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What is Google doing with its open source teams?

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

#321

Post by acdha »

helpfulgoogler wrote: post #320
acdha wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Google released Anthos, we were in the market for something along those lines for Kubernetes on our own hardware (policy requirements). Talked to our reps, asked for some quotes … nothing. Tried again. Nothing. Tried again. Nothing. This left everyone wondering what it'd be like if we (as an existing GCP customer) needed support for any reason. The only company I've ever dealt with which was worse at taking your…

I think you may be misreading the situation. When Anthos was announced, it didn't exist yet. They didn't have anything to sell you and you weren't important enough to be trusted with that knowledge. In this regard, your comparison was probably apt (especially if you were inquiring about Watson).

Released, not announced - they actually contacted us about it and then ghosted when we asked for a quote. At the very least I’d have expected a simple “we’ll get back to you”.

IBM was similar: we were trying to buy Opteron servers, let our rep know, had a bunch of people show up, ended with them saying they’d send us a quote, no reply to multiple requests. Maybe they weren’t interested in mere 6 figure purchases but they could have said so.

(And, sure, we aren’t the biggest customer but you don’t get large deals if you can’t handle medium size deals. AWS shows up & they get considerably more business.)

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

#322

Post by steelframe »

ipaddr wrote: post #14
0xcafefood wrote: post #4

"What is Google doing with its open source teams?" Laying them off? It is quite sad to see.

Really? The open source teams have the best of the best in terms of reputation and quality output often delivering more value and goodwill compared to the traditional marketing department. They should move some of those folks into search..

> They should move some of those folks into search

Given the choice, I know a lot of people deeply involved in the OSS community who would rather leave for another OSS-friendly role at another company rather than get pulled into something that pulls their time and attention away from their OSS activities.

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

#323

Post by ghostpepper »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #281
rurp wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reasoning seems plausible to me, but it seems to be having the opposite on employees from what I have seen. Why invest yourself in a company that will fire thousands of people for petty reasons? I think this will cause many employees to shift more focus on how to look good on paper, versus doing actual interesting or useful work that might fly under the radar.

Google makes so much money on ad revenues that their entire workforce could be completely lazy and unproductive and get almost nothing done and they'd still have money to burn. Ads is a money printing machine. The most important roles there are SRE, data centre, and ops/infra jobs that keep the machine up and running.

Are you sure about that?

"Profits [in Q3 2022] were at $13.9 billion, down from $18.9 billion in Q3 2021"

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/10/google-profits-plumm...

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

#324

Post by alpb »

googthrownaway wrote: post #304
AlbertCory wrote: post #10

I knew Chris DiBona quite well. While I don't know the whole community as well so this is a rash statement, it's hard to imagine anyone knowing more about open source than Chris does. And Chris, if you're reading this: you rock, man.

Using a throwaway account for obvious reasons: The insider perspective seems a bit more textured, as coworkers current and former have confided the last couple of days. Yes, this man was the face of a lot of things good, but he did steamroll (with his Segway no less) people along the way in a manner that doesn’t seem to be normal corporate acrimony. I can’t judge other people’s experiences, so I won’t. I’ve only had…

Xoogler here as well. A similar thing has happened me in the past. He threatened to shut down my personal repos by sending a DMCA notice to GitHub. Admittedly, those weren't released on my personal account by getting open source team's approval (it was a small Kubernetes related tool and I happened to work on Kubernetes at the time, so one can argue it's work related, but it really wasn't). As a junior engineer, it was asymmetric power play, and a level of threat/confrontation I did not have at any point during my time at Google for many years.

That said, Chris has done many great things for open source at Google and the open communities around the world overall (he oversaw many programs like Summer of Code, open source peer bonuses etc as well) so I'm sorry to see the best OSPO team out there getting gutted like this.

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

#325

Post by agentofoblivion »

thedorkknight wrote: post #319
agentofoblivion wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barf!!!! To compare a 2023 Google employee to any population that’s had “boot stomping on their faces” is so out of touch with historical reality that it’s disturbing, disgusting and laughable all at the same time. We’re not talking about kids cleaning chimney sweeps here, or even modern slaves digging in cobalt mines. But Google employees, where 6% were allowed to go find another lucrative position and are sacrifici…

This is just the "stop complaining, there's starving kids in Africa so shut up" argument. Most employers don't care whether or not you hate yourself going into a soul-sucking job as a worker drone and will absolutely regress to that in the few industries that don't have it currently the moment market forces allow them to. There's a reason that sociopathy rates are higher amount CEOs than the general population. Call…

No, that’s not the argument. I’m calling out your false comparison that positions it as if modern tech workers are in some sort of proletarian struggle against their oppressors. I’m sorry if being in one of the most lucrative and cushy jobs in history still leaves you feeling like there’s a big hole in your life. That’s an existential crisis. That’s not corporate oppression. You’re not in the same situation as oppressed workers of the past.

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

#326

Post by wallflower »

coredog64 wrote: post #121
wallflower wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft didn't miss mobile They missed mobile. Apple (and later Android) delivered what average consumers wanted. Average consumers do not want to have to be a personal IT department to upgrade their software and manage backups of their settings/apps. As someone who had a Windows CE iPaq and wanted to love it, the user experience was so frustrating. It was nicknamed Wince for a reason. For example, since Windows…

I had a succession of Windows CE devices (iPaq 3600, 3800, 4500, whatever the monochromatic one was, plus some Toshiba (?) that used an SH4, and 3 or 4 more that I could maybe pick out of a lineup but no longer remember). If memory serves, the Toshiba and the later iPaqs weren’t nearly so destructive on updates.

Whoa, you were a much more dedicated user than I ever was. Thanks for providing historical context that they learned from feedback and/or mistakes.

To be fair, I think, in retrospect, the iPod and iTunes sync process and system gave Apple a multi-year headstart with building and developing a consumer-friendly backup and sync process.

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

#327

Post by smsm42 »

thedorkknight wrote: post #260
downrightmike wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a Capital Revolt. Workers were getting too comfortable, and now Money is teaching them a lesson

We got a little blip in human history where employers were forced to treat their employees like actual people. Was nice while it lasted. Back to having a boot stomping on our faces again...

I think getting from 500k+ salary to slightly under 500k salary and maybe having to visit a bunch of interviews hardly qualifies as dystopian nightmare. I realize being fired is no fun. It is very stressful and upsetting and people undergoing it should have all the sympathy. But let's be real - if we're talking about people making 10x national averages, they are not downtrodden underprivileged proletariat. So makes sense to do a reality check here and tone it down a bit.

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

#328

Post by smsm42 »

thedorkknight wrote: post #319
agentofoblivion wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barf!!!! To compare a 2023 Google employee to any population that’s had “boot stomping on their faces” is so out of touch with historical reality that it’s disturbing, disgusting and laughable all at the same time. We’re not talking about kids cleaning chimney sweeps here, or even modern slaves digging in cobalt mines. But Google employees, where 6% were allowed to go find another lucrative position and are sacrifici…

This is just the "stop complaining, there's starving kids in Africa so shut up" argument. Most employers don't care whether or not you hate yourself going into a soul-sucking job as a worker drone and will absolutely regress to that in the few industries that don't have it currently the moment market forces allow them to. There's a reason that sociopathy rates are higher amount CEOs than the general population. Call…

You can whine all you like, at least until Zuckerberg buys HN and starts to ban wrongthinkers. It's just that using "struggle of the downtrodden workers under the boot of the capital" doesn't sound as impressive when the downtrodden makes 10x more in a year than his average compatriot. I don't want to diminish anybody feelings, but I feel there should be a sense of proportion of things being not exactly hellscape yet for tech workers.

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

#329

Post by BakeInBeens »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #179
BakeInBeens wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most monopolistic portion of Google besides search would be their hold on the ad tech industry (and even then you have other online giants Meta, Tiktok, Amazon, etc.) but I don't necessarily understand how you can say they have a monopoly on consumer products large enough to drive adoption of Android especially 15 years ago. Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Chrome and Android either have direct co…

Something like 70% of email is controlled by Google, and you cannot operate an email service if you do not meet Google's demands. If your business isn't listed in Google Maps, it doesn't matter what industry you are in, Google has killed you. Chrome and Android aren't open source (at least, not the version running on 99.9% of their respective install bases), and both operate as near complete monopolies. Chrome has us…

Yeah I truly don't understand how you can look at email and maps and say Apple and Microsoft aren't also competing in those spaces.

Chromium and AOSP also aren't trivial contributions to open source and having the ability to fork those projects is much preferable to me than a proprietary solution that's more democratic once it achieves market dominance. Manufacturers building their own devices having nowhere to go was a problem pre-Android and a reason they'd rather license Google's OS rather than compete against Apple. And I think the decision of web standards has grown to be a bigger issue beyond what W3C or Google should be handling at this point, we treat the internet as public utility with the promise of standards without actual regulations and our browsers are an extension of that mess currently (not to say government is actually equipped to solve the issue).

I wasn't ignoring those other services I was doubting their monopolies unless we're changing the definition. I'd say the majority of dominant tech products have a large market share with few competitors but which are monopolies? I'd agree Android/Chrome was a monopoly if iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, Safari, Windows, Azure, AWS and I guess bing all start getting a look at for markets with seemingly only one/two other competitors, especially when you look at the fact they contribute little to nothing back for public benefit.

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

#330

Post by lumb63 »

AStellersSeaCow wrote: post #189

Current Googler, I have no insider info at all, found out about this the same Friday morning as everyone else. Everything expressed here is speculation based on my own observations and conversations with HR leaders at Google and other companies involved in this round of industry layoffs. It's unfortunately not surprising that some current and rising stars in the open source world were impacted by this. There's an imp…

I’m still stunned by how many Googlers think they are not in the “wealth class”. Half, even maybe a quarter, of a normal-length career is enough for a Googler to retire.
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