (or maybe it was eng-misc?) from a fake email address (a google group alias with private membership), and got the mailing list moderator to approve it.
It only took Jeff an hour or two to hack his way through the back-end servers (using various internal-facing status pages, Borg logs, etc.) to figure out my identity.
But everyone enjoyed it!
My only regret is that I targeted the site specifically at Jeff and not Sanjay Ghemawat. Back then, Jeff & Sanjay did everything together, and were responsible for inventing a huge number of core technologies at Google (I have no idea to what extent they still work together today). The site was a joke, but I think it had the side effect of elevating Jeff above Sanjay, which is not what I intended. Really the only reason I targeted Jeff is because he's a bit easier to make fun of personality-wise, and because "Jeff Dean Facts" sort of rolls off the tongue easier that "Sanjay Ghemawat Facts" -- but in retrospect this feels a little racist. :(
My personal favorite joke is: Jeff Dean puts his pants on one leg at a time, but if he had more than two legs, you'd see his approach is actually O(log n).
My further comment will be buried, but its a rip on Chuck Norris facts, and was pretty ... whatever ... "geek culture". That was only proved by Chuck Norris' endorsement of Mike Huckabee back in 2007:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--EGyU57efY
Maybe I just run in different circles but I was always under the impression that the so called Chuck Norris of programming was Jon Skeet, another rather "famous" google employee
Funny, but also a reminder of how rare it is to find people who combine deep technical ability with the calm, high-leverage decision-making that scales teams. Memes aside, those are the folks who quietly shape entire fields.
54 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 61.4 ms ] threadThat's actually funny and cool if true. I think what's even more impressive is that this stuff was all pre-AI boom.
> Jeff Dean compiles and runs his code before submitting, but only to check for compiler and CPU bugs.
Sadly, I have encountered this, in many "Non-Jeff-Dean" developers.
I think this one's true-ish. Back in the day when Google didn't have good cron services for the corp and production domains [1], Jeff Dean's workstation ran a job that made something called (iirc) the "protocol buffer debug database". Basically, a big file (probably an sstable) with compiled .proto introspection data for a huge number of checked-in protobufs. You could use it to produce human-readable debug output from what was otherwise a fairly indecipherable blob. I don't think it was ever intended for production use, but some things that shouldn't have ended up using it. I think after Jeff had been on vacation for a while, his `prodaccess` credentials expired, the job stopped working, maybe the output became unavailable, and some things broke.
Here's a related story I know is true: when I was running Google Reader, I got paged frequently for Bigtable replication delay, and I eventually traced it to trouble accessing files that shared GFS chunkservers with this database. I mentioned it on some mailing list, and almost immediately afterward Jeff Dean CCed me on a code review changing the file's replication from r=3 to r=12. The problem went away.
[1] this lasted longer than you would expect
It was in 2008 I think (give or take a year, can't remember). I worked at Google at the time. Chunk Norris Facts was a popular Internet meme (which I think later faded when he came out as MAGA, but I digress...). A colleague (who wishes to remain anonymous) thought the idea of Jeff Dean Facts would be funny, and April 1st was coming up.
At the time, there was a team working on an experimental web app hosting platform code named Prometheus -- it was later released as App Engine. Using an early, internal build I put together a web site where people could submit "facts" about Jeff Dean, rate each other's facts on a five-star scale, and see the top-rated facts. Everything was anonymous. I had a few coworkers who are funnier than me populate some initial facts.
I found a few bugs in Prometheus in the process, which the team rapidly fixed to meet my "launch date" of April 1st. :)
On the day, which I think was a Sunday, early in the morning, I sent an email to the company-wide "misc" mailing list (or maybe it was eng-misc?) from a fake email address (a google group alias with private membership), and got the mailing list moderator to approve it.
It only took Jeff an hour or two to hack his way through the back-end servers (using various internal-facing status pages, Borg logs, etc.) to figure out my identity.
But everyone enjoyed it!
My only regret is that I targeted the site specifically at Jeff and not Sanjay Ghemawat. Back then, Jeff & Sanjay did everything together, and were responsible for inventing a huge number of core technologies at Google (I have no idea to what extent they still work together today). The site was a joke, but I think it had the side effect of elevating Jeff above Sanjay, which is not what I intended. Really the only reason I targeted Jeff is because he's a bit easier to make fun of personality-wise, and because "Jeff Dean Facts" sort of rolls off the tongue easier that "Sanjay Ghemawat Facts" -- but in retrospect this feels a little racist. :(
My personal favorite joke is: Jeff Dean puts his pants on one leg at a time, but if he had more than two legs, you'd see his approach is actually O(log n).
They just got their own (unofficial) Lego set: https://x.com/JeffDean/status/2006581022666928415
:)
Because it’s easy to pick on myself. :)"
Damn!
To me this will remain his best work.
Jeff Dean doesn't use a compiler; he just glares at his source code until it executes.
Jeff Dean once optimized a sleep(10) call to return in 5 seconds.
Jeff Dean’s keyboard doesn’t have a Backspace key; he simply doesn't make mistakes.
/end. There's no need to get up. I will see myself out.