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Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

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Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#91

Post by redthrowaway »

DavidSJ wrote: post #55
webwright wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful." Out of curiosity, what do you think Amazon is driven by, fundamentally? I'd put them right up there with Apple on the product innovation front.

Customers. [Edit: I worked at Amazon Web Services until recently. Now work at Google. Concern for customers drives everything that happens at Amazon, sometimes to a ridiculous degree.]

I'm interested to hear how that professed dedication to customers squares with the experiences of sites like reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#92

Post by nostrademons »

segabach wrote: post #75
cpeterso wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many (middle) managers are afraid of Scrum and other agile development because their role is sidelined. As "individual contributors", engineers are generating actual business value. Engineers can self-organize in "quasi-communist" Scrum teams (as they own the means of production ;) and collaborate with product management who work with customers to derive and prioritize product requirements. In this scenario,…

The scrum teams don't own the means of production. Individual contributors are human capital. The means of production are owned by the people in control of the finances and business model. If the company were to shift direction and your product discontinued, it's possible the scrum team would be disbanded and the resources that were being used to support them would be reallocated by the "owners" to a new team that al…

The team could also quit en masse and go found a startup to do what they'd been doing before, if they really believed in it. It's happened to more than a few big companies.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#93

Post by bartonfink »

dtegart wrote: post #85
nostrademons wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of failures is "working as intended". The only way to understand the market is to try out lots of things and see how the market reacts. Remember, the point of innovation is to solve unmet consumer needs - if people understood them, they wouldn't be unmet.

I think that is one way, but not the only way. Apple is able to release products that are generally well received by the market. In fact Apple understands the market for their individual products extremely well, even if the product isn't released yet. Google's approach seems to be more of a shotgun/spaghetti see if something sticks, without actually stopping to think things through first.

Isn't Apple targeting more of a niche than the general market, though? They service that niche very well, but it's easier to understand a niche than it is to understand the entire body of consumers.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#94

Post by adambyrtek »

webwright wrote: post #48
joebadmo wrote: post #6

It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful. It has always seemed to me that management is an important but overemphasized skill (as a fundamental trait of the way large organizations work) and it's really refreshing to see this happening.

"It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful." Out of curiosity, what do you think Amazon is driven by, fundamentally? I'd put them right up there with Apple on the product innovation front.

> I'd put them right up there with Apple on the product innovation front.

Could you elaborate on that? I can think about only two potentially innovative products coming from Amazon.

1. Kindle. The business model is definitely innovative, but the device itself had a cold reception. The modern versions are much better, but still don't reach the Apple level of polish.

2. AWS. Extremely innovative, but targeted to a relatively small population. This is definitely not a mainstream product.

I intentionally skip the innovations in streamlining the shopping experience, because I don't feel it's relevant to the comparison to Apple.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#95

Post by erikpukinskis »

blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

From the "Dear John" letters of people departing Google (Dennis Crowley for example) it seems like in the absence of a large political institution, the major political currency at Google is your ability to attract developers.

Given that, it seems like what a manager can provide a group of developers and designers is "workforce maintenance". That is, they will attend to the needs of the team, make sure people don't leave, and make sure they attract more people when they need them.

In other words, HR. The central HR department at Google has no reason to really care about the success of your unit over another, so your manager becomes the person who takes responsibility for the human resources of the unit.

This frees the engineers/designers to be able to focus on creating a great product. And as a side benefit, they happier and their jobs are easier because the manager is doing what it takes to keep them in the unit.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#96

Post by [deleted] »

dman wrote: post #23
Silhouette wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). The thing is, in a lot of larger tech companies, I suspect it's the other way around: management is under-rated because the engineers have taken over the asylum. It's easy to point to huge, successful companies with a very pro-engineering culture like Facebook and connect the culture with the success, but how do we know they succeede…

Management is great at extracting maximum value from a problem whose structure is known. For new problem spaces where the product is ill defined, management might just slow things down. It might be worth noting that as the world is moving into more uncharted territory (of shorter product cycles) industry is beginning to resemble academia to a greater extent.

[deleted]

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#97

Post by sgwooduk »

dman wrote: post #23
Silhouette wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). The thing is, in a lot of larger tech companies, I suspect it's the other way around: management is under-rated because the engineers have taken over the asylum. It's easy to point to huge, successful companies with a very pro-engineering culture like Facebook and connect the culture with the success, but how do we know they succeede…

Management is great at extracting maximum value from a problem whose structure is known. For new problem spaces where the product is ill defined, management might just slow things down. It might be worth noting that as the world is moving into more uncharted territory (of shorter product cycles) industry is beginning to resemble academia to a greater extent.

In what way do you mean industry is becoming more like academia as product cycles become shorter. I (a student in academia) find my superiors amazed by the speed of the try it fast and in the wild product development of software - compared to long cycles for academic publication for instance?

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#98

Post by jacques_chester »

dtegart wrote: post #85
nostrademons wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of failures is "working as intended". The only way to understand the market is to try out lots of things and see how the market reacts. Remember, the point of innovation is to solve unmet consumer needs - if people understood them, they wouldn't be unmet.

I think that is one way, but not the only way. Apple is able to release products that are generally well received by the market. In fact Apple understands the market for their individual products extremely well, even if the product isn't released yet. Google's approach seems to be more of a shotgun/spaghetti see if something sticks, without actually stopping to think things through first.

The spaghetti cannon strategy. Microsoft do this too.

Apple does not follow the spaghetti cannon strategy. However the risks of manufacturing a device that doesn't sell is higher than launching a website that nobody uses. It makes sense for Apple to take their time. As a side-effect they've accumulated a huge stockpile of cash.

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#99

Post by jganetsk »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #95
blinkingled wrote: post #7

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and…

From the "Dear John" letters of people departing Google (Dennis Crowley for example) it seems like in the absence of a large political institution, the major political currency at Google is your ability to attract developers. Given that, it seems like what a manager can provide a group of developers and designers is "workforce maintenance". That is, they will attend to the needs of the team, make sure people don't le…

How is that in any way a "Dear John" letter?

Re: Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

#100

Post by [deleted] »

magicalist wrote: post #64
Laments wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to ditto this; the linked article is very speculative, and without a G-employee response, it seems rather foolhardy to extend said speculation.

agreed, especially in light of the stories we just heard about technical skills being valued less in managers there. I think this is someone just coming up with a nice narrative.

[deleted]
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