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

Culture Change at Google

social.clawhammer.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 520 posts

Re: Culture Change at Google

#461

Post by a_vanderbilt »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #69

People have been quick to point out how Google's culture has had a fall from grace, but I don't think I've seen too many mention that the rest of the industry copied (to varying degrees) a lot of Google's culture in a good way, narrowing the gap quite a bit. When I joined the tech industry in the early 2000s, most companies, including many tech companies, were very Office Space esque. Drab cube farms with dull carpet…

We've seen the vilification of the MBA types over the past decade and a half as a downstream effect too. The technical types always had a distaste, but now it's bled into the mainstream and amplified by the ongoing economic conditions. As the monetary value of Internet-driven services grew, it tilted power to the doers in technical fields. The disrupters in the industry weren't the product people anymore, it was the engineers making things.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#462

Post by eastbound »

vlovich123 wrote: post #287
eastbound wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, Google’s choice of architecture prevents them from open-sourcing or maintaining projects a tad longer than absolute necessary. I’d say they dug their own grave, if it has such a large impact on the trust of customers. Maybe Google3’s architecture was excellent for worldwide scalability and costs, but let’s see which one matters in the long term.

I listed many reasons why open sourcing wouldn’t make sense and you seem to have hyperfixated on just one. Yes - Google chose a monorepo because of the engineering and business advantages it gave them. For example, all binaries had a common dependency that implemented all sorts of common functionality they found binaries on their servers needed out of the box - that’s why a simple c++ hello world on Google3 results i…

I didn’t mean to focus entirely on Google’s approach to developers. However, one has to notice that Google has lost the upper hand over the web since ChatGPT came about. It can still be summarized in your sentence:

> but that’s not the people Google cares about in terms of public trust

Exactly. At the beginning, Google cared a lot about perception from technology-minded people. It was necessary to rise. Now, this original audience doesn’t matter to them, as you very well explain it, with your explanation that they weighed nothing in the balance of choices for all of the (perceived) upsides of their architecture. Because it’s a megalith with well-established business streams, which puts them outside of danger from the whims of public perception.

The business streams are:

- Workplace: Google is an email provider,

- GCP: Infrastructure company (who doesn’t care about developers, remember),

- Ads: Basically a leech. Everyone associates Google’s services to spying people by any means necessary (hi Chrome, hi Analytics, hi Google Search).

- Youtube: Who likes Youtubers? It’s the most degrading title in society, no-one would like their son-in-law to be a youtuber.

Morally, it has lost its stance. Technologically, it’s behind Microsoft. Socially, it has incentivized verbosity on the web so much that nothing is searchable anymore, shooting their own foot, and shooting the entire web with it.

The glorious USSR lasted 80 years on the remains of their former glory (and on the remains of food that was still produced). I just hope Google’s descent will be less painful, hopefully overnight.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#463

Post by a_vanderbilt »

jacquesm wrote: post #44
kderbyma wrote: post #27

Alphabet has ruined it's entire portfolio if measured by the initial vision of each product. They have decimated the once great platforms they developed in pursuit of ever canabalizing their consumers

As well as lots of stuff they acquired and left to rot.

I think that's Google hemartia. They execute really well initially, but falter on maintaining and nurturing ideas and products. The internal incentives regarding promotions and pay amplify the problem. Maintaining or improving a product isn't as impactful to one's career as creating an entirely new one. They have a half dozen chat apps because they unintentionally created an engineering "crabs in the bucket" situation. Not to say they are anywhere near as bad as the companies who do it on purpose a la stack ranking though.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#464

Post by [deleted] »

ziddoap wrote: post #392
dfxm12 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Nobody Goes There Anymore. It’s Too Crowded" - Yogi Berra The point isn't about popularity (or not) of the daycare. The point is that on-site daycare isn't a competitive advantage for Google, because it is understood that the perk is rarely available.

> The point is that on-site daycare isn't a competitive advantage for Google, because it is understood that the perk is rarely available/convenient. Except for the people who filled up all of the slots of the daycare, right? Surely it was seen as an advantage to those people, it was available, and it was convenient. Which I think was the point of the original poster. Implying that dry cleaning and daycare have the sa…

[deleted]

Re: Culture Change at Google

#465

Post by a_vanderbilt »

mschuster91 wrote: post #52

> Let me explain. In a typical company, when priorities shift, you "downsize" (or cancel) a project, and then use the money to add people to a different, more important project. The common way to do this is fire people from the first project, then rehire a bunch of new people in the second project. It's easy, it's simple, it's expected. This is funny for me as a German, because here as a company you are not allowed t…

It's also incredibly shortsighted, and one of those aspects of business in America that contributes to the problems it has. All that institutional knowledge lost that could have been helpful in the new project. I will say that it is usually the worse run companies that are guilty of such things. The startup crowd that largely makes (made) Hacker News was spared this because a startup couldn't survive doing that. America has been coming down off the Jack Welch school of business for the past decade and a half, which perpetuated the culture that birthed the hate for MBAs and complete lack of faith in any company.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#466

Post by a_vanderbilt »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #55
petesergeant wrote: post #18

Other than people who worked there, and miss the old days … who cares? Google has transitioned into a mature tech company, which basically means they’re just an investment vehicle now managing assets. They’ll buy the innovation they need, but otherwise management’s job is to predictably manage share prices and profit. The nostalgia is nice for people who worked there, but the maturity of the business being presented…

Google is a bit like Microsoft under Steve Ballmer. It had lost its way. There was no leadership. Most of what they tried failed or wasn't that great. And yet it was still raking in the profits. And then MS turned it around. All it took was new leadership. They just overtook Apple as the most valuable company in the world. Just a string of good, solid decisive leadership. Satya Nadella turned that company around. Cou…

As much hate Microsoft gets these days they are doing a great job recovering from Ballmer. Satya's moonshot investment in OpenAI is probably going to be what cements them a place in the future despite Windows' mindshare eroding and Azure providing lukewarm service.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#467

Post by jacquesm »

a_vanderbilt wrote: post #463
jacquesm wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well as lots of stuff they acquired and left to rot.

I think that's Google hemartia. They execute really well initially, but falter on maintaining and nurturing ideas and products. The internal incentives regarding promotions and pay amplify the problem. Maintaining or improving a product isn't as impactful to one's career as creating an entirely new one. They have a half dozen chat apps because they unintentionally created an engineering "crabs in the bucket" situatio…

I think another important factor is that what's a viable business to one party isn't worth it to Google simply because they can use that engineering talent more effectively in a monetary sense elsewhere. Even spinning them out doesn't make sense from a numbers perspective. The big problem with that is that they utterly ruin the landscape for everybody who isn't Google and who would operate just fine if it weren't for the size 20 boots giant that tramples all over the space before giving up on it.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#468

Post by ghusbands »

froh wrote: post #286
truculent wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language should be adequate to the context of a conversation. If you were writing a legal document, or some policy for a kindergarten it might make sense to make that distinction, but this is a public forum with many non-native speakers. Child-raiser is a concept pretty much all of us are familiar with and if you say child-raisers we'll understand you mean people using the service because they care for young kids.

child-riser is a lovely neologism, more self-explanatory than caretaker, but still caretaker is well established. and to clarify: I chuckled with sympathy reading your response :-)

Caretaker is not well-established where I am. A caretaker takes care of grounds of schools and other similar large buildings.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#469

Post by LarsDu88 »

Aeolun wrote: post #185
Eisenstein wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since VR was mentioned tangentially, how many 'Valve hackers' is one John Carmack worth?

Zero, right now, as he’s not working with Facebook any more.

Not only not working there, but distinctly said he left because he complained that too much money was being sent down the money hole and productivity per capita was abysmal

Re: Culture Change at Google

#470

Post by Booourns »

jasode wrote: post #186
fuzztester wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets. Many companies used to do that both in the US and other countries. Some probably still do. SAS Institute (well-known maker of statistical and other software) did, for many years, last I checked. Don't know if they still are that way. Update: Looks like they are: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Institute [ In J…

>I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets. >>SAS Institute (well-known maker of statistical and other software) did, for many years, last I checked. Don't know if they still are that way. Update: Looks like they are: No... SAS Institute actually wanted to go public earlier in 2020 and then 2024 but they've now pushed the timeline back again to 2025 because…

Part of the reason they are going public is Goodknight is getting up there in years and something about a succession plan.
Post reply on HN