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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

#401

Post by tytso »

ihoz wrote: post #262
nir wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people in Google still think the magic is there? It seems like a great place if you want stability and a nice salary, but obviously (unless you're in the comparatively tiny X dept) you're going to be a very small cog in a huge machine?

I know many people at Google Boston (Cambridge). They are all bored out of their skulls. One guy says how he works 30 hours in a busy week and uses his 20% time to hit the gym. But in another's words: "how can I leave when they pay me so much?"

I work at Google Cambridge, and I'm easily working 50+ hours a week. I work in Technical Infrastructure (on our storage systems in our data centers) and one of my 20% projects was to design and architect the underpinnings of what an Android Product Manager has claimed to be one the most important features of Android N (file based encryption), the open source incarnation of which (ext4 encryption) has turned into a generic file system encryption mechanism that has enabled encryption for f2fs and soon ubifs, and has inspired the btrfs and xfs folks to look at file system based encryption.

For my "official" 80% project, in order to get approval to go into the planning phase for a complex, multi-year project, we had to demonstrate how it would save hundreds of millions of dollars on an ongoing basis, and show how the TCO savings would be many multiples over the software engineering costs to implement said project. So in Technical Infrastructure, we do very much care about operational efficiencies --- that's how Google Compute Engine (which is driven by TI) has been able to cut its prices and inspire the market to follow suit.

And this is not new, by the way --- the whole time (coming up on 7 years) that I've been at Google, we've always been very interested in bringing costs down, and the team was amply rewarded when we rolled out ext4 across the production fleet, because we could accurately quantify the performance benefits, and how that translated to dollars saved to the company.

And so no, I'm not bored. In fact, one of the great things about Google is that I have flexibility to do things that help move the industry, both in Google products and in the Open Source world. This includes serving on program committees, working with a graduate student on a paper which we've submitted to the Usenix FAST conference (fingers crossed, we'll hear soon if it's been accepted), do presentations of my work at LinuxCon, etc. etc. Of course, I probably should be carving out some time to hit the gym, just for personal health reasons....

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#402

Post by hobo_mark »

tytso wrote: post #401
ihoz wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know many people at Google Boston (Cambridge). They are all bored out of their skulls. One guy says how he works 30 hours in a busy week and uses his 20% time to hit the gym. But in another's words: "how can I leave when they pay me so much?"

I work at Google Cambridge, and I'm easily working 50+ hours a week. I work in Technical Infrastructure (on our storage systems in our data centers) and one of my 20% projects was to design and architect the underpinnings of what an Android Product Manager has claimed to be one the most important features of Android N (file based encryption), the open source incarnation of which (ext4 encryption) has turned into a ge…

However, for those who are not aware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Ts'o

In other words, very much an outlier, even at Google! :)

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#403

Post by Kurtz79 »

thearn4 wrote: post #97
matwood wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of Valve's no manager management style: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-27/why-there... When you have a lot of money, a lot of things work because you have a lot of money. You often see the same thing with people trying to emulate pro-athletes training methods. A genetically gifted pro-athlete can often succeed in spite of their training, and not necessarily because of their training.

The endless spigot of cash from Steam is something that does enable Valve to take some very experimental leaps (VR, Steam machines, SteamOS, etc.) In my opinion, Valve also has the same shortcomings as google: practically zero customer support, and an un-curated app platform full of shovelware (finding gems on the Steam and the Google Play & Chrome Web Stores can be tricky). But there is still a ton to admire in both…

"In my opinion, Valve also has the same shortcomings as google: practically zero customer support..."

This strikes me as something you can afford because you are in a factual monopoly ("You are not OK with our service ? Find an alternative... whooops :)"), rather than just having a lot of money.

Steam benefits from the fact that even people not completely happy with it (personally I have no complaints, but I use it exclusively as a store/launcher) are already invested in the platform, and do not want the hassle of dealing with two or more similar services, so they are wary of any alternative that might surface (see Windows store or proprietary stores like Origin).

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#404

Post by sowbug »

caminante wrote: post #134
georgespencer wrote: post #112

There's an interesting fiscal corollary of having unbridled ambition matched by enormous firepower which brings the world's smartest engineers and hackers together: a Xoogler who was early in the business once told me about how engineers would hack/exploit the travel allowance policy. Google allowed folks to book their own flight and accommodation, and had an algorithm which determined rewards for folks travelling wi…

> After a while someone realised that a group of engineers were consistently booking shitty travel around the same time, and then travelling first class the rest of the year. How's that different than having an annual travel budget? Sounds like they sacrificed to feast later instead of holding accommodations constant at "above average." I think you did a good job telling the story, but maybe I'm missing how gaming tr…

The difference is that if you know your budget is X, you'll probably try to spend X - epsilon, because that maximizes your personal outcome within the rules.

But if you get a credit based on the difference, then you'll have a shared incentive with the budget-maker to spend much less than X.

However, then you have the problem that if X is per trip, then there's a perverse incentive to maximize the number of trips (even if they're each well under budget) because you pocket the cumulative credit. Then you can go way over X on the trips you actually care about.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#405

Post by tytso »

hobo_mark wrote: post #402
tytso wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at Google Cambridge, and I'm easily working 50+ hours a week. I work in Technical Infrastructure (on our storage systems in our data centers) and one of my 20% projects was to design and architect the underpinnings of what an Android Product Manager has claimed to be one the most important features of Android N (file based encryption), the open source incarnation of which (ext4 encryption) has turned into a ge…

However, for those who are not aware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Ts'o In other words, very much an outlier, even at Google! :)

Last year, when I was attending our Storage Infrastructure roadmap/planning meeting, it was very humbling because there lots of people in the room that were way smarter than me. Which is the other really great thing about working at Google; unless you're someone like Jeff Dean, there will be lots of people smarter than you that you can learn from, and the default assumption that you can make is that your colleagues will be very talented.... so I'm not sure how much of an outlier I really am!

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#406

Post by MarkMc »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #242
dalbasal wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How/why are search margins shrinking? Is it getting more expensive to deliver search? Online ad spending is going up, not down.

What Punch said, basically its a maturing of the Internet Advertising market, the early enthusiasm for lots of metrics on engagement being dampened by a gradual understanding of click fraud. This is reflected in Google's financials as a falling 'cost per click' (what Google gets for an ad click). The other factor is that Google search has been slowly losing its quality edge on its competitors and so services like Mic…

Here is Google's net profit margin for past 4 years [1]:

2013: 22.9%

2014: 21.4%

2015: 21.7%

2016 (9 months): 22.0%

It doesn't look like profit margins are under strong downward pressure. But a better metric would probably be 'revenue per search query' - I don't have any recent statistics, but if Bing can close that gap it will reduce Google's margins when bidding for search traffic from Apple and Firefox (and maybe force Google to increase the percentage of AdSense revenue they give to website publishers). But even then, Google will still have three significant advantages to avoid the complete erosion of their margins: (1) Android; (2) Chrome; (3) The Google brand (I'm sure that more people try to change the default search engine on their new Windows computer than try to change the default search engine on their new Android phone).

Also, Bing would probably not be profitable if it was a separate company and had to pay Microsoft for the privilege of being the default search engine on Windows. Bing+Yahoo seems to be growing market share, but I wouldn't expect them to completely close the gap with Google in the next 20 years because Google's ownership of assets like YouTube, AdSense, Google Maps, Android and Chrome.

Google has all my search history, a list of all the AdSense websites I visit, my YouTube history, my location history, ten years of my email history and my Play Store purchase history. And for any given search query I perform, Google can access a larger pool of similar search click history from other users. How will Bing ever overcome all these disadvantages?

[1] Derived from https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGOOGL&fstype=ii&ei...

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#407

Post by georgespencer »

saryant wrote: post #330
georgespencer wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crucial point which I didn't communicate properly: they were block booking spurious/unnecessary travel well in advance (by years).

How can you even book flights years in advance when airlines only publish schedules 330 days in advance?

You can book hotels years in advance and flights ~1 year in advance.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#408

Post by jhayward »

Periodic wrote: post #11

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 work the way it does to be successful. It works that way because it is successful.

Correct, and commonly the case. There is a corollary as well - often the company (not commenting on G specifically) does not know precisely why they are/were a success, i.e. what very specific details were important vs other specific details that look important, but aren't.

This lack of insight happens all the time and company culture can become fixed on things that they did as they became successful but were red herrings. A kind of cargo cult effect. One example I would give from Google is the early focus on "top school, top grades" "A" players as hiring filters - turns out that was useless, or worse. Kudos for figuring that out - but there are probaby at least a dozen other strong beliefs cooked in to the culture that are simply coincidental to success, not essential.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#409

Post by CM30 »

To some degree, this is like anything else in life, isn't it? The more successful/skilled/good you are at anything, the less you have to worry about whether you're doing things the 'right' way.

See for example, sports. A gifted athlete could quite easily defeat a far less gifted one with more 'technical knowhow' because they're simply more skilled by default and can hence make up for their inefficiencies or mistakes.

Or maybe any RPG game ever made. Come across a super powerful character or grind your party 100 levels higher than everything else, and it doesn't matter what tactics you use; you're simply too powerful to lose.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScissorsCutsRock

And the same obviously with companies, individuals and money. Enough money means even a lot of stupid decisions will work out well, whereas a competitor with much less will simply falter in the same situation.

Re: Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline

#410

Post by iamatworknow »

robryan wrote: post #271
shuntress wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't use steam to find gems. Steam is just where you go to buy them.

The user review system for games is the best I know of and arguably more useful in deciding what to buy than critic reviews. Steam is also constantly promoting new games to you and making suggestions based on what you currently play. There is also the social aspect in that you can see who is playing what, leading to new discoveries.

Why does it seem like every review I read is basically a joke by someone with 1500 hours in a game saying simply "it's pretty good" or conversely someone with 2 hours in a game that writes an entire novel about how let down they were when they barely scratched the surface?

I will admit that at least having the verifiable length of time a reviewer played a game helps, but I don't find the reviews themselves to be all that worthwhile for most games.

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