Lots of good comments already describing the uselessness of design docs at Google. I wanted to add one additional perspective that I find problematic.
As mentioned design docs are "promo" material which causes massive amounts of fluff. But they also seem to substitute actual documentation!
Every design doc is out of date pretty much the minute they are finished but teams point to them instead of writing documentation. The result.... documentation at Google as pretty bad and out of date.
Honestly I would've really preferred if documentation / instructions were promo material instead of writing 20 pages about what you DIDNT DO. Write 2 pages about how to use what actually exists
Lots of good comments already describing the uselessness of design docs at Google. I wanted to add one additional perspective that I find problematic.
As mentioned design docs are "promo" material which causes massive amounts of fluff. But they also seem to substitute actual documentation!
Every design doc is out of date pretty much the minute they are finished but teams point to them instead of writing documentation. The result.... documentation at Google as pretty bad and out of date.
Honestly I would've really preferred if documentation / instructions were promo material instead of writing 20 pages about what you DIDNT DO. Write 2 pages about how to use what actually exists