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Mourning Google

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Re: Mourning Google

#331

Post by refulgentis »

dmoy wrote: post #308
nonameiguess wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real core of the problem. Bell Labs was populated by hackers who were perfectly content to earn double to triple what an average factory worker was getting for less toil while doing cool shit. FAANGs became too profitable and attracted people who would have been finance bros in the 90s. Engineers expected to be compensated like quants and directors like portfolio managers. You don't get a Skunk Works or D…

> How do you get this? I don't even know. Well one component that has changed there is that the marginal tax rate on the inflation-equivalent of a Google Director pay back then was 80-90%, so there wasn't really a point in enticing people with large salaries. Also, the factory workers you mentioned could afford houses in a big city on a single income. Now a single FAANG eng struggles to do the same unless they get N…

150% nailed what happened to the culture in the most concise way I've ever seen anyone do it.

Absolutely not: re factory workers affording houses in big city on single income in 1960s.

Re: Mourning Google

#332

Post by vishnugupta »

rchaud wrote: post #255

These blog posts eulogizing Google's culture death sidestep the elephant in the room; Google sells ads. Nothing else they produce makes money. Google Search didn't magically get dumber, they simply made a business decision to favor SEO-optimized junk sites, many of which run Google Ads. There's an outdated saying that goes, "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" If Google was hiring only the best and brightest, s…

> all the cool projects they worked on weren't profitable at all?

Not only were they not profitable they wouldn't even get funded if not for the money printer of Ads business.

Re: Mourning Google

#333

Post by lgkk »

The problem with these companies is the stat padder employees these days.

How many people do you genuinely know who are actual well.. engineers or at least creative minded?

90% of the people I meet these days (I’m in Bay Area) who work in tech just want to get these companies on their resume. People whose bio is basically I’m ex meta ex Amazon ex google.

When most of your employees are only in it for the money and prestige, and nothing more, imo this dullness and stagnation is what you get.

It’s quite toxic.. a culture focused on TC instead of creativity and earnest. Just people chasing a check for the sake of it.

Compare that to the innovations that came out of these companies prior to the mid 2010s. Everything “cool” since then has just been to support their massive scale and not really to promote new and interesting things.

Just my opinion.

Re: Mourning Google

#334

Post by behnamoh »

rchaud wrote: post #255

These blog posts eulogizing Google's culture death sidestep the elephant in the room; Google sells ads. Nothing else they produce makes money. Google Search didn't magically get dumber, they simply made a business decision to favor SEO-optimized junk sites, many of which run Google Ads. There's an outdated saying that goes, "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?" If Google was hiring only the best and brightest, s…

Google keeps YouTube for its massive dataset to train its (unsuccessful) multi-modal language models.

Re: Mourning Google

#335

Post by throwaw12 »

cousin_it wrote: post #16

I have a different theory about the cause of the decline. Google 10-15 years ago had a clear idea of how to win: hire the best programmers, give them freedom, and they'll build products that will win in every market. And, well, that hasn't happened. Long before the current talk of Google's decline, there was talk of the Google black hole, where talented people would get hired and their noteworthy output would drop to…

> hire the best programmers, give them freedom, and they'll build products that will win in every market. And, well, that hasn't happened

There are 2 dimensions in this equations (1) best programmers (2) management.

They might have hired best engineers, but not the best management. Maybe the management ruined them, by putting profits above everything else.

Keep in mind, some of those management/MBA people have tendency to put promotion above anything else.

Re: Mourning Google

#336

Post by hn8305823 »

Multicomp wrote: post #216
Chathamization wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the impression I have. I remember a little over a decade ago when the population at large was completely hyped about all of the world changing technology we were going to see coming from the moonshots at Google X. The excitement over Google Glass, the mystery over the Google barges. Eventually, people started wondering when these hyped up products in development were going to actually become products[1]. Not i…

> People like to say, "But those people don't even create anything, they're just taking credit for other people's work!" But just letting smart people gather and work on pet projects doesn't seem to work particularly well either. Maybe having a headstrong product oriented person upstairs is useful/necessary. I mean, isn't that what Bell Labs basically was? Put smart people in a supportive playground and harvest the c…

> I mean, isn't that what Bell Labs basically was?

More like Xerox PARC. I wish we could re-create the secret to how productive that engineer playground was. Yes, Xerox HQ (across the country) had little interest in monetizing their output but as an invention factory it was an immense success and we use their ideas every day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Parc

Re: Mourning Google

#337

Post by kbenson »

hn8305823 wrote: post #323
psunavy03 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the function of a Jobs type character is to be the defining asshole in the organization that no one has a chance of defeating alone. Except you don't have to be an asshole to be that person, just in charge.

Just having the power isn't enough. Nobody respects pushovers. Think of "Asshole" in corporate leadership as "a show of force" that earns begrudging respect. But to your point you can earn respect without always being an asshole, or being one for no reason at all.

I think Jobs as an example here is confusing, because he's noted as being an asshole and also an asshole, so people will read it your way and people will read it the other way.

Re: Mourning Google

#338

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Wonnk13 wrote: post #13

Tangential to the article, when I onboarded in 2017 it felt like showing up to a house party at 3am. You had missed all the action, everyone was now in some kind of stupor half awake half asleep. I think it was literal weeks after they moved "Don't be Evil" to the bottom of the employee handbook or whatever. I didn't make it to three years. I met some incredible individuals, but the org as a whole as I experienced it…

I'm glad you posted this. Honestly, while I agree with the flood of recent posts mourning Google in the wake of their layoffs (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39046825 ), some of these posts (not necessarily this one by Tim Bray, as he left Google a decade ago, but certainly lots of the other ones) kinda leave a bad taste in my mouth because they strike me as a bit self-serving.

That is, I think folks generally have seen, and commented on, Google's rot for many years now. For me the beginning of the end was in the early 2010s or so, whenever Google drastically reduced the differentiation between ads and organic results, and began loading more and more ads into the top or the results page. I felt it was the first actively user hostile change that was solely in the service of revenue for Google. So I feel it's a tad rich that all these posts are coming out from ex-Googlers lamenting Google's decline now that it's really affecting Google's employees personally. I guess in their defense it seems pretty obvious they wouldn't be posting/commenting while they were currently Googlers, but still, it seems a bit lacking in insight/introspection to see all these posts pointing to the demise of Google's culture as when they had "uncaring" layoffs. I'm thinking, no, Google's demise started a decade-plus ago; they could just paper over it for a long time with good food.

Re: Mourning Google

#339

Post by _bohm »

Apocryphon wrote: post #244
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think, you can reach people that speak of "cultural marxism" with wikipedia? I dont and i dont know an alternative since cognitive biases slowly take away the ability to freely reason about contradicting statements; their ability to reason in general.

Well, the OP seems to know a few lofty theorists and cites Hegel, yet resorts to the inflammatory meaningless epithet, so their post is all over the place. No level of depth is easily gleaned from the post; it is one of contrasts. Whatta dialectic.

Reading the OP charitably, I think it was a genuine mistake.

Re: Mourning Google

#340

Post by behnamoh »

hn8305823 wrote: post #323
psunavy03 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the function of a Jobs type character is to be the defining asshole in the organization that no one has a chance of defeating alone. Except you don't have to be an asshole to be that person, just in charge.

Just having the power isn't enough. Nobody respects pushovers. Think of "Asshole" in corporate leadership as "a show of force" that earns begrudging respect. But to your point you can earn respect without always being an asshole, or being one for no reason at all.

I wonder what it is about leaders like Steve Jobs that makes them popular despite how programmers working for them know the guy in charge has never written a line of code.

Is it charisma (whatever that means)? Is it vision? Is it luck and being at the right place at the right time? Is it a few devoted loyal programmers who spread the word about how amazing the Führer is?

I often think it also has to do with the person positioning himself/herself in crowds that appreciate/respect/value him/her. For instance, it's hard to imagine someone like Jobs at an Oracle-style corporation, or imagine Elon Musk running a bank. It seems like these types of people soon understand that certain groups match their "vibe" better, and it works as a positive feedback loop for them.

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