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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

#121

Post by joebadmo »

palish wrote: post #114
joebadmo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds familiar. As a USMC fire team leader, my job was mostly to protect my Marines from all the shit that rolls downhill. It's generally a very difficult job to do well, because of the way the explicit incentives are set up, but somewhat easier for me as I was basically apolitical and had no career plans in the Corps.

Blog. Please?

I keep a blog about miscellaneous stuff at http://blog.byjoemoon.com (plug) but I don't think that's what you mean.

I got out in 2006, and I had already stopped writing by the time I made team leader, but I did keep a blog for some of the time I was in, and I collected it (the interesting stuff) at http://www.servicerecordbook.com.

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

#122

Post by brown9-2 »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #120
brown9-2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you really draw this conclusion based on these two points of data? There is no way to determine cause and effect.

There is no guarantee of causation, but do you see another explanation of why GOOG dropped 3% today?

Finding a single reason why thousands of people (and robots) trade the way they do is a folly, in my opinion.

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

#123

Post by Elepsis »

jacques_chester wrote: post #101
rwmj wrote: post #61

So here's a question for potential HN entrepreneurs: If your company got as big as Microsoft or Google, would you split it up, spinning off subdivisions as separate companies? And (in the case of MSFT/Google) why haven't they done that?

In the case of Microsoft, no. The Office and Windows division are mutually-supporting rivers of gold. Everything else is the spaghetti cannon approach they've pursued since the 90s, with the possible exception of the Xbox. Most of what Google does is not actually directly profitable and thus not ideal for spinoffs.

I'm not sure why people assume that Microsoft only makes money on Windows and Office. There were 11 separate businesses within Microsoft that brought in a billion dollars or more in revenue last year: http://techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/microsofts_11_billion-d...

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

#124

Post by tirrellp »

dman wrote: post #13
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…

One of my ex managers said that his role was to attend the meetings,shield the developers from the politics of getting projects approved and other institutional overhead so that we could focus on delivering product.

Did you used to work for me?

I ask because when I moved into management and worked with a stellar group of extremely experienced engineers, far better AND more experienced than I ever was, that's exactly how I explained my job to them.

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

#125

Post by panel8 »

argus wrote: post #117
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #27

I question the title. It doesn't sound like engineers are in charge, instead, it sounds like smaller operating units will be in charge. That is a very different thing from having the inmates running the asylum. I have yet to see a large company that successfully treats software as a creative endeavor instead of a production line that still manages to be able to focus on solving customer problems. I really hope that L…

I agree that the article does seem a little tabloid, but I think speculating on what will happen to G as a complete outsider is to a very high degree a gamble.. There would be so many issues at play here.. How well can Larry get buy-in from various levels of the organisation? How well will the Google culture evolve around his proposed changes? What will they do to ensure Quality of service goes up? At the end of the…

Organizational culture is one of the toughest things to change! Larry has his hands full

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

#126

Post by ippisl »

adambyrtek wrote: post #94
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.

> 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 rela…

Amazon's main strength is building platforms for other businesses , and innovating business models. their product innovations are just tools to build platforms. You can see this from a list of their innovations: 1. amazon fulfillment services. 2. the affiliate marketing method. 3. 3rd party sellers arena, used book selling arena inside their own store. 4. the kindle - a digital platform for many authors and publishers. the physical kindle is not that hard, just look on how many e-readers are there. 5. aws - a good product, but also an innovative business model.

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

#127

Post by redthrowaway »

te_chris wrote: post #116
redthrowaway wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This was addressed well by someone from Netflix but I can't find the link. Basically he said that Reddit weren't so much the victim of AWS rather than the victim of not understanding the product enough and not spending enough to buy the right instances and thus ensure their constant performance. The guy from Netflix justified this by the way that the different sized instances are split across their respective hosts a…

If that were true, you'd think that would be the first thing they were told when they started complaining about crashes a year ago. Certainly, you'd think by the time they had talked to the CIO, somebody would have said, "you guys need to buy bigger instances". We know money isn't a problem for reddit anymore, and all current and former employees have said the problems with EBS just aren't something they can fix by throwing money at.

I would suggest the guy from netflix simply doesn't know enough about reddit's particulars to offer an informed opinion. Either that, or he knows better than everyone at reddit, every support person at amazon, and even the CIO of amazzon how best to solve reddit's problems.

I strongly suspect the former.

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

#128

Post by zmmmmm »

nostrademons wrote: post #45
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is whether those flops should have ever happened. I admire Google that they will kill unsuccessful products, but I question how well they understand the market when they have so many products to kill.

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 still think it's worthwhile to distinguish between failure of execution and failure due to factors beyond your control. Buzz and Wave certainly had market challenges but they were seriously hampered by some poor decisions.

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

#129

Post by bproper »

hobb0001 wrote: post #26

FTA: That jibes well with Page’s push to whittle down Google’s manager bureaucracy, eliminate politicking and rekindle its start-up spirit. I first read that as "pot-licking" and thought, WTF is that? A new managerial term like dogfooding?

Google doesn't need more engineering, it needs better product vision.

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

#130

Post by monjaro »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #120
brown9-2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you really draw this conclusion based on these two points of data? There is no way to determine cause and effect.

There is no guarantee of causation, but do you see another explanation of why GOOG dropped 3% today?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-05/google-said-to-be-p... could be a possibility
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