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Culture Change at Google

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Re: Culture Change at Google

#151

Post by vkazanov »

boxed wrote: post #89
romanovcode wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in one big company when something like this actually happened. First week one developer blatantly said to management in-front of the scammer that the scammer (CTO) doesn't know anything about technology and is a complete fraud. The developer got fired 10 minutes later. Others took note to not challenge him if they want to keep their job. That happened ~10 years ago and I am actually grateful for that expe…

You learned how to assume the world is broken, and not fix it. That's the path back to a hunter gatherer society. I think that's the wrong lesson to learn.

This might sound rough but the lesson should be "don't be an idiot".

Time for shouting "king's naked!" comes eventually but people who ignore timing will end up losing this game. The secret to this is to understand how other decision-makers see the status quo. Who made a bet on this person? Who understands that he is THE problem? Is right now the best time for a direct opposition?

And sometimes it's just easier to accept that it may make sense to work elsewhere.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#152

Post by saagarjha »

flklklklkl wrote: post #97

Whenever I see posts like these, whether for Google, or any other company, I can't stop thinking about the people not working as engineers - the sales guys, CS reps, building maintenance, the IT guys. Did they have 20% of their time dedicated to "personal projects", whatever that might be? Did they have free food? Are their titles attached to their person? Do they feel their employer value its employees above all els…

Fulltime employees at Google are basically the same as any other employee. They get the same benefits, can eat the free food, and generally I haven't seen any serious discrimination against them for being "not engineers". However, some of the things you've mentioned (e.g. building maintenance) are often done by contractors or outside firms, and for them things are often very different.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#153

Post by broeng »

dougb5 wrote: post #129
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether you think I'm being unfair to Google or to OpenAI. Everybody and their brother sued Google early on for a huge variety of their products. Google News got sued for showing headlines from news websites. Google Books got sued for copyright violations for, y'know, making a copy of everybody's books. Back in 2007, Google would've been in the middle of the the Viacom vs YouTube lawsuit. The whole idea…

A big difference in my view is that OpenAI doesn't meaningfully "provide access" to all the text and art and everything in the world; rather, they suck the marrow out of all the text and art and everything in the world and use it to sell their own replacement service for all the text and art and everything in the world. Google has done some questionable things to become a gateway to the world's work, but they're (mos…

Maybe we can agree they are still _mostly_ at gateway. But their ambition to answer your question through zero-clicks (i.e., show the answer right in their search results) does make them profit from direct copying. The copyright owner will not get any clicks, show any adds, or get any other kind of feedback to their work, in those cases.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#154

Post by piva00 »

hintymad wrote: post #67

Isn’t it obvious? When the company had 1000 people or fewer yet was printing money, it could of course use Putnam questions or Matin-Gardneresque puzzles or ICPC programming problems to pick the brightest and smartest, and maintain a geek culture. But when the company grew to 130K people yet still managed to hire another 25K in a year, the culture was destined to change, if not deteriorate. > he most incredible and u…

> Nowadays we got employees who bragged about their “lifestyle” on TikTok

And bicker around Blind about "TC" to show off how much money they are making. It's like a new generation of yuppies but instead of working in finance in the 80s they are working for Big Tech in the 2010s-2020s.

I've been in the tech since the early 2000s, right after dot-com bursting, it's been very palpable the change on types of people who wants to work in tech, before it was geeks who learned to fiddle with computers since we were kids, the later cohorts came specifically through a path of learning CS to apply for jobs paying US$ 100-200k as their first salary.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#155

Post by glimshe »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #45
nequo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the company culture of OpenAI like? How does it compare to early Google?

Well, it seems like it's got some cool tech based on providing access to everybody else's copyrighted content in novel ways, a bunch of promise to make a lot of money without knowing 100% what the plan is, messy politics at the top, and it's around the San Francisco area, so....

> providing access to everybody else's copyrighted content in novel ways

This is a cartoonish interpretation of what Generative AI does. You might be coming from a good place trying to defend the "little guy" who supposedly is getting ripped off by GenAI (they aren't), but in practice you are helping copyright trolling and big rusty corporations that live off the perpetual copyright scam.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#156

Post by InCityDreams »

the_gipsy wrote: post #110
treprinum wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My very first boss that I believe is an undiagnosed psychopath is now director level over there. That told me everything I needed to know about any possible direction of the company. I no longer use anything made by them and actively steer everyone I know away to alternatives.

Check out the Gervais Principle. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

>the Gervais Principle

Which it's not really, as it only considers the US version. "The characters portrayed here are based upon other characters that RG invented."

Re: Culture Change at Google

#157

Post by glimshe »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #29

For me, the important sentence is "Google is still a great place to work -- far better than most companies -- and still doing amazing things." This is very interesting, but I like that the author notes the outside view, because I still get the feeling I'd like to work there someday.

Don't go to Google unless it's for the pay/benefits (benefits are basically pay in a costume) or for a very particular role which is unmistakably aligned with your professional priorities. You won't find any of the mythological coolness there, literally all of my buddies say. Additionally, when recruiters sell you the position, they try to make it look like you are working at the core of their most important products, when it's generally about some minute pedestrian detail of their internal ecosystem.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#158

Post by foofie »

treprinum wrote: post #77
redcobra762 wrote: post #68

Someone I used to work with was acquihired into Google, despite being one of the most manipulative, conniving, duplicitous people I’ve ever met. A person like this can get found out at companies that value talent (he has none), but at Google, he’s thriving . This ruined the shine of a Google resume, for me. It’s still great, but it’s just a job now. I look at the specific skills applied during an applicant’s time the…

My very first boss that I believe is an undiagnosed psychopath is now director level over there. That told me everything I needed to know about any possible direction of the company. I no longer use anything made by them and actively steer everyone I know away to alternatives.

> My very first boss that I believe is an undiagnosed psychopath is now director level over there. That told me everything I needed to know about any possible direction of the company. I no longer use anything made by them and actively steer everyone I know away to alternatives.

I had a boss who was a manager at one of Google's flagship products, and he made it his point to not let anyone forget it. He pushed people to work nights and weekends, he berated team members and threatened firing them during daily meetings, he overrode engineer's calls to not release a product to claim he released it before schedule, he threatened the same engineers if anything went wrong during the illadvisable release, etc.

He was since hired as a VP of engineering of another global company.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#159

Post by fuzztester »

0xpgm wrote: post #48
zamfi wrote: post #24

Is any company still like this? I was at Google in ‘06-07, and again ‘09-11, and already there were obvious differences. You just can’t scale “total internal transparency” when the company doubles in size every year. And at some point you need just plain-old-“good” engineers to make the A/B tests happen and all the other stuff that doesn’t excite the PhDs. And at some point you need product people too, because you st…

I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets. Maybe become profitable and pay off the VCs then don't go public? Then you can resist the pressure for growth quarter by quarter, and remain the 'right size' that your internal culture demands. Did Valve corporation do something like that?

>I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets.

Many companies used to do that both in the US and other countries. Some probably still do.

SAS Institute (well-known maker of statistical and other software) did, for many years, last I checked. Don't know if they still are that way.

Update: Looks like they are:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Institute

[ In July 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that the semiconductor giant Broadcom was in talks to acquire SAS.[37] In a July 13, 2021 email, SAS CEO Jim Goodnight stated that the company was not for sale.[38] ]

Re: Culture Change at Google

#160

Post by nicoburns »

zamfi wrote: post #24

Is any company still like this? I was at Google in ‘06-07, and again ‘09-11, and already there were obvious differences. You just can’t scale “total internal transparency” when the company doubles in size every year. And at some point you need just plain-old-“good” engineers to make the A/B tests happen and all the other stuff that doesn’t excite the PhDs. And at some point you need product people too, because you st…

This is the argument for biasing the economy against large companies
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