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Culture Change at Google

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Re: Culture Change at Google

#481

Post by zamfi »

softwaredoug wrote: post #304

It’s easy to have a culture of taking risks when you have unlimited revenue. What’s amazing to me is how timid companies get when there’s limited resources. Instead of making another big bet to get back on the revenue train, they chase trends. Like Google getting caught off guard on AI and now chasing that instead of leading here or elsewhere. I don’t know the answer. Part of the problem is you went from company lead…

Richard Thaler, the behavioral economist, is pretty sure this is because the incentive structure goes bad. An executive who goes for a new project with a 50/50 chance of either (a) making $3m or (b) losing $1m -- note the expected value of $2m -- expects a pat on the back, maybe a couple months' salary as bonus, in case (a), and to be fired in case (b). Naturally, the business would love to pursue all these opportunities, while any individual manager would almost never choose to pursue one.

This is a variant of the principal-agent problem.

Thaler's book is titled "Misbehaving" -- well worth listening to the audiobook if you have a commute!

Re: Culture Change at Google

#482

Post by throwaway20045 »

altaltson wrote: post #345

I worked at Google from the early(-ish) days up till 2019. My hot take is that the employees broke the social contract first. Sundar "MBA" Pichai is not the cause, he's the effect. The truth is, the early Google would have had no patience for the "problems" Googlers cared about between 2014 and 2020. The levels of internal hubris and employee activism about every random topic were insane. People cared more about cafe…

2015-current Googler here.

This take rings true for me.

Many Googlers show no drive in their role. Good enough work gives high compensation. Firings are for egregious performance.

If that wasn't enough, the internal culture slows output too. endless infrastructure migrations. Design docs for small changes. "Demonstrate leadership". Strategic timing of "demonstrate trajectory".

Belt tightening and slimming is a good idea.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#483

Post by taurath »

sokoloff wrote: post #408
taurath wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red badges and the equivalent elsewhere make up an astounding amount of who actually works at most major companies. They’re the poor and working class to the gentry (FTEs) and the elites (FTE executives). They’re paid 50% of what their contracting agency is paid for them, they have poor benefits if at all and live in a constant consciousness about who is higher class than them. They attend different Christmas parties…

If I have $100 to pay someone in the US, about 25% of that will go to "fringe" (taxes, health insurance, unemployment/worker's comp, 401k match, PTO/sick, etc) and that percentage is probably higher for lower-paid employees. So, start with $100, fringe expenses take $25-30, agency middleman profit/overhead/flex-risk takes maybe 20% ($20), and the end worker gets $50-55 out of the $100 the original company is paying f…

All those taxes are already being paid. It’s to ensure that the contract worker gets worse insurance and next to no benefits and therefore costs less, and also so that you can get rid of them whenever you want for someone even cheaper.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#484

Post by esafak »

mizzao wrote: post #34
baron816 wrote: post #5

> Early employees would often encourage each other to "fail fast" as a means to innovation, but that's no longer easy in an environment where failure implies a layoff. Big tech is in a really tough spot when it comes to innovation. Google has developed a reputation for killing off products too easily. Many have commented here and elsewhere that you can’t trust them to invest in using their new products because they m…

I had understood that the main reason products were killed off so easily were the promotion incentives: you get big awards for launching a product, less so for maintaining it and growing it and doing the hard iteration work required to continue improving it.

I don't understand why they never fixed the incentives.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#485

Post by petesergeant »

avgcorrection wrote: post #80
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…

> Other than people who worked there, and miss the old days … who cares? So you’re not a Googler? Or a Xoogler? Maybe you identify as a Noogler (never-Googler)?

My eyes are frequently googly

Re: Culture Change at Google

#486

Post by alexeiz »

Google hiring process was always flawed. They didn't hire talented generalists. They hired people who gamed the hiring process. Most of them are mediocre at best. As an anecdote, I worked with a couple of guys who were later hired by Google. They weren't stellar in my team (in fact I was glad they were gone), and I have a hard time to believe they were stellar at Google either.

When you have a lot of mediocre developers, you can shift them around from one project to another all day long, but it won't improve your bottom line. The only solution is to fire them. Unfortunately for Google without the change in the hiring process, they will continue to hire the same kind of people that they just fired. From this perspective Google has become the "normal" company a long time ago.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#487

Post by sokoloff »

taurath wrote: post #483
sokoloff wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have $100 to pay someone in the US, about 25% of that will go to "fringe" (taxes, health insurance, unemployment/worker's comp, 401k match, PTO/sick, etc) and that percentage is probably higher for lower-paid employees. So, start with $100, fringe expenses take $25-30, agency middleman profit/overhead/flex-risk takes maybe 20% ($20), and the end worker gets $50-55 out of the $100 the original company is paying f…

All those taxes are already being paid. It’s to ensure that the contract worker gets worse insurance and next to no benefits and therefore costs less, and also so that you can get rid of them whenever you want for someone even cheaper.

The taxes are paid in either scenario, of course.

I was responding to "They’re paid 50% of what their contracting agency is paid for them" and the contracting agency is paying those fringe items out of "what their contracting agency is paid for them".

Re: Culture Change at Google

#488

Post by froh »

ghusbands wrote: post #468
froh wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I see. and that's indeed one of the two main meanings.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/caretaker

hmmm is there some extended n-gram search these days where you can search for a specific word *with a specific meaning*?

Re: Culture Change at Google

#489

Post by Vinnl »

saagarjha wrote: post #477
Vinnl wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder how people figured out that Google was associated with Google+, Google Inbox, Google Reader, Google Talk, Google Video, Google Wave, ... (I'm just kidding; I don't actually hold a grudge against Google for terminating projects. Although I do miss Inbox. And it does looks like Google Labs was killed too?)

Those were official products, right?

That's fair enough, I suppose, though I think those are also primarily where the "Google kills everything" reputation comes from - not the Labs products.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#490

Post by hnbad »

gmadsen wrote: post #303
helboi4 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the whole point, lots of people ARE parents but aren't child raisers. Even traditional fathers who are part of the family but do not raise their kids because they expect their wife to ARE parents but are not primary raisers of their kids.

Caretaker or guardian is the word you are looking for.

Both of those words would apply to the dad in that example. Sure, you could qualify it as "primary caretaker" but that would likely be claimed by any person considering themselves "head of the family" whether they're the ones spending most time with the children or not.

The idea was to specifically include caretakers/guardians who are not parents (e.g. older siblings, grandparents or uncles/aunts) but also exclude those who do not take an active role (or take a less active role) in the actual caretaking. If my spouse does the brunt of all the caretaking, I may still be a caretaker or guardian but I don't need daycare in order to be able to work (though daycare may enable my spouse to work).

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