Leaving Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaving Google

#391

Post by mehrdada » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

nuerow wrote: post #249

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…

> 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. This assertion presumes that it is impossible to propose any form of compensation that's enticing without involving stock. This is not only baseless but also flies in the face of reality, as other tech companies, including other FAANGs, barely offer any…

You could pay them in other means, but there were constraints there are obvious constraints that I did not spell out. We are assuming a non-growing company that now needs to pay extra cash to you top up employee comp with cash. Your margin will start to shrink, and so does your earnings (the premise was no growth, remember), continuing the downward trend of your stock.

Plus, your competitors are not sitting still. People will go work for the more exciting companies even if you pay them equal amounts anyway (to vary their type of work and grow their careers) rather than staying and watching the thing die and doing the same thing for 30 years.

Re: Leaving Google

#392

Post by efficax » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #191

mavelikara wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Product Management, in many orgs, is the old wine of Taylorism in a new bottle, where there is a "thinking class," and there is a separate "doing class." The stereotype of an engineer with poor social skills who can't grasp the "high-level cross functional relationships and strategies" (from nostrebored's sibling comment) is not very different from Taylor's idea of workers: One of the very first requirements for a ma…

This is exactly right. I studied both engineering and management, so I have experienced both schools. Actually understanding science and manipulating the world is hard. Try to explain to a non techie how a car moves, or how a web request happens. They can never understand it on the required level to fix things. Now try to explain to an engineer how a bond works, or how industrial strategy works. He can do both his ow…

> Try to explain to a non techie how a car moves

I always love a classic hacker news take where software engineers are the only people who can understand how things work. It's not like high school dropouts are ever car mechanics.

Re: Leaving Google

#393

Post by random314 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

throwawaylinux wrote: post #266

random314 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how economics of scale work. This is zero sum thinking. Google buying green electricity makes green electricity cheaper, not more expensive. More producers are incentivized to produce green electricity as Google's demand increases continuously. Other companies like Microsoft and Facebook go green as well, and the economies of scale kick in. Prices start collapsing. This is actually happening right now. If…

> Google buying green electricity makes green electricity cheaper, not more expensive. The marginal cost of puchasing more energy might go down (or it might go up if you are pushing up the demand). But not the total expenditure on energy. > Prices start collapsing. This is actually happening right now. Thermal coal prices are at all time record highs right now. It's 4x the price it was a few years ago when we were al…

How is the price of thermal coal spiking and solar prices collapsing not a good thing?!

Are you sure that if the situation were inverted you wouldn't still be complaining? Damned if you, damned if you don't.

Re: Leaving Google

#394

Post by random314 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #228

random314 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how economics of scale work. This is zero sum thinking. Google buying green electricity makes green electricity cheaper, not more expensive. More producers are incentivized to produce green electricity as Google's demand increases continuously. Other companies like Microsoft and Facebook go green as well, and the economies of scale kick in. Prices start collapsing. This is actually happening right now. If…

The fact that there is a learning effect doesn't mean it's good to consume more electricity. If you want to argue positive sum, you would need to show a the consumed green electricity displaces more than the equivalent amount of fossil electricity plus co2 fp of measures used to handle variability of renewables vs nearly flat demand from data centers. Which seems hard.

I mean we might as well shut down electricity to all of our homes if we want to make this argument. And we could argue with each other over snail mail.

But I suspect that will actually be worse from CO2 emissions perspective.

Re: Leaving Google

#395

Post by wjamesg » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:53 PM UTC

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.

My thoughts as well

Re: Leaving Google

#396

Post by random314 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

ant6n wrote: post #242

random314 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use the same argument to argue that EVs are a scam, because some electricity is generated by coal. The point is that electricity can have a green source, liquid carbon fuel can't. You absolutely cannot compare the two. FWIW, Google's data centers are primarily powered by green energy.

> Google's data centers are primarily powered by green energy. But not since they declared themselves carbon neutral (which they originally accomplished with certificates). Note the original claim was 'carbon neutral since 2008'. Google also uses a large amount of resources besides electrical energy, so claiming to be neutral is a scam unless they actually sequester co2 permanently. > You can use the same argument to…

> Google also uses a large amount of resources besides electrical energy, so claiming to be neutral is a scam unless they actually sequester co2 permanently.

I am going to have to ask for a citation for this. They claim to be carbon neutral, not that they don't use any resources at all.

>> > Google's data centers are primarily powered by green energy.

> But not since they declared themselves carbon neutral

Nobody has made this claim

> Note the original claim was 'carbon neutral since 2008'.

Which is true.

> But I do argue that EVs are not carbon neutral.

That is obvious

Re: Leaving Google

#397

Post by justicezyx » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:00 PM UTC

ido wrote: post #125

mikepurvis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that. There are plenty of examples of "boutique" companies who pay well and have insanely good retention over the long term— 37signals/basecamp as one example, at least until that dustup earlier this year. Valve is probably another. It's not hard to imagine a Google that had taken this path, just focused indefinitely on search & search ads, run itself with <1000 highly skilled, highly paid employee…

Valve doesn’t have as many employees but they definitely grow in both revenue and product line (vr, deck, they had other hardware products before - steam itself was a “side project” to distribute half life 2!)

Everyone knows that valve mostly care about steam nowadays, and at most one other core gaming product.

They largely abandoned dota 2, and CS is mostly plowing without any sign of major changes.

If steam were not this successful, it would have to hire more to grow revenue. It was just that steam as a platform is so efficient in utilizing manpower, it makes it less hungry on hiring.

Most organization aspiring growth has to find a way. It could be the market is growing, or better tech, or more employee, or more often, a mix of 2 or more of these or other unmentioned factors.

Re: Leaving Google

#398

Post by prox » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #320

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…

This is what people seem to forget. A company that doesn't grow for all intents and purposes is a dead company. Or in the M&A world we call it "distressed". It doesn't matter how profitable you are if you don't get grow there are serious implications - employee motivation, loss of talent, erosion of customer services, etc.

This seems like a popular and reflective comment, but this is a very cultural idea in my amateur opinion. It seems like this -needs- to be so, and many do so because of that belief. But in reality it is a self perpetuating hamster wheel of burn out bliss a company is setting itself up for.

Re: Leaving Google

#399

Post by justicezyx » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #23

freyir wrote: post #17

“Quite a few activists and researchers were fired for asking Google to be a bit more ethical” In the examples the author cited, those activists and researchers were fired for reasons going beyond “asking Google to be a bit more ethical. And frankly it doesn’t seem ethical for activists, researchers, and the author to deliberately misconstrue facts whenever they believe they’re on the right side of an ethical (and som…

I'm not sure this is true. Normally I'd be inclined to agree with you, but the Timnit situation was handled badly. Objectively, there was nothing wrong with her paper. You may have a point about the other researchers. I'm not familiar enough with their situations. But I dug into Timnit's pretty thoroughly. Their recent behavior isn't too encouraging either: https://archive.md/7jCQY (Related Twitter thread: https://tw…

If the now died down Timnit reporting did not convince you that Timnit didn't apply the right tactic, if we agree to set aside the legitimacy of her cause in the first place (which itself was and still is under intense debate), then there does not seem any good way to unify our views.

Re: Leaving Google

#400

Post by puglr » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #145

ultrasounder wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a normie I sometimes wonder what happens to FAANGlers(googlers + other FAANG). You are used doing things the FAANG way and been doing it for a while and now it’s too late for you to learn how the “rest of the world” does so how does one adapt? Just curious. I find it hard to believe that one has transferable skills after doing time at FAANG.

Well paying jobs typically don't look for people with experience in specific technologies, rather they look for people with experience in relevant domains. And the domain experience you learn at FAANG is worth a ton, lots of companies wants to be more like FAANG. Example: You are making a search engine, you use technology X. Would you rather hire a person who worked on Google search but didn't work with technology X,…

In my recent interviewing cycle I got dinged in most interviews for not being a React expert. Every panel knew going in that my React experience was recent and limited. I have 4+ years of relevant domain experience at a FAANG on my resume. I laughed with interviewers about how every few years the de facto tech stack changes and every team I've ever joined required me to learn completely new (to me) frameworks. Still got dinged.

I wish what you're saying was the truth but I think it's very much the minority.