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Google was founded 25 years ago today

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Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#131

Post by ghaff »

paxys wrote: post #122
Xenoamorphous wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lots more that you enjoy every day Just a reminder that outside of SV/FAANG (so, 99% of devs?) all of that is not even close to be a reality.

And how were the conditions 25 years ago for these same developers? Just because everyone doesn't get paid the same doesn't mean the overall compensation in the profession hasn't gone up.

I'm not sure how much it has relative to other engineering and arguably comparable professions more broadly. Maybe somewhat? But $100K+ as an entry-level in enterprise IT is probably pretty solid.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#134

Post by karaterobot »

paxys wrote: post #99

Without commenting on the direction of the company in recent years and where it is today, I'll be forever grateful to Google for setting the standard for how tech companies need to treat their engineers. People who have entered the industry in the last decade or two may not realize it, but the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lot…

It's clearly more complicated than this, as people are pointing out, but I think your point is directionally true, and worth making. Maybe somebody else would have raised the bar, maybe the bar wasn't raised as high as was claimed, maybe they even raised the wrong bar. But, Google did pressure many other employers to change in a generally positive direction, so I'd give them that.

Analogously: I'm not a fan of Starbucks coffee, but I recognize that (where I live) specialty coffee places mostly did not even exist before SBUX popularized the idea that coffee didn't have to come out of a #10 can. You can raise the level of competition while not being the best yourself.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#135

Post by paxys »

dekhn wrote: post #128
paxys wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say it like paying 25% more than the prevailing wage is trivial for any company to do. Yes all they did was spend more money on talent than everyone else, and that's exactly what boosted the market.

Many companies in the bay area pay 25% more than prevailing- it's called "the bay area tax".

We are talking about the bay area. No one – IBM, Cisco, Apple, Oracle, HP, Novell, Intel, Motorola, 3Com, Yahoo or any of the other big industry players that employed software engineers – paid anywhere near the salary and benefits of Google.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#137

Post by jeremyjh »

crazygringo wrote: post #100
jjoonathan wrote: post #92

> The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

But fortunately market competition ensures that a higher-quality search engine is only ever a click away. So the bar for quality search is always going to remain pretty high, in order not to simply go out of business.

I'm not sure if you are using the same internet that I am...

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#138

Post by infecto »

russ wrote: post #102
paxys wrote: post #99

Without commenting on the direction of the company in recent years and where it is today, I'll be forever grateful to Google for setting the standard for how tech companies need to treat their engineers. People who have entered the industry in the last decade or two may not realize it, but the sky high salaries, stock grants, benefits, flexible work hours, free gourmet meals, stocked pantries, gym memberships and lot…

100%. My dad was an electrical engineer in the 70s and 80s and ended up transitioning to sales, given that it paid much more.

Is that not still true. I have many acquaintances with EE degrees that left to work in software because of the comparatively low salary.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#139

Post by chubot »

What's also incredible about early Google is how FAST the company created unique technology that led to decades-long profits.

The company IPO'd in August 2004, less than 6 years after it was founded. I think the market cap was around $20 B then, and now it's in the trillions.

I don't think any other company since has done it that fast -- Stripe, Uber, AirBNB, Dropbox, etc.

Compare Facebook, a company that also grew quickly. It was founded in 2004 and IPO'd in 2012, so more like 8 years.

And not just IPO'd, but created BOTH interesting tech and product. Back in those days I loved using Google -- it's a shame that most people don't remember that, and don't have the chance to experience it.

People would say the same things about Google that they say today about generative AI -- I remember an acquaintance wrote a blog post "Is Google God?"

Also, if you compare OpenAI, they're about ~8 years in now, and obviously have done more than 99.9% of organizations in 8 years. But they're also not fantastically profitable, and there's a big "research preview" disclaimer below their main product.

...

I joined Google less than 7 years in, right after the IPO, and it was already a smoothly running machine. It already had 3,000 employees and a bunch of offices, and good management.

I do think the IPO changed the company permanently. There was a bunch of turnover around that time. I remember Wayne Rosing, the VP of engineering, left shortly after I joined. I maintained/rewrote tools written by early employees, and I'm sure they were all (rightfully) taking a victory lap, at least in their minds ...

Definitely sad to see the hollowing out of all that talent in the last ~10 years. I think the founders just weren't prepared for how big it would become, and the company got beyond them.

Re: Google was founded 25 years ago today

#140

Post by satvikpendem »

jjoonathan wrote: post #92

> The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. - Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine

But I'm sure they love being billionaires now. At some point most people will sell out. You see it all the time with companies, mainly consumer product companies, that sell to private equity who then create objectively worse products than before.
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