Reflecting on 18 Years at Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#221

Post by khazhoux » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

detourdog wrote: post #133

satvikpendem wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All their revenue came from ads, and they loss-led other projects. Great, market has matured from that. Has it? Seems like Google still makes most of their money via ads and everything else is a loss leader.

I loved old google they refused to share a business model. Google ~2006 I think is just past peaked google. I think they developed ads because it was the only model that fit their valuation.

You have the history backwards.

Ads in early 2000s > Mega-valuation

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#222

Post by Capricorn2481 » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #204

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in my “I quit Google” post I was careful to make it impossible for an outsider to determine who I was complaining about, even scrubbing my team info from LinkedIn. But I think 18 years at Google means the author has plenty of “fuck you” money.

You are probably right; I just don't really see what's to be gained by going public with it considering the complaints are pretty inside-baseball and not that interesting to outsiders (I mean, hard to imagine someone thinking "I'm not going to deal with Google because so-and-so's subordinates say they don't understand her strategy").

I will certainly not use Dart if a person in charge of its direction doesn't know what they're doing even at a basic level. I can't just blindly hope her team does what's best and doesn't listen to her.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#223

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #214

pardoned_turkey wrote: post #86

Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…

> ... what's the alternative? A cutthroat corporate environment where you're never sure about the future of your job? No, I think the ideal structure for a company which accumulated a great amount of resources is to become a sort of Venture Capitalist with the teams of people they control. So, ZERO "corporativism", ZERO bureaucracy, ZERO control, just give access to the company resources and let the teams come up wit…

Some companies do something like this with some success, but this was also the theory of the guy who drove Sears into the ground.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#224

Post by willsmith72 » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

drubio wrote: post #117

> Take Jeanine Banks, for example, who manages the department that somewhat arbitrarily contains (among other things) Flutter, Dart, Go, and Firebase. Her department nominally has a strategy, but I couldn't leak it if I wanted to; I literally could never figure out what any part of it meant, even after years of hearing her describe it. Her understanding of what her teams are doing is minimal at best; she frequently m…

Nothing kills motivation more than bad management, I can totally feel his pain.

In saying that, I don't think public, targeted statements like this are ever the right thing to do. She's just a person, doing a job.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#225

Post by teaearlgraycold » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #204

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in my “I quit Google” post I was careful to make it impossible for an outsider to determine who I was complaining about, even scrubbing my team info from LinkedIn. But I think 18 years at Google means the author has plenty of “fuck you” money.

You are probably right; I just don't really see what's to be gained by going public with it considering the complaints are pretty inside-baseball and not that interesting to outsiders (I mean, hard to imagine someone thinking "I'm not going to deal with Google because so-and-so's subordinates say they don't understand her strategy").

It’s just venting. A person in the author’s position must feel that the mediocre management robbed them of a core part of their identity.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#226

Post by chubot » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #159

Every bit of innovation in the AI space today originated at Google. The company poured probably tens of billions into its Brain division, sponsored and made public every bit of research, and pretty much created the field of modern AI. So what was the outcome? When the employees realized they had struck gold they figured they'd rather go join startups or found their own companies instead, because regardless of the amo…

Not disagreeing with your larger point, but Google paid $40M+ for the 3 people from U Toronto responsible for AlexNet (according to Cade Metz's book).

Google might deserve more credit than any other company, but there were 20-30 years of innovation at universities beforehand.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#227

Post by hot_gril » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #153

hot_gril wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes Google is still less diversified than its peers. Cloud and YouTube (edit: and Pixel phones?) are profitable afaik. The overall tech market has matured is what I meant; it's no longer time to loss-lead everything.

I was about to correct you about GCP profitability, but I just looked it up, and TIL that GCP became profitable for the first time in 2023 Q2. Interesting.

And before, it might've been in that "profitable if we want it to be" situation where they're just reinvesting the revenue.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#228

Post by artzmeister » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

You see a lot of people here in the comments, as well as the author in the article, talking about how "there are good and well-meaning people working at Google" and "it sucks that people unfortunately hate us =(". A genuine question: if one is a good, well intentioned human being, supposedly with principles, and ends up actively contributing to a dystopia or at least a much worse society, is that person excused because of "oh, the leadership fell off!" or "because I had good intentions"? At all? No, you'd be piled up with all the others that sold their morals and their society for money. People think of a dystopia as if it would come from an evil dictator, or a greedy corporate man, but the reality is that the dystopia will come with a charismatic smile and a promise of something better. You'd perhaps be right to criticize my calling of it a "dystopia" (for now), but my point stands.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#229

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 6:34 PM UTC

3seashells wrote: post #132

pardoned_turkey wrote: post #86

Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…

It's people having families that is the ultimate corrupt or. If worst comes to worst thy values come first on the chopping block.. One of the reasons old people can't look each other in the eye, is that they all have seen what they are willing to do to each other to get junior a good start in life.

Having children can awake antisocial impulses in people but it can awake prosocial impulses just as easily and just as strongly.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#230

Post by Laremere » Wed, Nov 22, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

pardoned_turkey wrote: post #86

Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…

> But once you achieve market dominance, your priorities have to shift.

This is true, but I think you're mischaracterizing the required shift, and assuming this requirement is what's causing Google's problems today.

A company does eventually need to make a shift from "fast and experimental" to "responsible and steady". However this shift is entirely orthogonal from "focus on the users" becoming "focus on the bottom line and year over year growth".

Just because they're following the same path as other large tech companies have, doesn't mean this is inevitable. Instead it means they failed to learn the proper lessons. As a sibling comment points out, there was the attitude "but Google is special so that won't happen", when instead it should have been "to keep Google special, we need to work really hard on preventing that from happening".