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The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

businessinsider.com

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Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#11

Post by dmunoz »

cliveowen wrote: post #6

"With little emotion, speaking in his usual flat, robotic tone[...]As Page talked, he kept his gaze averted, resisting direct eye contact." Journalists have a tendency of portraying figures in tech circles as being on the spectrum, while very often that isn't the case.

It's not just journalists. Both Amazon's Betas and HBO's Silicon Valley could not resist the temptation to make Asperger's jokes in their first episodes. HBO's Silicon Valley's usage even made it into the trailer. To be fair, I suppose an argument can be made that the shows are reflecting the common view of people in technology.

It's weird to me, because I don't think being nervous around people you're not familiar with is at all odd. Plenty of people I have worked with are very shy around new people, but absolutely open up as you get to know them. I don't think many of them at all are with any significance "on the spectrum", ignoring the trivial argument you can make for everyone being on it to unnoticeable degrees.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#12

Post by yid »

gtirloni wrote: post #7
cliveowen wrote: post #6

"With little emotion, speaking in his usual flat, robotic tone[...]As Page talked, he kept his gaze averted, resisting direct eye contact." Journalists have a tendency of portraying figures in tech circles as being on the spectrum, while very often that isn't the case.

Just to clarify what you mean by "on the spectrum", do you mean the mental illness one? It's a new expression for me and searching only came up with things related to autism, etc.

Autism and asperger's are now on the "autism spectrum disorder": http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disord...

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#13

Post by argumentum »

gtirloni wrote: post #7
cliveowen wrote: post #6

"With little emotion, speaking in his usual flat, robotic tone[...]As Page talked, he kept his gaze averted, resisting direct eye contact." Journalists have a tendency of portraying figures in tech circles as being on the spectrum, while very often that isn't the case.

Just to clarify what you mean by "on the spectrum", do you mean the mental illness one? It's a new expression for me and searching only came up with things related to autism, etc.

He means the autistic spectrum. Usually when referring to someone as "on the spectrum", they really mean to imply that the person in question is on the high-functioning end.

It's just meaningless speculation, in my view. People have widely different personalities, and also the tendency to categorize other people as having some pathology.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#14

Post by lutusp »

gtirloni wrote: post #7
cliveowen wrote: post #6

"With little emotion, speaking in his usual flat, robotic tone[...]As Page talked, he kept his gaze averted, resisting direct eye contact." Journalists have a tendency of portraying figures in tech circles as being on the spectrum, while very often that isn't the case.

Just to clarify what you mean by "on the spectrum", do you mean the mental illness one? It's a new expression for me and searching only came up with things related to autism, etc.

It normally means on the Autism spectrum, which, if you understand contemporary clinical psychology, can mean anything or nothing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum

For a time about ten years ago, it seemed as though everyone would be placed on the Autism spectrum, but psychologists realized what that would mean (i.e. if everyone is mentally ill, then no one is), so they threw out Asperger's, said it wasn't a real mental illness after all, thus postponing the day or reckoning. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#15

Post by lutusp »

yid wrote: post #12
gtirloni wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify what you mean by "on the spectrum", do you mean the mental illness one? It's a new expression for me and searching only came up with things related to autism, etc.

Autism and asperger's are now on the "autism spectrum disorder": http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/autism-spectrum-disord...

For the record, Asperger's is gone. It was cast out because it seemed that everyone was "suffering" from it.

http://www.autismspeaks.org/dsm-5/faq#asperger

The above means people can use the word "Asperger's" if they want, but it has been denied any clinical meaning. The reason is that it didn't have a clearly defined clinical meaning to begin with.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#16

Post by moonka »

pk2200 wrote: post #5

Early Googler here. It's funny how often the story of the mass-firing is misreported. This article gets two basic facts wrong: 1) Larry was targeting engineering management, not project management. 2) Nobody was fired. The engineering managers shifted to pure engineering roles (an easy move, since they all had technical backgrounds). On many teams, the managers continued managing, but they did it more discreetly, tak…

They mention that they weren't fired.

>In the end, the layoffs didn’t stick. The project managers Page had intended to fire that day were instead brought into Google’s growing operations organization, under the leadership of Urs Hözle.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#17

Post by fuzzythinker »

pk2200 wrote: post #5

Early Googler here. It's funny how often the story of the mass-firing is misreported. This article gets two basic facts wrong: 1) Larry was targeting engineering management, not project management. 2) Nobody was fired. The engineering managers shifted to pure engineering roles (an easy move, since they all had technical backgrounds). On many teams, the managers continued managing, but they did it more discreetly, tak…

Actually, few paragraphs later, he did say they are not fired.

"In the end, the layoffs didn’t stick. The project managers Page had intended to fire that day were instead brought into Google’s growing operations organization"

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#18

Post by guyzero »

fuzzythinker wrote: post #17
pk2200 wrote: post #5

Early Googler here. It's funny how often the story of the mass-firing is misreported. This article gets two basic facts wrong: 1) Larry was targeting engineering management, not project management. 2) Nobody was fired. The engineering managers shifted to pure engineering roles (an easy move, since they all had technical backgrounds). On many teams, the managers continued managing, but they did it more discreetly, tak…

Actually, few paragraphs later, he did say they are not fired. "In the end, the layoffs didn’t stick. The project managers Page had intended to fire that day were instead brought into Google’s growing operations organization"

But they were never even laid off, that's the point. How can layoffs "not stick"? If people were fired they wouldn't still have been working there.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#19

Post by bshimmin »

There are some truly strange and incongruous turns of phrase in this article - "Google's human resources boss, a serious woman with bangs named Stacey Sullivan", "Finally Rosing, a bald man in glasses, began to speak", "Though he was an appealing presence with above-average height and nearly black hair", etc.

It strikes me the author would far rather be writing Mills & Boon novels than articles for Business Insider.

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