I'm no businessman, but does anyone else feel this will kill a lot of potential innovation? Not every project pays dividends immediately, and some are worth pursuing even at a long-term loss. (imagine if we all had fiber today and bandwidth was ridiculously abundant. Just how different would the internet be, just as when electricity became abundant?) Also I understand that Google is a business, but the need for a business model for research might stymy forays into interesting tangents. (I can't currently list any, but history is full of examples of things that were invented while looking for a solution to a different problem) Sure a company shouldn't be hemorrhaging money or throwing it at anything that moves, but it also shouldn't be completely beholden to (my generalization of) investors who can be quite short-term-thinking and risk-averse.
Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
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Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#32So many companies try to emulate how Google works. There are multiple books, hundreds or thousands of articles. People speculate on the perks, the review structure, the hierarchy, the autonomy. However, when other companies try to imitate Google they always fail because they're missing a crucial piece: Billions of dollars in ad revenue Google doesn't work the way it does to be successful. It works that way because it…
I don't buy it. Many companies are able to get the perks, culture, and autonomy right without being a multi-billion dollar company. It does enable Google to do certain things (like moonshot projects) that smaller companies can't do, but a lot of the perks I've seen are replicated in other companies. In fact, I think your comment "Google doesn't do what it does to be successful, it does it because it is successful" is…
He's not talking about the perks. He's talking about the design of the organization, beyond the culture.
The structures, the roles, the processes.
Autonomy is a value, but values only influence design.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of that stuff although is cheaper for the corporation to provide than for the employee to pay for themselves in money and time. The corp has a tax advantage and a bulk purchase advantage. Not having a payment infra probably adds a little bit of efficiency too.
Which does seem like sort of a loophole. Don't companies have to add perks over a certain amount to the employees pay so that it gets taxed? Wouldn't feeding an employee every day qualify? It would be sort of weird if we turn back into having sort of 'company towns' where your employer provides a lot of what you need except they pay for it. It's not just Google this would be beneficial for, even if you run a factory…
The IRS rule is that these kinds of perks are allowed if it is for the company's benefit.
For example, if a free lunch allows an employees to have a lunch meeting, the IRS considers that for the company's benefit.
Whether all of Google's perks actually satisfy that test is a different issue, but that is the IRS's rule.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which does seem like sort of a loophole. Don't companies have to add perks over a certain amount to the employees pay so that it gets taxed? Wouldn't feeding an employee every day qualify? It would be sort of weird if we turn back into having sort of 'company towns' where your employer provides a lot of what you need except they pay for it. It's not just Google this would be beneficial for, even if you run a factory…
I one spoke with a woman from the Netherlands who was surprised that these perks are not taxable. According to her, in the Netherlands perks like shuttles to work or company-provide food are taxable.
What if the company had a business meeting and lunch was provided?
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which does seem like sort of a loophole. Don't companies have to add perks over a certain amount to the employees pay so that it gets taxed? Wouldn't feeding an employee every day qualify? It would be sort of weird if we turn back into having sort of 'company towns' where your employer provides a lot of what you need except they pay for it. It's not just Google this would be beneficial for, even if you run a factory…
I one spoke with a woman from the Netherlands who was surprised that these perks are not taxable. According to her, in the Netherlands perks like shuttles to work or company-provide food are taxable.
Similar taxes have been adopted in Norway, as companies were paying for leased cars and mobile phones rather than raising wages.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#36So many companies try to emulate how Google works. There are multiple books, hundreds or thousands of articles. People speculate on the perks, the review structure, the hierarchy, the autonomy. However, when other companies try to imitate Google they always fail because they're missing a crucial piece: Billions of dollars in ad revenue Google doesn't work the way it does to be successful. It works that way because it…
> Google doesn't do what it does to be successful. It does it because it is successful.
I love this line.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#37Contrast Google's old way of managing bets with Tesla.
When Google started working on self-driving cars, they went about it academically. They did not plan a sequence of stepping stones that they could sell. They meant to have a product in an indeterminate future which should be immediately perfect and better than a human, essentially not needing a wheel.
Tesla went about it with an engineering perspective. First, cars that can send accumulated data over the Internet. Then, equipped with cameras. Then, with limited assistance, warning the user to take the wheel back in difficult situations. And sporadic updates adding support for more complex cases.
The end goal is identical; but they make money along the way.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#38Google has a fundamental problem with solving challenging issues, especially those in the realm of physical "meat-space". Really hard problems, problems that might reveal that Google is not omnipotent, where Google might not succeed, Google pulls back from. In areas where Google is, Google dominates the landscape. In all others, Google does not deign to participate. If Google can't dominate a market, it is not interested.
> Former employees say Page became frustrated with Fiber’s lack of progress. “Larry just thought it wasn’t game-changing enough,” says a former Page adviser. “There’s no flying-saucer shit in laying fiber.”
The issue with the physical world is that fundamentally, compared to a lot of software or hardware technology, it _is_ fairly boring. Boring work is also some of the most important work; the synchronization of traffic lights, the scheduling of flight paths, the minutiae of power line access, these are all boring, important things. A common reaction to boring problems by technologists is to throw computers at them. Build an algorithm to synchronize traffic lights. Build an AI to schedule flight paths more efficiently. I understand these reactions, the impulse to replace existing, less-optimal processes with stronger, more efficient, automated ones. Google does a really great job at automating things, its their core competency. However, automation can't solve all problems. You can't automate away political processes. You can't automate away property rights and fair access to power lines, and contracting construction work. Page clearly feels uncomfortable with this, and so he abandoned Fiber.
Honestly I am not sure Page was wrong to abandon Fiber. Google's core competency is automation and if they can't automate a problem, maybe they shouldn't be involved in the space. Or maybe Google should get a new core competency and learn new things. Teaching an old company new tricks is hard though. Very hard. So hard that most companies fail before they can ever adapt. Without being able to solve problems in the physical space, Google is fundamentally "locked-in" to only being able to solve digital problems in the digital world. This is why Google has no physical stores, no physical products (which are not manufactured by someone else - Chromebooks, Pixel, etc do not count. Prototyping is easy. Selling to customers in a retail store is hard). Microsoft had the same problem as Google once. It was hard for Microsoft to learn how to run stores, build its own products; it took Microsoft over a decade. Let's hope Google can learn too.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't buy it. Many companies are able to get the perks, culture, and autonomy right without being a multi-billion dollar company. It does enable Google to do certain things (like moonshot projects) that smaller companies can't do, but a lot of the perks I've seen are replicated in other companies. In fact, I think your comment "Google doesn't do what it does to be successful, it does it because it is successful" is…
He's not talking about the perks. He's talking about the design of the organization, beyond the culture. The structures, the roles, the processes. Autonomy is a value, but values only influence design.
The post I responded to mentioned (and naturally I mentioned this as well) perks, autonomy, structure, etc... and then says that the missing piece is billions of dollars in ad revenue.
So I pointed out that many companies are able to get these things right (/imitate Google), without billions of dollars in ad revenue. It's not the ad revenue. That's my contention.
Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline
#40So many companies try to emulate how Google works. There are multiple books, hundreds or thousands of articles. People speculate on the perks, the review structure, the hierarchy, the autonomy. However, when other companies try to imitate Google they always fail because they're missing a crucial piece: Billions of dollars in ad revenue Google doesn't work the way it does to be successful. It works that way because it…
I don't buy it. Many companies are able to get the perks, culture, and autonomy right without being a multi-billion dollar company. It does enable Google to do certain things (like moonshot projects) that smaller companies can't do, but a lot of the perks I've seen are replicated in other companies. In fact, I think your comment "Google doesn't do what it does to be successful, it does it because it is successful" is…
I tried to clarify the wording. I'm specifically trying to call out the structure of Google's management and the general way they approach problems.
For example, even within the profitable Google portion of the business, they often have many competing projects. There will be competing search features, competing chat applications, competing cloud services. Google will make big speculative bets or internally competitive bets because it can afford to just let people build things and see what happens. Google, as a company, doesn't really seem to have any idea of what most individual engineers are doing week to week.
Many companies can't do that. If you are a medium-sized company you probably don't have the market position or revenue to afford to be unfocused.