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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

ln.hixie.ch

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#621

Post by CrimsonRain »

silenced_trope wrote: post #151
satvikpendem wrote: post #107

Glad to see Hixie still working on Flutter though, as I'm a big user of it. For the Google specific parts, I can't comment much on the internal development structure of the company, having not worked there, but as a user of their products over the past 20 years or so, there really has been a slowdown of innovation from them. I mean, what did they really create in the last decade that endures?

I literally came in here to say I'll probably stop using it given all the people at Google who Flutter depends on. I suspect a few high level departures more and it'd be dead. Do you mean he's going to continue working on it or just that he had been for the past 8 or 9 years?

Eric and Tim already left awhile ago. It is very much possible that Tim left for the same reason as Hixie or at least fully supports Hixie for this decision.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#622

Post by eslaught »

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…

It's worth noting that was a turning point: the "more wood behind fewer arrows" policy adopted by Larry [1] initiated the die-off cycle of Google products. Prior to that, as far as I am aware, they were much more tolerant of products staying around in a mature-but-not-wildly-successful state. Afterwards, it seemed as if they would only keep things that maintained a trajectory to become as successful as their core products.

Again, this was not entirely unpredictable. While I don't remember the details of that lecture, I remember the professor calling out these sorts of big shifts in cultural values as being typical of startups transforming into large companies. And Larry himself was part of the transformation, turning into (presumably, what he believed to be) what was needed to lead Google into its next stage as a large company.

[1]: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind-few...

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#623

Post by mianos »

deanCommie wrote: post #618
refulgentis wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll vouch for it, I think you may have escaped what it became: I'm a couple generations after you, joined Google/Wear in 2016 and accepted defrag onto Android SysUI in 2018. Much lower level, topped out at L5, but saw a ton because I was the key contributor on two large x-fnl x-org projects in those 5 years, one with Assistant[1], one with Material/Hardware.[2] Both were significantly more dysfunctional than any env…

> TL;DR the roadmap was "let's burn ourselves out doing an 60% copy of what Apple did last year and call that focus." This doesn't resonate. I've been a loyal Android user since Gingerbread (2010), and maybe for the first couple of years it was catching up to Apple, but i would say since pretty much KitKat, it's Apple that's been accused of just copying Android features. (And arguably putting them out with more stabi…

I think he may be referring to Android Wear. While I agree with you, Android is rock solid and great to use on most phones in the last few years, Android Wear is anything but. It's buggy, unstable and a long long way behind the Apple platform.

I love my Android phone, but, having had way too many Android Wear devices, it's complete crap.

I really want it to be good.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#624

Post by lurker919 »

throwaway678808 wrote: post #265
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…

I worked in the org that Jeanine now runs. It had a series of bad-to-disastrous leaders at the Director, VP, and SVP level. To call out Jeanine and only Jeanine in language this harsh feels wrong. From my recollection and from what I have heard from people still working there, she is par for the course. Also I am almost never the person to bring this kind of thing up but ... there aren't a lot of other black women in…

[flagged]

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#626

Post by obviouslynotme »

whoknowsidont wrote: post #610
obviouslynotme wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I explain it in the third paragraph but to illustrate it further: Consider a function. A function that is 1 line long is immediately understandable. At 10 lines, it is readable within a minute or two. At 100 lines, it is maybe legible to someone who lives in that function. At 1000 lines, it is a black box. Human organizations are the same way. You might suggest refactoring, which is what companies do too. They create…

But that has to do with the capabilities of the executives involved, it doesn't make it impossible. Just like in your example, there are many, many developers that can perfectly understand large functions or code bases without issue. If you have such a code base and you hire people that are not equipped, either through inexperience or capability, of managing that code base that is a resourcing issue. If your executiv…

Except large code bases do the same. They regularly die when their ability to be understood drops too low. Even with well organized code, they are pushed to add features until they aren't understood at the deepest level. Once you hit millions of lines of code, even when you spend decades in that code base, you still forget changes you made even if you have an overarching picture. That's ignoring other people working on it all the time. The understanding gets reduced to contracts, types, and interfaces.

And most importantly, humans are more complicated than code. With enough time and knowledge, I can accurately tell you what any piece of code does on a single expression or statement. Humans regularly do things they don't even know for purposes they don't understand.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#627

Post by sdenton4 »

chatmasta wrote: post #341
glimshe wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sundar is one of the worst CEOs in modern American corporate history. Anyone can keep Google profitable, but only the most inept could mismanage, to such a magnitude, the "Dream Team" of Engineers that Google used to be and, to some extent, still is. Google hasn't created a new major product in years, despite having some of the best paid professionals in the market. I know many Googlers; people at the top of their ga…

> Google hasn't created a new major product in years Indeed, and this goes back even further in time than you might think. All their best products came from acquisitions: Maps (KeyHole), Android, YouTube, Google Docs. The only truly original Google products that I can think of, other than Search, are GMail and Chrome (which was largely powered by WebKit anyway). But they do deserve credit for nurturing those products…

Eh, YouTube was going to crash and burn hard without an acquisition. It was acquired in 2006, and was built into something sustainable by integrating with Google infrastructure.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#628

Post by yterdy »

pardoned_turkey wrote: post #86

Ian's post is pretty incisive, although I've read so many of these over the past 15 years or so. And the prescription is always to go back in time. I don't really think that's possible. When you're a newcomer, a disruptor, the whole point is to be different. You're bold, you have a clarity of purpose, you say things like "we're building a new kind of a company" or "the user comes first." But once you achieve market d…

>But once you achieve market dominance, your priorities have to shift. It's no longer "why wouldn't you try this" or "let's do the right thing." It's "why would you rock the boat and risk the nice thing we have?"

Antitrust is important, wouldn't you think?

>A cutthroat corporate environment where you're never sure about the future of your job?

This is the state that the unanointed live in, and we even often deem it beneficial (however erroneously), for the good of society, or a market reality, or whatever, so it is very much an option to be considered. I'm sure many are aghast at the thought, and my memetic response is playing a video clip of SpongeBob's Plankton exclaiming, "I went to COLLEGE!", with a wry smile on my face.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#629

Post by mpalmer »

deanCommie wrote: post #609
mpalmer wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I don't think mentioning her by name was necessary (she's just an example of the culture of bad middle management he's calling out), I do think highlighting her race as a meta-criticism does neither the OP nor Banks herself any favors. My rule of thumb: unless given an obvious reason not to, assume good faith on the part of individuals.

Throwaway didn't claim bad faith necessarily, but just pointed out an important variable. It's good to have good faith, but it's also good to understand that good faith individuals also suffer from blindspots and unconscious biases. Hypothetically if there is a set of leaders, directors, and VPs, that all seem equally incompetent, but you call out only one, what might be the reason for it? It could be random. It coul…

I agree with you that some reactions were a bit strong.

But I reject that "pretending racism doesn't exist" is a good description of objections like mine above.

In my view it's just as fair to say that taking your position means pretending that racism exists in all interactions between people of different races, and must be contended with before other matters.

Unconscious racism is a thing, yet I question the utility of bringing it up when you have no actual evidence that OP is affected by unconscious racism. He might just hate women too, right? Can't rule that out.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#630

Post by refulgentis »

mianos wrote: post #623
deanCommie wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TL;DR the roadmap was "let's burn ourselves out doing an 60% copy of what Apple did last year and call that focus." This doesn't resonate. I've been a loyal Android user since Gingerbread (2010), and maybe for the first couple of years it was catching up to Apple, but i would say since pretty much KitKat, it's Apple that's been accused of just copying Android features. (And arguably putting them out with more stabi…

I think he may be referring to Android Wear. While I agree with you, Android is rock solid and great to use on most phones in the last few years, Android Wear is anything but. It's buggy, unstable and a long long way behind the Apple platform. I love my Android phone, but, having had way too many Android Wear devices, it's complete crap. I really want it to be good.

I'd say y'all are thinking macroscopically of Android as a whole, whereas I'm thinking about my corner of 100-200 on launcher / system UI. There's very explicit examples I can think of, but now that I think of it...it might impossible to tell from the outside because you can't really tell what's The Cool Project from year to year
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