You've got to hand it to him for being so classy and humble about it. It's much easier to be quiet and take the praise. Only when someone is modest enough and truly believes that others deserve credit does he/she actually advocate for other people on his/her team.
Humble? Look at the first two sentences after the introduction: "I am indeed the main individual behind the interaction design and implementation of the circle editor. I conceived, designed and implemented a compelling prototype for it almost single-handedly". And then, the first sentence of the following paragraph "Steven Levy's excellent Wired article got the story right - I wrote the circle editor and then recently widened my focus to the overall Google Plus user experience."
In my opinion, in order for me to believe Andy is actually humble, the last sentence, "Suffice it to say that Google Plus is the creation of large, talented team that I'm proud to be a part of", should have been the first one.
I think you are missing what he is actually doing - he states that the part he is wholly responsible for is just one tiny part of the whole, and that all the other credit given to whom is wrong. His first statement is meant to be a bit ironic.
I actually thought it was a humble brag. The word single handedly shouldn't appear in a post if you're trying to be completely humble.
Maybe he singlehandedly did the prototype,
But how many great designers taught him, how many great designs did he study, before creating it?
I'm not trying to criticize him. Um, Designing the biggest new product for the biggest Internet company in the world is 'kinda' a big deal, and he should be proud. I just found this post to be a sneaky humble brag.
Definitely. Google wants to ensure that people understand it's not a Steve Jobs type situation at Google. Innovation comes from everywhere. I think it's impressive that they could successfully implement a site-wide redesign despite the fragmented nature of the company. Ordered chaos.
> Google wants to ensure that people understand it's not a Steve Jobs type situation at Google.
I don't mean to be snarky but even a cursory examination of the evidence would make that pretty obvious. A bit of focus and cohesion would do their product quality some good.
I totally agree. Their recent focus on consistent design is a step in the right direction. However, we all know that Engineering wins pretty much every time at Google so I'm especially curious and pleasantly surprised they pulled a product like this off.
