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Why I Left Google

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Re: Why I Left Google

#211

Post by thwest »

davemel37 wrote: post #33

I think Google+ 's mistake, like the author, has to do with a changing doctrine, but i think it has more to do with a branding issue than an innovation or technology issue. (it could be both, but i would argue perception comes before reality when it comes to success) I think "Google+ is a dud," has less to do with whether social is broken, but rather with human perception and branding. Much the way Google owned the c…

And here I am, just wishing someone could sell me awesome $10/mo email without feeling the need to leverage my presence on the mass media cognitive battleground.

Re: Why I Left Google

#212

Post by anthonydchang »

edwardw wrote: post #205
anthonydchang wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without the emails, there are the links on the left in Perf that you can see your peer and manager reviews. Unless you're telling me Google China used a different Perf. I'm sorry to hear that you feel your time at Google is the worst experience for you, but your story just doesn't make sense. How can you submit a ticket after you left? Were you in eng? Did you not see mchurch's delusional rants and all the peopl…

The only reason I visited my personal profile was to write weekly snippet. So no, I didn't pay attention to the links you mentioned if there were no Perf emails to remind me. I submitted a ticket from outside as an alumnus. It is a fact. Credit to Google for setting this up. That being said, if there is anyone gets delusional, it is you. I'm an engineer and used to work for Sun Microsystems. It was awesome. So I have…

1. Perf is different from your personal profile or snippets. Were you even at Google long enough for Perf? 2. "I didn't pay attention." there you go :)

Re: Why I Left Google

#213

Post by rprasad »

anthonydchang wrote: post #192
edwardw wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your comment is a case in point. Anyone familiar with your story (at Google and, as you know, there are many of us who are) knows how totally skewed your perception is. Speak for yourself, would you? I'm myself a victim, unfortunately. I never even knew my Perf when I was with the company, only discovered it accidentally after I left. The process is very broken for me. Thanks @michaelochurch, I now know better abou…

Huh? You didn't see those links on the left? You missed those emails that told you Perf is completed and please go in and check your reviews?

Guys, it sounds like he worked for Google China. I don't know how tech works between different Google entities (as I don't/never have worked for Google), but its possible that Google China wasn't using the same system as Google US at the time edwardw was working for them.

Re: Why I Left Google

#214

Post by nextparadigms »

philwelch wrote: post #204
nextparadigms wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "the people" were on Myspace, Hi5, Friendster and other social networks before Facebook - hundreds of millions of them. So clearly it's something about the product, too.

Except if you go backwards from Facebook, there was at least an order of magnitude fewer people on MySpace, at least an order of magnitude fewer than that on Hi5 or Friendster, and so forth. Facebook reached a critical mass that the others never did.

That's not true. Myspace had 200 million users before Facebook even got a chance to catch-up with them.

Re: Why I Left Google

#215

Post by edwardw »

anthonydchang wrote: post #212
edwardw wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason I visited my personal profile was to write weekly snippet. So no, I didn't pay attention to the links you mentioned if there were no Perf emails to remind me. I submitted a ticket from outside as an alumnus. It is a fact. Credit to Google for setting this up. That being said, if there is anyone gets delusional, it is you. I'm an engineer and used to work for Sun Microsystems. It was awesome. So I have…

1. Perf is different from your personal profile or snippets. Were you even at Google long enough for Perf? 2. "I didn't pay attention." there you go :)

1. Of course. Otherwise what I submitted ticket for? 2. I said I didn't pay attention to the links if there were no emails to remind me.

Please, at least read what you reply to.

Re: Why I Left Google

#216

Post by r00fus »

frogpelt wrote: post #69
rickmb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Please enlighten me, what is Google+ (or Facebook for that matter) about if it isn't about advertising? Because as far as I know, every service that isn't about being so great people would pay for it is about advertising and nothing else.

Facebook is winning advertising because they have 750 Million users. Facebook wasn't created for advertising so much as advertising was the logical way to profit from having that many people use your product. Google certainly is motivated to compete with Facebook for that advertising revenue but their real motivation is just the user base which I'm sure they already have they just haven't been able to convert them to…

> Facebook is winning advertising because they have 750 Million users.

That's a rather bold claim. How many of those users see, much less click on those ads? I know for all my family (of which roughly half use FB), no one sees ads because I've disabled them. How many of those 750M are active accounts that represent real people?

Fact is, we don't know and it's their revenue that shows us... and they're far far behind Google in that respect.

Re: Why I Left Google

#217

Post by philwelch »

nextparadigms wrote: post #214
philwelch wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except if you go backwards from Facebook, there was at least an order of magnitude fewer people on MySpace, at least an order of magnitude fewer than that on Hi5 or Friendster, and so forth. Facebook reached a critical mass that the others never did.

That's not true. Myspace had 200 million users before Facebook even got a chance to catch-up with them.

Facebook says they have 845,000,000 "active" users. log10 of 845,000,000 is 8.9 or so, log10 of 200,000,000 is 8.3, leaving about 0.6, or most of an order of magnitude. And Facebook hasn't peaked yet.

Re: Why I Left Google

#218

Post by wvenable »

marshray wrote: post #142
wvenable wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason to want your identity is for advertising. Google went from a technology company (with the goal of collecting and making available all the world's information) to a social media company (with the goal of collecting information on the unwashed masses). Google has gone from cool to dirty and I think we'll see more Googlers leaving the company as they slowly discover that fact.

I mostly suspect you're right. But at the same time I get the sense that nobody is completely sure what all this social identity is going to be good for. Like the early days of the web, everybody can see that it will be very important going forward, but the business models it will support aren't fully clear yet. So it's a mad land grab at the moment in the hope it will monetize or be commercially leveragable somehow…

I think you get it; Social identity just isn't worth that much and I don't think it's a question of nobody knowing what to do with it. It's a bubble and now Google is on the bandwagon as well.

Re: Why I Left Google

#219

Post by jfager »

philwelch wrote: post #202
jfager wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entrenched winner in the late 90s right before Apple's resurgence was Wintel - cheap and everywhere. What does Apple do to compete? The name of the campaign was literally what the parent comment says a company needs to do - "Think Different" - backed by a line of products that were completely different than Windows: colorful vs beige, whole-stack vs licensed out to third-party manufacturers, premium vs commodity.…

But what Apple did to Microsoft and Dell is make a better product, which is exactly what Jony Ive is talking about.

Okay, so make a better product. Just don't market it as 'the same thing but better', market it as 'different and better'. That's the point.

Re: Why I Left Google

#220

Post by michaelochurch »

nine_k wrote: post #206
michaelochurch wrote: post #165

To understand why Google isn't what it used to be, one has to understand what happened in 2009-2011. This is the era when Google decided to get "real managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM, and Intel. If Google had told them to wipe their fucking feet off before tracking shitty culture into the place, it might have survived. It didn't. Google has an immense amount of talent "under…

Hmm. I see (and write) some Python around me. I see a lot of Scala around me. And it's production code, actively developed, not phased out. I also keep hearing about Go. Of course, I'm a mere contractor, I don't see the bigger picture, and all. But I _hope_ that on the language front things are not as grim.

Really? What do you work on?

Google's stance on Scala may have changed in the past few months as the language becomes more mature.

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