This is not how Google works, this is a PR product -- it's full of fashionable and/or trivial things that we see on various blogs every single day. I don't see why is this interesting to the HN crowd, but well, who am I to judge this. :)
How Google Works
31–40 of 113 posts
Re: How Google Works
#32That stupid webpage keeps forwarding me to an empty page after a few seconds in.
Re: How Google Works
#33The motivation of Google is not even discussed here. Why do you want to create a certain environment for "smart creatives?" Oh yeah, almost forgot... so they'll make products that will make Google lots of money. This always leads to a logic contradiction. If they are so smart and creative, why do they need Google? Everyone knows if you create the next g-mail you still walk in on Monday and get a salary, not equity. Y…
> If they are so smart and creative, why do they need Google?
I can't speak for everybody, but there are plenty of things I can do at Google that I cannot do on my own. Google engineers have access to world class compute clusters, CDNs, data analysis tools, and state of the art libraries for machine learning, speech, nlp, dnn, etc. Having resources like that available empowers creative people to hack around on their big ideas.
Re: How Google Works
#34I've received the book last week and read it during the weekend. It has plenty of insights and great ideas that you can take and try to use in your current area of work.
Re: How Google Works
#35The motivation of Google is not even discussed here. Why do you want to create a certain environment for "smart creatives?" Oh yeah, almost forgot... so they'll make products that will make Google lots of money. This always leads to a logic contradiction. If they are so smart and creative, why do they need Google? Everyone knows if you create the next g-mail you still walk in on Monday and get a salary, not equity. Y…
> If they are so smart and creative, why do they need Google? Many things cannot be created individually, no matter how smart and creative you are. Think of pyramids, space ships, - or even GMail. It's about leveraging the resources of a big company. And not to forget the low risk: you build something while you are on salary vs. building something for equity that may or may not worth dollars in the end.
Just a tip: you don't want to be one of the people building a pyramid. You may want to think of a non-enslavement-and-death example when you explain why somewhere might be a good place to work. I can just imagine the recruiter's pitch now...
Re: How Google Works
#36That stupid webpage keeps forwarding me to an empty page after a few seconds in.
Me too. Use the embed link instead: http://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/40175706?rel=...
Re: How Google Works
#37I found these slides rather shallow. Smart, creative people are the best employees? Who knew! The Internet led to massive disruptions in traditional businesses? Wow!
Sorry for my cynicism/sarcasm, but I see the book campaign as Eric Schmidt positioning himself for his next role. He's trying to secure his personal Google legacy as he gets ready for an exit. I can't imagine it's all that enticing to go from CEO to chairman in a company where the founder takes back the CEO role... how much influence does that leave you?
Re: How Google Works
#38I started work at google pretty recently, and expressed an interest in working on a particular project. I made some notes about some of my ideas, and was putting some stuff together to show to one of the teams, to get some input before prototyping. I asked a senior team member to have a look at the notes I had made, and see if they were ready to show to the wider team. His advice? "Go build something, then we can hav…
I was under the impression that the work load at Google is so heavy that it is almost impossible to get "20% time" anymore. During what time did you work on your idea? Are they freeing you of all responsibilities to build your prototype or do they expect you to do it in your free time and then donate it to the company? Thanks, I'm very curious about this aspect of Google's culture.
I think it depends. If you're working on something with a hard upcoming deadline, chances are you have no 20% time. If you're working on a launched product in incremental/maintenance mode, chances are you have extra time.
Sometimes greenfield projects or rewrites also permit lots of 20% time, because you've got existing implementations, so you can have some people maintain the old one and some people go work on the new rewrite using new tech.
I'm one of the unlucky ones with very little free time at the moment. :)
Re: How Google Works
#39I found these slides rather shallow. Smart, creative people are the best employees? Who knew! The Internet led to massive disruptions in traditional businesses? Wow! Sorry for my cynicism/sarcasm, but I see the book campaign as Eric Schmidt positioning himself for his next role. He's trying to secure his personal Google legacy as he gets ready for an exit. I can't imagine it's all that enticing to go from CEO to chai…
The slides, if not educational, are inspiring and elucidating . They might not reveal new insight, but frame existing insight in a way that's easy to understand.
Re: How Google Works
#40And then Larry Page walked in and said "Focus! Everybody's goal is to push Google+ now!"
IANAG, but as far as I understand G+ is a twofold process: first, there's transforming Google into a platform (as per Yegge's famous rant [0]) and secondly, there's the mediocre social network (they've managed to fail at both UX and perf, kudos for that achievement). The latter, and the confusion itself are obviously pretty idiotic. The G+ platform, despite the annoying name, is a pretty solid idea.
Larry Page claims to want to be a modern, successful Tesla [1], and I believe and appreciate him for that, but some of his actions since he took the reins again (G+, Android) are ones you'd rather expect from an Ellison or Gates. Probably that's a good tradeoff for being able to sustain innovation at a massive scale, but I'm just wondering whether some of the decisions he makes are just plain uninspired, rather than ruthless.
This being said, Larry is still the reason I want to work for Google at some point in the future. I feel like he's one of the very few high-profile CEOs that appreciate ideas and cool shit more than money, and that's something I think hackers in particular need to appreciate.
0: https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX
1: http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-the-untold-story-2...