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Parents are only raising children while the children are children. They continue to be parents when their children are adults.
Culture Change at Google
321–330 of 520 posts
Re: Culture Change at Google
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Valve does have a reputation for having this type of model. They've famously expressed an intention to not go public or sell the company to anyone else. This is also what leads to them being a fairly small and selective company that can afford to cherry-pick employees, and that also has an allegedly more employee-friendly culture than others. Just like the recollection in the original post, they might have th…
I would argue that they made a really good early bet with Steam which rakes in enough profit that they can keep this (or whatever) mindset. They never really had competition in the PC space. If they would need to come up with new and better products each fiscal year they would look very different.
Steam doesn’t exist without Valve’s catalog of games and especially Half-Life 2. Its continued success can’t be simple luck given how much competition they have, although at times it does seem like Microsoft, Google (Stadia), Epic, Ubisoft simply want Steam to win.
Re: Culture Change at Google
#323Is 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?
It’s not the “growth at all costs” mindset at all.
It’s growth period.
It’s easy to have a “hire smart people to do whatever” culture when the money is coming in hand over fist. Your investors don’t care.
But when the goose that lays the golden egg dies, nobody is going to hand over money to get a 2% return. Might as well just buy treasuries with zero risk and a higher return.
You’re flipping the cause and effect. It’s not the demand for growth that changes a company, it’s the companies business changing such that the money doesnt come in via fire hose any more.
That demands culture change to show that you actually are doing something productive.
Re: Culture Change at Google
#324[flagged]
Honestly `child-raisers` is such an old and bigoted term. We now use `human-larva-caretakers`.
Re: Culture Change at Google
#325Earlier 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.
>That's the whole point, lots of people ARE parents but aren't child raisers.
My wife calls those people "sperm doners."
Re: Culture Change at Google
#326Re: Culture Change at Google
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets. Google (and Facebook etc) are controlled by their founders (some even as majority shareholders). There's no blaming financial markets here. Facebook was even happy to set fire to a giant pile of cash in pursuit of the 'metaverse', a project that approximately no investors wanted, but that was dear to the heart of…
Their employees and executives make the majority of their income from RSUs. You can't exactly run a company if your entire workforce gets a huge pay cut each year from a poorly performing stock.
That’s a great point as well. People blame investors but at FAANGs the workforce itself are investors and very important ones since they’ll bail if the stock stops going up.
Re: Culture Change at Google
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO I felt that battle was lost couple of years back when my wife was pregnant with our youngest. We were looking for CDC guidelines on covid booster for expectant mothers. The website mentions "pregnant people". That's when I felt discourse is evolving to cater to the edge cases. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommend...
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> Some men can be pregnant
Only if you define man in a way such that any person can claim manhood.
Re: Culture Change at Google
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO I felt that battle was lost couple of years back when my wife was pregnant with our youngest. We were looking for CDC guidelines on covid booster for expectant mothers. The website mentions "pregnant people". That's when I felt discourse is evolving to cater to the edge cases. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommend...
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Men can not be pregnant, that’s what makes them men
Re: Culture Change at Google
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
> I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets. Yes, just don't hire MBAs with fetish for shareholder value
You think employees will stick around when their vested options are underwater?
It’s not the MBAs alone that demand an increasing stock price.