61–70 of 520 posts
> 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…
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…
If historic Broadway theaters in NYC transitioned to blocks of server farms, then many people would have a feeling, "Singing and dancing and live art used to happen here, and that history is worth continuing, here," even if for economic reasons it wouldn't and couldn't anymore. . . and so I don't think it's only wistful or wishfulness speaking. It's positive to believe that places where creativity happened and was on…
We should get a "Landmarks Preservation Commission" for corporate cultures.
The non profit people never stood a chance.
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…
or abusing monopoly and network effect.
No one takes a Google resume seriously and everyone who works there talks about little they work.
In a sense a massive transfer of wealth from capital to labor: the finest example of redistribution in the world.
Is any company still like this? I was at Google in ‘06-07, and again ‘09-11, and already there were obvious differences. You just can’t scale “total internal transparency” when the company doubles in size every year. And at some point you need just plain-old-“good” engineers to make the A/B tests happen and all the other stuff that doesn’t excite the PhDs. And at some point you need product people too, because you st…
I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets. Maybe become profitable and pay off the VCs then don't go public? Then you can resist the pressure for growth quarter by quarter, and remain the 'right size' that your internal culture demands. Did Valve corporation do something like that?
> he most incredible and unusual thing that struck me about Google's early culture was the tendency to value employees above all else
At that time, those employees are Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Rob Pike, Paul Buchheit, Lars, and etc. Nowadays we got employees who bragged about their “lifestyle” on TikTok
This ruined the shine of a Google resume, for me. It’s still great, but it’s just a job now. I look at the specific skills applied during an applicant’s time there, as opposed to previously presuming some level of excellence as a result of working with what I at one point thought were other great engineers.
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, horrible coffee, and MBA types running the show. Getting a second monitor or different equipment took months if it was even possible.
Maybe you got lucky and got some free snacks and coke. The idea that an engineer could be paid as much on an IC track as a manager or director was quite rare, much less showering employees with perks such as free food, gourmet coffee, video games, lounges, and the like.
All of that is fairly common. I've worked at startups that had free food, plenty of companies have a fairly lucrative IC track, snacks/perks, pleasant looking offices and all that.
The gap is a lot smaller, even on Google's good days, and I think that affects everyone's perception more than they realize.
Someone I used to work with was acquihired into Google, despite being one of the most manipulative, conniving, duplicitous people I’ve ever met. A person like this can get found out at companies that value talent (he has none), but at Google, he’s thriving . This ruined the shine of a Google resume, for me. It’s still great, but it’s just a job now. I look at the specific skills applied during an applicant’s time the…