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The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

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Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#151

Post by throwawaylinux »

abadger9 wrote: post #44

I'll say something I wish someone told me in my 20's: most leadership/upper management is poor. I've worked at FAANGs, a unicorn, and currently @ a company that recently IPO'd. Most people in product leadership neither really understand how to make original ideas that effect the product at a high level or the technical details of the product, their responsibility is to be good stewards of a certain revenue stream and…

The other thing that would probably help engineers is that business and management is extremely difficult, in a way more than engineering, and that whether or not a particular person or decision is good or bad is often times not something that many engineers have the information or capability to evaluate.

I'm a cynic about business and management, not a manager and will not be one, am an engineer, also partake in the usual bitching about managers and business decisions that we all do.

But a lot of the hate is not too rational, and a lot of times the decisions that engineers would prefer would be disastrous for the company. Also, engineers really hate to share any responsibility for commercial failures. It must be a soul sucking job to run a company or sell a product that is uncompetitive. Talk to any engineer about their pet company or product or industry with some notable failure (Boeing, HP, DEC, Sun) and the story is always the same, management and bean counters sucked the life out of it to feed wall street parasites. You hear very little about how their products were sub-standard, too expensive, or out-competed by other companies despite their also being beholden to MBAs and shareholders and pointy haired bosses.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#152

Post by paxys »

galactus wrote: post #145
paxys wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic everyone in the world is privileged compared to those earning 5% less than them, including every person here complaining about a Google employee's privilege. So what does that word mean exactly?

If you go to the other extreme no one but the richest person on earth is priviledged. Come on, making 300k a year or more is privilege even within the context of US white collar jobs.

Regardless of the number, getting paid for your labor & skills is not "privilege". Employees at Google are getting fleeced by the corporation and its shareholders just like the rest of us are by ours. Remember the big tech poaching scandal from a decade ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...)?

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#153

Post by sgtnoodle »

gretch wrote: post #107
mediaman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given median comp at Google, working at Google is quite privileged. Going to Stanford is likewise privileged. Being privileged isn't an insult, just a recognition of fact.

> just a recognition of fact It's literally not a fact, it's an opinion. Hey what's your job? You don't need to tell me. But I'm gonna go ahead and say you're privileged compared to a rural chinese farmer that has never held a phone.

That farmer might be happier though.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#154

Post by tootie »

abadger9 wrote: post #44

I'll say something I wish someone told me in my 20's: most leadership/upper management is poor. I've worked at FAANGs, a unicorn, and currently @ a company that recently IPO'd. Most people in product leadership neither really understand how to make original ideas that effect the product at a high level or the technical details of the product, their responsibility is to be good stewards of a certain revenue stream and…

Everything in this guy's takedown of Google management is more or less endemic to human nature. It's not a Google thing. It's not a Silicon Valley thing. If you have a group of more than 25 people doing almost anything you'll see some version of the same story play out. A truly inspired and energetic leader can slow it down as well as a foolish one will bring it on quicker but it's still inevitable.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#155

Post by spritefs »

revskill wrote: post #49

As people get more intelligent and smarter, the Ad business will die. I'm sure about it. In my whole life, there's no single ad that makes sense for me to see and click, because it's annoying. I love smart search results, not smart ad results.

No clue why this is getting downvoted, maybe by people working in said business who are coping over this

But really: why don't more people use ublock origin? It makes the web actually usable

If I go on a website and see a bunch of sponsored bullshit, it makes me much less likely to ever go there again

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#157

Post by spritefs »

jongjong wrote: post #124
komali2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel quite strongly about this. Aligning society along a hierarchy of "intelligence" is really just aligning it on a hierarchy of access to education, which is just a function of economic class privilege (or racial class privilege really, these are tightly integrated even today in many societies for historical or otherwise reasons). Therefore I believe that as our society reaches for further egalitarianism, this hi…

It's worse than that. It's not about education anymore but pure credentialism. Did you study at MIT, Harvard or Yale? Did you work at FAANG? No? Then surely you must be an idiot. Nevermind all these difficult projects you worked on. Nevermind that your ex colleagues gave you glowing references. Nevermind all your open source projects. Nevermind that the project you led and worked on has never been hacked in 3 years i…

> It's all worthless because I don't see any fancy branding in your resume.

According to who exactly? Some stupid person somewhere? Why should anyone here care?

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#158

Post by mc32 »

paxys wrote: post #52
hsn915 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Observing super priviliged people whining about how unfair it is to get laid off is really something.

There's nothing "privileged" about working at Google. It's a job, like anything else in tech.

If you ask the people who were gentrified out of the mission when FAANGers decideed the Peninsula wasn't cool and would move into the Mission, if FAANGers are privileged or just a regular joes and janes, I'm pretty sure I can predict their answer.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#159

Post by jensensbutton »

abadger9 wrote: post #44

I'll say something I wish someone told me in my 20's: most leadership/upper management is poor. I've worked at FAANGs, a unicorn, and currently @ a company that recently IPO'd. Most people in product leadership neither really understand how to make original ideas that effect the product at a high level or the technical details of the product, their responsibility is to be good stewards of a certain revenue stream and…

I'd broaden that to say most people working at these companies are poor, including the engineers.

Reality is most people are not the awesome standouts they believe themselves to be and truly strong leaders/engineers/sales people/product manager/etc. are extremely hard to find.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#160

Post by metadat »

nebula8804 wrote: post #122
ipaddr wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started 10 years earlier just being able to get paid to program was amazing. My first job in 2001 was for minimum wage. I wonder how many developers exist who wouldn't if pay wasn't so high.

We are likely about to find out. In the end this could be a good thing, shake out a lot the bootcampers and leave the people who like to code. On the downside, people like me like to code and also rest n' vest. :/

You're assuming that management can and does differentiate between the two and only fires the sitters.

Life experience tells me this is highly unlikely.

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