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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#31

Post by TheRealPomax »

hnthrowaway0328 wrote: post #23
t8sr wrote: post #12

Around 2016 at Google, my entire reporting chain, from manager to CEO, changed. Literally not a single person was left. Laszlo, both Erics, Patrick and the rest of the L team all left in quick succession. I think the old Google of < 2015 and the current Google are two companies that have almost nothing in common.

I guess it was the Alphabet saga? It's all like this. I have decided that if given the chance, I'd never work in companies with more than 1,000 persons.

Not even if they pay well enough that you can quit and still afford having a family in only 5 years, instead of 20?

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#32

Post by guiomie »

> Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural norms of early Google.

That's an interesting observation considering Sundar is where he is because of early-Google cultural norms.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#33

Post by lesuorac »

nostrademons wrote: post #24
lesuorac wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you think cookies get stored?

Not localStorage.

Non-sequitor.

If you look back the at the original post I say "Hard drive" not the "localStorage object".

And they are indeed stored are your system and not the servers.

https://allaboutcookies.org/what-is-a-cookie-file#:~:text=In....

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#35

Post by t8sr »

hnthrowaway0328 wrote: post #23
t8sr wrote: post #12

Around 2016 at Google, my entire reporting chain, from manager to CEO, changed. Literally not a single person was left. Laszlo, both Erics, Patrick and the rest of the L team all left in quick succession. I think the old Google of < 2015 and the current Google are two companies that have almost nothing in common.

I guess it was the Alphabet saga? It's all like this. I have decided that if given the chance, I'd never work in companies with more than 1,000 persons.

Google in 2015 had probably 30,000 employees, maybe more. And it was still completely open internally and had a real community feel to it.

One time, I was stuck in Montreal for 7 days for personal reasons (a vacation plan that exploded). I walked into the Google office there, made some friends, worked on a random project they were doing and ended up collaborating on an OKR a year later. It is entirely possible to keep this kind of culture going for much longer than people think.

Conversely, I've worked at companies with 500 employees that were the blandest kind of "enterprise business company firm" you can imagine. :)

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#37

Post by tapoxi »

lesuorac wrote: post #18
Chabsff wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be confusing cookies and local storage.

Where do you think cookies get stored?

Well they're two different APIs. Most people aren't concerned about a few KB to store things like sessions. Most people don't even know what cookies are.

So the cookie warnings have basically become the Prop-8 warnings of the internet, where they're so prevalent people just ignore them, but the cookie warnings are more annoying since they require active dismissal.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#38

Post by Dudester230602 »

alberth wrote: post #13

> “Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural norms of early Google.” Ouch. I know a lot of outsiders believe that, but to have someone who spent 2-decades at Google saying it publicly is rough.

I think Pichai tries his best within his abilities, maybe it's time to pay attention to the ones who had chosen him?

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#39

Post by VirusNewbie »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #20

Is Google the new Microsoft?

Eh, I interviewed for both a GCP and multiple Azure teams simultaneously and the difference in talent level was astounding.

The latter team leads were anywhere from disinterested, asking basic level leetcode questions I could breeze through, to fucking incompetent who didn't even understand the coding questions they were asking. I was shocked at how different they were in terms of thoughtfulness and intelligence.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#40

Post by bandofthehawk »

lesuorac wrote: post #7

> one of the most annoying is the prevalence of pointless cookie warnings we have to wade through today. Hey if you're cool with me using your hardrive to store data I have a bunch of chia coins that need mining. Its weird how getting somebody's permission before using their stuff is considered unnecessary.

I noticed that comment also. It seems like the point of view of an engineer that doesn't really think about security.

Reminded me of when I first discovered that major browsers allow third party cookies by default. And thinking I can't believe they allow this massive privacy leak.

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