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Culture Change at Google
301–310 of 520 posts
Re: Culture Change at Google
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do we have to change our language (and behaviour) for the edge cases? Is a grandparent who raises their grandchildren offended by the word parent? I doubt it. What’s the point?
The only people experiencing offense here seem to be the ones who don't like the term child raiser for some reason.
For one, I have never heard the term "child raiser" in my life so I assume its even more confusing for those with english as a second language. It also just sounds so emotionless, like children are cattle. I'm really struggling to see what is gained by not using parent. For all intents and purposes, people use the term parent for those raising a child.
Re: Culture Change at Google
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes just because you aren't blood and you raise/help raise a kid, you are the parent. To change the verbiage is diminishing to the task, even though you don't mean it to be. Who's more of a parent, the guy who knocks up a woman and leaves forever, or the step-dad who actually raises the kid for 18+ years?
That's the whole point, lots of people ARE parents but aren't child raisers. Even traditional fathers who are part of the family but do not raise their kids because they expect their wife to ARE parents but are not primary raisers of their kids.
Caretaker or guardian is the word you are looking for.
Re: Culture Change at Google
#304It’s easy to have a culture of taking risks when you have unlimited revenue.
What’s amazing to me is how timid companies get when there’s limited resources. Instead of making another big bet to get back on the revenue train, they chase trends. Like Google getting caught off guard on AI and now chasing that instead of leading here or elsewhere.
I don’t know the answer. Part of the problem is you went from company leadership focused on a domain (search) to generalist business types. The domain experts had a strong conviction about their domain. But the business types are good at executing an existing business model, but not the domain wherewithal to find another big market. Even if internally there exists someone with such a conviction or idea, if it threatens to take focus away from the current cash cow, and leadership doesn’t have the expertise to understand the idea, such innovation will be discouraged.
You also tend to attract stability oriented careerists once people see how likely it is to make sustainable salary, with stock, by getting in. Once in I don’t think you’re incentivized to take risks or rock the boat of the existing business model.
And thus, and forever, cycles of business will continue. It’s hard to create a big company that has both a stable business model and takes the right risks.
Re: Culture Change at Google
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a myth. I had a successful 20% project when I was there and I was nobody special. I started an anti-bot system in 2010 and by 2014 it had become integrated into most of the top products. Last I heard there is a whole team working on it still, and there were also spinoffs. That wasn't only a 20% project but a secret one! For several months I told my manager in daily standups that today was my 20% day, and tha…
I appreciate your comment and anecdata, and I’m glad you commented here. That being said, I’m not sure whether it is you or I who does not know what “quasi” means.
I think we both have a quasi-understanding of the word :)
Re: Culture Change at Google
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
The success of 20% projects is a quasi-myth. Gmail is often touted, but you would do well to look up the employee # at Google of the inventor. Point being, you need (very) early hire clout or your 20% project isn’t going anywhere either.
Gmail wasn't a 20%, I don't know why anyone thinks it is. Buchheit was asked to work on it.
The product they often presented as started in 20% time is Google news. I don't know the actual details, just this is what I remember from my time at Google (2006-2012).
Re: Culture Change at Google
#307Is any company still like this? I was at Google in ‘06-07, and again ‘09-11, and already there were obvious differences. You just can’t scale “total internal transparency” when the company doubles in size every year. And at some point you need just plain-old-“good” engineers to make the A/B tests happen and all the other stuff that doesn’t excite the PhDs. And at some point you need product people too, because you st…
I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets. Maybe become profitable and pay off the VCs then don't go public? Then you can resist the pressure for growth quarter by quarter, and remain the 'right size' that your internal culture demands. Did Valve corporation do something like that?
Financial markets in general do not demand this. As someone else said, the return expected is just a basic risk-free rate plus some compensation for the added risk of owning equities instead of treasuries, which isn't nothing but it doesn't mean you need to double in size every year indefinitely.
The problem for FAANGs and Tesla is their valuation was predicated on indefinite rapid growth. Once you have that valuation, the only way to keep it is to actually grow at the rate the valuation priced in. If you don't, the price will drop and all of the various directors and high-level employees whose compensation is largely in the already heavily-priced stock will lose a lot of net worth. This isn't a problem for all publicly-traded companies. It's a problem specific to a very small number of extremely highly-valued companies whose value was based upon the expectation that they would grow very rapidly.
Venture capital is another matter entirely. Being far riskier than owning publicly-traded equity shares, they do demand outsized growth from every investment. But venture capital is hardly ubiquitous. Outside of software devs, all small business owners I've ever known would not have even tried to consider it. If they need money, they ask their parents or a bank.
Re: Culture Change at Google
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Language should be adequate to the context of a conversation. If you were writing a legal document, or some policy for a kindergarten it might make sense to make that distinction, but this is a public forum with many non-native speakers. Parents is a concept pretty much all of us are familiar with and if you say parents we'll understand you mean people using the service because they care for young kids.
“Child raiser” is perfectly adequate to the context of a conversation about people who are raising children.
Wouldn't the employees of the day care be able to be considered as "child raiser" if I follow the meaning of the words?
Re: Culture Change at Google
#309Re: Culture Change at Google
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only people experiencing offense here seem to be the ones who don't like the term child raiser for some reason.
For one, I have never heard the term "child raiser" in my life so I assume its even more confusing for those with english as a second language. It also just sounds so emotionless, like children are cattle. I'm really struggling to see what is gained by not using parent. For all intents and purposes, people use the term parent for those raising a child.
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