Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 132 posts

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#101

Post by lutusp »

nooron wrote: post #93
lutusp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No. Diagnosing mental illness is a very inexact science since multiple etiologies can create very similar symptoms. And a single etiology or difference can create many divergent ones [edit for clarity: symptoms]. It wasn't cast out because everyone was suffering from it. It was simply put into the lump categorization of Autism Spectrum Disorder: http://www.dsm5.org/Documents/Autism%20Spectrum%20Disorder%2... From the…

> Diagnosing mental illness is a very inexact science since multiple etiologies can create very similar symptoms.

Yes, true, and that means it is not science. Science requires evidence on which similarly equipped observers can agree, and falsifiability. Psychological diagnoses don't have either of these properties.

> It wasn't cast out because everyone was suffering from it.

It was cast out because of an epidemic of overdiagnosis (as it was put by the editor of DSM-IV), one that forced psychologists to realize they had made a mistake including it in the previous DSM. So, taking the high road, they voted it out of the present DSM.

But I ask that you notice something -- mental illnesses aren't identified by microscopes and lab assays, they move into and out of existence by way of votes. That by itself should give people pause about the scientific nature of the process.

Psychologists are reluctant to give up on a diagnosis like Asperger's, and such a reversal has only happened once before. Can you guess which behavior, now regarded as a civil right, defended by a number of federal laws, was branded a treatable mental illness until the 1970s?

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#102

Post by johnx123-up »

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…

Can any Googler explain the difference between engineering management and project management?

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#103

Post by nutjob2 »

nostrademons wrote: post #40
nutjob2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just call it what it is: sloppy journalism? Ignoring the facts to further a pre-determined narrative would more commonly be called a lie.

Ironically, this debate over whether it's "crafting a narrative" or "sloppy journalism" is itself an example of crafting a narrative. The same facts can be explained many ways, with many different emotional tenors.

Of course, nothing wrong with creating a narrative, and of course the same facts can be seen different ways. But the point is you use the FACTS.

I've seen too much journalism, especially in tech, which has scant regard for the truth and focuses on pushing some line that the author thought would make a good story.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#104

Post by Tarang »

zhemao wrote: post #54

I find it funny that Page complained about Gmail taking 600 milliseconds to load back when it was created. It probably takes longer than that these days unless you have a really fast connection.

If they had to check the server logs wouldn't they be referring to something more related to generating the html? This would remain the lowest response even on the fastest possible connection.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#105

Post by paulrademacher »

bshimmin wrote: post #19

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.

"Woman with bangs." I cringe any time I see a writeup of a female engineer or executive where attention is drawn to her hairstyle, clothes, or shoes. It's unnecessary and undignified.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#106

Post by nostrademons »

johnx123-up wrote: post #102
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…

Can any Googler explain the difference between engineering management and project management?

There're actually more flavors of management role than just those two, and the terms get a bit confusing when you try to map them:

1.) Tech lead. This is the technical point of contact for the project as a whole. Responsible for deciding overall system architecture (usually by acting as the tiebreaker when there're debates within the team), determining priorities, either assigning work or creating systems where the team can identify what needs to be done and do it, interfacing with their PM, pitching in technically when needed, and ensuring the overall engineering success of the project.

2.) Engineering management, or more generally, people management. This is what's reflected in the official org chart. Responsible for career development of subordinates, keeping reports happy and ideally still employed at Google, dealing with personnel issues, HR issues when necessary, managing performance, coaching, giving feedback, getting their reports promoted, stepping in when the employee has done something inappropriate, etc.

3.) Product manager. Drives the product vision of the project forward. In theory (and hopefully often in practice) they represent the user and are responsible for building something users want. Daily duties include negotiating with other functional areas of the org (legal, PR, security, privacy, accessibility, etc.), doing market research, analyzing data, representing the team in meetings, keeping the product vision, coming up with new ideas, often building mockups (although this is often outsourced to UX), ordering T-shirts, getting approvals, and generally doing everything necessary to get the project to launch.

4.) Program managers. These are process-oriented managers that are often attached to infrastructure or devrel teams that have ongoing responsibilities that impact a number of consumers. Their job is basically organization and communication: they make sure everyone knows what they need to know and that all external requests are eventually handled with nothing important being dropped on the floor.

#1 and #2 are both done by engineers, although #2 is sometimes done by dedicated engineering managers. #3 and #4 are specific job titles. Sometimes #1 and #2 are the same person, sometimes they are separate people; many people find things run more fairly and more efficiently if technical decisions are not made by people with direct authority over your career, although others prefer to have their manager be intimately familiar with their work because it helps come promotion time.

#1 and #3 also map to startups, where a "tech lead" is basically the "hacker" while a "product manager" is basically the "hustler". #2 maps to the "adult supervision CEO", while #4 maps to "super talented admin who keeps the books, knows all the employees, and keeps the company running."

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#107

Post by bluefinity »

paulrademacher wrote: post #105
bshimmin wrote: post #19

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.

"Woman with bangs." I cringe any time I see a writeup of a female engineer or executive where attention is drawn to her hairstyle, clothes, or shoes. It's unnecessary and undignified.

Do you also cringe every time you see a write-up of a male engineer or executive where attention is drawn to his hairstyle, clothes, or shoes?

Example from the same article: "Finally Rosing, a bald man in glasses, began to speak"

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#108

Post by nl »

ust wrote: post #35
nutjob2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just call it what it is: sloppy journalism? Ignoring the facts to further a pre-determined narrative would more commonly be called a lie.

Agreed. One more factual error is mentioning Tesla as a Croatian immigrant, but actually he was born in then Austrian Empire (which today is Croatia). His parents were Serbian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Whether Tesla was Serbian or Croatian is one of the most controversial topics on Wikipedia[1]. As is typical for Wikipedia he has been added and removed from the list of famous Croats a number of time[2]. I don't think that can be classed as a factual error

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_controversial...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Croats#Tesla

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#109

Post by crusso »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #82

I realize that it's an aside in the article but I wanted to contradict something: > What’s less well understood is that Apple’s board and investors were absolutely right to fire Jobs. Early in his career, he was petulant, mean, and destructive This idea (Jobs needed to be away from Apple to improve himself) gets mentioned a lot but I think it's nonsense. First: Jobs was petulant, mean and destructive to people he dis…

Pink, Taligent, OpenDoc, CHRP

Dear god, those are words that still chill me with the memory of hype and shattered expectations.

The rest of your analysis is fairly spot on. Although I do think that Steve grew some outside of Apple. The reality is that Apple needed its years of failures without Jobs to realize how much he was needed. Really, even when they brought him back, they didn't understand how huge his impact would be. They just thought that they were buying NeXT with a bonus.

Re: The Story Of Larry Page's Comeback

#110

Post by meylingtaing »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #82

I realize that it's an aside in the article but I wanted to contradict something: > What’s less well understood is that Apple’s board and investors were absolutely right to fire Jobs. Early in his career, he was petulant, mean, and destructive This idea (Jobs needed to be away from Apple to improve himself) gets mentioned a lot but I think it's nonsense. First: Jobs was petulant, mean and destructive to people he dis…

I was under the impression that Jobs wasn't fired, but that it was his choice to leave Apple. I'm aware almost every source out there (including quotes from Jobs himself) will say that he was fired, but from what I recall from reading iWoz, this isn't true.
Post reply on HN