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The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

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Re: The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

#11

Post by andreyf »

It amazes me how someone thinks he can generalize something about a 15,000-person organization having worked with a tiny piece of it for a short time. I think the author should have stuck more to Sergei's tune, when he said: "I left because Microsoft turned out to be the right place for me".

Want promotions and management positions and fancy titles? Then a flat organizational structure is not for you.

Want exhaustive tests, project managers, and countless meetings? Then a "startup mentality" is not for you, either.

Re: The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

#12

Post by vchakrav »

emmett wrote: post #2

Google might still have a chance to do interesting things. Somehow they're managing to avoid adding huge amounts of "process" to building projects? They ship code fast? Sounds like everything is going fine...

Actually, Google does have one major challenge -- how to motivate its people. I'm not talking about fresh college graduates, but rather people who are high up in the organization because they happened to join early on. Many of these people are worth a lot of money, and presumably see day to day work at Google as a way to spend their time, socialize, and to flex their political muscle.

In such a place, bringing in new hungry blood is very difficult to do, especially since the old crowd will try very hard to protect their power structure. In the long term, this does cause problems in the ranks, since success within the company starts to become a measure of how well you can navigate politically, vs. the quality of work produced.

Re: The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

#13

Post by evilneanderthal »

cliff wrote: post #7
evilneanderthal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you go by what the on-board shuttle group [1] is doing for NASA, more process is the key to a better functioning organization. But then, that's how software should be written when there's lives on the line, which doesn't exactly describe Google. Still, something to aspire to. [1] http://www.fastcompany.com/node/28121/print

Sure, but there are plenty of downsides to this. I've always been fascinated by and impressed with NASA's software methodologies, but they are neither cheap nor fast. I'm not sure it's something to aspire to as much as one extreme on a continuum of code quality vs. code cost. I would suggest that it would not be in Google's nor in most companies' interest to do anything like this. Where a company falls on this line d…

What I was aiming at was the notion that creating maximally stable software that does exactly what it's designed to do is something to aspire to.

Just my opinion, obviously. You could be right that the above is not in most companies' interest.

Re: The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

#14

Post by apathy »

aneesh wrote: post #9
willz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. To criticize Google still working like a start-up is a big complement.

Not necessarily. Even pg will agree that a lot of the things that make a startup so productive and exciting fundamentally break when you have 15,000+ people.

Even pg will agree that a lot of the things that make a startup so productive and exciting fundamentally break when you have 15,000+ people.

Well then, let's hear it from pg.

Re: The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

#15

Post by pg »

apathy wrote: post #14
aneesh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Even pg will agree that a lot of the things that make a startup so productive and exciting fundamentally break when you have 15,000+ people.

Even pg will agree that a lot of the things that make a startup so productive and exciting fundamentally break when you have 15,000+ people. Well then, let's hear it from pg.

They tend to in practice, but it may not be completely inevitable. Organizations have some control over how bureaucratic they become.

Re: The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

#16

Post by willz »

vchakrav wrote: post #12
emmett wrote: post #2

Google might still have a chance to do interesting things. Somehow they're managing to avoid adding huge amounts of "process" to building projects? They ship code fast? Sounds like everything is going fine...

Actually, Google does have one major challenge -- how to motivate its people. I'm not talking about fresh college graduates, but rather people who are high up in the organization because they happened to join early on. Many of these people are worth a lot of money, and presumably see day to day work at Google as a way to spend their time, socialize, and to flex their political muscle. In such a place, bringing in new…

Great insight. Very practical. I hope Google founders are NOT reading this.

Re: The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

#17

Post by gaius »

andreyf wrote: post #11

It amazes me how someone thinks he can generalize something about a 15,000-person organization having worked with a tiny piece of it for a short time. I think the author should have stuck more to Sergei's tune, when he said: "I left because Microsoft turned out to be the right place for me". Want promotions and management positions and fancy titles? Then a flat organizational structure is not for you. Want exhaustive…

Well, that is kinda sorta the point he was making - it is a big company now.

Re: The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

#18

Post by daniel-cussen »

aneesh wrote: post #9
willz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. To criticize Google still working like a start-up is a big complement.

Not necessarily. Even pg will agree that a lot of the things that make a startup so productive and exciting fundamentally break when you have 15,000+ people.

Nucor (18,000+ employees) comes to mind as a counterexample. But then, the exception proves the rule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucor

Re: The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

#19

Post by neilk »

daniel-cussen wrote: post #18
aneesh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. Even pg will agree that a lot of the things that make a startup so productive and exciting fundamentally break when you have 15,000+ people.

Nucor (18,000+ employees) comes to mind as a counterexample. But then, the exception proves the rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucor

I don't know if you meant it like this, but the original sense of "prove" was more like "test". That is, an apparent exception is a test of the rule's generality.

According to that wikipedia page, Nucor believes in decentralization and objective metrics, so they are indeed a good test of the rule. If that page is accurate, Nucor employees can't get very far on politics alone.

Re: The GOOG-MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsoft

#20

Post by neilk »

emmett wrote: post #2

Google might still have a chance to do interesting things. Somehow they're managing to avoid adding huge amounts of "process" to building projects? They ship code fast? Sounds like everything is going fine...

So you think Google ships code fast? How do you know?

There are a lot of services Google tries to build that never see the light of day. And there are yet others that took a year or more to be released even as beta. There are some projects that seem to have gone from concept to launch in a few months, but I'd say those are usually the exception.

Also: there is a lot of necessary process that comes with launching a Google service. Version 0.1 for a startup can be buggy, embarassing, ugly, contain security bugs, or be non-scalable. In fact, you might go all the way to acquisition and still have all these problems. Pretty much anything on *.google.com has to be ready for Digg on day one.

I will say that there are many teams at Google that deliver quality, polished software faster than almost any other company. But that's more like winning marathons rather than sprints.

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