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

#121

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

wvenable wrote: post #101

ehsankia wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for every one deprecated product you can name, there's probably more like 10-20 new product. The issue is that Google has gotten so big and has so many different projects, that the number of deprecation is just bigger, even if percentage wise they're probably lower than most other companies. Try looking at https://gcemetery.co/ and naming how many of those you even recognize and can describe without looking it…

That list seems awfully incomplete compared to: https://killedbygoogle.com/ Your list is missing some high profile products like Google Allo and Chromecast Audio.

chromecast audio is replicated trivially by chromecast + hdmi to audio converter(that you can buy for 5 bucks). i think the real problem is that the solution is confusing and people aren't linking up old audio systems. they're upgrading.

chromecast's ux was always waaaaay to complicated to understand for non-tech people and audio is it's first casualty.

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

#122

Post by tehlike » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 5:59 AM UTC

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…

Fb is not in trouble, is it?

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

#123

Post by wvenable » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #109

wvenable wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That list seems awfully incomplete compared to: https://killedbygoogle.com/ Your list is missing some high profile products like Google Allo and Chromecast Audio.

I dont think chromecast audio was a high profile product. Allo is overhyped, from day 1.

It's overhyped now that it's dead.

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

#124

Post by mda » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 6:02 AM UTC

vl wrote: post #115

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. :)

Even with my limited insight I can tell that they were and still are vastly different companies.

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

#125

Post by rms_returns » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 6:03 AM UTC

Buge wrote: post #88

rms_returns wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read somewhere that Sundar's biggest achievement (and rise in power structure) relates to the saving of day by using practical business sense. Back in around circa 2006, Microsoft one day suddenly decided to remove Google search and replace it with Bing on their default browser, IE (which was still number one back then). This threatened Google's revenues to a considerable extent as online search is one of the ma…

Bing was released in 2009, so if this was in 2006 it must have been one of Bing's predecessors.

Yep, it was called "MSN Search" or something back then but it existed.

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

#126

Post by TaylorAlexander » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 6:03 AM UTC

jpm_sd wrote: post #56

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.

Also, Larry and Sergey got obsessed with useless and irrelevant things. (Flying cars? Robot butlers? Airship yachts? Glass?)

Also Waymo, which seems promising.

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

#127

Post by cco » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

kkarakk wrote: post #116

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

To serve ads...

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

#128

Post by pishpash » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 6:19 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #95

loganfrederick wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had that experience before as well. What always surprises me is how upper management overlooks the opportunity to pocket more money for themselves by cost-cutting the net negative employees. Too often the ones who do it go overboard and completely gut the company to death instead of just making it more effective and profitable. For example, a company with 5,000 employees might have about 500 positions that could…

Companies do this frequently. It's the annual "Cisco is laying off 7400 employees" or "E-bay is laying off 5000 employees" or "Microsoft is laying off 13,000 employees", where each time the number is suspiciously close to 10% of the company. Commenters on HN usually assume this means that X is in trouble, but really it's a way to get rid of the bottom 10% of the company while passing the cost on to the state's unempl…

Your employer pays into that fund, and when you draw, your employer's premium goes up.

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

#129

Post by dang » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 6:21 AM UTC

luxuryballs wrote: post #6

colordrops wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To continue servicing the state department to cement their position as an organ of the state.

and you know exactly where that organ is suppose to go

Please don't do this here.

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

#130

Post by joejerryronnie » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 6:28 AM UTC

avinium wrote: post #104

osrec wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work a corporate job in an investment bank with around 30k employees. The majority of those employees were politicking chameleons with little productive output and a disproportionate salary. I used to hope that large innovative tech companies were different. From what I hear on HN it's becoming clear that that's not the case. It's almost as if the "largeness" of a company allows the non productive people to…

> It's almost as if the "largeness" of a company allows the non productive people to hide within it, all while successfully siphoning off their sustenance. Bang. You're spot on. From what I've seen, it's an unfortunate artifact of many (if not most) large companies. There are just too many places to hide. I'm keen to know if it's the same at Apple and Amazon.

Yes, it's the same.