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

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

#281

Post by manigandham »

sam0x17 wrote: post #233
tanilama wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would not having a CTO symbolize Google's strategy shift from tech? Google has more than enough talented tech visionaries at high levels in each of its sub organizations, probably overpopulated with such. I don't think Google lacks tech direction, quite on the contrary, they still excel and way ahead of the crowds. But they don't have a strategy to make money off from those technologies, other than limited venues…

For example a CTO could say unilaterally "no, we won't help build the great search firewall for China".

That’s not a CTO decision.

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

#282

Post by joshuamorton »

sam0x17 wrote: post #235
bertil wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an insider, but I was under the impression that Jeff Dean was that visionary. He seems to focus on AI, which sounds like a conscious pivot from Google. Have I missed something? It’s likely that anyone who works on other projects might feel left out and that would explain your reaction and the article.

They have many visions and no cohesion and no one technical with wide-sweeping power apparently. That's how you get Hangouts + Google Meet + Allo, and evidently, how China gets it's great search blocker. It feels to me like there are many divisions and teams and no one in charge of the collective, from a technical point of view. So yeah, kind of like microsoft in recent years. A many-headed hydra. Cut off a head, gro…

Literally none of those are cto decisions.

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

#283

Post by shereadsthenews »

saurabh20n wrote: post #216
shereadsthenews wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly as a Googler I neither saw nor needed the vision of Larry, Sergey, Eric, Sundar, or anyone else except maybe Urs, Jeff, and Sanjay. I mean I worked on the C++ toolchain. Making a bitchin' compiler is its own reward. I guess things are different on product teams?

Honest question: does the current Google have the environment to innovate on the next generation of compilers/PL/program synthesizers? I would have definitely said yes back in the day; but not so sure now. (Admittedly might be biased. I'm the founder of Synthetic Minds. We're building program synthesizers; basically all compilers work: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19059922 )

No I don’t think Google is on the forefront of that type of thing. It’s more of a practical craft. There may be people doing interesting PL research at Google but they aren’t in the language platform team. That said these are probably some of the tightest, safest, and best-tested large-scale C++ programs ever.

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

#284

Post by joshuamorton »

scottlocklin wrote: post #199
mav3rick wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right Google is losing in ML or not caught up to speed ? I don't know when you left but even outside Google it's pretty much known that ML innovation is Google's strength. Two big teams use Rust at Google in production. I guess Google didn't make the TPU or Tensor Flow as well. Take your pitch forks out but once you're done have a look at some facts.

They kicked off the deep learning trend when they bought deep mind I guess. Otherwise what innovation are you talking about? Switching from KNN to DL in machine translations is impressive as a technical achievement ... but not really an innovation, and I doubt all this "innovation" impacts their bottom line in any way.

Brain existed prior to deep mind, and is a leader in it's own right.

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

#285

Post by aetherson »

practice9 wrote: post #249
jpm_sd wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Larry and Sergey got obsessed with useless and irrelevant things. (Flying cars? Robot butlers? Airship yachts? Glass?)

Glass was interesting product that died on the hands of outrage journalists. It's possible they Google release another version when technology will be ready (better battery, camera, sound packed into much smaller form & size)

I don't think that's true. Glass died because nobody could think of anything to do with it. Talk about "glassholes" dominated the conversation because there was no other subject to discuss. The explorer program was supposed to let people come up with cool ideas for applications and nobody ever did.

This is broadly true of wearables so far: nobody has come up with a use case for them more compelling than, "shave a few seconds off checking notifications on your phone."

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

#286

Post by shereadsthenews »

whoisjuan wrote: post #106
shereadsthenews wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly as a Googler I neither saw nor needed the vision of Larry, Sergey, Eric, Sundar, or anyone else except maybe Urs, Jeff, and Sanjay. I mean I worked on the C++ toolchain. Making a bitchin' compiler is its own reward. I guess things are different on product teams?

Your work is crucial for the foundation of whatever Google builds. Unfortunately just like in construction, having a good foundation doesn’t mean that what gets build on top is the right thing.

Well I think of it more like carpentry. I can build a beautiful house and not get upset later that the owner sits on the couch watching game shows on tv all day. Similarly it doesn’t have to bother me that the result of all my optimizations at Google was they had more capacity to let a computer play Starcraft against itself for fifty million CPU-years. Just does not concern me at all as long as my paycheck didn’t bounce.

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

#287

Post by paulcole »

petra wrote: post #227
tyingq wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They want more people writing amazing content, and not SEO garbage" I'm not convinced on this one. It feels like they've ceded the SEO spam war to me. As mentioned in the article, they just crudely exclude large swaths of content now instead of trying to filter out actually bad content. And they have just generally devalued the organic results in favor of ads, widgets, curated stuff...anything that keeps you walled…

As of anything with SEO, it's all guesses. But in general, the job of SEO's is increasingly being about writing better content and satisfying the user, and less about "tricks". That's true , at least generally. But when i say better content, better is defined as more engaging, shareable, linkable, clickable. that sort of stuff. This isn't our cup of tea here at HN, but maybe that's what most people go for. Maybe. BTW…

> But when i say better content, better is defined as more engaging, shareable, linkable, clickable. that sort of stuff. This isn't our cup of tea here at HN, but maybe that's what most people go for. Maybe.

Are you kidding? Look at the articles posted on HN. MANY are pure marketing or self-promotion pieces designed to be shared on social media like HN, get clicks, and start discussion.

It’s funny how HN commenters only call it seo, clickbait, and marketing if they don’t like it lol.

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

#288

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

givinguflac wrote: post #99
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

|and building things that broadly speaking make the world a better and more productive place. I strongly disagree with this sentiment, ease up on the kool-aid. Productive, maybe? Better, hell no.

Oh, because you disagree, I'm drinking the koolaid? Grow up and realize that your perspective and priorities are not universal.

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

#289

Post by joshuamorton »

wvenable wrote: post #101
ehsankia wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for every one deprecated product you can name, there's probably more like 10-20 new product. The issue is that Google has gotten so big and has so many different projects, that the number of deprecation is just bigger, even if percentage wise they're probably lower than most other companies. Try looking at https://gcemetery.co/ and naming how many of those you even recognize and can describe without looking it…

That list seems awfully incomplete compared to: https://killedbygoogle.com/ Your list is missing some high profile products like Google Allo and Chromecast Audio.

That site is also wrong.

News and weather is basically just merging with another app, reply moved into Android (I beta tested reply, and despite the app being gone I still have the features), Tez still exists as a part of pay, showtimes got rolled into normal search, tango was experimental and became arcore, google x very much is still around, glass never left beta as a consumer product and is still relevant as an enterprise product. Chrome frame has no reason to still exist, Quickoffice merged with Google docs, the Nexus line became pixel, noop was a 20% project, not an official google product.

When you remove the garbage, you end up with a company that deprecates a few things each year, most of which you've never heard of anyway.

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

#290

Post by joshuamorton »

345tw4erfd wrote: post #153
ajmbbs wrote: post #17

Having read the article, only 54% of Googlers view their compensation is better than what they could get from another company. I find it surprising. Who else pays more than Google does? Can only think of Facebook, but even then not sure.

I used to work at another BigCorp (around $150,000/yr) and really thought Google pays competitively, but boy was I wrong. Here are two offers that I received recently: 1. Small company: around $160,000/yr + equity 2. Google: no exact number but I was told that for the level I was approved, the base is around $120,000/yr. Apparently my coding skills on a Google doc were equivalent to that of a new grad and they are re…

I mean, you're neglecting to mention Google's equity, which would at a minimum bring the compensation in line with the other company.
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