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Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

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Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#31

Post by MAGZine »

IBM wrote: post #24
antonius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Companies like Yahoo and Microsoft; i.e viewed as stodgy old companies that aren't great places to work." For what reasons is Microsoft not a great place to work? I may be biased because my brother works there full-time and a friend is interning there but both of them very much enjoy it.

My comment about them is how they're perceived in the industry, in reality they may be great places to work.

Other than stack-ranking thing/general office politics, I don't really have a negative preception of Microsoft. Is this a supposed-perception, or an actual perception?

I don't know anything about Yahoo!, but my perceptions of them are still positive. If you have an awful work environment, people will just go elsewhere. especially if you're qualified to work at either company.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#35

Post by amaks »

Steve Jobs' advice was not (only) to maximize profits, but to consolidate the products, reduce the number of products "because Google was all over the place". That's from the Steve Jobs autobiography by Walter Isaacson. So far, it looks like Larry Page took Steve Jobs advice to his heart and executes precisely on that vision: all products get integrated together (including through the Google+), innovation rate is still high and growing, company is super successful in post PC world.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#36

Post by yapcguy »

Permit wrote: post #27
birken wrote: post #6

Here are 3 pertinent facts related to your post: 1) When I worked there, long before Larry Page was CEO, 20% time barely existed and Google cared a heck of a lot about making money. 2) The share price going up makes employees, former employees, and all sorts of non-"wall street investors" very happy. 3) Your hacker news about section links to your Google+ page

>3) Your hacker news about section links to your Google+ page Someone can use Google+ and love Google+ and empathize with others who might not feel the same way. Regardless, it's entirely irrelevant. He doesn't mention Google+ once in the post.

Proves the point that people use Google+ to scavenge information, including real names, before attacking them... love the irony!

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#37

Post by yuhong »

MAGZine wrote: post #31
IBM wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment about them is how they're perceived in the industry, in reality they may be great places to work.

Other than stack-ranking thing/general office politics, I don't really have a negative preception of Microsoft. Is this a supposed-perception, or an actual perception? I don't know anything about Yahoo!, but my perceptions of them are still positive. If you have an awful work environment, people will just go elsewhere. especially if you're qualified to work at either company.

I think they were referring to the 1990s when MS was a lot worse than the Google of today. MS did a lot of unethical attacks against competitors during that period (my favorite is the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco).

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#38

Post by matthewmacleod »

What's with the sudden outpouring of Google-hate of late?

I totally get that Google is changing, and has been doing so for a while. But I don't see that as "evil," and I'm struggling to see why anybody would.

Google around maybe five or six years ago was a wasteland of shoddy, broken, unintegrated products, many with half-assed, confusing interfaces. That's been tightened up - many of their products are now substantially better; there's a coherent account and profile system in place; the weak products have been culled. Their focus is a lot better.

I'm probably using Google resources less than I used to - GMail's interface pisses me off, the new Maps layout is infuriating, and search is broadly speaking totally broken for me in places. I'm also acutely aware that Google's audience has changed - it's no longer tech-savvy early adopters, but almost everybody who has an Internet connection. Unfortunately, the interests of the minority groups of users are going to fall by the wayside as the business evolves.

To some extent, that's great - it opens up gaps in the market where other products can get a look-in. If Google's search sucks, I'm sure a competitor will pop up. Same with Gmail, or Docs, or Hangouts… etc.

There are unsurprisingly some areas in which Google's record is not 100% clean - they stopped supporting RSS, removed XMPP federation, require profile verification (apparently) - but in most cases, I can certainly see how the business or technical case for these could legitimately be made. These are not evil actions - they're just ones that you (and I) don't agree with. Fair enough - we're under no obligation to use Google's services. In the meantime, they continue to develop a huge diversity of open-source software and protocols, and I hear it's still a great place to work.

I guess at the end of the day you could be right - Google has declined from your perspective. But I doubt that's true from the perspective of their wider user base.

Re: Google's Decline Really Bugs Me

#39

Post by michaelochurch »

auggierose wrote: post #32

I admire the guys who can pull off something great with just 20%. I could not do that. When I have something that excites me, it soon grabs 100% of me.

20% time is the idea that it's OK to put "only" 32 hours (or, in practice, 25-30) on your assigned project, but there is certainly not an 8-hour maximum on the side project.

If you want a promotion, you'll have to put in more time than 25-32 hpw; but you won't get in trouble at that effort level. Of course, this is true in most companies-- a 25-hour effort on your assigned work is not low enough to get you fired, almost anywhere; it means that you're not outrunning the bear but you're outrunning someone-- but the difference is that you don't have to hide side projects. That makes a pretty substantial difference.

It's a good idea, not because the number means anything, but because it means that (under most managers, although there are exceptions) you don't have to deny or hide working on other things ("skunk works") that might prove useful. You can talk about them openly. In companies without 20%T projects, people still do those types of projects, but are afraid to share their work, which means those projects go nowhere. Google doesn't seem to have that problem. If you build a demo and share it, that's encouraged.

Google is still better than many companies (yes, I'll say it; it is, if you land in the right place, a great place to work) but an incredible amount depends on your manager. The biggest moral failing of Google probably is how easily a manager can become a SPOF for your career. That's not different from most companies, but any firm that wants to call itself progressive ought to solve that problem. You'd think it would be a first order of business.

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