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Google wants employees to move faster

cnbc.com

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Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#11

Post by Marazan »

leosanchez wrote: post #4
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #2

> “People come to us because we are trusted,” Raghavan said. “They may have a new gizmo out there that people like to play with but they still come to Google to verify what they see there because it is the trusted source and it becomes more critical in this era of generative AI.” Seriously, in which reality-distortion bubble does Prabhakar Raghavan live?

Isn't he the Google ads guy ?

He used to be. Now he is head of Search. He became Head of Search at exactly the same time as when Google Search started becoming completely shit.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#12

Post by angry_moose »

paxys wrote: post #6

Meaningless executive speak. How should employees move faster exactly? Unless you are sharing exact guidelines, cutting down pointless projects and reducing work load, removing red tape etc. how do you expect everyone to magically ship quicker? If startups are beating you at your game with a tiny fraction of the employees, funding and resources, it should be obvious that the number of hours put into the job isn't the…

Yeah, we get the same crap constantly. “You have to be faster”

“Ok, are you going to remove the mountains of red tape, reviews, and documentation that make a 2 week project take 16 weeks?”

“Well, we can’t do that. Here’s a motivational story about boats”

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#13

Post by letmeinhere »

sgt101 wrote: post #7

He's got problems... He says his teams are working 120hrs a week, but he wants them to work more. I think that this is not going to happen!

I thought you must be misrepresenting the article, but no, its almost as bad as you said:

> He praised the teams working on Gemini, the company’s main group of AI models. He said they’ve stepped up from working 100 hours a week to 120 hours to correct Google’s image recognition tool in a timely manner. That helped the team fix roughly 80% of the issues in just 10 days, he said.

psychotic

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#14

Post by renegade-otter »

Unless I know exactly what I am looking for, I don't remember the last time I used Google to discover information.

First it was one sponsored link - now it's SEVEN. At some point even the masses catch on to the grift.

This is a desperate "something DO something" plea.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#15

Post by cletus »

Having worked at Google, this is entirely self-inflicted. This once internal now leaked video [1] summed it up pretty well. There is so much process you have to go through to do anything. A lot of it makes sense but it comes at the expense of speed.

More than a decade ago OKR (Objectives and Key Results) culture set in where once you just worked on things until they were ready. OKRs are really insidious because what qualifies as an acceptable goal depends on how much you're liked and the political muscle your org has. It also means the smallest unit of time because a quarter and if you had to approach another team for help, the soonest they would help you was the following quarter and that's only if you had the muscle to get onto those OKRs.

At a more macro level, Google is insanely profitable. I'm not sure what the current employee count but the per-employee profit is probably sitting at or above $500,000 per year. That's after all expenses. Yet the relentless pursuit of profits (which shrink over time) means further exploitation of surplus labor value.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6L-FlfeaI

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#16

Post by tyingq »

sgt101 wrote: post #7

He's got problems... He says his teams are working 120hrs a week, but he wants them to work more. I think that this is not going to happen!

"He praised the teams working on Gemini, the company’s main group of AI models. He said they’ve stepped up from working 100 hours a week to 120 hours to correct Google’s image recognition tool in a timely manner."

So, assuming they work 7 days a week, that's 17 hours a day. Leaving 7 hours for commuting, sleep and life. And it feels like he's offering that up as an example of "move faster".

Just wow.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#17

Post by CuriouslyC »

letmeinhere wrote: post #13
sgt101 wrote: post #7

He's got problems... He says his teams are working 120hrs a week, but he wants them to work more. I think that this is not going to happen!

I thought you must be misrepresenting the article, but no, its almost as bad as you said: > He praised the teams working on Gemini, the company’s main group of AI models. He said they’ve stepped up from working 100 hours a week to 120 hours to correct Google’s image recognition tool in a timely manner. That helped the team fix roughly 80% of the issues in just 10 days, he said. psychotic

I mean, if those engineers were doing it by choice and getting million dollar bonuses each, maybe not. But probably.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#18

Post by rdtsc »

> Raghavan clarified that the failure in image generation wasn’t due to a lack of effort.

> “I want to be clear, this wasn’t some case of somebody slacking off and dropping the ball,” he said.

So what is he saying then? Is he indicating they were sabotaged on purpose or that stuff just happened randomly - “an algorithm error”?

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#19

Post by korginator »

“If there’s a clear and present market reality, we need to twitch faster, like the athletes twitch faster,” he said.

“There is something to be learned from that faster-twitch, shorter wavelength execution,” he said.

Raghavan urged employees to “meet this moment” and “act with urgency based on market conditions.”

After that he goes to praise the teams working 120 hours a week, that's basically 17 hours a day.

Early in my career I'd have been angry, surprised or in denial at hearing this sort of rancid garbage. Now I see this in so many organizations, this is just a symptom of the deeper rot and top-down dysfunction.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#20

Post by nimbius »

angry_moose wrote: post #12
paxys wrote: post #6

Meaningless executive speak. How should employees move faster exactly? Unless you are sharing exact guidelines, cutting down pointless projects and reducing work load, removing red tape etc. how do you expect everyone to magically ship quicker? If startups are beating you at your game with a tiny fraction of the employees, funding and resources, it should be obvious that the number of hours put into the job isn't the…

Yeah, we get the same crap constantly. “You have to be faster” “Ok, are you going to remove the mountains of red tape, reviews, and documentation that make a 2 week project take 16 weeks?” “Well, we can’t do that. Here’s a motivational story about boats”

the C-level equivalent of poking the business with a stick and mumbling, "c'mon, do something..." when youve clearly run off all the talented, sidelined all the most dedicated, and turned your once thriving tech company into an ambling rudderless dumpster fire that occasionally immolates its best products for no reason and runs down pointless features because you spend more time reading Gartner than reading O'Reilly.
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