41–50 of 132 posts
I had the privilege/fun of consulting at Google for four months last year and getting a glimpse inside the company was more than interesting.
I think the filter that projects should offer 10x improvements sets high expectations. If Google is the first to develop a general purpose AI then their valuation will approach infinity.
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…
#2 is actually in the story. Unless you're saying they got the particulars wrong? "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."
The idea of investors bringing in a "professional" CEO has largely died, thankfully. It must have been incredibly frustrating for Sergey/Larry to see a younger Mark Zuckerberg go from strength to strength as Founder/CEO while they had to pretend Schmidt was in charge for "adult supervision".
"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.
Hi! Nicholas here. I'm not a doctor, and I don't diagnose Page in the story with any sort of disorder or condition. I just describe.
That said, I really enjoyed the article, which I find really well-researched and well-written. Most of all I appreciate the fact that you, unlike writers on most publications, didn't waste time on useless descriptions of physical features or buildings and surroundings, and kept them to a minimum . Also, it's great that you reached out here on HN.
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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'…
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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'…
> so they threw out Asperger's, said it wasn't a real mental illness after all, thus postponing the day or reckoning. Say what you want about Asperger's, but my son has autism and I can assure you it's a real mental health disorder, however many kids might somehow get diagnosed with it.
Yes, but you're mixing different things. Autism is a category that includes a "Rain Man" level of functioning, but Asperger's was a diagnosis du jour that picked out brighter-than-normal kids, plus a raft of historical figures including Albert Einstein, in a way that made it seem like an attractive diagnosis, such that now, we have people objecting, saying, "No! I'm an Aspie and I don't care what you psychologists say!"
Such a thing has never happened before -- there has never been a reverse stigma to a mental illness diagnosis. When psychologists saw people lining up to get this cool new diagnosis, they knew they had gone too far, so they started a process to remove Asperger's from the diagnostic manuals before their credibility was further eroded.
Remember when you read about Asperger's that psychologists, who have every reason to hold onto established diagnoses, couldn't wait to get rid of Asperger's and the embarrassment it caused them.
50, 100 years from now, Larry Page (if he's even dead yet) will be remembered as one of the more impactful people in human history.
Why specifically? History is long, think of Einstein, the person that invented the penicillin, vaccines, the transistor.... Search engines existed before Page, granted not as good but they existed. Google rode the internet explosion, whereas Jobs and (drumroll...) Gates brought a computer in every home. What he will be remembered is for tainting the Google brand. It was golden, now in many circles they see them as bi…
There has rarely been an industrial force with the ambition Page gives to Google. If they succeed in even half measures on some of these initiatives, it will be transformative.
Great article !
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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'…
Unless you happen to know and care for someone who actually is on the autism spectrum, it's probably best not to go around talking as if you know what it's about.