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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#441

Post by kenjackson »

drubio wrote: post #117

> Take Jeanine Banks, for example, who manages the department that somewhat arbitrarily contains (among other things) Flutter, Dart, Go, and Firebase. Her department nominally has a strategy, but I couldn't leak it if I wanted to; I literally could never figure out what any part of it meant, even after years of hearing her describe it. Her understanding of what her teams are doing is minimal at best; she frequently m…

His critique of his manager doesn’t paint him in the most positive light either. The fact that she seems to articulate the strategy but he doesn’t understand it is something I’ve seen on a few occasions where people effectively refuse to acknowledge the strategy because they disagree with some aspect of it.

His lack of specificity on almost all counts but her name also makes me question his judgment.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#442

Post by whoknowsidont »

emodendroket wrote: post #411
downWidOutaFite wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping quiet about perceived problems is exactly the kind of toxic political lack of transparency that Ian is calling out here.

How much is it really doing if you’re making the criticism after you left?

Infinitely more than never talking about it, at the very least. It definitely will empower others to talk about it by validating their perceptions and concerns.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#443

Post by teen »

e_y_ wrote: post #438
eslaught wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was an intern at Google circa 2010, there was a guest lecture from a business professor who described exactly this process. At the end of it, he made a comment like, "Of course none of this will happen to Google. You're too innovative." But literally every single prediction of his came true, and I witnessed some of them happening in front of my own eyes even in just the months that I was there (and certainly i…

On paper, Google's throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks strategy (that has lead to a substantial Google Graveyard) seems like it was intended to allow for some parts of the company to innovate while keeping the core products stable and boring. In practice, many of those innovations (Google Inbox, anyone?) were not deemed profitable enough to keep around. Others were never given the resources to grow beyon…

I mean that incubator was a total waste of money. No one did anything, everyone was a bser from the top, and 95% of the projects were total failures. I think there were maybe 3 "successful" projects.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#445

Post by tcbawo »

gorbachev wrote: post #258
tcbawo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have come to the opinion that being an executive at any sufficiently large company revolves around building a cult of personality. Any contribution they make would be nearly impossible to compare against what a possible replacement candidate would make. This might be a fair or unfair characterization -- it might even be both! Building a personal brand by being a cheerleader for your company/organization, maintainin…

I don't think that's quite accurate. There are genuinely amazing, highly respected executives in some (most?) tech companies. I do agree though that the public facing image of a lot of them is a lot of hype. A lot of the big companies want to build an aura of infallible leader extraordinaire's for their management team.

I didn’t say that they weren’t talented or deserving people. But at some point, managing perception is essential to surviving and excelling. There are plenty of geniuses that fail to get their due. The hagiography (especially on this site) is particularly strong and often paints these people as larger than life. Based on the downvotes of my opinion, I seem to have struck a nerve.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#446

Post by ianmcgowan »

antupis wrote: post #373
miohtama wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called Scumpeter's creative destruction (to be distinguished from other creative destruction) and why large companies may lose the ability to be innovative and compete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction However. it's hard to see Google's core business dominance, search and ad, to be destroyed very easily. It's also super confusing that no other entity has been able to create a matching service…

5 years ago it was hard to see , now I ampersonally using more chatgpt than Google.

Yeah, it's hard to go back to wading through SEO-optimized BS after just getting a decent answer (which, to be fair to the AI-sceptics, you do have to think about before using blindly).

It's an interesting mental shift - I wasn't googling because I wanted to find a web page, I was googling because I wanted an answer to a question. An AR or mixed-mode personal assistant is going to be a game changer.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#447

Post by yojo »

pardoned_turkey wrote: post #346
yojo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think “rediscovering” the old ways of operating is a charitable interpretation that makes it sound like these patterns are somehow better. Silos and fiefdoms don’t benefit the company, they benefit the professional managers that are using them to grow their careers. I subscribe to the interpretation that sufficiently successful companies inevitably attract ladder climbers whose goals are personal advancement at all…

As the other commenter mentioned, silos are not inherently bad. Indeed, in a large company, they're necessary to avoid dysfunction. You want stable groups of competent people who share priorities and lore, who own well-defined parts of the business, and who have the autonomy to set the strategy for their thing. "Founder-led" companies are more dynamic mostly because they're smaller. Once they get to 100,000 employees…

Maybe? I'm having a hard time finding a contemporary example. Bezos bowed out (though Amazon culture was famously bad for years), and even Facebook doesn't have 100k employees.

My point though is there is a difference between having a leader who got there by politicking versus a leader who got there by building a great company. They're both going to have different strengths and weaknesses, but there's at least a chance the founder isn't going to tolerate the sycophants.

An example: I was at Google 2005-2008. My manager's manager's manager was one of the early empire builders. He hired like crazy with no plan at all for the people he was hiring, and kept getting promoted for managing such a rapidly growing org. Eventually he rose high enough up that someone near the top realized what was going on, and promptly fired the guy, leaving behind a fair-sized mess as folks tried to figure out what to do with all his hires.

From what I've read lately, if this guy had just shown up to Google a few years later, he'd still be getting promoted.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#448

Post by lifeisstillgood »

antupis wrote: post #373
miohtama wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called Scumpeter's creative destruction (to be distinguished from other creative destruction) and why large companies may lose the ability to be innovative and compete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction However. it's hard to see Google's core business dominance, search and ad, to be destroyed very easily. It's also super confusing that no other entity has been able to create a matching service…

5 years ago it was hard to see , now I ampersonally using more chatgpt than Google.

Is that because ChatGPT returns better results, or because when it returns results, it wraps them in words that make you feel more comfortable accepting them as better

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#449

Post by Andrex »

satvikpendem wrote: post #112
hot_gril wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. The people complaining about culture shifts there seem to want the company to pretend it's ~2006. I was never impressed with old Google. All their revenue came from ads, and they loss-led other projects. Fun, but the market has matured from that. Since I joined several years ago, perks have really degraded but overall I've become more satisfied with my actual work. Over-engineered pet projects in and a…

> All their revenue came from ads, and they loss-led other projects. Great, market has matured from that. Has it? Seems like Google still makes most of their money via ads and everything else is a loss leader.

Google has been trying very hard to diversify, mostly through Cloud.

How well they are succeeding at that is up to interpretation but they are chipping away at Ads' percentage of revenue. It used to be higher than 85% but as of 2022 it's down to only being 58% of operating revenue[0].

0. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/05/18/how-does-google-make-mon...

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#450

Post by compiler-guy »

teen wrote: post #443
e_y_ wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On paper, Google's throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks strategy (that has lead to a substantial Google Graveyard) seems like it was intended to allow for some parts of the company to innovate while keeping the core products stable and boring. In practice, many of those innovations (Google Inbox, anyone?) were not deemed profitable enough to keep around. Others were never given the resources to grow beyon…

I mean that incubator was a total waste of money. No one did anything, everyone was a bser from the top, and 95% of the projects were total failures. I think there were maybe 3 "successful" projects.

Pretty standard rate of failure for early stage startups.
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