When Henna Singh decided to move her family from India to Ireland so her husband could pursue his master’s degree, she was determined to meet the moment head on. Not only did she dive into learning a new country and culture, but also she decided to take on a whole new career. “It was a time where I had no regulations,” she says. “I could do whatever I wanted.”
To her, the timing couldn’t have been better. She needed to find work in her new city of Dublin and saw that programming, with all its job openings, would be the perfect way to engage her passion for building and creating new things. There was only one catch: She first needed to learn how to code.
Seeking both personal and professional development in Dublin, Henna started searching for opportunities that allowed her to learn code with others in a classroom setting. That instinct helped her find a program to study Android offered by Udacity and Grow with Google. Henna applied, and heard back after a few weeks. She got a full scholarship.
As she started to attend more classes and meet more people, she noticed that many of her new friends belonged to different Google Developer Groups (GDG). These groups are independently run communities, guided by Google, that bring local developers with similar interests in technology together. So in the same spirit that led her to move from India to Ireland, a curious Henna immediately called the organizer of GDG Dublin, the Google Developer Group that was closest to her. After hearing Henna’s story on learning Android from scratch, the organizer invited Henna to give a talk about her journey to the group.
Henna started her presentation to an excited crowd, but was struck by an overwhelming sense of stage fright. So the GDG Dublin community quickly sprung to action. Filled with Google mentors, experts and local thought leaders, the group offered Henna advice from their own experience as public speakers. “They told me to slow down and take a breath. They told me I could do it,” Henna says. “I felt like I had such huge support. That moment helped me find my confidence moving forward.” She pushed ahead, and nailed her presentation. She knew she found her developer family, and later helped the group organize events.
Empowered by the expertise and warm family support she received during her first talk, Henna realized that public speaking, even when it goes all wrong, is not that scary. She soon signed up to give a global talk at DevFest Dublin 2018, and then went on to seek out more leadership roles in her own local developer community.
All of these experiences, paired with the Google mentorship and technical education content she received, helped Henna eventually land a full-time role as a Technical Services Engineer. In her free time, she is also a Community Organizer for Google’s Women Techmakers, where she helps connect local companies to women in development. And, of course, she is still a dedicated member of her GDG Dublin family.
Want to join a Google Developer Group near you? Learn more about how to get involved virtually or in person, on our website.
When Henna Singh decided to move her family from India to Ireland so her husband could pursue his master’s degree, she was determined to meet the moment head on. Not only did she dive into learning a new country and culture, but also she decided to take on a whole new career. “It was a time where I had no regulations,” she says. “I could do whatever I wanted.”
To her, the timing couldn’t have been better. She needed to find work in her new city of Dublin and saw that programming, with all its job openings, would be the perfect way to engage her passion for building and creating new things. There was only one catch: She first needed to learn how to code.
Seeking both personal and professional development in Dublin, Henna started searching for opportunities that allowed her to learn code with others in a classroom setting. That instinct helped her find a program to study Android offered by Udacity and Grow with Google. Henna applied, and heard back after a few weeks. She got a full scholarship.
As she started to attend more classes and meet more people, she noticed that many of her new friends belonged to different Google Developer Groups (GDG). These groups are independently run communities, guided by Google, that bring local developers with similar interests in technology together. So in the same spirit that led her to move from India to Ireland, a curious Henna immediately called the organizer of GDG Dublin, the Google Developer Group that was closest to her. After hearing Henna’s story on learning Android from scratch, the organizer invited Henna to give a talk about her journey to the group.
Henna started her presentation to an excited crowd, but was struck by an overwhelming sense of stage fright. So the GDG Dublin community quickly sprung to action. Filled with Google mentors, experts and local thought leaders, the group offered Henna advice from their own experience as public speakers. “They told me to slow down and take a breath. They told me I could do it,” Henna says. “I felt like I had such huge support. That moment helped me find my confidence moving forward.” She pushed ahead, and nailed her presentation. She knew she found her developer family, and later helped the group organize events.
Empowered by the expertise and warm family support she received during her first talk, Henna realized that public speaking, even when it goes all wrong, is not that scary. She soon signed up to give a global talk at DevFest Dublin 2018, and then went on to seek out more leadership roles in her own local developer community.
All of these experiences, paired with the Google mentorship and technical education content she received, helped Henna eventually land a full-time role as a Technical Services Engineer. In her free time, she is also a Community Organizer for Google’s Women Techmakers, where she helps connect local companies to women in development. And, of course, she is still a dedicated member of her GDG Dublin family.
Want to join a Google Developer Group near you? Learn more about how to get involved virtually or in person, on our website.
When Henna Singh decided to move her family from India to Ireland so her husband could pursue his master’s degree, she was determined to meet the moment head on. Not only did she dive into learning a new country and culture, but also she decided to take on a whole new career. “It was a time where I had no regulations,” she says. “I could do whatever I wanted.”
To her, the timing couldn’t have been better. She needed to find work in her new city of Dublin and saw that programming, with all its job openings, would be the perfect way to engage her passion for building and creating new things. There was only one catch: She first needed to learn how to code.
Seeking both personal and professional development in Dublin, Henna started searching for opportunities that allowed her to learn code with others in a classroom setting. That instinct helped her find a program to study Android offered by Udacity and Grow with Google. Henna applied, and heard back after a few weeks. She got a full scholarship.
As she started to attend more classes and meet more people, she noticed that many of her new friends belonged to different Google Developer Groups (GDG). These groups are independently run communities, guided by Google, that bring local developers with similar interests in technology together. So in the same spirit that led her to move from India to Ireland, a curious Henna immediately called the organizer of GDG Dublin, the Google Developer Group that was closest to her. After hearing Henna’s story on learning Android from scratch, the organizer invited Henna to give a talk about her journey to the group.
Henna started her presentation to an excited crowd, but was struck by an overwhelming sense of stage fright. So the GDG Dublin community quickly sprung to action. Filled with Google mentors, experts and local thought leaders, the group offered Henna advice from their own experience as public speakers. “They told me to slow down and take a breath. They told me I could do it,” Henna says. “I felt like I had such huge support. That moment helped me find my confidence moving forward.” She pushed ahead, and nailed her presentation. She knew she found her developer family, and later helped the group organize events.
Empowered by the expertise and warm family support she received during her first talk, Henna realized that public speaking, even when it goes all wrong, is not that scary. She soon signed up to give a global talk at DevFest Dublin 2018, and then went on to seek out more leadership roles in her own local developer community.
All of these experiences, paired with the Google mentorship and technical education content she received, helped Henna eventually land a full-time role as a Technical Services Engineer. In her free time, she is also a Community Organizer for Google’s Women Techmakers, where she helps connect local companies to women in development. And, of course, she is still a dedicated member of her GDG Dublin family.
Want to join a Google Developer Group near you? Learn more about how to get involved virtually or in person, on our website.
When Henna Singh decided to move her family from India to Ireland so her husband could pursue his master’s degree, she was determined to meet the moment head on. Not only did she dive into learning a new country and culture, but also she decided to take on a whole new career. “It was a time where I had no regulations,” she says. “I could do whatever I wanted.”
To her, the timing couldn’t have been better. She needed to find work in her new city of Dublin and saw that programming, with all its job openings, would be the perfect way to engage her passion for building and creating new things. There was only one catch: She first needed to learn how to code.
Seeking both personal and professional development in Dublin, Henna started searching for opportunities that allowed her to learn code with others in a classroom setting. That instinct helped her find a program to study Android offered by Udacity and Grow with Google. Henna applied, and heard back after a few weeks. She got a full scholarship.
As she started to attend more classes and meet more people, she noticed that many of her new friends belonged to different Google Developer Groups (GDG). These groups are independently run communities, guided by Google, that bring local developers with similar interests in technology together. So in the same spirit that led her to move from India to Ireland, a curious Henna immediately called the organizer of GDG Dublin, the Google Developer Group that was closest to her. After hearing Henna’s story on learning Android from scratch, the organizer invited Henna to give a talk about her journey to the group.
Henna started her presentation to an excited crowd, but was struck by an overwhelming sense of stage fright. So the GDG Dublin community quickly sprung to action. Filled with Google mentors, experts and local thought leaders, the group offered Henna advice from their own experience as public speakers. “They told me to slow down and take a breath. They told me I could do it,” Henna says. “I felt like I had such huge support. That moment helped me find my confidence moving forward.” She pushed ahead, and nailed her presentation. She knew she found her developer family, and later helped the group organize events.
Empowered by the expertise and warm family support she received during her first talk, Henna realized that public speaking, even when it goes all wrong, is not that scary. She soon signed up to give a global talk at DevFest Dublin 2018, and then went on to seek out more leadership roles in her own local developer community.
All of these experiences, paired with the Google mentorship and technical education content she received, helped Henna eventually land a full-time role as a Technical Services Engineer. In her free time, she is also a Community Organizer for Google’s Women Techmakers, where she helps connect local companies to women in development. And, of course, she is still a dedicated member of her GDG Dublin family.
Want to join a Google Developer Group near you? Learn more about how to get involved virtually or in person, on our website.
As our CEO Sundar Pichai announced today, Google will invest $175 million toward economic opportunity for Black business owners, startup founders, job seekers and developers. A part of this initiative is the inaugural Google for Startups Accelerator in the U.S: a virtual three-month program for Black founders from across the country.
During the accelerator, startups will be paired with Google experts to identify and solve their most pressing technical challenges, everything from implementing machine learning to developing mobile apps to improving user experience design. Founders will also participate in workshops focused on fundraising, hiring and sales. Interested startups can apply through June 30th and the accelerator will kick off in August. This will be the first in a series of Google for Startups Accelerators focused on underrepresented founders.
Along with the accelerator, we're creating a $5 million Google for Startups Black Founders Fund. This fund will provide cash awards up to $100,000 to selected startups from our U.S. programs and partner communities. These cash awards will go to startups with Black founders, who have been deeply impacted by COVID-19 and who are disproportionately locked out of access to capital.
Though we see this as a step forward, we know there is much more work to be done to level the playing field for founders. If you or someone you know would be a great fit for the Google for Startups Accelerator, encourage them to apply by June 30th.
Every year, GDC is a moment to celebrate our successes and learn from one another. Although we won’t be gathering in person this year, we’re bringing you the latest updates at our Google for Games Developer Summit, where developers can watch the announcements and virtually attend sessions for free at g.co/gamedevsummit.
We also realize this may have been a big sacrifice for your teams. For some, GDC is a major opportunity for annual business development and marketing strategies. That’s why we’ve partnered with WINGS andthe GDC Relief Fund to support teams in continuing to do what they do best: build world-class games.
Now more than ever, games are helping players around the globe feel more connected. To ensure you have access to the tools you need to deliver the best possible game experiences, our teams have been building solutions to help you tackle your biggest challenges and set you up for long-term success. You can check out the highlights below:
Build games and reach a wider audience with Android and Google Play
We’re making it easier for you to build and optimize games on Android. Learn about new tools to help your development process, provide greater insights into your game’s performance, and access a wider player base. Once you’re ready to publish, review our updated guidance to ensure your game is high-quality and leverages various features and services for a successful go-to-market with Google Play.
Grow your business with Google Ads and AdMob
The best game developers think about their players first—both when creating experiences people love and building sustainable businesses. Google Ads and AdMob are introducing new ways to analyze and utilize player insights to help you grow your games and earn the revenue you need to improve them over time.
Simply scale your global game with Google Cloud Game Servers
Hosting and scaling a global game can be challenging and requires that you either build costly solutions, or turn to pre-packaged ones that limit choice and control. To offer you more choices and time to dedicate to core elements of producing games, the Google Cloud team is introducing a simplified, convenient way for managing game server clusters.
Build and publish the next generation of games with Stadia
New game platforms present new challenges and opportunities for game creators and Google is here to help. For developers of all sizes looking to bring their games to Stadia, the team is unveiling Stadia Makers, a new program to support the independent development community.
We’re excited to see this community continue to delight players around the world, and we look forward to building what’s next, together. From all of us, thank you for keeping this community thriving.
Every year, GDC is a moment to celebrate our successes and learn from one another. Although we won’t be gathering in person this year, we’re bringing you the latest updates at our Google for Games Developer Summit, where developers can watch the announcements and virtually attend sessions for free at g.co/gamedevsummit.
We also realize this may have been a big sacrifice for your teams. For some, GDC is a major opportunity for annual business development and marketing strategies. That’s why we’ve partnered with WINGS andthe GDC Relief Fund to support teams in continuing to do what they do best: build world-class games.
Now more than ever, games are helping players around the globe feel more connected. To ensure you have access to the tools you need to deliver the best possible game experiences, our teams have been building solutions to help you tackle your biggest challenges and set you up for long-term success. You can check out the highlights below:
Build games and reach a wider audience with Android and Google Play
We’re making it easier for you to build and optimize games on Android. Learn about new tools to help your development process, provide greater insights into your game’s performance, and access a wider player base. Once you’re ready to publish, review our updated guidance to ensure your game is high-quality and leverages various features and services for a successful go-to-market with Google Play.
Grow your business with Google Ads and AdMob
The best game developers think about their players first—both when creating experiences people love and building sustainable businesses. Google Ads and AdMob are introducing new ways to analyze and utilize player insights to help you grow your games and earn the revenue you need to improve them over time.
Simply scale your global game with Google Cloud Game Servers
Hosting and scaling a global game can be challenging and requires that you either build costly solutions, or turn to pre-packaged ones that limit choice and control. To offer you more choices and time to dedicate to core elements of producing games, the Google Cloud team is introducing a simplified, convenient way for managing game server clusters.
Build and publish the next generation of games with Stadia
New game platforms present new challenges and opportunities for game creators and Google is here to help. For developers of all sizes looking to bring their games to Stadia, the team is unveiling Stadia Makers, a new program to support the independent development community.
We’re excited to see this community continue to delight players around the world, and we look forward to building what’s next, together. From all of us, thank you for keeping this community thriving.
A year ago, our Google Registry team launched .dev—a top-level domain (TLD) for developers, designers, technical writers, and technology enthusiasts. This new TLD gave people the chance to register memorable domain names that can be hard to find on older domains, with a descriptive ending that’s especially relevant to them.
The .dev TLD is on the HSTS preload list, which means it’s secure for both website owners and their visitors. Placement on the HSTS preload list ensures HTTPS encryption for your entire website, which helps protect visitors against ad malware, tracking injection from ISPs, and potential spying when using open Wi-Fi networks. With so much built-in security, .dev has become the natural place for technology makers to share resources, showcase great work, and foster community.
In the last year, over 150,000 .dev domains have been registered, and we’ve seen many creative uses of the TLD. Here are just a few of the exciting examples we’ve seen.
Atlassian launched both software.dev and cicd.dev to share insights into today’s software development landscape and how software and IT professionals use CI/CD tools. Using .dev domains helped them market both sites, which have sparked conversations on social media among the developer community.
Cloudflare
Cloudflare launched workers.dev to help developers build serverless websites and applications that deploy directly onto subdomains of workers.dev. The TLD made it possible for Cloudflare to use a domain name that’s both descriptive and easy to remember. And over the last year, they’ve seen developers create handy apps like this “lazy invoice” tool.
Salesforce
Salesforce used lwc.dev to launch a site dedicated to Lightning Web Components (their open source project) where professional developers can find online documentation, copy source code for various recipes, and engage with the Lightning Web Components community.
Google Developer Relations
The Google Developer Relations team launched google.dev for developers to explore and learn about all the technologies Google has to offer. You can sign up for the waitlist for the beta version of google.dev, which lets developers create profiles and earn badges by passing technical challenges. The team sends out new invites regularly, so be sure to sign up.
Go Programming Language
Our Go Language team launched go.dev on the 10th anniversary of the open source programming language to provide Go developers a hub where they can find learning resources, including featured use cases and customer stories of other companies using Go.
Build your own .dev experience
From the start, we envisioned .dev as a home for developers and technology makers, and it’s been wonderful to see all the amazing work showcased in this domain. To celebrate .dev’s first birthday, we created a short video of some of our favorite .dev users sharing their tips for building great websites. We hope you’ll find it useful as you begin your next project, and we hope it inspires you to create your own .dev experience. Visit get.dev to learn more and get started.
Editor’s Note: Guest authors Diego Moreno and Sophia Deng (@sophdeng) are from Gigster, a firm that builds dynamic teams made of top global talent who create industry-changing custom software.
Prelude: Data input & management … three general choices
Google Cloud provides multiple services for gathering and managing data. Google Forms paired with Google Sheets are quite popular as they require no engineering resources while being incredibly powerful, providing storage of up to 5 million rows of data and built-in analytics for small team projects.
At the other end of the spectrum, to support a high volume of users or data, Google Cloud provides advanced serverless platforms like Google App Engine (web app-hosting) and Google Cloud Functions (function/service-hosting) that can use Google Cloud Firestore for fast and scalable data storage. These are perfect for professional engineering teams that need autoscaling to respond to any level of user traffic and data input. Such apps can also be packaged into a container and deployed serverlessly on Google Cloud Run.
However, it's quite possible your needs are right in-between. Today, we're happy to present the Gigster story and their innovative use of Google Apps Script—a highly-accessible service conventionally relegated to simple macro and add-on development, but which Gigster used to its advantage, building robust systems to transform their internal operations. Apps Script is also serverless, meaning Gigster didn't have to manage any servers for their application nor did they need to find a place to host its source code.
The Gigster story
Gigster enables distributed teams of software engineers, product managers and designers to build software applications for enterprise clients. Over the past five years, Gigster has delivered thousands of projects, all with distributed software teams. Our group, the Gigster Staffing Operations Team, is responsible for assembling these teams from Gigster’s network of over 1,000 freelancers.
Two years ago, our team began building custom software to automate the multi-stage and highly manual team staffing process. Building internal software has allowed the same-size Staffing Operations Team (3 members!) to enjoy a 60x reduction in time spent staffing each role.
The Apps Script ecosystem has emerged as the most critical component in our toolkit for building this internal software, due to its versatility and ease of deployment. We want to share how one piece of the staffing process has evolved to become more powerful over time thanks to Apps Script. Ultimately, we hope that sharing this journey enables all types of teams to build their own tools and unlock new possibilities.
End-to-end automation in Google Sheets
Staffing is an operationally intensive procedure. Just finding willing and able candidates requires numerous steps:
Gathering and formatting customer requirements.
Communicating with candidates through multiple channels.
Logging candidate responses.
Processing paperwork for placement
To add complexity, many of these steps require working with different third-party applications. For awhile, we performed every step manually, tracking every piece of data generated in one central Sheet (the “Staffing Broadcast Google Sheet”). At a certain point, this back-and-forth work to log data from numerous applications became unsustainable. Although we leveraged Google Sheets features like Data Validation rules and filters, the Staffing Broadcast Sheet could not alleviate the high degree of manual processes that were required of the team.
The centralized Staffing Broadcast Google Sheet provided organization, but required a high degree of manual entry for tracking candidate decisions.
The key transformation was integrating Sheets data with third-party APIs via Apps Script. This enabled us to cut out the most time-consuming operations. We no longer had to flip between applications to message candidates, wait for their replies, and then manually track responses.
To interact with these APIs, we built a user interface directly into the Staffing Broadcast Google Sheet. By introducing an information module, as well as drop-down lists and buttons, we were able to define a small set of manual actions versus the much wider list of tasks the tool would perform automatically across multiple applications.
By integrating Google Apps Script with third-party APIs and creating a user interface, we evolved the Staffing Broadcast Tool to centralize and automate almost every step of the staffing process.
doPost() is the key function in our staffing tool that facilitates third-party services triggering our Apps Script automations. Below is a snippet of how we listened to candidates' responses from a third-party messaging application. In this case, queueing the third-party message in a Google Sheet so it can be processed with improved error-handling.
/** * Receive POST requests and record to queue. */ doPost(e) { var payload = e.postData.contents; SpreadsheetApp.openById(SPREADSHEET_ID) .getSheetByName("Unprocessed") .appendRow([payload]); return ContentService.createTextOutput(""); // Return 200 }
Almost all manual work associated with finding candidates was automated through the combination of integrations with third-party APIs and having a user interface to perform a small, defined set of actions. Our team’s day-to-day became shockingly simple: select candidates to receive messages within the Staffing Broadcast Tool, then click the “Send Broadcast” button. That’s it. The tool handled everything else.
Leveraging Sheets as our foundation, we fundamentally transformed our spreadsheet into a custom software application. The spreadsheet went from a partially automated datastore to a tool that provided an end-to-end automated solution, requiring only the click of a few buttons to execute.
Evolution into a standalone application
While satisfied, we understood that having our application live in Google Sheets had its limitations, namely, it was difficult for multiple team members to simultaneously use the tool. Using doGet(), the sibling to doPost(), we began building an HTML frontend to the Staffing Broadcast Tool. In addition to resolving difficulties related to multiple users being in a spreadsheet, it also allowed us to build an easier-to-use and more responsive tool by leveraging Bootstrap & jQuery.
Having multiple users in a single Google Sheet can create conflicts, but Apps Script allowed us to build a responsive web app leveraging common libraries like Bootstrap & jQuery that eliminated those problems while providing an improved user experience.
When other teams at Gigster got wind of what we built, it was easy to grant access to others beyond the Staffing Operations Team. Since Apps Script is part of the G Suite developer ecosystem, we relied on Google’s security policies to help deploy our tools to larger audiences.
While this can be done through Google’s conventional sharing tools, it can also be done with built-in Apps Script functions like Session.getActiveUser() that allow us to restrict access to specific Google users. In our case, those within our organization plus a few select users.
To this day, we continue to use this third version of the Staffing Broadcast Tool in our daily operations as it supports 100% of all client projects at Gigster.
Conclusion
By fundamentally transforming the Staffing Broadcast Tool with Apps Script, Gigster’s Staffing Operations Team increased its efficiency while supporting the growth of our company. Inspired by these business benefits, we applied this application-building approach using Apps Script for multiple tools, including candidate searching, new user onboarding, and countless automations.
Our team’s psychological shift about how we view what we are capable of, especially as a non-engineering team, has been the most valuable part of this journey. By leveraging an already familiar ecosystem to build our own software, we have freed team members to become more self-sufficient and valuable to our customers.
To get started on your Apps Script journey, we recommend you check out the Apps Script Fundamentals playlist and the official documentation. And if you're a freelancer looking to build software applications for clients, we’re always looking for talented software engineers, product managers or designers to join Gigster’s Talent Network.
Thank you to Sandrine Bitton, the third member of the Staffing Operations Team, for all her help in the development of the Staffing Broadcast Tool.
Calling all coders: Hash Code, Google’s annual team programming competition, is back for 2020—and you can register today atg.co/hashcode.
Hash Code was created back in 2014 by a few engineers in the Google France office. These engineers were coding competition enthusiasts and wondered if it would be possible to create a new kind of coding competition, one that looked more like the type of work they did each day.
While Hash Code shares similarities with other programming competitions, there are four things that we think make it especially Googley:
Teamwork makes the dream work. Just like software engineers at Google, you work in a small team during Hash Code. So while coding ability is important, so are teamwork and communication skills. Don’t have a team? Don’t worry! You can register and find a team later using our Facebook group.
Launch, iterate, repeat. There’s never a “right” answer to a Hash Code problem. Teams spend the entirety of each round working on one challenge, continuously trying to improve their solution. In computer science, this is referred to as an optimization problem, and it’s similar to problems you’d encounter working as an engineer at Google. Also, here’s one pro tip: Your team should submit early and often during the competition so you can test your solutions and keep improving them!
Visit Google’s European headquarters. Hash Code takes place over two rounds: First up is the Online Qualification Round on Feb. 20, after which the top teams will be invited to Google’s Dublin office for the Final Round on April 25 (check out last year’s Final Round highlights). While it’s awesome to make it to the Final Round, we encourage teams taking part in the Online Qualification Round to focus on trying their best, learning something new, and—of course—having fun!
Want to get involved? There’s something for everyone in a Hash Code challenge, so whether you’ve just started coding or you’ve been participating in programming competitions for years, head over to g.co/hashcode to register today and be part of the #HashCode fun. We’ll see you for the Online Qualification Round on Feb. 20!
