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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

ln.hixie.ch

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#591

Post by nektro »

screye wrote: post #360
willsmith72 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing kills motivation more than bad management, I can totally feel his pain. In saying that, I don't think public, targeted statements like this are ever the right thing to do. She's just a person, doing a job.

> I don't think public, targeted statements like this are ever the right thing to do. As a previous believer in this, I now strongly disagree. (even if I am too chicken to do it myself) Tech nerds are usually nice and non-confrontational people. They get exploited to high heaven by those who are effective at navigating low-visibility & grey-area political spaces. When an org, leader, employee or associate taints ever…

the solution is to report it to boss' boss or quit. calling someone out like this publicly is beyond bad taste

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#592

Post by AlbertCory »

gregw134 wrote: post #543
AlbertCory wrote: post #17

Yet another "famous" Googler whom I didn't know. He joined one month before I did. I did know Chris DiBona, at least. Didn't know this Jeanine person. I wrote a number of articles about working there in the early (or earlier) days. Chronologically: https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-enterp... https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-ads https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-go…

"At any rate, after exploring this, I naturally wondered if there wasn’t some easier way to do it; not as statistically valid, maybe, but adequate for the advertiser who just wants to improve his performance. I won’t go into the details here, but let’s just say that everyone wanted a Super Deluxe version even if it did require changing every part of the Ads system. No one wanted something quick-and-dirty that just di…

Yeah. Like I said, the dream never died. Almost ten years later, it was revived & made real.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#593

Post by chii »

nextos wrote: post #570
htrp wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at least for anything that isn't somehow AI-related. If you can't innovate at the base level of app design .... how do you have any hope of innovating for AI apps that require research/engineering/product/marketing collaboration?

That's true. What they need is what they had started doing, i.e. breaking down Google into Alphabet and letting some companies within the conglomerate act like startups. Why was this effort unsuccessful? Perhaps they were unable to get rid of middle management? I have had lengthy discussions with employees from several of their companies, e.g. Calico, and that seemed to be the case. This article only reinforces my vi…

> Why was this effort unsuccessful?

i suspect that they are unsuccessful for two reasons: failure is not death, and success is not riches (for those who did the work).

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#594

Post by BytesAndGears »

ianmcgowan wrote: post #446
antupis wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 years ago it was hard to see , now I ampersonally using more chatgpt than Google.

Yeah, it's hard to go back to wading through SEO-optimized BS after just getting a decent answer (which, to be fair to the AI-sceptics, you do have to think about before using blindly). It's an interesting mental shift - I wasn't googling because I wanted to find a web page, I was googling because I wanted an answer to a question. An AR or mixed-mode personal assistant is going to be a game changer.

This is also where the paid search engine comes into play. I get to pin Wikipedia so it’s always at the top whenever it’s relevant to my search, and there is almost zero SEO spam. And no ads.

I use a mix of that and chatGPT together depending on the specific thing I’m searching for, and it’s truly better than even the old Google.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#596

Post by tannhaeuser »

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…

I find the real comedy here is the emotional attitude towards an employer TBH, especially with GOOG doing just fine.

The other thing I find worthwhile is the many Googlers/Xooglers coming out here quite bluntly. Which is appreciated when there was a noticeable lack of contributions recently that I was beginning to attribute to some newly imposed corporate social media policy by Google (like, to prevent leaks to competitors or antitrust authorities or sth).

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#597

Post by actionfromafar »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #571
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that because ChatGPT returns better results, or because when it returns results, it wraps them in words that make you feel more comfortable accepting them as better

It's because ChatGPT isn't being monetized with ads yet. I use "yet" quite deliberately, mind you. The question isn't whether ChatGPT will eventually have ads; the question is how easily you'll be able to tell they're ads, or if it's going to be product/service placement worked into responses as seamlessly as possible.

What a long con nudge bubble will be woven, in the darkness to bind them.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#598

Post by sumeno »

pardoned_turkey wrote: post #269
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Careers and incomes are at stake. People will get hurt. Google continues to print much more money than it burns. People get hurt by callous corporate decisions like layoffs. People don't get hurt by a company that has insane amounts of money taking risky projects, and if they fail, assigning those people to some other project. Given the size of Google and the fact that they hire generalists, being at risk of losing…

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…

> 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.

This doesn't really match the reality of the layoffs. They weren't team/project based or performance based, they were seemingly random. If they were concernee about too many low performing products and employees they went about it in completely the wrong way.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#599

Post by CrimsonRain »

serial_dev wrote: post #490
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…

Calling her out by name felt a bit harsh within the context of the post. Sure, call out Sundar as he's a public figure, but this lady, never heard of her, never seen her. He could have made the point by writing "I had this terrible boss who had no idea about anything and...", her name is irrelevant to demonstrate the issue of decline at Google.

It is the right thing to do. Flutter team losing someone like Hixie is a big loss to everyone. It is very much possible Tim also left Flutter because of her. This terrible manager has nothing to contribute compared to that. I hope other googlers speak up.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#600

Post by chii »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #579
obviouslynotme wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less about risk aversion than it is about position, size, and complexity. As these things grow, the incentives change and the ability to understand what the organization even is becomes impossible. A startup starts at the bottom. It begs investors, customers, and employees from a position of optimism and humility. The organization enthusiastically changes itself to find a good balance between those three or it d…

>and the ability to understand what the organization even is becomes impossible. What makes it impossible?

too many things going on, involving too many people and nobody can possibly keep track of it all in their head. You have to split it up. But by splitting it up, the left hand doesn't really know what the right hand is doing.

So controls and processes are put in place to ensure no bad outcomes are possible, but this also prevents good, innovative outcomes from sprouting.

Fundamentally, it's a loss of trust that can exist in a smaller organization.

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