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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#361

Post by shaftway »

tdeck wrote: post #314
aappleby wrote: post #48

12 years at Google for me, 2011-2023. Left after they froze internal transfers the same day I was going to transfer, which put me in limbo for 6 months despite management saying they'd find a way to get it done. Absolutely agree with this article. The disaster of Google+ and "Real Names Considered Harmful" was the first major crack in the culture. The layoffs destroyed what was left. The change in frankness and hones…

And of course there was never a postmortem for Google+ and nobody was held accountable for that failure.

There was an extensive postmortem for Google+ on Memegen, search for the phrase "vicg" among others.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#362

Post by jLaForest »

mpalmer wrote: post #337
throwaway678808 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in the org that Jeanine now runs. It had a series of bad-to-disastrous leaders at the Director, VP, and SVP level. To call out Jeanine and only Jeanine in language this harsh feels wrong. From my recollection and from what I have heard from people still working there, she is par for the course. Also I am almost never the person to bring this kind of thing up but ... there aren't a lot of other black women in…

While I don't think mentioning her by name was necessary (she's just an example of the culture of bad middle management he's calling out), I do think highlighting her race as a meta-criticism does neither the OP nor Banks herself any favors. My rule of thumb: unless given an obvious reason not to, assume good faith on the part of individuals.

Pretending racial disparities doesn't exist (particularly in tech) doesn't do any favors either.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#363

Post by TheCaptain4815 »

"Responsibilities are guarded jealously. Knowledge is hoarded, because making oneself irreplaceable is the only lever one has to protect oneself from future layoffs. I see all of this at Google now."

My father, a machine mechanic, gave me the same advice years ago. In my mind stuff like this only applied to blue collars so I didn't give it too much thought. Only later did I realize (after the company I was at became so mismanaged) he was 100% right.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#364

Post by afjeafaj848 »

cubefox wrote: post #245

He doesn't mention it, but it is curious that Google has apparently also lost the lead in the AI race to OpenAI, after being unquestionably on top for many years. PaLM 2 was inferior to GPT-4, despite being younger, and Gemini is set to release a whole year later. What's going on?

Does it really matter though? Whatever OpenAI does google will just copy and incorporate into GCP, similar to how they lost the race with AWS

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#365

Post by caskstrength »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #194
emodendroket wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the generic complaints of everyone who doesn't like their manager ever and frankly I would have thought twice before attaching my name to a broadside that attacks a former manager by name. But hey, what do I know, I never worked at Google.

Even in my “I quit Google” post I was careful to make it impossible for an outsider to determine who I was complaining about, even scrubbing my team info from LinkedIn. But I think 18 years at Google means the author has plenty of “fuck you” money.

> But I think 18 years at Google means the author has plenty of “fuck you” money.

And the balls! Dunno whether I read your generic "why I quit Google" essay, but author's post was the first that I liked due to his willingness to throw punches.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#366

Post by rkagerer »

pardoned_turkey wrote: post #86

Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…

You're never too big put the user first.

When you stop doing that, someone else will and in time your customers will go there instead.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#367

Post by paxys »

kelnos wrote: post #297
paxys wrote: post #159

Every bit of innovation in the AI space today originated at Google. The company poured probably tens of billions into its Brain division, sponsored and made public every bit of research, and pretty much created the field of modern AI. So what was the outcome? When the employees realized they had struck gold they figured they'd rather go join startups or found their own companies instead, because regardless of the amo…

> Every bit of innovation in the AI space today originated at Google. The company poured probably tens of billions into its Brain division, sponsored and made public every bit of research, and pretty much created the field of modern AI. So what was the outcome? When the employees realized they had struck gold they figured they'd rather go join startups or found their own companies instead, because regardless of the a…

It's not an indictment of Google but every large company in existence. That's just how our current corporate structure works, and is the reason entrepreneurship is a thing.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#368

Post by lowbloodsugar »

>Many times I saw Google criticised for actions that were sincerely intended to be good for society.

> Take Jeanine Banks, for example, ... Her understanding of what her teams are doing is minimal at best; she frequently makes requests that are completely incoherent and inapplicable.

So, when Ian does sincere things that were intended to be good, they get criticized for them unfairly. But this Jeanine Banks is [fucking incompetent] and Ian could not possibly be an outsider making the same mistake he claims everyone else is.

Also seems like a defamation suit waiting to happen.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#369

Post by tazjin »

throitallaway wrote: post #249
LargeTomato wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left in 2021, only 3 years tenure. The company was extremely chaotic. We had multiple calls to walkout, unionization, Sundar locking down communication in the wake of people fighting on memegen. We had company wide drama all the time. I had a list of every major dramatic happening and it grew to like 5-6 things in a year. I showed my manager and we laughed about how crazy it was. I left and from what I hear it just…

GCP has also been bringing in Oracle execs to run things. The results are very much so affecting our relationship with Google to the negative.

> affecting our relationship with Google to the negative

If you're paying them more money now then your relationship is affected to the positive (from Google Cloud's perspective).

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#370

Post by foobar_______ »

poszlem wrote: post #342
Osmose wrote: post #69

This is a good reflection, but I do disagree with the view of honest efforts from Google to improve the world being met with unnecessary external criticism. People outside Google don't have the benefit of thinking of any particular project as being run only by the individuals currently working on it—those particular people may leave the company or change teams or move on to other projects. It's Google that's making i…

It's the old: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Yeah seems pretty straight forward to me. Guy has been getting GOOG RSUs for 15 years straight and is now a multi-millionaire. Why would he rock his own boat? It is much easier to ignore any wrongdoing of the hand that feeds.
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