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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

#291

Post by joshuamorton »

345tw4erfd wrote: post #168
ptd wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a better way of making sure someone can actually code? It’s easy to take credit for past projects when it’s unclear how much help you had or what part you played. Isn’t the best way to judge a candidate asking them to create/produce something for you?

IMHO a better way would be: - A non-trivial take-home exercise and give them a week or two to complete. This should have higher weight on the decision instead of the "Google doc coding" as most likely that's the type of code they'll be shipping to production. - Use the onsite interviews to improve upon the exercise and/or to get into the nitty gritty details, and also to make sure this is the type of person people wo…

People can cheat on take home exercises. At the scale of google, a nontrivial number of people will.

If you'll end up having to do a face to face analysis to make sure someone didn't cheat on a big take home assignment like that, why not just skip to the face to face analysis?

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

#292

Post by kamaal »

sn41 wrote: post #43

Google's fall from grace mirrors HP's and Xerox's. At some level, CEOs who do not share an altruistic vision espoused by the "rank-and-file" engineers who are more idealistic. I think in Xerox, they were called "toner heads". When you suck out the soul, the remaining carcass will totter on for a couple more decades, and encomiums will be written to the "well-managed" company in business magazines, but no promising un…

There is no way MBA CEOs can ever do any good to these companies.

Their whole training is to convert high performance engineering places to minimum wage paying furniture assembly shops.

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

#293

Post by mav3rick »

scottlocklin wrote: post #279
mav3rick wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware innovation in the Pixel Camera also uses ML. "Night Sight" is the result of work across teams

Would love to know more if you have some references for this.

Here you go - https://www.blog.google/products/pixel/see-light-night-sight...

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

#294

Post by mav3rick »

kurtisc wrote: post #253
izacus wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So at least an order of magnitude less than any of the Google competitors?

Yes. It has nothing to do with the topic though. Google are an order of magnitude less than Volkswagen.

Of course it does have to do with the topic. I can know the CEOs number in a 10 person startup. And the number isn't the point, the point is having an official unscripted channel to voice concerns.

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

#295

Post by mac01021 »

feanaro wrote: post #215
mac01021 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are expensive. And their presence compromises your family's privacy.

I'm afraid having Google's robot butlers around all the time wouldn't do wonders for privacy either.

Are we saying Google's robot butlers won't work without an internet connection? That would severely diminish their value.

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

#296

Post by AJ007 »

tyingq wrote: post #223
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…

"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…

Google wants extractable facts that they can insert directly in the search results. I speculate the users want it too, at least as long as those “facts” are actually true. The more voice makes up the percentage of searches, the fewer searches will be directly to a non-paid organic website.

Anyone trying to build a scalable business and expecting SEO to play a meaningful role probably doesn’t have a firm grasp on what Google has done over the past 10 years and will continue to do. Most businesses, and their investors, should be calculating what their numbers look like if they were to receive 0 free users from Google.

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

#297

Post by clubm8 »

cbnotfromthere wrote: post #275
sam0x17 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For example a CTO could say unilaterally "no, we won't help build the great search firewall for China". That would be absurd, as such decision has no technical merit.

>That would be absurd, as such decision has no technical merit.

You think a CTO's job is only to decide which technologies to use?

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

#298

Post by scottLobster »

blihp wrote: post #69
osrec wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. On the other hand, in smaller companies you have to deal with the egos and personality quirks of those at the top because there's nowhere for you to hide from them. Pick your poison.

Eh, I still wouldn't say they're equivalent. A CEO with an ego you can build a strategic relationship with, a headless mass of uncoordinated politicking and beuraucracy is that times 1000, and is often far more impenetrable from the ground floor

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

#299

Post by askafriend »

untog wrote: post #247
wolco wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook somehow has turned social into a giant. Forced real names and gave your grandmother a reason to be on the internet. Facebook will be the global free television network will push vr and start introducing telepatic phone services. Netflix will probably split into two with one company showing new movies with different pricing models. The second service will have all of the original content they made throughout…

I think the OP's point was less what the companies have done in their lifetime than what they're doing now. Both Google and Facebook revolutionised the internet, but I'm really struggling to think of much that they've done recently . Google at least has the Android platform, and I suppose Google Home? Facebook just seems to have a trail of failed hardware projects and has bought success through billion dollar acquisi…

Instagram was not bought success. It was incredible execution and foresight on FB’s part. Remember that IG was only 10 people at the time, had less than 50mm users, and $0 in revenue when FB bought it.

Credit where credit is due. I don’t think IG would be where it is today without FB.

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

#300

Post by sam0x17 »

clubm8 wrote: post #297
cbnotfromthere wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example a CTO could say unilaterally "no, we won't help build the great search firewall for China". That would be absurd, as such decision has no technical merit.

>That would be absurd, as such decision has no technical merit. You think a CTO's job is only to decide which technologies to use?

Yeah, this is my point. CEOs are often too detached from the technology to understand the moral/privacy implications of practically anything.
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