What is Google doing with its open source teams? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#51

Post by chaboud » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

bbor wrote: post #36

As a google employee (who obviously has no privileged info) I really don’t buy this whole activist-investor explanation for the layoffs. Besides the fact that the investors in question own I’m much more convinced by the argument that they saw this sector-wide wave of layoffs as an opportunity to scare their engineers and change the culture to be a more intense, hierarchical one. Google engineering culture has long be…

It’s much easier to lose trust that to gain it, and the ramifications of the move will be felt for a very long time. There’s the time before and the time after, and Google won’t ever really look the same to the industry.

That said, Google probably now actually looks more like what Google is and has been for some time. The industry was just hanging on to goodwill forged over the last two decades.

There’s still massive innovation and builder spirit there, but I’m betting that we’ll have a much easier time poaching our favorite employees from Google now than we have over the last few years.

I’ve been part of several companies that have gone through layoffs, and one thing I’ve learned is that companies that haven’t done it in a while (or ever) typically do it poorly.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#52

Post by doktorhladnjak » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:06 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #26

spinningslate wrote: post #23

I've no inside knowledge on Google, so can't comment on the rationale for selecting those being let go. From the outside though, Google under Pichai increasingly looks like Microsoft under Ballmer in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Balmer was lauded for delivering good numbers from a dominant market position. That was fine - until it wasn't. Under his watch, Microsoft completely misjudged the internet and totally missed…

This doesn't quite line up for me. Ballmer, for his lack of technical foresight, managed an incredibly profitable business. People act like anybody could have just stepped in to milk Windows and Office for all they were worth, but the focus and execution are easy to scoff at in hindsight. If MS had focused on mobile, who's to say they would have succeeded? And perhaps in the process of losing, also ceded dominance to…

I worked at Microsoft during the Ballmer era. Profits and revenue continued to increase under his watch.

They did invest in mobile from fairly early. Microsoft was selling smart phones (through third party manufacturers) in the early 2000s. They just executed very poorly on mobile by building the wrong thing for the wrong customers. By the time leadership figured this out and started to pour money into Windows Phone, they were too late to catch up.

App stores and app platforms became critical to the success on any mobile platform. Microsoft didn’t sufficiently cultivate the Windows CE based apps enough. Then they ditched that app platform for a new one in Windows Phone 7, losing what little they had. Companies that had built apps for iPhone and Android had no incentive doing so on Windows at that point.

Ballmer at least recognized the value of Azure, Office in the cloud and similar efforts. All the seeds of Satya’s success were planted during Ballmer’s reign. There was just so much fumbling.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#53

Post by andromeduck » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:07 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #24

wan23 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people on the revenue making teams aren't usually the ones who are let go.

The algorithms work. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The algorithms need a lot of maintenance these days.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#54

Post by PessimalDecimal » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

bbor wrote: post #36

As a google employee (who obviously has no privileged info) I really don’t buy this whole activist-investor explanation for the layoffs. Besides the fact that the investors in question own I’m much more convinced by the argument that they saw this sector-wide wave of layoffs as an opportunity to scare their engineers and change the culture to be a more intense, hierarchical one. Google engineering culture has long be…

Sundar's recent pay package tied more of his compensation to performance of GOOG relative to the rest of the S&P 100 [1, 2]. That could also be related.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/alphabet-links-more-ceo-p... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/20/21031629/google-ceo-sund...

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#55

Post by radlad » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

doktorhladnjak wrote: post #52

darkerside wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't quite line up for me. Ballmer, for his lack of technical foresight, managed an incredibly profitable business. People act like anybody could have just stepped in to milk Windows and Office for all they were worth, but the focus and execution are easy to scoff at in hindsight. If MS had focused on mobile, who's to say they would have succeeded? And perhaps in the process of losing, also ceded dominance to…

I worked at Microsoft during the Ballmer era. Profits and revenue continued to increase under his watch. They did invest in mobile from fairly early. Microsoft was selling smart phones (through third party manufacturers) in the early 2000s. They just executed very poorly on mobile by building the wrong thing for the wrong customers. By the time leadership figured this out and started to pour money into Windows Phone,…

> Then they ditched that app platform for a new one in Windows Phone 7, losing what little they had. Companies that had built apps for iPhone and Android had no incentive doing so on Windows at that point.

I remember this basically as around the time that Microsoft bought Nokia and produced some really nice looking phones that people were excited about... they had also just reinvented their app platform and nothing could run on them.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#56

Post by bushbaba » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:08 PM UTC

mike_d wrote: post #47

fnordpiglet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scale up staff? That’s not the cloud business at all. It’s scale up infrastructure and services independently of staff, 100%. Source: I was there

Nope. Major accounts require tons of dedicated technical resources and hand holding. You might not have been directly involved, but the people side of Cloud is scaling out of control right now - even during "hiring freeze" and layoffs.

It’s a bit of both.

Culturally it didn’t get enterprise, e.g. “ditch oracle and move to spanner”.

Technology wise it was not setup for enterprise.

Staff wise it was paying way too high of a total-comp for non revenue roles. TAMs making 400k/year on accounts spending However it could have addressed all those. There were people inside advocating for those changes. Eng and Product leadership refused to listen. And the CEO refused to reward business success and instead rewarded product launches od multiple un-successful messaging apps.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#57

Post by throw_m239339 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

bombolo wrote: post #42

pm90 wrote: post #7

It will be interesting to see amazing talent leave Google and build new companies and institutions now that it’s slowly being mismanaged to death.

This can only happen with funding. Is this available lately?

Well, just look at the interest rates, from next to zero in the last 3 years to 4%. free money is over.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#58

Post by doktorhladnjak » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

bbor wrote: post #36

As a google employee (who obviously has no privileged info) I really don’t buy this whole activist-investor explanation for the layoffs. Besides the fact that the investors in question own I’m much more convinced by the argument that they saw this sector-wide wave of layoffs as an opportunity to scare their engineers and change the culture to be a more intense, hierarchical one. Google engineering culture has long be…

There’s an assumption made often on HackerNews and elsewhere in tech circles that Google is special and not like other companies. These layoffs show that this is not true. Google is a large corporation, like many others.

There’s no grand conspiracy. Nothing unusual is going on. Layoffs can seem random. They’re often done to appease investors or to clean house or both. A lot of Googlers and ex Googlers seem to be reeling from this, but it’s really just another day in corporate America.

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#59

Post by jezzamon » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

friendlyHornet wrote: post #6

DefineOutside wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

step one: promote BSD and MIT licenses over more copyleft licenses such as GPL step two: profit from people willing to code for enterprises for free There has to be some reason that Google released PyTorch under BSD-3 by Meta and TensorFlow being released under Apache by Google.

You forgot step 1.5: make contributing to open-source an unwritten rule to getting a job in the industry Full disclosure: I got my current job before I had contributed anything to open source but I was asked a lot about it while applying to companies like it's expected that you work in your free time

I think in my entire time working I haven't met anyone who has significantly contributed to open source (aside from "let me fix some bug that's annoying me in a library"), so I'm not sure how required it really is

Re: What is Google doing with its open source teams?

#60

Post by doktorhladnjak » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:16 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #7

It will be interesting to see amazing talent leave Google and build new companies and institutions now that it’s slowly being mismanaged to death.

My observation is that this has already been happening for a long time. I’ve worked with a lot of ex Google people in startups, especially more established ones. They pretty much all found it unsatisfying working there. Too slow. Too little impact. Maybe the layoffs will be a kick in the pants for others too, but they won’t be the first or alone in moving in that direction.