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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#231

Post by hot_gril »

duped wrote: post #193
hot_gril wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has passed up too many great opportunities that don't even take a visionary to see. Biggest examples, we let Zoom, OpenAI, and even Microsoft (Teams) steal our thunder. Microsoft, that company we make fun of as a dinosaur, moves faster than we do! I remember the discussions around the office right when ChatGPT came out. "Bard performs better," "we're more ethical," etc. Nope, they ate our lunch.

ime Googlers/Xooglers have this egotism that needs a sharp kick in the butt to remedy.

Well they're getting that kick now.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#232

Post by pkasting »

liveoneggs wrote: post #47
pkasting wrote: post #10

As a current Googler of approximately the same tenure, I can't speak to the comments on Jeanine Banks (never met her), but I agree with every other word of this. It's frustrating to continue to see both the level of genuinely well-intentioned work that the public is unfairly (and often viciously) critical of the motives of, and also the (at this point) complete absence of concern for the user, the long term, and the…

Not intending harm does not excuse causing it over and over.

Quite so. And my point is not that people should somehow give Google a pass; it is that in their focus on maligning our motives, people not only fail to level serious criticisms of the consequences of our actions, but make it less likely anyone will be willing to listen to those criticisms.

Privacy advocates say Manifest v3 is an attempt to wipe out ad blockers. Google claims it's about security. But which side is right is not only unprovable, it's irrelevant; what matters is what the actual consequences will be.

If you don't like what Google is doing, by all means speak up. But please, stop claiming you know why some team is advocating for some position, and focus on the effects that position would have in practice.

Google's size and power mean that causing harm is exceptionally easy. We need to listen to cautionary voices. Having a mob of posters yelling about how evil we are even at the times we were trying our best makes that more challenging.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#233

Post by tannhaeuser »

emodendroket wrote: post #174
kevinventullo wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I’d characterize YouTube as a diversification from ads.

It is though. Being an ad supplier is different from being an ad exchange. Or would you describe the New York Times or HBO as "ads businesses"?

I'm not into watching streaming services or TV for that matter, but that would be news to me. Does YT now produce own exclusive content? I think they don't 1. to keep content producers running their stuff on YT rather than acting as competitor 2. to avoid yet another reason for antitrust action (ie. the bad looks of extending their monopoly)

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#234

Post by SilverBirch »

I think the conclusion is really interesting. Maybe this was just well written, but I was thinking "What should the CEO of Google be pursuing as a strategy", and then he drops the mission statement. I don't know if the mission statement is the best articulation of the goal. But it's a clear goal. And it's a goal that Google aren't pursuing. It's an interesting goal in the context of large language models. Now, more than ever, having a accessible and organised store of credible information would be incredibly valuable to me. I was literally saying this to someone earlier today - the web today sucks. I google something, I click the first link it's popup hell. I click through all the links on the first page, half of them are the same information re-garbled for Google. Boy, what I wouldn't pay to Google the web from 2010. Just let me tick a box that says "Classic web" that excludes anything published in the last 15 years. Well this post turned into a rant...

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#235

Post by neilv »

I didn't see them mention rank&file careerism culture.

Are they attributing the root cause to leadership, and believe the old culture is merely dormant, or could be inspired in people who never saw it, and who weren't hired for it?

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#236

Post by emodendroket »

chatmasta wrote: post #197
ghaff wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>perhaps that organization will inevitably develop into something resembling IBM. So an over 100 year old company that makes 10s of billions of dollars?

Sure. But people in this thread aren't complaining that Google's profitable. They're complaining about the culture. Long term, such a poisonous culture is not a sustainable path to growth or retained profitability. And it's even less sustainable when the company is dependent on an undiversified revenue stream, since they need to be innovating to mitigate that risk, and a poisonous culture is toxic to innovation. But…

> Long term, such a poisonous culture is not a sustainable path to growth or retained profitability.

Are you sure? This feels a little bit like when I read the American capitalism is going to collapse because there are a lot of homeless people. Just because something has the effect of making some people miserable doesn't mean that it's unstable or doomed to fail. IBM, GE, Boeing, or any number of other "dinosaur" companies haven't gone anywhere. And Microsoft itself shows that even a conservative culture can manage to adapt to changing circumstances when it's necessary.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#238

Post by kelnos »

Osmose wrote: post #69

This is a good reflection, but I do disagree with the view of honest efforts from Google to improve the world being met with unnecessary external criticism. People outside Google don't have the benefit of thinking of any particular project as being run only by the individuals currently working on it—those particular people may leave the company or change teams or move on to other projects. It's Google that's making i…

Yup, agreed. My view is that the people on the inside often can't see the forest for the trees. They look at their immediate team/group, love the autonomy/transparency/"don't be evil"-mandate/etc. that they have and follow, and look around and see some of that in other groups, and think, "wow, this company is great, doesn't care about all that big-bad-company stuff".

But people outside can look at a company that gets most of its revenue from advertising on the web, see that they're also building a web browser, and be rightly concerned about what is inevitably going to happen there. Even if the browser team initially has a mandate to do what's best for the user, and to not care about what's best for that company, there's no way that will be a sustainable long-term strategy.

(And a cynical person might believe that the browser team was told this specifically so they'd be excited about the project, and of course management knows that when you're bootstrapping a new project/product, you need to get users fast, and the best way to get users is to do what's best for the user... at least for now.)

It is absolutely unsurprising to me that this browser team couldn't see any of this at the time. And now we have people on the Chrome team earnestly pushing things like Web Environment Integrity, and somehow telling people that this is what users want and need, and that this is good for the web. I don't know if they are brainwashed, or are just very good liars. Again: completely unsurprising result.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#239

Post by asim »

"...She treats engineers as commodities in a way that is dehumanising, reassigning people against their will in ways that have no relationship to their skill set..."

You know, I remember a time I said, management just think of engineers as a resource and refer to us as such. But when the word "dehumanising" is used it strikes me a lot clearer. When this disconnected occurs between different layers of the same corporation people just become a resource, they are no longer humans , they are a means to an end, and that end doesn't even serve the purpose of the company but the merits of that individual. I really wish developers had a way to empower themselves out of this hellscape.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#240

Post by emodendroket »

mmkos wrote: post #217
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.

Oh well. Maybe it's about time incompetent people were named and shamed, maybe that would put a stop to failing upwards for people who really shouldn't be there.

It's doubtful.
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