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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#671

Post by unix_fan »

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…

As a person of color who is also disabled, I find bringing race into the discussion to be reductionist. It reduces the individual to the skin color, which is just as bad as what you accuse others of doing. People shouldn’t be judged based on whether there are enough black women at Google.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#672

Post by oblio »

emodendroket wrote: post #174
kevinventullo wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I’d characterize YouTube as a diversification from ads.

It is though. Being an ad supplier is different from being an ad exchange. Or would you describe the New York Times or HBO as "ads businesses"?

HBO? No. NYTimes? Probably. All media is.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#673

Post by martinflack »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #571
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that because ChatGPT returns better results, or because when it returns results, it wraps them in words that make you feel more comfortable accepting them as better

It's because ChatGPT isn't being monetized with ads yet. I use "yet" quite deliberately, mind you. The question isn't whether ChatGPT will eventually have ads; the question is how easily you'll be able to tell they're ads, or if it's going to be product/service placement worked into responses as seamlessly as possible.

You say that, but Google Search is still free after decades, whereas you can pay ChatGPT $20/mo for a membership right now.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#674

Post by kuchenbecker »

Osmose wrote: post #69

This is a good reflection, but I do disagree with the view of honest efforts from Google to improve the world being met with unnecessary external criticism. People outside Google don't have the benefit of thinking of any particular project as being run only by the individuals currently working on it—those particular people may leave the company or change teams or move on to other projects. It's Google that's making i…

I'm friends with a dude on chrome team and used to work at Google.

I describe this as a random walk of good intentioned people but where a decision will harm Google someone come out of the woodwork to block or slow it down.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#675

Post by zerbinxx »

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…

Not to be an egghead/navel gazer about it, but I’ve grown skeptical of “innovation” as an end in itself: was Facebook innovative, or was it just another small iterative improvement on an existing form? Same with Google and search. My gut tells me companies should focus on more concrete measures of success rather than the abstract “innovation”.

It’s probably not semantically wrong to say that these two cases really were/are innovative, but even so, was that really the cause of their success? And is it replicable as a methodology? My gut tells me that a lot of what gets labeled as a massive innovation is really just a market inevitability, and someone got to the right idea first, either by luck or having a single clever differentiating idea.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#676

Post by [deleted] »

sjkoelle wrote: post #332
throwaway678808 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you - also why target someone who has been there for only 2 years.

[deleted]

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#677

Post by makeitdouble »

caskstrength wrote: post #357
throwaway678808 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 leadership at Google. Makes this targeted attack feel worse. Unless I misunderstood the author she was his manager. It is not like he chose some random "black woman in leadership at Google" to attack.

But then, why point at "her department" when they are both in it ? My read is she's not in author's direct hierarchy line.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#678

Post by marcellus23 »

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…

> it's Apple that's been accused of just copying Android features.

I think you might be in a bit of an Android bubble. Android is plenty "accused" of copying Apple features as well. Really, both copy plenty of ideas from each other.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#679

Post by kuchenbecker »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #178
swetland wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "throw everything in the trash and start over" thing is massively overstated. The iPhone announcement absolutely impacted things, not entirely all bad -- there was interest from OEMs before that, but it went through the roof after -- and it did mean we moved from the plan to ship a blackberry-style device first followed by a touchscreen device to skipping right to touch for initial launch, recognizing that…

>Microsoft might end up entrenching themselves the way they did in PCs through the 90s, possibly including a more successful attempt to control the browser/web experience That fear was kind of overblown. In those days of Steve Balmer, Microsoft was far less focused and organized, too high on its success with Windows and Office, for such a slow, large and bloated ship to react quickly and precisely enough on this. Jus…

Your description of msft sounds like current google with generative AI.
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