141–150 of 335 posts
One year I was competing from my honey moon.
I was never really good but it was one of the competitions I have greatly enjoyed. Especially when one could still run the code locally and submit solutions in any language possible.
There were pepole who made an effort to solve every problem is different language.
I haven't competed last 5 or so years, but I will shed a tear for Google Code Jam.
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Fully disagree with windows phone. It never reached enough maturity to be a true competitor to ios, but it absolutely could have won over android. the gui was truely innovative (with the « tiles » system), and the general feeling and smoothness was absolutely better than android. Microsoft missed a huge opportunity there. It never was a technical problem, MS knows how to make operating system. It was only a strategic…
The windows phone would never win over android. Google is the web monopolist, and would never build apps like YouTube or Maps for a Windows phone product, since it would compete with Android, and not have the market share of the iphone. Microsoft tried making their own YouTube app, which Google had taken down. Without access to the Google web products, a new phone ecosystem is going to be dead on arrival
Before jumping on the "Google is now Oracle" bandwagon, curious with anyone with even a little inside baseball knowledge can comment on the reasoning behind this. Because if it's for penny-pinching, "we need to be more efficient" reasons, then yeah, I'm ready to jump on the bandwagon too. But someone else posited it may be more that they want to focus on new skills needed for AI, for example (i.e. "Software 2.0" vs.…
It's true that Apple makes good devices and Google does good search, but their competitors are good enough.
What distinguishes Apple and Google from their competitors is that we like them more.
Not "we" the technical literati, but "we" billions of users.
As a result, they are SO careful about maintaining that goodwill. But is this careful as in afraid, or careful as in focused?
Google spent time building it, but now seems to want only not to screw up.
Apple is still building. It's always trying to build it, probably because it spent its 1990's adolescence as an outcast.
Twitter and Facebook are similarly large and had similar initial stories, but of late have induced massive distrust. People are there only because they have to be, and they're struggling.
Apple and Google see Twitter and Facebook as examples of what NOT to do with your goodwill.
Apple's growth and technical chops keeps investors at bay. But Alphabet's sprawling failures have heightened criticism, as Google-X and other nice-to-have's haven't turned out any measurable benefit (and measurement is how Sundar justifies his strategies).
So fingers-crossed that Google's quiet retrenchment doesn't result in a Twitter explosion. I'm not confident that switching out Sundar would help more than it hurts (which is the FUD that he lives by).
More importantly, the industry-wide refocusing on AI produces lots of demo-ware, but no business on a scale that could grow Google or Microsoft. That coming implosion worries me.
What's lost in the rush to AI is the question of bureaucracy: how to keep these massive organizations from being self-serving, particularly to the extent they engage with the outsourcing and consultancy that drive financialization.
WFH likely increases bureaucracy by privileging process and work-product over brainstorming and risk-taking, so my bet is still on Apple weathering the storm better than the others.
Is there any other, more gracious, way to interpret this as Google retiring for on being Google, if so I’d like to know. I think the direct impact of these competitions to hiring were minimal. The biggest impact was to have thousands perhaps millions of coders and researchers see Google as the place to be. As the place that gets it. The Mecca of coderdom, if you will. Now they are just another corporation. I hope the…
the Google Summer of Code still exists (and that other program for high school kids I think).
I think those were the nicest things they did back in the day, and I don't know of any other corp doing it.
Thank you Sundar for getting rid of the frivolous, Silicon-Valley-esque things like coding competitions for kids, extricating all of the humanity and decency that made Google so inefficient with money, and for doubling down on your focus to turn Google into the next iteration of Cisco, Oracle and IBM. It's exactly what this world needs, so you are the perfect leader for this.
There are two possible outcomes for a publicly traded company that has figured out how to make a lot of money over a long period 1. Continue to accrete new revenue sources and pivot slightly forever until you eventually do a bit of everything, "diversifying" to the point where you become in effect a small nation 2. Stick to your plan and go out of business These are the two possible outcomes as a public company
Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc are offensive companies in that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
Microsoft in particular is held back by having to support the platforms. Office as a standalone company would be worth more than Microsoft.
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> Tip outs are better in bougie joints frequented by tech workers. This sounds a little trickle-downy. Why not strive for an economy where people doing important work like feeding their communities just... Don't need to be tipped? I know it sounds crazy in today-terms, but if it makes any sense, it makes tipping culture look like more of a problem than a boon to anyone receiving the tips.
Servers love tip out. They can make hundreds a night and possibly even what a junior SWE can (pro rata) if they’re good. If you want fierce resistance from servers - ask them to split tips more equitably with the kitchen - offer to abolish the tip system altogether and just pay them $15/h flat, hell even $25/h
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If a person is in a $200m per year job, they're primarily incentivized to keep the job for as long as possible. This one objective dwarfs any other consideration in every decision that the person makes. And sure, 99% of his compensation is Google stock, but at those magnitudes the marginal utility of the dollar is zero. What's the difference between $100m and $200m anyway?
$100,000,000
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Honestly Apple Maps isn't even particularly good outside of the US and a few European countries. Roads are constantly out of date and can barely keep up and landmarks and businesses in tons of major cities aren't close to correct
Not to mention its complete inability to reroute sometimes if you take the wrong turn. It'll keep yelling to return to the route over and over instead of routing a turnaround somewhere.
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Sundar is the Steve Ballmer of Google. And that's fine! Ballmer was a competent if uninspiring CEO: Microsoft under his leadership missed many new opportunities, but still made lots of money. Most importantly, Ballmer's tenure is what made it possible for Satya Nadella to pivot Microsoft into what it is today. Realistically, Windows Phone was never going to beat Apple, Bing was not going to beat Google, Yammer was no…
> to pivot Microsoft into what it is today You mean marginally less obnoxious than it used to be?