Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 144 posts

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#41

Post by inferiorhuman »

tialaramex wrote: post #25
gorgoiler wrote: post #17

> Brynjolfsson: ”I asked Sundar [about Google losing the initiative]. He didn't really give me a very sharp answer. > Schmidt: Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. The reason startups work is because the people work like hell. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the fact of the matter is if you go found a company and compete against the other star…

> you're not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week Huh, I guess I dreamed the first start-up I worked for (a couple of decades ago) where indeed I only came in one day a week. Yes of course you "work like hell". We had a nasty leak bug and I set things up so that day or night if the leak was detected my stereo would go maximum volume and play "Straight Outta Compton". How does commuting c…

  If I'm sat in a car
There are other ways to commute. Commuting via train gave me a chance to go for a walk through parts of the city I'd otherwise not spend a lot of time in. Being stuck in suburban hell currently, working 100% from home is a nightmare scenario for me. Asshole neighbors. Constant noise (far worse than e.g. Oakland). Shit infrastructure (electric, telecom, whatever).

And, in my experience, collaboration almost always suffers. One coworker used to work 100% from his man cave but also refused to invest in getting decent WiFi coverage down there.

  then it's also possible we're discussing the album that's playing, or a
  video game we both enjoyed, or a novel we're both reading.
So? Even though HN has a hard on for eliminating human interaction, socialization is important.

That said, Schmidt is wrong to pin Google's failures on remote work. Pichai is a fucking moron and Google's toxic culture is destroying both their ability to put out competitive products and to keep anything around long enough to get meaningful market share.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#42

Post by panarky »

freeopinion wrote: post #37

What is Google supposed to win at? Being the most popular search engine? Being the highest grossing ad agency? Having the highest average salaries? Selling the most used cars? Curing cancer? Owning more generators than anyone else? Contributing money to youth groups? How do we judge whether Google is winning?

In our system, winning == market capitalization.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#43

Post by dangus »

pknomad wrote: post #26
thrdbndndn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question: what would be the refutation of this opinion, if any? Out of options like "Google are not actually losing", "Google are losing but not because they chose work life balance", "Google are, indeed, but so be it", etc.

I'm not a googler, but my take would be that Google was a smaller ship with technical founders at the helm who understood the problem and acted accordingly with first mover benefits. I remember when I started to use search engines in grade school (AskJeeves, AltaVista, etc) and Google just had the most relevant answers. Google is now a behemoth that seems to just chuck money and promo packets at problems (Stadia, Goo…

I don’t think startup aficionados and hustle culture members realize that the world runs on C-players.

You’re right, startup people have a drive to build great things and they burn the midnight oil and they get divorced during the development of the original iPhone, etc.

But the people who keep the lights on at most companies especially big ones like Google are a sea of average, steady, stable employees who do their tasks and not much else, go home at 5 or maybe earlier and have no interest in burning themselves out so that the CEO can have a second private jet.

And you don’t want to run your company on all A-players and 10x developers because once the thing is built they’ll get bored and move on to the next thing, or they’ll hit a mental breakdown and rage quit because they’re the bulb burning brightest.

Those C-players will just keep clocking in, they won’t be poached by more attractive places to work, they won’t be difficult to cover for when they go on leave, and they won’t write code that goes over the head of other C-players.

Technically, a developer at a public company should work harder to boost the stock price because they’re getting shares as compensation. But at the same time, making 5% more in stock value isn’t worth working 50% harder.

I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with the culture at Google. People who wish Google would be exciting again like Schmidt are just grasping at nostalgia. Boring business may be boring but boring business is excellent business.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#44

Post by jordanb »

aaomidi wrote: post #29
the_black_hand wrote: post #14

Listened to the first few mins. Did he say anything controversial in the? The part about Google work-life balance isn't that big a deal. It's no secret that startups grind more.

Googlers used to regularly work 50-60 hours. You did have the teams that had a decent WLB, but it was generally the non public facing stuff. Google’s WLB ironically got significantly better after the layoffs. No one cared about the company anymore.

Funny that pretty much describes the company I work for. People would work their asses off. Pull all-nighters, work through holidays, etc. Then the rounds of layoffs started happening and now nobody cares at all about the company. Everyone just does the minimum while planning their next thing.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#45

Post by xyse53 »

aaomidi wrote: post #29
the_black_hand wrote: post #14

Listened to the first few mins. Did he say anything controversial in the? The part about Google work-life balance isn't that big a deal. It's no secret that startups grind more.

Googlers used to regularly work 50-60 hours. You did have the teams that had a decent WLB, but it was generally the non public facing stuff. Google’s WLB ironically got significantly better after the layoffs. No one cared about the company anymore.

This. I worked hard at Google for years because I was pationate about my projects and my colleagues. Then over the past few years especially starting around dragonfly and maven we started getting more of an us vs them culture pushed down from the top. Layoffs were the end for me. I didn't exactly quiet quit but I toned it down and only worked on what I absolutely felt like.

Then jumped over to a startup where we work hard but in a much more organic and empowering way. People come in when it makes sense.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#46

Post by brewdad »

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #3
metadat wrote: post #2

Why was it deleted? Are there non-youtube hosted copies out there, perhaps an archive.org or torrent link?

From what I understand, it’s over the controversy in his statement about Google losing competitive advantage because they chose work life balance over in-office collaboration.

The it’s good, actually, to steal others IP. If you get caught later, the lawyers will fix it bit also probably wasn’t his finest message.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#48

Post by golergka »

dangus wrote: post #38
ldjkfkdsjnv wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took this more as Schmidt being disappointed in what Google has become. He really did build Google, its completely valid for him to be mad about the state of the company culture wise.

Or maybe mad that he wasted his life having no work-life balance and then realizing that lots of companies with work-life balance are productive and profitable. I’m ordering something from Europe where the factory is shut down for the entire month of August. I just have to wait an extra month for that item. The company still gets my money because I need the item. I also use a piece of software written by a European c…

Not working for a whole month just sounds awful. I have a lot of hobbies outside of work, but it is still the most interesting and fulfilling part of my life. Even though I need breaks for it now and then doesn’t mean I won’t miss it.

I get to spend time with wonderful people, solving interesting puzzles, building something that people love and that makes their days better. I used to work in game dev, so it brought people joy, but now I make developer tools, and it using better tools makes them love their jobs more, and makes them more effective. Some of the people who use the tools are literally doing cancer research or other very meaningful stuff.

How could I get the same feeling of fulfilment from the most amazing vacation?

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#49

Post by jarsin »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #28

I have a question out of curiosity: Has anyone or anything ever succeeded in deleting/removing anything from the Internet once it goes up? I’ve realized that anything that goes online will be (perhaps unintentionally) leaked, hacked, uncovered, archived, altered, restored, referenced, and what not.

It's a publicity trick. See The Kardashian's.

Re: Eric Schmidt deleted Stanford interview

#50

Post by nextos »

kamaal wrote: post #39
nextos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of great startups have remote teams so this argument by Schmidt is pretty weak. Google is hybrid, not even remote. Also, I don't think that well motivated and engineers work or produce less while WFH. It could be the opposite. Less interruptions are key, as explained in Peopleware . But bad managers love controlling people in open plan offices. Regardless, I found it surprising Schmidt didn't talk about other st…

>>I don't think that well motivated and engineers work or produce less while WFH. Thats the whole problem isn't it. Years back I was involved in a project(not WFH), like everyone worked at office. But the manager/lead was sort of a totally disengaged person. He would sit in a conf room all day. And come up with some weird things about freedom to work the way people liked. There was no ticketing system, the code repo…

I agree, but Google is not even remote WFH, they are hybrid. This is ideal.

You go to the office regularly to sync with people, but also make long uninterrupted bursts of focused work from your home.

Post reply on HN