41–50 of 463 posts
Contrast 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, ca…
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You must be a joy at parties. How is any of the data private when you willingly use their tools, sites, servers, etc? You open up google.com and type things in, what privacy do you expect? Or am I missing something you are referring to?
So you would have no problems with your cell service provider keeping records of all of your calls and locations and recording conversations in the room even when not on a call? Most people don't know what data google is keeping and monetizing.
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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 competitiv…
So 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. Those things aren't mutually exclusive and almost certainly are both true
But without search, without Gmail, without Chrome, without Android, without the moonshots and all the "hobbies" Google's brand would wither, and its access to data at massive scale would be crippled, and its access to eyeballs would be curtailed, and the talent would walk. Others have built advertising businesses, but Google's dominance in advertising couldn't occur without the product mix.
Google 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 intere…
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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.
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Indeed, it's amazing how profitable vacuuming up users' private data without their informed consent and monetizing it can be.
> informed consent Sidenote, and completely off topic: Is there a non-high-horse way to word this? I understand the meaning, but the same phrase can be used to be completely dismissive as well. It's a potential moral high ground, where if you don't agree you must be uninformed. I'm not saying OP meant it that way, it just brought up the honest question from me.
Contrast 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, ca…
I wonder if he bought into the press likening him to Tony Stark...
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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?