VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work' • Hacker News Board

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#111

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Thu, May 09, 2024, 8:43 PM UTC

StuntPope wrote: post #110

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #92

Advertising-supported nerds using the media to attack each other. The person making this coment about "BS jobs" is the one who started EasyDNS and OpenDNS and tried to compete with the pre-Chrome "Google toolbar" and later Chrome and eventually the "omnibox" for the privilege of injecting ads into the "user experience", and/or collecting data to support ad services. Google, with its control over being "default search…

easyDNS and OpenDNS have completely different founders. You are probably confused with EveryDNS - was founded by the same person who started OpenDNS.

Apologies for the inadvertence. Thank you for the correction.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/canadian-firm-cau...

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#112

Post by horns4lyfe » Sat, May 11, 2024, 12:35 PM UTC

srj wrote: post #102

TideAd wrote: post #24

> "I don't think it's crazy to believe that half the white-collar staff at Google probably does no real work," he said. "The company has spent billions and billions of dollars per year on projects that go nowhere for over a decade, and all that money could have been returned to shareholders who have retirement accounts." So, he doesn't really understand Google's dysfunction and is just guessing at the causes?

Yeah for all the possible criticism of Google he's seriously arguing it's that there's too much speculative R&D? Generally companies become irrelevant by trying to hold onto their cash cow and not trying to reinvent / find new revenue streams. I can think of ways I would have approached some specific instances differently (e.g Waymo), but the existence of speculative projects isn't evidence of waste. The specific cal…

Ya, the retirement account thing sounds to me like a lame attempt to justify his logic “for the people” or something, when his whole premise is that Google could have made a few rich people richer. I’ve honestly never hated a VC more

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#113

Post by horns4lyfe » Sat, May 11, 2024, 12:39 PM UTC

ltdanimal wrote: post #100

bdcravens wrote: post #36

I know this is an against the grain (for HN at least) take, but I don't disagree. If you're not working on, or supporting, the company's product, you MAY have a BS job. Good example: Twitter, which functioned well after layoffs of 80% or so (the owner's persona has damaged the revenue and reputation extensively, but the product itself has been fine). They're maybe the boldest, but hardly the only company in the past…

The Twitter example is the exact nearsighted reason a lot of comments like the one we're all talking about come up. A lot of smart people spent years trying to make a resilient system and then everyone claims they aren't needed when it doesn't immediately crumble. There are also many examples of huge gaps in content moderation, customer reps, and other "useless" functions that has lead to it's decay other than just i…

Oh no, the gaps in content moderation! How will Twitter be able to perform surveillance and propagandize for the federal government?