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Leaving Google

jayconrod.com

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Re: Leaving Google

#301

Post by matheusmoreira »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #55
titzer wrote: post #43

I joined in 2010 and left in 2019. The company I joined was very different than the one I left. Every single one of Google's problems can be traced back to scale. Loss of trust, distance to top leadership, tone-deafness, repeated failures, escalating surveillance dystopia, perf management overhead, leaks...all of them are fundamentally due to scale. And scale is simply because greed. Gotta make that 23% YoY revenue g…

> And scale is simply because greed. Is it possible that it is simply because of survival? The general theme of business I see is if you do not keep up with others, you will lose to your competitors. Especially in a winner take all business with network effects and low marginal costs like tech.

The trillion dollar companies won't be able to survive? They're in danger? I simply cannot muster any sympathy.

Actually I think they're not in enough danger. They take things for granted, our attention and private information for example. Denying Google, Facebook those should put some real fear in them.

Re: Leaving Google

#302

Post by lotsofpulp »

UncleMeat wrote: post #295
lotsofpulp wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proportionally, a greater area of San Diego can still be more expensive than a similarly proportional area of NYC Metro. For example, NYC Metro would have cheaper housing 60min from work than San Diego. I generally find land in coastal CA to be more expensive than everywhere else in the US.

It is also quite expensive in Hawaii, yet Google pays less well there. Similarly, it is quite expensive in London, yet Google pays less well there too. This is based on Google's model of paying by local market rather than CoL. There are a few regions where this ends up being quite frustrating. No doubt it is difficult to look at a nontrivial pay cut if your housing costs aren't much lower. It has even been frustratin…

Yes, I think we are agreement. There is no such thing as a cost of living adjustment. Or rather, it is better to frame it as

“employer offering employee what they think employee will accept because employee will probably have less options to earn more by being in a certain location”

Obviously, a highly in demand programmer or whatnot will be able to live wherever they want and demand whatever they want. That is all it has ever been and always will be, aka a market where buyers try to buy for as low of a price as possible and sellers try to sell for as high of a price as possible.

Re: Leaving Google

#303

Post by Aeolun »

DanielVZ wrote: post #264
tsimionescu wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the history of Facebook's acquisitions, I think this is a little optimistic. The sheer disgusting amount of money that FAANGs have allows them to buy or undercut any competitor that looks to gain steam.

Wasn't the same true 20-30 years ago? I feel like you can just choose not to sell or IPO, right?

But can you resist if someone throws 4B in cash at you?

Re: Leaving Google

#305

Post by lotsofpulp »

caoilte wrote: post #260
mehrdada wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the stock price would tank (note that the current multiple assumes growth), employees would leave due to poor compensation, and starts a downward spiral. I am not sure if that is called survival. And no, most businesses in the world do not survive that long. Lifetime of businesses are often much shorter than lifetime of humans. Even many of them that look like have survived may share the name only and are e…

They could achieve good multiples by paying dividends. The question is whether they're wasting as much money trying to grow as they are saving by keeping their profits offshore (and not paying tax on them). I don't know, but at some point the answer may become obvious.

Owners do not want dividends. I do not want dividends from my tech stocks if I’m simply going to turn around and reinvest in them. That is just paying extra short term capital gains taxes when you do not have to.

Re: Leaving Google

#306

Post by bigmanwalter »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #18

A few months ago, I considered applying to Google to join the JAX team. It turns out that you can't apply to Google's JAX team. You have to apply to Google, and then managers at various teams select whether they want you. The thing is, JAX is amazing. So I'm now faced with the uncomfortable idea that this process must make sense, because it clearly works. Yet I profoundly dislike it. Perhaps my ideas are the problem,…

The most desirable teams are filled by internal transfers. External hires get the teams that have trouble hiring internally.

Re: Leaving Google

#307

Post by lotsofpulp »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #301
lotsofpulp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And scale is simply because greed. Is it possible that it is simply because of survival? The general theme of business I see is if you do not keep up with others, you will lose to your competitors. Especially in a winner take all business with network effects and low marginal costs like tech.

The trillion dollar companies won't be able to survive? They're in danger? I simply cannot muster any sympathy. Actually I think they're not in enough danger. They take things for granted, our attention and private information for example. Denying Google, Facebook those should put some real fear in them.

Is there anything significant about a trillion dollars in 2021? Was it not $10B+ in the 1980s and $100B in the 2000s?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z93yWXb9Tb0

I do not know what you mean by sympathy, I am just opining on the economic reasons for why successful businesses keep trying to expand, and that is if they do not, then they risk falling behind.

Re: Leaving Google

#308

Post by Aeolun »

natch wrote: post #167

I’ve come to suspect the reason (ex) Google people write these is basically humblebragging. There just isn’t enough interesting material presented to have any other explanation make much sense. Just an opinion; ymmv.

Personally I’m quite happy with every blog post that someone claims to be burned out in. Al least I feel like I’m not alone.

Re: Leaving Google

#309

Post by simonh »

capableweb wrote: post #286
WoahNoun wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basic math. If you are 20% of the industry right now and stay the same size while the industry grows 10x, you become 2% of the industry and a essentially a non-factor. You've yahoo'd yourself.

Basic math right, so if you're 20% of the industry, earning 20% of the industry profits at that scale, and the industry grows 10x, then you have a smaller piece of the industry but your earnings remain the same as the profits grew as well.

I don't have statistics but it's, frankly, blindingly obvious. In a rapidly growing market, staying still as a business isn't a static situation because the landscape around you is changing. You're shrinking in relevance to customers. Even if your margins stay the same, your competitors margins are going down as they scale up, which means they will undercut you on price and you won't be able to do anything about it.

The premise of this discussion is static revenue, but you can't assume that. You'll have to work harder and harder just to stand still, until it becomes unsustainable. You might be able top sustain a business by focusing on a niche specialist market segment, but at that point you're not recognisably Google anymore. As for greed, that's an incredibly naïve way to view it. Nobody creates a long term business plan that aims for irrelevance.

Re: Leaving Google

#310

Post by [deleted] »

abdabab wrote: post #225
mehrdada wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the stock price would tank (note that the current multiple assumes growth), employees would leave due to poor compensation, and starts a downward spiral. I am not sure if that is called survival. And no, most businesses in the world do not survive that long. Lifetime of businesses are often much shorter than lifetime of humans. Even many of them that look like have survived may share the name only and are e…

> employees would leave due to poor compensation With a gross profit of 100 billion dollars a year [1] they can easily outbid the market compensation if they want to and stay with current revenue. But again how many Jeff Deans can one company need before it calls itself The Man? [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/gros...

[deleted]
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