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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#641

Post by robryk »

artzmeister wrote: post #527
munificent wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A genuine question: if one is a good, well intentioned human being, supposedly with principles, and ends up actively contributing to a dystopia or at least a much worse society, is that person excused because of "oh, the leadership fell off!" or "because I had good intentions"? At all? No, you'd be piled up with all the others that sold their morals and their society for money. The challenge is that we are all simu…

You're right, and it makes sense. Let me propose another perspective then: would a well-meaning, good person not be liable to culpability if he or she worked on a feature that actively monitored its users for data to sell to advertisors, much more than if such a person was working with something like Flutter or Go, since the latter workers are doing net positive things? I suppose I got a bit carried away originally,…

> I suppose I got a bit carried away originally, but the point is just that - can one truly be well-meaning if he works in such a feature as that of the first example?

One way of reading the original statements is that there are many people who are not doing that and would not do that.

> But we do not have a choice (...) or in paying taxes to our governments

This obviously reminds me of Thoreau, but more practically many people can move. Unless you are from the US (or a handful of other weird countries) that stops you from paying taxes to your origin's government.

E: Upheaval caused by moving is often actually not higher than one caused by quitting: consider (a) people on employer-tied visas and/or who don't speak the local language well enough to use it professionally (b) people who don't have families of their own yet.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#642

Post by lupire »

cellu wrote: post #612
pardoned_turkey wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focusing on the user is easy when you have little to lose. When you have a trillion-dollar business and 200,000 employees you're responsible for, a large part of your focus is not destroying that. And quite often, it's not easy to reconcile that with what your users might want.

I’m curious to understand your perspective:m as to why a business that focus on the user may expose to risk? Doesn’t meeting user needs equals to making users happy which in turn equals to making more money?

Not when your users are not your paying customers

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#643

Post by lapcat »

CrimsonRain wrote: post #611
lapcat wrote: post #256

> I found it quite frustrating how teams would be legitimately actively pursuing ideas that would be good for the world, without prioritising short-term Google interests, only to be met with cynicism in the court of public opinion. > For my first nine years at Google I worked on HTML and related standards ( https://whatwg.org/ ). My mandate was to do the best thing for the web, as whatever was good for the web would…

W3C got what it deserved. > The WHATWG began because the W3C told you, “HTML was dead. If you want to do something like HTML5, you should go elsewhere.” Now that the W3C has come to its senses, is it time for the WHATWG to hang up its spurs and for its participants to work inside W3C to continue the development of the web platform? We tried (2007–2012). It didn’t work out. In fact, we ended up spinning more specs out…

> W3C got what it deserved.

This is an unnecessarily "team"-oriented spin. The question is what the web and the users of the web deserve, and I don't believe they deserve to be dominated by a few giant tech corporations who have a monopoly not only on web browsers but also on operating systems.

> Now that the W3C has come to its senses, is it time for the WHATWG to hang up its spurs and for its participants to work inside W3C to continue the development of the web platform?

Yes.

Here's the major problem: the tech world of 2003 was a lot different than the tech world of 2023. Back then, iOS didn't exist, Android didn't exist, Google Chrome didn't exist, Safari barely existed. The WHATWG members are infinitely more dangerous and monopolistic now than they were back then. Maybe, arguably, HTML5 was the better outcome at the time of the dispute at that time, but the dominance of the major browser vendors now is not the better outcome.

The irony is that Mozilla and Opera inadvertently handed over great power to the BigCos who would come to overshadow and virtually annihilate them. You won the battle but lost the war. Opera even had to switch to Chromium.

> So we announced a mailing list, and did it there.

It seems to me that more time could have been taken and more lobbying done.

> W3C declared html dead and now you are mad on whatwg for html5?

Well, I personally think HTML5 was completely botched and became a nightmare, but that's a bit of a digression.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#644

Post by Aeolun »

jjulius wrote: post #484
e_y_ wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Google Inbox Still so damn bitter about that death.

It’s weird that Gmail never reached that point. Even years later it’s still the same it was 10 years ago.

I think after inbox died I just gave up on it and moved to fastmail.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#645

Post by lupire »

ghaff wrote: post #173
chatmasta wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's the alternative? A cutthroat corporate environment Sure. Isn't that how the financial industry operates? (Or maybe that's more of an illusion, and people in finance just tell themselves they're in a cut-throat environment, even though in reality they'll never leave it. Whereas if it were really a cut-throat environment you'd expect to see more churn as the weak employees fail out of the industry.) > And then…

>perhaps that organization will inevitably develop into something resembling IBM. So an over 100 year old company that makes 10s of billions of dollars?

That's 25% of Google revenue using more employees.

So yeah, bloated and underperforming.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#646

Post by swetland »

refulgentis wrote: post #481
swetland wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I take exception to the painting of Android as inherently "unhealthy" and not "solving real problems for users." Also with lumping it in with the unmitigated disaster that was the Social/G+ effort. I attribute much of Android's success to Larry & Eric being very supportive, shielding the team from constant interference from the rest of the company, and letting us get shit done and ship. I came aboard during the…

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…

I had moved on from Android by 2013, so I definitely don't have much insight into what it's become over the past decade. In the earlier years it was very much about working hard to build the platform, products, and ecosystem. The team was pretty small and generally isolated from the rest of the company, which was both good (we got to focus on doing our thing and not get distracted) and bad (integrating with Google properties, services, etc was often rather painful).

Part of the reason I left the team was Clockwork (before it became Wear) turning into "just cram Android on to a watch", which was very much not an approach I was excited about and things getting more political and "too big to fail", combined with burnout and needing a change of scenery.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#647

Post by gerdesj »

Vicinity9635 wrote: post #608
gerdesj wrote: post #603

"Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural norms of early Google." "The oft-mocked "don't be evil" truly was the guiding principle of the company at the time" A company with public shareholding loses the ability to be anything other than a generator of increasing shareholder value. That is its overt…

> A company with public shareholding loses the ability to be anything other than a generator of increasing shareholder value. People always say this but I've never seen a law or regulation enforcing it. Care to enlighten me?

It's part of the tacit agreement when you list on an exchange - Initial Public Offering (IPO). You kick off with a nominated "value" ie I think I am worth x so I will sell y shares at z (where x = y * z). Hopefully all your shares are bought and you are fully capitalized and you can crack on with whatever you are doing.

You now have two major forms of "money in and out" - what your business makes and loses by doing its thing and lolly from investment by shareholders and the vagaries of the stockmarkets.

You can make and sell stuff to make loot - old school. You can also convince people that your ability to make and sell stuff is so good that you are really cool - your share price rises and so does your "value" via capitalization.

You don't list unless you actually want to become a generator of increasing shareholder value. There is no law or regulation because it is what it is. You need more capitalization and listing is a method. In return you sell your soul!

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#648

Post by UncleMeat »

pardoned_turkey wrote: post #269
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Careers and incomes are at stake. People will get hurt. Google continues to print much more money than it burns. People get hurt by callous corporate decisions like layoffs. People don't get hurt by a company that has insane amounts of money taking risky projects, and if they fail, assigning those people to some other project. Given the size of Google and the fact that they hire generalists, being at risk of losing…

Layoffs at Google didn't happen because they had to happen. They happened because the leadership was concerned that in the good years, the company accumulated way too much dead weight - pointless projects, underperforming employees that the managers never had to deal with because they could always hire more people, etc. It's an awful fix and only a temporary one, but unnecessary risk-taking can jeopardize a lot more…

> the company accumulated way too much dead weight - pointless projects, underperforming employees

The layoffs weren't just low performers and killing unwanted projects.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#649

Post by robryk »

bipson wrote: post #56
benrapscallion wrote: post #30

Another article that highlights Vic Gundotra’s arrival and rise at Google as the beginning of their decline.

I almost forgot about Vic! He hasn't been relevant for quite some time though, right? Are you suggesting his influence still lingers?

> Are you suggesting his influence still lingers?

I think this is a poorly specified question. One can imagine a situation where someone's actions caused a change in a society, which is no longer attributed to him according to popular opinion. Does influence of that person linger?

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#650

Post by foxp2 »

jjulius wrote: post #484
e_y_ wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Google Inbox Still so damn bitter about that death.

I miss Inbox features too. Shortwave is nice if you want something similar today.
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