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Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

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Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#211

Post by asah »

protocolture wrote: post #138
exabrial wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would, but Google. What a hell of a justification.

We have a multi billion dollar machine built by developers with the goal of doing good things and profiting by them. >Cell phone privacy Sure we make a cell phone and we make a cell phone OS but its best to look the other way and never trust your privacy to a device that society has decided should follow you 24/7.

Sorry for the flippant comment - I wasn't just referring to the code and apps running on your phone, but the servers and cell towers that collect tons of details about you. Plus, the physical emanations as your phone connects and responds to signals from 4g, 5g, wifi, bluetooth and more.

A secure OS is cute but so what - there's a million other ways to p0wn your privacy.

On the plus side, the digital trail is so intense, citizens have a pretty robust alibi against being framed. For example, sure someone could borrow your phone, but they'd have a real hard time using it exactly the way you do, from accelerometer data to swipes to individual apps and and and...

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#212

Post by sanderjd »

leptons wrote: post #132
asah wrote: post #93

(repost after every Google-bashing...) Alternate perspective as a longtime googler, ex-googler, mostly-happy user and shareholder. Please hear me out. As user, I'm pretty ok with Google. Websearch is sputtering sure but that's normal after a challenge like chatgpt. I tried Bing again and came back after a day. Google seems ok on privacy: in 2024, you don't see hackers exfiltrate Google data, employees abuse privilege…

>Google Cloud remains the easiest to use among the big 3 by a wide margin After trying all of them, I found that Google is last in the "easiest to use" category. Just not a good experience for me, and I have 30yoe. YMMV. AWS has been extremely easy, everything just makes sense, is well documented, and there's an API for everything. It's miles ahead of Google as a cloud platform to build on.

This is pretty dissonant for me. AWS certainly has a lot, but I wouldn't describe any of it as being easy or making sense. It's all poorly integrated with UX that is just a hair above adequate. The documentation is generally pretty decent though, I'll give you that, and it's nice that everything has an API, though true to form, the client libraries for those APIs leave a lot to be desired.

But I haven't used Google Cloud extensively, so I don't know if it's even worse.

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#213

Post by sanderjd »

andrewstuart wrote: post #14

Its amazing that the CEO of Google is still there after wholesale wrecking of developer trust over many many years.

I have myself found out very confusing that nobody ever seems to suggest that maybe Pichai isn't steering this ship very well...

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#214

Post by [deleted] »

noqc wrote: post #183
asah wrote: post #93

(repost after every Google-bashing...) Alternate perspective as a longtime googler, ex-googler, mostly-happy user and shareholder. Please hear me out. As user, I'm pretty ok with Google. Websearch is sputtering sure but that's normal after a challenge like chatgpt. I tried Bing again and came back after a day. Google seems ok on privacy: in 2024, you don't see hackers exfiltrate Google data, employees abuse privilege…

> Websearch is sputtering sure but that's normal after a challenge like chatgpt. If you think the complaint about google search is that it isn't as good as chatgpt, I think you might be not listening. The problem with google search is that it's worse than it was

[deleted]

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#215

Post by fortylove »

asah wrote: post #93

(repost after every Google-bashing...) Alternate perspective as a longtime googler, ex-googler, mostly-happy user and shareholder. Please hear me out. As user, I'm pretty ok with Google. Websearch is sputtering sure but that's normal after a challenge like chatgpt. I tried Bing again and came back after a day. Google seems ok on privacy: in 2024, you don't see hackers exfiltrate Google data, employees abuse privilege…

With regard to Waymo, it seems it just hit a cyclist: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39296067

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#216

Post by lxgr »

readams wrote: post #206
lxgr wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Websearch is sputtering sure but that's normal after a challenge like chatgpt. How would the existence of LLMs make "classic" web search worse ? SEO spam and content farms cluttering the first results page has been going on for longer too. > Services like Gmail/gsuite are awesome for productivity and while they lag in shiny features, the teams are adding features quickly enough. Google Docs has some of the most cur…

Markdown in Google docs: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12014036?hl=en Of course, if you want non wysiwyg, then don't use Google docs just use markdown in a text editor or install mediawiki or something.

Yeah, I want non-WYSIWYG, or at least something that cleanly copy-pastes into and out of markdown.

I don’t get to choose, and I bet a considerable fraction of Google Docs users don’t either and it’s just what their workplace prescribes.

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#217

Post by david_allison »

paxys wrote: post #100
TillE wrote: post #20

Google does plenty of stuff well, but what's their last big exciting new product or even new feature? Bard is good but they're chasing OpenAI. Same story with the Pixel phones and Samsung. Or YouTube Shorts and Tiktok. It all seems directionless or stagnant, like the bad old days of Microsoft.

Every large tech company does one or two things extremely well and prints money from them and then has a hundred other efforts that range from terrible to middling. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon...they are all the same in this regard. When was the last time any of them truly innovated?

Metaverse?

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#218

Post by esafak »

WWLink wrote: post #144
lxgr wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Websearch is sputtering sure but that's normal after a challenge like chatgpt. How would the existence of LLMs make "classic" web search worse ? SEO spam and content farms cluttering the first results page has been going on for longer too. > Services like Gmail/gsuite are awesome for productivity and while they lag in shiny features, the teams are adding features quickly enough. Google Docs has some of the most cur…

If you think jira is bad you should try deltek costpoint. Holy shit.

The only thing worse than B2B for UX is B2G.

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#219

Post by lxgr »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #178
lxgr wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Websearch is sputtering sure but that's normal after a challenge like chatgpt. How would the existence of LLMs make "classic" web search worse ? SEO spam and content farms cluttering the first results page has been going on for longer too. > Services like Gmail/gsuite are awesome for productivity and while they lag in shiny features, the teams are adding features quickly enough. Google Docs has some of the most cur…

> FWIW, 90% of my gripes would go away if it just supported a "markdown mode" instead of WYSIWYG, and I don't understand what's so hard about that for somebody of Google's caliber. This exactly hard on Google's caliber. Not only do they have a bunch of requests for special modes where they can't simply add all without creating a mess, but at that size they also have to consider the support cost of users hitting the "…

I do see that it’s not a simple problem. But this brings us back on topic nicely: This is Google we’re talking about!

There was a time when the name was synonymous for the best software engineering and some of the brightest minds in the world! And here we are arguing whether two different editing paradigms in one word processor might be too hard for them.

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#220

Post by scarmig »

asah wrote: post #93

(repost after every Google-bashing...) Alternate perspective as a longtime googler, ex-googler, mostly-happy user and shareholder. Please hear me out. As user, I'm pretty ok with Google. Websearch is sputtering sure but that's normal after a challenge like chatgpt. I tried Bing again and came back after a day. Google seems ok on privacy: in 2024, you don't see hackers exfiltrate Google data, employees abuse privilege…

As another Xoogler, I'd dispute some of your points, though I agree with the rest:

1) The Cloud Console is very meh compared to the AWS frontend. Slow and cumbersome. Otherwise GCP is generally playing catch-up, though it's closed the gap significantly in recent years.

2) Morale is low. Googlers used to see themselves as representatives of the most beneficial company in the world. Now, they're much more likely to view themselves as well-compensated cogs in the next IBM. Which is more realistic, but the negative vibe shift is real.

3) Privacy/security wise, I trust Google to do what it promises to do better than anyone. Which is to say, it will extract your data and monetize it to the maximum extent possible and make sure no one else has access to it. Still better than the alternatives, but that's a pretty damn low bar.

And two other points:

4) Hiring standards have dropped. Googlers are more competent than the average SWE on the market, but they are not generally exceptional. And their experience at Google teaches them proprietary tooling and how to navigate bureaucracy.

5) On that note, the core issue is that Google is a bureaucracy split into fiefdoms, living off Ads profits like a Gulf oil state. It hampers execution and makes genuine product vision impossible.

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