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Culture Change at Google

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Re: Culture Change at Google

#101

Post by the_third_wave »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #83
treprinum wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My very first boss that I believe is an undiagnosed psychopath is now director level over there. That told me everything I needed to know about any possible direction of the company. I no longer use anything made by them and actively steer everyone I know away to alternatives.

What alternatives do you recommend for email? That's my one google service I have difficulty getting away from.

Self-host, easy. No matter the hordes of detractors who will tell you this is impossible and that all your mail will be /dev/nulled by all the usual suspects (Microsoft, Microsoft and Microsoft being the main culprit here, Gmail comes in second) the truth is that you'll be fine as long as you make sure to configure things like SPF and DKIM correctly and you're either using a smarthost for outgoing mail (ask your IAP whether they provide one) or are on a reputable network.

A SBC like a Raspberry Pi is sufficient to host mail services for a fairly large number of people. Filter out spam with Spamassassin and a greylist, run sieve to organise your incoming mail flow, use specific mail addresses when communicating with commercial and government organisations and you'll end up asking yourself why so many people insist that self-hosting mail is not an option.

Now that you're self-hosting mail you can also self-host XMPP using the same address making it possible for people to reach you through either SMTP (mail) or XMPP (instant messaging/voice/video calling) using that address. This can be hosted on that same SBC without problems.

Source: my own experience self-hosting mail (and more) since the 90's. If it worked on a 486DX2-66 it should work on a quad-core 1.5GHz 64-bit ARM...

Re: Culture Change at Google

#102

Post by thowawatp302 »

tavavex wrote: post #75
renewiltord wrote: post #65

It's interesting. When I moved to California in 2012, Google was exciting. They had hot stuff, new platforms, very exciting. Six years later, you were hesitant to hire Google people. Today, it's the Bay Area retirement home. No one takes a Google resume seriously and everyone who works there talks about little they work. In a sense a massive transfer of wealth from capital to labor: the finest example of redistributi…

I'm sorry, I'm speaking from a point of absolutely no experience in these high-profile Silicon Valley jobs, but "companies refuse to hire Google employees" strikes me as a statement akin to "the king refuses to dine from a 99.999% gold plate because they skimped out on getting him a 100% pure plate". Even right now, many tech workers see Google and other big-name tech companies as basically the ultimate goal of their…

I work at one of those SV Fortune 500 companies and I’d absolutely give pause during hiring if I saw google in their resume

I might be an outlier

Re: Culture Change at Google

#103

Post by dilyevsky »

AlbertCory wrote: post #15
kyrra wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric leaving. Larry and Sergey stepping back. And the hiring of Ruth Porat as CFO. My money is on Ruth being the biggest change to Google.

Could be. Patrick was just so perfect as a Google CFO. Only-at-Google. His backpack full of hundreds (supposedly). But Ruth: she could be anywhere in the corporate world.

Imo patrick was no better with his “we saved 200M on snacks this year oh btw guess what my bonus was”

Re: Culture Change at Google

#104

Post by galkk »

avgcorrection wrote: post #80
petesergeant wrote: post #18

Other than people who worked there, and miss the old days … who cares? Google has transitioned into a mature tech company, which basically means they’re just an investment vehicle now managing assets. They’ll buy the innovation they need, but otherwise management’s job is to predictably manage share prices and profit. The nostalgia is nice for people who worked there, but the maturity of the business being presented…

> Other than people who worked there, and miss the old days … who cares? So you’re not a Googler? Or a Xoogler? Maybe you identify as a Noogler (never-Googler)?

Noogler - new googler. not “never googler”.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#105

Post by tonfa »

voiceblue wrote: post #6
baron816 wrote: post #5

> Early employees would often encourage each other to "fail fast" as a means to innovation, but that's no longer easy in an environment where failure implies a layoff. Big tech is in a really tough spot when it comes to innovation. Google has developed a reputation for killing off products too easily. Many have commented here and elsewhere that you can’t trust them to invest in using their new products because they m…

The success of 20% projects is a quasi-myth. Gmail is often touted, but you would do well to look up the employee # at Google of the inventor. Point being, you need (very) early hire clout or your 20% project isn’t going anywhere either.

Gmail wasn't a 20%, I don't know why anyone thinks it is. Buchheit was asked to work on it.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#106

Post by gws »

“The most incredible and unusual thing that struck me about Google's early culture was the tendency to value employees above all else”

I wish they had valued users above all else

Re: Culture Change at Google

#107

Post by jjav »

0xpgm wrote: post #48
zamfi wrote: post #24

Is any company still like this? I was at Google in ‘06-07, and again ‘09-11, and already there were obvious differences. You just can’t scale “total internal transparency” when the company doubles in size every year. And at some point you need just plain-old-“good” engineers to make the A/B tests happen and all the other stuff that doesn’t excite the PhDs. And at some point you need product people too, because you st…

I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets. Maybe become profitable and pay off the VCs then don't go public? Then you can resist the pressure for growth quarter by quarter, and remain the 'right size' that your internal culture demands. Did Valve corporation do something like that?

> I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets.

If you go public, no way to prevent it.

You have to stay private. But if you took a lot of VC money (and gave them board positions) that's going to be difficult.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#108

Post by choppaface »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #25
zamfi wrote: post #24

Is any company still like this? I was at Google in ‘06-07, and again ‘09-11, and already there were obvious differences. You just can’t scale “total internal transparency” when the company doubles in size every year. And at some point you need just plain-old-“good” engineers to make the A/B tests happen and all the other stuff that doesn’t excite the PhDs. And at some point you need product people too, because you st…

So the real answer is to join the next Google.. :) OpenAI?

Notably Google is currently doing layoffs while simultaneously paying Deepmind / Brain MLEs $1-$10m counters to keep them from OpenAI https://seekingalpha.com/news/4055187-google-said-to-use-spe...

Re: Culture Change at Google

#109

Post by tavavex »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #90
tavavex wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> providing access to everybody else's copyrighted content in novel ways That's a very biased characterization that downplays a debate that people have right now as basically being already solved. It's simply not truthful, unless they started a side business in developing a torrent tracker or something.

I'm not sure whether you think I'm being unfair to Google or to OpenAI. Everybody and their brother sued Google early on for a huge variety of their products. Google News got sued for showing headlines from news websites. Google Books got sued for copyright violations for, y'know, making a copy of everybody's books. Back in 2007, Google would've been in the middle of the the Viacom vs YouTube lawsuit. The whole idea…

I think the characterization is unfair to generative AI, because the information that is retained in the model is a very lossy and rough generalization of the training data - that situation is a lot less direct than what it's like with search engines. In my mind, the lawsuits against search engines have a lot more ground to stand on. Saying that something "provides access to copyrighted content" almost implies that there's some mechanism that allows the user to wholesale download complete, unedited and exact copies of some copyrighted material - I could see that argument with a search engine, but not really with a text or image generator.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#110

Post by the_gipsy »

treprinum wrote: post #77
redcobra762 wrote: post #68

Someone I used to work with was acquihired into Google, despite being one of the most manipulative, conniving, duplicitous people I’ve ever met. A person like this can get found out at companies that value talent (he has none), but at Google, he’s thriving . This ruined the shine of a Google resume, for me. It’s still great, but it’s just a job now. I look at the specific skills applied during an applicant’s time the…

My very first boss that I believe is an undiagnosed psychopath is now director level over there. That told me everything I needed to know about any possible direction of the company. I no longer use anything made by them and actively steer everyone I know away to alternatives.

Check out the Gervais Principle.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

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