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Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

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Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#21

Post by dylan604 »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #18
Spartan-S63 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, it’s over the controversy in his statement about Google losing competitive advantage because they chose work life balance over in-office collaboration.

Genuine question: what would be the refutation of this opinion, if any? Out of options like "Google are not actually losing", "Google are losing but not because they chose work life balance", "Google are, indeed, but so be it", etc.

"Google isn't losing as we're not playing the same game of releasing a chatbot. We're working on something much bigger". They'd just have to do it

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#23

Post by coreload »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #18
Spartan-S63 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, it’s over the controversy in his statement about Google losing competitive advantage because they chose work life balance over in-office collaboration.

Genuine question: what would be the refutation of this opinion, if any? Out of options like "Google are not actually losing", "Google are losing but not because they chose work life balance", "Google are, indeed, but so be it", etc.

Google is no longer a startup. Google is competing for a significant number of talented people. The startup mentality will not easily work for decades of competition with the other wealthiest tech companies.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#24

Post by nextos »

gorgoiler wrote: post #17

> Brynjolfsson: ”I asked Sundar [about Google losing the initiative]. He didn't really give me a very sharp answer. > Schmidt: Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. The reason startups work is because the people work like hell. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the fact of the matter is if you go found a company and compete against the other star…

Lots of great startups have remote teams so this argument by Schmidt is pretty weak. Google is hybrid, not even remote. Also, I don't think that well motivated and engineers work or produce less while WFH. It could be the opposite. Less interruptions are key, as explained in Peopleware. But bad managers love controlling people in open plan offices.

Regardless, I found it surprising Schmidt didn't talk about other stuff that differentiates startups. Smaller teams, a lot less red tape, a lot more ownership, less politics... Google should really follow Steve Jobs 2011 advice to Page about focus. Breaking down into a conglomerate was a great idea to bring focus and agility, but it has not been fully executed and lots of the different resulting entities seem dysfunctional.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#25

Post by tialaramex »

gorgoiler wrote: post #17

> Brynjolfsson: ”I asked Sundar [about Google losing the initiative]. He didn't really give me a very sharp answer. > Schmidt: Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. The reason startups work is because the people work like hell. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the fact of the matter is if you go found a company and compete against the other star…

> you're not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week

Huh, I guess I dreamed the first start-up I worked for (a couple of decades ago) where indeed I only came in one day a week.

Yes of course you "work like hell". We had a nasty leak bug and I set things up so that day or night if the leak was detected my stereo would go maximum volume and play "Straight Outta Compton". How does commuting count as "working like hell" ?

If I'm sat in a car (and once a week I often was) then I'm not working am I? I am useless for several hours each day we do that. Maybe sometimes the CTO (who is in the car, he's driving, he worked from home too) is discussing relevant technology, you know design of our secret sauce schema-less database engine, IP stuff - but then it's also possible we're discussing the album that's playing, or a video game we both enjoyed, or a novel we're both reading.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#26

Post by pknomad »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #18
Spartan-S63 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, it’s over the controversy in his statement about Google losing competitive advantage because they chose work life balance over in-office collaboration.

Genuine question: what would be the refutation of this opinion, if any? Out of options like "Google are not actually losing", "Google are losing but not because they chose work life balance", "Google are, indeed, but so be it", etc.

I'm not a googler, but my take would be that Google was a smaller ship with technical founders at the helm who understood the problem and acted accordingly with first mover benefits. I remember when I started to use search engines in grade school (AskJeeves, AltaVista, etc) and Google just had the most relevant answers.

Google is now a behemoth that seems to just chuck money and promo packets at problems (Stadia, Google Cloud, Nest, etc) with no clear vision for them. It kind of reminds me of the examples in this blog: https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611

There's also self selection going on - people joining startups generally have more vested interest in solving a problem and will work longer and harder, too. So I think there's some kernel of truth what Eric Schmidt was saying. How much enthusiasm can a person have about increasing the bottom line of a mega public company?

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#27

Post by ldjkfkdsjnv »

gorgoiler wrote: post #17

> Brynjolfsson: ”I asked Sundar [about Google losing the initiative]. He didn't really give me a very sharp answer. > Schmidt: Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. The reason startups work is because the people work like hell. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the fact of the matter is if you go found a company and compete against the other star…

I took this more as Schmidt being disappointed in what Google has become. He really did build Google, its completely valid for him to be mad about the state of the company culture wise.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#28

Post by Brajeshwar »

I have a question out of curiosity: Has anyone or anything ever succeeded in deleting/removing anything from the Internet once it goes up?

I’ve realized that anything that goes online will be (perhaps unintentionally) leaked, hacked, uncovered, archived, altered, restored, referenced, and what not.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#29

Post by aaomidi »

the_black_hand wrote: post #14

Listened to the first few mins. Did he say anything controversial in the? The part about Google work-life balance isn't that big a deal. It's no secret that startups grind more.

Googlers used to regularly work 50-60 hours. You did have the teams that had a decent WLB, but it was generally the non public facing stuff.

Google’s WLB ironically got significantly better after the layoffs. No one cared about the company anymore.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#30

Post by gorgoiler »

nextos wrote: post #24
gorgoiler wrote: post #17

> Brynjolfsson: ”I asked Sundar [about Google losing the initiative]. He didn't really give me a very sharp answer. > Schmidt: Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. The reason startups work is because the people work like hell. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the fact of the matter is if you go found a company and compete against the other star…

Lots of great startups have remote teams so this argument by Schmidt is pretty weak. Google is hybrid, not even remote. Also, I don't think that well motivated and engineers work or produce less while WFH. It could be the opposite. Less interruptions are key, as explained in Peopleware . But bad managers love controlling people in open plan offices. Regardless, I found it surprising Schmidt didn't talk about other st…

Interestingly, re: red tape, Schmidt has been quoted from this same talk as saying if you get caught stealing IP then just “hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up, right?”
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