More Google Employees Are Losing Faith in Their CEO's Vision

Post by jacques_chester » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #50

wtmt wrote: post #15

For the sake of the employees and for the sake of the rest of us, I believe that Sundar Pichai is not CEO material at all. He should go or be pushed out, and Larry Page and Sergei Brin (or one of them) should take a stronger role and have a deeper engagement on many matters. Google has been doing well financially, but it has lost its soul (the one it had in its very initial years) and seems to be going around aimless…

I dunno. I like Sundar. I like his straightforward style. Personally I think he's got it together a lot more than Larry and Sergey do. When Larry was the boss, I always felt like we were lurching. Sundar feels like high speed cruise. Look this ship don't turn fast no matter who's at the helm. And it's not even clear it needs to. Maybe it's already sailing where Sundar wants it to (mad money + compelling products). As…

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 3:25 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #237

petra wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think that Google has a technical vision. They want more people writing amazing content, and not SEO garbage. They want to offer people focused answers to their questions. They want to serve as your personal assistant. They want people to really trust the first answer they get from Google. And they want to be deeply integrated with your life. The thing is: building AWS is more of an engineering project. Achievin…

To be fair, they only lead the world in AI because they bought DeepMind.

Post by ModernMech » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #108

ModernMech wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Internally, Google is not so different from an ecosystem of VC-funded startups. They try a lot of things. Some ideas work and others don't. For some definition of work. They're still mostly (~80-90%) an ad-driven company, after all these years.

This is almost saying uber makes all of its money from ride hailing, almost all these years. Reality: after 2008, economy boomed, and advertising also did. Advertising, once you have the means, is easier to scale, and high margin. Google stopped relying on just owned and operated properties, and diversified into 3p properties to achieve even more scale Most other businesses or business attempts require massive operat…

Post by prolikewh0a » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 3:37 PM UTC

osrec wrote: post #63

goldenchrome wrote: post #40

Don't discount the massive increase in the number of employees. The more people you add, the more the culture dilutes. It becomes impossible for employees to feel like they're part of single a tribe with a clear goal. Factions develop, tensions mount, and you get angry employees leaking confidential information constantly. Most of the negative press the public has heard about Google in the past year is a direct resul…

I used to work a corporate job in an investment bank with around 30k employees. The majority of those employees were politicking chameleons with little productive output and a disproportionate salary. I used to hope that large innovative tech companies were different. From what I hear on HN it's becoming clear that that's not the case. It's almost as if the "largeness" of a company allows the non productive people to…

Post by prolikewhoa » Sat, Feb 02, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #210

sildur wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking on this. From a capitalist point of view, an Universal Basic Income may be useful to remove non-productive people from companies. I think the productivity increase (because non-productive people tend to drag productive people around them) May very well offset the costs.

It won't work for that. Some non-productive people are non-productively lazy, and UBI may work for them. Others are non-conformist creative types, and UBI will half work for them. IMO it's good to have some of these types around in a business to shake things up - as long as they have some practical skills and aren't just dreamers. Others are primarily interested in accumulating power, and corporations provide a perfe…