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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#501

Post by stillwithit »

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…

Has nothing to do with Google “being bad” and everything to do with emerging social trends questioning the corporatization of everything.

Such memes have gone viral across our society. From big beer boycotts, to turning on Google and SV. Filter bubbles across contexts are turning on the source of their fascination; we’re out for video games, Hollywood, beer, celebrities, experts, politicians. Knives aren’t out yet but the sharpening stones are.

The real value of decades old value stores foisted upon us in deference to the investor class, for if we do not validate their decades old choices and memes, they will have no choice but to engage in punitive acts, drive fiat economy off the fiscal cliff!

People are getting fucking tired of it. Sooner than later they’ll resort to whatever behavior is necessary to meet their needs and shoot anyone who takes issue with it.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#502

Post by alliao »

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…

kind of interesting how bell was able to spun off so much while modern companies aren't able to do so

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#503

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Fordec wrote: post #482
ghaff wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? I could legitimately IMO rag on a handful of former managers who I think mostly meant well but I’m not going to do it in a blog post.

After 18 years at Google he's likely at a stage in his life where he's at f-you money in his bank account. If he cares more about the company culture than being rehired by the people that disagree with his outlook, why not let it fly? If it instigates a culture change, he wins at the cost of a professional bridge he doesn't value anyway.

One great way to lose the f-you money in your bank account is to get involved in a harassment or slander lawsuit because of some offhand things you said that got pasted all over the interwebs.

I'm not saying that will happen here, but if I were writing this blog post I would have deliberately avoided specifics like this because of that, in part.

It's one thing to legitimately trash Sundar Pichai; another to name some middle-level manager like that.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#504

Post by averageRoyalty »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #453
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…

I had the same reaction. I'm ex-Google, but never worked in that org or heard of her ever but it seemed in profound bad taste (or just mean?) to me to be pinpointing people by name like that. I'm not sure what it accomplishes, unless there is a vendetta at work here? Also seemed out of tone with the rest of the article, which I agreed with the substance of and enjoyed reading.

Why is there a presumed intent to "accomplish" anything? It's a blog post.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#505

Post by dasil003 »

closeparen wrote: post #469
dasil003 wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Silos and fiefdoms allow small gelled teams who know and trust each other, have similar levels of competence, and sit physically near each other to put their heads down and execute with extraordinary speed and quality. ...for things that align with that silo structure. If you try to build new things that necessitate conceptual integrity across org boundaries, then teams that think this way will first debate ownersh…

I don’t disagree. But I have also seen situations where middle managers are highly attuned to and proud of cross-team projects, and basically don’t pay any attention or give any weight to value delivered for end-users within teams, so everyone is encouraged to structure their projects to maximize communication overhead (even line managers, since doing so gives them the opportunity to grow their directs).

Absolutely. There are a lot of failure modes. This is why true IC leadership with teeth is needed. The whole point of staff+ engineer roles (outside of specialist research) is to navigate the right technical decisions that span across teams.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#506

Post by liveoneggs »

pkasting wrote: post #409
liveoneggs wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the issue is that Google uses its engineering staff as foils to spread their lies instead of putting forward the product managers, who would explain why breaking the web is good for profits. I don't blame the engineers.

Having been in the room on a number of these occasions, a don't think this description is remotely accurate.

What's the mood in the room when-

"I have a change to propose to the http standard that doesn't consider the 20 year history of UDP amplification attacks and breaks all existing servers and browsers!"

or

"I think some websites like Pinterest should dominate all of the google image search results instead of any other website in the world!"

or

"Autoplaying audio is hostile to users except for the few sites we (Google) run and the list of people we think are okay?"

Honestly. Have you been involved in these types of short-sighted and blatently evil decisions? That's why I said I don't blame the engineers. The banality of the day-to-day with a room-full-of-juniors likely doesn't even consider any consequences beyond "xyz is yelling at me".

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#507

Post by dazzlefruit »

crazygringo wrote: post #432
dazzlefruit wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chrome versions of the first few years were so nice to use. It was the _lightest_ major browser for a time. It's insane how it has drifted since then.

Has it drifted? I don't see it. I think all the other browsers just had to become light and fast too. Even Microsoft was forced to say goodbye to IE, and instead based Edge on Chromium. And tech people were eventually able to switch back to Firefox because it got much faster too. Google wanted a world where all browsers were light and fast in order to efficiently run complex webapps -- and they achieved that. Kudos.

Chrome is often criticized for overusing RAM. Personally I stopped using it a couple years ago, but when I stopped, it was very far from light; I remember it freezing for a few seconds for lack of RAM in a way other browsers (Firefox with multiprocessing, Edge before it got rebuilt over Chromium) didn't.

The original Chrome just felt like a barebones window to the Internet. Though I agree that Firefox et al. became much less sluggish over time. (Is that only their performance improvements or did hardware get better faster than they grew?)

Also maybe "light" and "fast" shouldn't be lumped together. Chrome can definitely be fast when it has enough resources. That and sandboxing seem to make it much _heavier_ in RAM.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#508

Post by kccqzy »

Eridrus wrote: post #338
pardoned_turkey wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layoffs at Google didn't happen because they had to happen. They happened because the leadership was concerned that in the good years, the company accumulated way too much dead weight - pointless projects, underperforming employees that the managers never had to deal with because they could always hire more people, etc. It's an awful fix and only a temporary one, but unnecessary risk-taking can jeopardize a lot more…

> Regulatory and PR risks are similarly grave. For example, Google couldn't have pulled off something like TikTok without all kinds of regulators jumping at their throats right away. They had to wait for ByteDance to clear the way and then launched their own "also-ran" clone. It's the same story with ChatGPT: Google had the tech but not the freedom to let it loose. I think this is directionally true: Google would hav…

Indeed, the company behind TikTok (called ByteDance) didn't even have an IPO yet. It is unclear how much money they are earning from TikTok. It's conceivable that TikTok itself makes no money and is subsidized by the company's other products like Toutiao.

If Google were to try this early, it is uncertain that Google will discover a monetization strategy before the product joins the Google graveyard.

Let's not even talk about short form video, just YouTube. How many years did Google subsidize YouTube with Search money before it really turned up advertising on YouTube? Do we know how much effort Google expended in experimenting with monetization strategies for YouTube?

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#509

Post by cmrdporcupine »

refulgentis wrote: post #481
swetland wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I take exception to the painting of Android as inherently "unhealthy" and not "solving real problems for users." Also with lumping it in with the unmitigated disaster that was the Social/G+ effort. I attribute much of Android's success to Larry & Eric being very supportive, shielding the team from constant interference from the rest of the company, and letting us get shit done and ship. I came aboard during the…

I'll vouch for it, I think you may have escaped what it became: I'm a couple generations after you, joined Google/Wear in 2016 and accepted defrag onto Android SysUI in 2018. Much lower level, topped out at L5, but saw a ton because I was the key contributor on two large x-fnl x-org projects in those 5 years, one with Assistant[1], one with Material/Hardware.[2] Both were significantly more dysfunctional than any env…

"Pople at the bottom would be starved for work, while people in the middle were _way_ overworked because they were chasing L+1 and holding on to too much while not understanding any of it"

Sounds like every org I worked in at Google, though it got worse as time went on. I started there end of 2011, and left end of 2021. This kind of bullshit is endemic to the tech culture at Google, but was the worst inside smaller sites or in teams with "sexy" products.

And might have been arguably worse when they had explicit "up or out" policies around L4s.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#510

Post by kitsune_ »

ghaff wrote: post #312
kradroy wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no greater source of professional resentment than suffering under a manager who's incompetent and a narcissist (my summary of his blurb). After 18 years at Google he probably feels safe burning that bridge.

But why? I could legitimately IMO rag on a handful of former managers who I think mostly meant well but I’m not going to do it in a blog post.

People who never had the misfortune to work with a truly toxic manager or co-worker are often oblivious to the damage they can cause. I'm speaking of psychological damage, burn out, anxiety, stress, depression, health problems. Naming their abuser can be helpful to people who had to endure such a thing.
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