More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision • Hacker News Board

Re: More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

#111

Post by azurezyq » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:50 AM UTC

shereadsthenews wrote: post #87

vl wrote: post #7

Wait, our CEO has a vision? Google company culture strongly erodes for two reasons: De-facto retirement of Larry and Sergey and significant deepening of the reporting structure in the last few years (ie endless layers of middle management). Both of these make consistent vision and values much harder to achieve. Recent Googlegeist just reflects that.

Honestly as a Googler I neither saw nor needed the vision of Larry, Sergey, Eric, Sundar, or anyone else except maybe Urs, Jeff, and Sanjay. I mean I worked on the C++ toolchain. Making a bitchin' compiler is its own reward. I guess things are different on product teams?

I work for cloud products. I cannot say much about others, but at least urs is the best technical infrastructure leader but not a good choice for cloud leader. Many people on customer engineering side also share the same feeling with me.

Business is complicated. You cannot be narcissus forever.

Re: More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

#112

Post by jpeg_hero » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

The scales are maybe falling off the eyes of the google workers.

The search ads are the alpha and the omega of google. The thousands of employees doing non-ad work are just a cover to make the employees think that this is a change the world mission and flying cars and contact lenses that read your blood pressure... all nonsense. They need smart people to keep the ad machine running and to keep tuning it. The rest is all diversion.

Where is my balloon internet !?!

Re: More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

#113

Post by wolco » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

dawhizkid wrote: post #66

blfr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, Facebook's vision is Frindster but 15 years later and Netflix is literally putting TV on the Internet, a Silicon Valley (I mean the show) worthy description.

Facebook is near the bottom with Google IMO. Netflix has totally flipped Hollywood and airing really interesting original content. That is something.

Facebook somehow has turned social into a giant. Forced real names and gave your grandmother a reason to be on the internet. Facebook will be the global free television network will push vr and start introducing telepatic phone services.

Netflix will probably split into two with one company showing new movies with different pricing models. The second service will have all of the original content they made throughout the years for a low price but lack studio productions. Not sure it will be as appealing unless they can find a way to strench a production budgets while keeping quality.

Re: More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

#114

Post by tehlike » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

amoorthy wrote: post #93

hcnews wrote: post #8

Sundar is neither a founder nor has been a practicing Engineer. That's gotta hurt a company like Google which is mostly Engineering driven. I guess Google at this point just keep churning through systems because Engineers are incentivized to show impact and rarely end up creating new good products. Adding tons of new engineers is also probably hurting their overall quality and velocity.

I'm not a Googler but read that Pichai oversaw the growth of Chrome browser from minor player to the dominant position it has today. And he also oversaw Android's growth after Andy Rubin's departure [1]. While he may not have written code that's two world-leading consumer adoption stories. So many great engineers build products that never achieve great adoption. So aren't Pichai's accomplishments worthy of CEO-level…

I am not sure if he oversaw android's growth.

Re: More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

#115

Post by vl » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:53 AM UTC

ajmbbs wrote: post #14

Is this a bit similar to what Microsoft went through in the early 2000s?

All corporations grow, decay and rot on the similar trajectories, so in this sense it's similar.

I worked at MS at this time, and I think BigG now is like MS in 2003 roughly speaking. I'm waiting for miniggl to appear, then the circle will be complete. :)

Re: More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

#116

Post by kkarakk » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:53 AM UTC

jpeg_hero wrote: post #112

The scales are maybe falling off the eyes of the google workers. The search ads are the alpha and the omega of google. The thousands of employees doing non-ad work are just a cover to make the employees think that this is a change the world mission and flying cars and contact lenses that read your blood pressure... all nonsense. They need smart people to keep the ad machine running and to keep tuning it. The rest is…

part of that initiative was to bring wifi to developing countries which is being achieved in part by https://station.google.com/ in india,nigeria,mexico,indonesia,thailand

the balloon thing was also only for developing countries only,Loon has become it's own thing https://www.wired.com/story/alphabet-google-x-innovation-loo...

and is going to start in kenya - https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44886803

Re: More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

#117

Post by protomyth » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:54 AM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #51

goldenchrome wrote: post #40

Don't discount the massive increase in the number of employees. The more people you add, the more the culture dilutes. It becomes impossible for employees to feel like they're part of single a tribe with a clear goal. Factions develop, tensions mount, and you get angry employees leaking confidential information constantly. Most of the negative press the public has heard about Google in the past year is a direct resul…

Going back to the previous comment, I don't really see how it's possible to grow your employee count by an order of magnitude without introducing 1-2 more levels of management. As much as flat structures are cool, I'm not sure how much they scale. The other option would be to just not grow, but I'm not sure how realistic that is.

I guess it comes down to how you build a hierarchy with a belief or lack of one in Dunbar’s number. I honestly think a lot of this is too low a number of interactions and the requirement to have job titles and responsibilities common to other companies.

Re: More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

#118

Post by tehlike » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:56 AM UTC

trixie_ wrote: post #19

Google's Achilles heel is search and ad revenue (80%). Which is sad because they've been trying to diversify and find another major source of income for 20 years now. If a better search engine comes along and people switch over, then google won't be able to maintain its empire and it could fold, or how would you like to pay $10 a month for a GMail and Google Maps combo access package? It could happen a lot easier and…

Google diversified its ads revenue, that is still something.

Yt, display, gmail, etc.

Re: More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

#119

Post by wolco » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:57 AM UTC

hopler wrote: post #90

ur-whale wrote: post #27

Once upon a time, Google used to be run by engineer types. When Larry and Sergey retired and handed the reins over to Sundar, a standard issue McKinsey drone whose technical contributions over the span of his entire career are close to nil, it was game over for the original Google culture. In fact, there is a theory floating around that he was chosen because someone very smart at Google predicted the huge oncoming co…

You are saying Pinchai is a bad CEO but he was picked because he is talented enough to handle the exploding time bomb created by the previous "good" CEOs?

Best fall guy not really most talented.

Re: More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

#120

Post by tehlike » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:58 AM UTC

analogmemory wrote: post #10

prepend wrote: post #2

What is Sundar’s vision? I’m not quite sure and I think I’m pretty aware of google’s goings on through media and such.

According to some search results ... it's > “Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the “device” to fade away. Over time, the computer itself — whatever its form factor — will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. We will move from mobile first to an AI first world” https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/technology/sundar-...

Not his vision. Jeff dean, might be.