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Sunsetting Hire

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Re: Sunsetting Hire

#221

Post by creato »

eindiran wrote: post #85
bigiain wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% yes. If it's not ad sales or search - I don't trust Google enough to base long term projects on it. _Maybe_ add gmail to that, perhaps. Possibly Suite (since at least they charge for it). For me at least, Google Cloud is still not quite emerged from "interesting, but not sure it'll be around long term yet" status. I'll use it as part of a multicloud architecture, or for prototypes/short-term projects. But I have…

After having the Inbox rug swept out from underneath my feet, I don't have a lot of trust about Gmail either.

Inbox was just a different skin/front end for gmail though, they aren't really comparable. I was annoyed about Inbox coming and going too, but that was a totally different thing than if gmail itself were to go away.

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#223

Post by debatem1 »

eitland wrote: post #204
tempay wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would this actually be practical? From what little I know about google infrastructure everything is dependent on their in house tooling and spinning projects off is a massive amount of work.

I think the point is that Google has been burning goodwill for a decade now. It might not be visible yet, just like the ice cube who has been heated from -100°C to -5°C and still doesn't melt, but at this point it would take very little energy to thaw Googles goodwill reserves. Anything they can do to return to former status as "defender of the Internet" might be worth huge investments for that alone.

This is a very good analogy for a concept I've tried to formulate succinctly spur-of-the-moment a few times. I especially like that it captures the reversibility of the trend and the energy cost of doing so. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#224

Post by beardedman »

n42 wrote: post #163

What is humorous to me is that Google is hurting users who typically have the most influence over SaaS integrations at their company (managers) by taking away a tool that helped them deal with the part of their job most of them hate the most (hiring/recruiting). If it hasn't been obvious yet to managers watching this, Google's software is not a safe investment for you to make for your company. It is only a matter of…

Yup. Google a search company, any technology that doesn't impact their bottom line, is dispensable (to a lesser/greater degree) to them.

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#225

Post by smcl »

eitland wrote: post #203
kayoone wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but most lack the financial stability of google and could disappear rather quickly because of that.

Look for companies like Basecamp, companies that arent looking to be aquired or get unicorn status but to stay soundly profitable year-after-year. This was one of the reasons I loved WhatsApp so much early on when that seemed to be the way it was going: a healthy >1B USD company with no dependency except on users. As the WhatsApp story and many other tells us this isn't always safe, but it should be a safer bet than…

Was WhatsApp healthy or profitable before it was bought by Facebook? I'm not sure if there's any way we can know for sure, but it all played out like a pretty standard Silicon Valley "unicorn" - couple of rounds of investment by a big VC followed by a mega-acquisition by a FAANG.

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#226

Post by rswail »

kensai wrote: post #167
kayoone wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the EU guidelines says <= 250 employees, Germany's KMU is defined as <= 500 employees

Why the negative points? Exactly in both definitions, the French and the German, the M means MEDIUM. 500 is NOT a SMALL business. It's at least a medium one.

The generic term in industry is SME, ie Small to Medium Enterprise. Mom and Pop stores often don't even qualify as "Small".

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#227

Post by wolfgke »

beardedman wrote: post #224
n42 wrote: post #163

What is humorous to me is that Google is hurting users who typically have the most influence over SaaS integrations at their company (managers) by taking away a tool that helped them deal with the part of their job most of them hate the most (hiring/recruiting). If it hasn't been obvious yet to managers watching this, Google's software is not a safe investment for you to make for your company. It is only a matter of…

Yup. Google a search company, any technology that doesn't impact their bottom line, is dispensable (to a lesser/greater degree) to them.

> Yup. Google a search company, any technology that doesn't impact their bottom line, is dispensable (to a lesser/greater degree) to them.

Rather: Google is an advertising company, ...

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#228

Post by rswail »

nateps wrote: post #79

I'm the founder and CTO of Lever ( https://www.lever.co ), a similar product and part of YC S12. I recommend you check us out! I was also a PM at Google from 2007-2011. A big part of why I left and founded Lever is that I'm super passionate about enterprise software, and vertical enterprise software (even in huge markets) isn't aligned well with Google's core business.

> and vertical enterprise software (even in huge markets) isn't aligned well with Google's core business.

That's exactly the point that everyone who says "Don't use google products" is missing. Anything horizontal (eg GSuite basics, docs/sheets, mail, calendar) are relatively safe.

Anything vertical isn't going to move the needle in Google's view of their finances.

MS and Oracle have had issues with their "verticals" in the past, but they weren't actually big enough that they could kill them off, given their reliance on enterprise customers for their income.

FAANG (except Netflix obv) aren't dependent on enterprise customers. Facebook and Apple don't really offer enterprise products and AWS/Google have, basically Workspaces/Workdocs for AWS and GSuite from Google.

Both Facebook and Google are "vertical" in that they sell ads on the internet, or, more accurately, they provide access to their users to advertisers. Everything else is noise.

So the general rule is "Don't buy vertical services from a horizontal company".

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#229

Post by danielscrubs »

smcl wrote: post #225
eitland wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look for companies like Basecamp, companies that arent looking to be aquired or get unicorn status but to stay soundly profitable year-after-year. This was one of the reasons I loved WhatsApp so much early on when that seemed to be the way it was going: a healthy >1B USD company with no dependency except on users. As the WhatsApp story and many other tells us this isn't always safe, but it should be a safer bet than…

Was WhatsApp healthy or profitable before it was bought by Facebook? I'm not sure if there's any way we can know for sure, but it all played out like a pretty standard Silicon Valley "unicorn" - couple of rounds of investment by a big VC followed by a mega-acquisition by a FAANG.

Do we even know they are profitable now without Facebook selling user data?

But WhatsApp is an insane success story on its own. Back then, around 20 engineers handling billions of messages per day, with their own servers and spending zero dollars in advertisement and using a non-standard language (Erlang).

Re: Sunsetting Hire

#230

Post by danielscrubs »

tempay wrote: post #178
nkingsy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like these non billion user products could be sold off rather than killed. The cost to ready the software to live outside google would be worth it for the goodwill alone.

Would this actually be practical? From what little I know about google infrastructure everything is dependent on their in house tooling and spinning projects off is a massive amount of work.

That's interesting. They are not dogfooding Google Cloud?
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