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Google wants employees to move faster

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Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#51

Post by Zigurd »

The notion that startups are more efficient at creating great products is a massive case of survivorship bias, a subclass of selection bias. A full facepalm duh!

Either he does not understand that, and that's bad, or he is trying to put one over on some very smart employees who do understand that, and that won't work.

You can make a big company less inefficient, but everyone who thinks startup efficiency is simply a culture you can recreate inside a big company is going to be disappointed.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#52

Post by cletus »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #41
cletus wrote: post #15

Having worked at Google, this is entirely self-inflicted. This once internal now leaked video [1] summed it up pretty well. There is so much process you have to go through to do anything. A lot of it makes sense but it comes at the expense of speed. More than a decade ago OKR (Objectives and Key Results) culture set in where once you just worked on things until they were ready. OKRs are really insidious because what…

Google makes >90% of profits from Search and Ads. Even if you group in half of gsuite for Gmail and all of Android (for the default search app) - that's still not even half of the company. The profit per employee there is probably close to $1.5M - and that's after average compensation above $500k.

And we arrive at collectivism vs individualism and the tendency of people to privatize gains but socialize losses.

Yes, search and ads are the golden goose but so many things contribute to that success. Chrome, for example, is absolutely crucial to search quality. Maps is huge. Android is also critical. Search and ads use a whole bunch of infra (eg Borg, storage, load balancing, serving infra, traffic management, data center infra and so on). Even the people who manage all the corp Linux distributions and video conferencing infra contribute. Source control, build infra, testing infra and so on.

Deciding who does and doesn't "contribute" for something so interconnected like this quickly devolves into a political exercise at best and a popularity contest at worst.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#53

Post by aleph_minus_one »

MiscIdeaMaker99 wrote: post #22

I've never heard of a company that wants their employees to move slower.

> I've never heard of a company that wants their employees to move slower.

Companies don't formulate it this way, but in practice, by

- having lots of meetings

- introducing more and more red tape

- introducing more and more layers of management

- introducing more and more reporting requirements

- ...

they actually practice it.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#54

Post by Traubenfuchs »

MiscIdeaMaker99 wrote: post #22

I've never heard of a company that wants their employees to move slower.

My dad likes to tell the story of him working at a post office as a teenager. He was very motivated and worked fast, so his colleagues urged him to slow down, otherwise they would get more work.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#56

Post by John23832 »

I really cannot express how much I dislike these midlevel management figures that do nothing but talk and engage in LinkedIn style virtue signaling.

They don't touch code, they don't touch any technologies (not even making prototypes so they they have a grounded understanding). They just regurgitate the socio-business zeitgeist. "Oh we must get more lean. Oh these workers must be lazy. AI AI AI".

And yet their multi million dollar pay packages MUST be equitable compensation for their in-the-box unoriginal business thinking. They went to HBS or SBS... they must be thought leaders, right?

Instead of sacking the people who dig ditches, what if half the talking heads left? I'm sure THAT would actually clear the air.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#57

Post by belter »

paxys wrote: post #6

Meaningless executive speak. How should employees move faster exactly? Unless you are sharing exact guidelines, cutting down pointless projects and reducing work load, removing red tape etc. how do you expect everyone to magically ship quicker? If startups are beating you at your game with a tiny fraction of the employees, funding and resources, it should be obvious that the number of hours put into the job isn't the…

Moving faster... but in which direction exactly?

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#58

Post by Clent »

afavour wrote: post #10
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #2

> “People come to us because we are trusted,” Raghavan said. “They may have a new gizmo out there that people like to play with but they still come to Google to verify what they see there because it is the trusted source and it becomes more critical in this era of generative AI.” Seriously, in which reality-distortion bubble does Prabhakar Raghavan live?

I actually think he’s right. Us Hacker News types don’t trust Google at all but for the average person it’s where they go to find information, and we’ve seen time and time again that the majority either don’t understand or don’t care about many privacy concerns. All this stuff is a little handwavey but a 2023 report: https://pro-assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2023/05/Mos... Has a specific breakout about Google.…

Data dumping a 57 page pdf about Global brands is the best way to communicate something specifically about Google.

But based on the graph I assume you're talking about page 12 which has a graph of various Google products. The data only goes back to 2018 and ends in Apr 2023. There is a clear downward trend since then Google Maps is the least affected but is still down from the low.

The trend I've seen is people on here have voice a significant lost trust over the past year. A loss of trust that is only growing. I feel its safe to assume we loss trust first since this is our industry.

If we're losing trust and the general public has already losing trust, I expect that general public's trust to catch up soon and show a steeper decline.

Anecdotally, I've already seen dissatisfaction with Google coming up more and more frequently in the areas of the internet I visit where the topics are far less technical. Unlike here those people are less aware of the alternatives.

I expect that when people realize Google is the new Boeing, they will abandon it quickly. There are many alternatives.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#59

Post by afavour »

Clent wrote: post #58
afavour wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think he’s right. Us Hacker News types don’t trust Google at all but for the average person it’s where they go to find information, and we’ve seen time and time again that the majority either don’t understand or don’t care about many privacy concerns. All this stuff is a little handwavey but a 2023 report: https://pro-assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2023/05/Mos... Has a specific breakout about Google.…

Data dumping a 57 page pdf about Global brands is the best way to communicate something specifically about Google. But based on the graph I assume you're talking about page 12 which has a graph of various Google products. The data only goes back to 2018 and ends in Apr 2023. There is a clear downward trend since then Google Maps is the least affected but is still down from the low. The trend I've seen is people on he…

> The trend I've seen is people on here

Right but my point is that we’re weird outliers. I can absolutely believe that the general public’s trust in Google is lower than it was a decade ago but from what to what? If people really didn’t trust Google would Chrome still be the overwhelmingly popular browser choice?

I simply don’t see the evidence that the level of distrust seen in HN is reflected in the general population.

Re: Google wants employees to move faster

#60

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

cletus wrote: post #52
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google makes >90% of profits from Search and Ads. Even if you group in half of gsuite for Gmail and all of Android (for the default search app) - that's still not even half of the company. The profit per employee there is probably close to $1.5M - and that's after average compensation above $500k.

And we arrive at collectivism vs individualism and the tendency of people to privatize gains but socialize losses. Yes, search and ads are the golden goose but so many things contribute to that success. Chrome, for example, is absolutely crucial to search quality. Maps is huge. Android is also critical. Search and ads use a whole bunch of infra (eg Borg, storage, load balancing, serving infra, traffic management, dat…

Maps is part of the search org.

Chrome is part of the android org.

I already included those.

I'm basically not counting YouTube, Cloud, most of Gsuite, Waymo (and all the other bets).

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