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What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

nytimes.com

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Re: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

#21

Post by dinoleif »

jpatokal wrote: post #16
dinoleif wrote: post #6

Ridiculous puff piece & PR job. There is not a single piece of data in that entire article. The way this works is: 1/ Google crunches some data 2/ The company leadership looks at that data, twists it to leave out "inconvenient" facts, and tells whatever narratives they want to tell (internally and to the NYT) 3/ No data or any empirical results are ever released (even internally)

Do you work at Google, or what are you basing these bold assertions on? FTR, I'm a manager at Google. I don't feel qualified to comment on the research or the specifics of this article, but I can assure you Google takes building effective teams pretty darn seriously.

Of course Google takes building effective teams seriously (and rightly so, it's People Ops org does good work), but that doesn't really have anything to do with the dynamic here.

Re: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

#22

Post by bobby_the_whale »

indubitable wrote: post #18
indubitable wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google wanted to optimize teams. Couldn't find any patterns that show why one team does better than another. Saw psychology report indicating that having people free to express themselves is important for team performance, as if this is a major revelation. Rest of the paper focuses on a single anecdote that is supposed to show this.

As an aside, I am familiar with and critical of the psychology report [1] they reference in this article. The paper had a psychologist break people into groups and then perform tasks like plan a shopping trip. The psychologist's data indicated that the sum of the measured aptitudes of the teams did not correlate against their performance, so they then jumps from that to suggesting that therefore individual aptitude d…

"It's not fair when you reason better than us!"

-- Psychologists United Now (PUN)

Re: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

#23

Post by raziel2p »

bobby_the_whale wrote: post #7

The New York Times also started to write clickbait head lines. That's exactly what the world needs: more clickbait. The article is just another glorification of data for nothing but attention and branding of the religion called Google. Gamification of the work place where it is tracked with how many people you have had lunch sounds like a dystopia straight from Black Mirror. It appears that Google's employee force se…

This seems like both an off-topic and unnecessarily spiteful comment.

Re: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

#24

Post by stoev »

I read through the HN comments of this very same article from almost two years ago wondering whether the message of the article would have been interpreted any differently.

It is really surprising how much negativity there is in today's comments as opposed to the older topic. In 2016 people were calling this article enjoyable and even "Their favorite Google-related article of the year". I found suggestions on how to further expand on Google's work in the comments and people seem to have supported them.

Fast forward two years and in today's comments I see nothing but negativity towards the study and its achievements, criticism of the NYT journalism, and disdain of the amount of power big corporations have over their employees.

I wonder how much of this is based on real improvements in the understanding of what makes a team work well together and how much of it is a result of the recent rise in paranoia over fake news and also distrust of corporations that are gaining power at a much faster pace than regulators can cope with. It is fascinating how a scientific study (although arguably not a very good one) can be interpreted so differently by the same group of people solely based on trends in public sentiment rather than changes in the actual evaluated metrics.

Re: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

#25

Post by xxs »

jpatokal wrote: post #16
dinoleif wrote: post #6

Ridiculous puff piece & PR job. There is not a single piece of data in that entire article. The way this works is: 1/ Google crunches some data 2/ The company leadership looks at that data, twists it to leave out "inconvenient" facts, and tells whatever narratives they want to tell (internally and to the NYT) 3/ No data or any empirical results are ever released (even internally)

Do you work at Google, or what are you basing these bold assertions on? FTR, I'm a manager at Google. I don't feel qualified to comment on the research or the specifics of this article, but I can assure you Google takes building effective teams pretty darn seriously.

Which of the assertion do you consider bold?

I also read the article and saw no data points or anything that would suggest "some of the company’s best statisticians, organizational psychologists, sociologists and engineers" had any numbers to work with. (beside that certain employees were involved)

Re: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

#26

Post by dogruck »

stoev wrote: post #24

I read through the HN comments of this very same article from almost two years ago wondering whether the message of the article would have been interpreted any differently. It is really surprising how much negativity there is in today's comments as opposed to the older topic. In 2016 people were calling this article enjoyable and even "Their favorite Google-related article of the year". I found suggestions on how to…

That’s a fair insight. (And, yeah, title needs 2016 added).

Now I’m curious to see how the comment thread grows. The negativity at this moment could be anchored in the observations of the first couple of top-level comments.

Certainly it’s fair to characterize this as a PR puff piece. It’s common practice for companies to buddy-up with news publishers on stories such as this.

But, yes, between 2016 and today we’ve definitely leapt into the era of Fake News.

Re: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

#27

Post by xxs »

dogruck wrote: post #26
stoev wrote: post #24

I read through the HN comments of this very same article from almost two years ago wondering whether the message of the article would have been interpreted any differently. It is really surprising how much negativity there is in today's comments as opposed to the older topic. In 2016 people were calling this article enjoyable and even "Their favorite Google-related article of the year". I found suggestions on how to…

That’s a fair insight. (And, yeah, title needs 2016 added). Now I’m curious to see how the comment thread grows. The negativity at this moment could be anchored in the observations of the first couple of top-level comments. Certainly it’s fair to characterize this as a PR puff piece. It’s common practice for companies to buddy-up with news publishers on stories such as this. But, yes, between 2016 and today we’ve def…

The article was published on the 25th of Feb, 2016 (so 2016 in the title).

Re: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

#28

Post by mattmanser »

stoev wrote: post #24

I read through the HN comments of this very same article from almost two years ago wondering whether the message of the article would have been interpreted any differently. It is really surprising how much negativity there is in today's comments as opposed to the older topic. In 2016 people were calling this article enjoyable and even "Their favorite Google-related article of the year". I found suggestions on how to…

It's Saturday, HN turns incredibly hostile at the weekends.

Re: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

#29

Post by sgift »

dinoleif wrote: post #8
dinoleif wrote: post #6

Ridiculous puff piece & PR job. There is not a single piece of data in that entire article. The way this works is: 1/ Google crunches some data 2/ The company leadership looks at that data, twists it to leave out "inconvenient" facts, and tells whatever narratives they want to tell (internally and to the NYT) 3/ No data or any empirical results are ever released (even internally)

I made a mistake. It turns out that there are actually 9 articles as part of that series, so I have to make a correction: There is not a single piece of useful data in any of those 9 articles.

And useful data is defined as ...? This is an NYT article, not a scientific paper. No idea what you expected here ..

Re: What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (2016)

#30

Post by lsmarigo »

stoev wrote: post #24

I read through the HN comments of this very same article from almost two years ago wondering whether the message of the article would have been interpreted any differently. It is really surprising how much negativity there is in today's comments as opposed to the older topic. In 2016 people were calling this article enjoyable and even "Their favorite Google-related article of the year". I found suggestions on how to…

> by the same group of people

Don't think it's the same group of people, it feels like intelligent and mentally healthy individuals have been opting to abstain from online discussions in general over the last few years in droves after realizing their time and energy and better spent elsewhere. Especially with the trend of comments being taken out of context to attack individuals employers/livelihood. That leaves the young, socially broken and depressed (myself included).

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