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Culture Change at Google

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Re: Culture Change at Google

#71

Post by debok »

poundofshrimp wrote: post #40

> But, coming back to my first decade at Google, it was incredible to see employees valued above everything else. Perhaps this is a privilege only possible in a culture of infinite abundance. Or maybe not? Maybe it's possible in a limited-resource culture too, but only if the company is small. Every team that I’ve been on where I felt this way was when that company was rapidly growing and successful. I can’t say the…

I worked for a bootstrapped startup where the opposite was true. While the company was in survival mode, employees were highly valued and the owners had a "we're in it together" type of attitude. When the money started rolling in, their attitude changed to "we are better than you." They moved all their employees to a different office than themselves, and started treating us like we are expendable. They lost all their competent staff in a year, and had to start relying on freelancers to get anything done.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#72

Post by tavavex »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #45
nequo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the company culture of OpenAI like? How does it compare to early Google?

Well, it seems like it's got some cool tech based on providing access to everybody else's copyrighted content in novel ways, a bunch of promise to make a lot of money without knowing 100% what the plan is, messy politics at the top, and it's around the San Francisco area, so....

> providing access to everybody else's copyrighted content in novel ways

That's a very biased characterization that downplays a debate that people have right now as basically being already solved. It's simply not truthful, unless they started a side business in developing a torrent tracker or something.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#73

Post by sidcool »

I think the recent treatment by companies of its employees will remove the rosy glass from our eyes. All employee goodiness is a fair weather phenomena. Always keep a healthy distance from your work and company.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#74

Post by Niksko »

petesergeant wrote: post #18

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…

> It's time for smaller, scrappier tech companies to be the place where innovation happens

I think this is exactly what is being lamented. There was interesting stuff happening for a really long time, and now there isn't. And companies that stop innovating tend to die long, slow deaths. It sounds like Google held out longer than most, but now runs the risk of going the way of the dodo. I'd lament that too.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#75

Post by tavavex »

renewiltord wrote: post #65

It's interesting. When I moved to California in 2012, Google was exciting. They had hot stuff, new platforms, very exciting. Six years later, you were hesitant to hire Google people. Today, it's the Bay Area retirement home. 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 redistributi…

I'm sorry, I'm speaking from a point of absolutely no experience in these high-profile Silicon Valley jobs, but "companies refuse to hire Google employees" strikes me as a statement akin to "the king refuses to dine from a 99.999% gold plate because they skimped out on getting him a 100% pure plate". Even right now, many tech workers see Google and other big-name tech companies as basically the ultimate goal of their careers, and I can't really imagine the kind of a one-in-a-million company that'd be justified in turning down a Google ex-employee based on just their employer.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#76

Post by Uehreka »

vlovich123 wrote: post #20
huevosabio wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could keep starting products and instead of killing them, release them as open source. Or one click deploy on GCP. Actually, that last one makes a lot of sense for pushing for more GCP adoption.

Open source is very hard for a bunch of reasons: * Code at Google3 is one giant monolith that has dependencies on things that aren’t open sourced. Even if they could be, they don’t make sense outside of Google * most services internally run on internal services like Borg and GFS rather than GCP for historical reasons. That maybe has changed now but I suspect a lot of stuff depends on internal infra not available on G…

> Code at Google3 is one giant monolith

I’ve heard this stated before, and something about it feels off. There’s no way all of Google’s code is in one repo.

Like, does that monorepo contain the full Android operating system with Google Services and the firmware for all the Pixel devices? I feel pretty sure multiple teams at Google must have forks of the Linux kernel for one reason or another, would those be in there too? Is Chromium in there too? What about the whole golang project?

Even if I’m off about some of this, it feels like the statement “Code at Google is one giant monolith” needs some qualifiers.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#77

Post by treprinum »

redcobra762 wrote: post #68

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…

My very first boss that I believe is an undiagnosed psychopath is now director level over there. That told me everything I needed to know about any possible direction of the company. I no longer use anything made by them and actively steer everyone I know away to alternatives.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#78

Post by V-eHGsd_ »

jrockway wrote: post #58
V-eHGsd_ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

patrick "sorry I missed the last tgif I was running a marathon in paris with my daughter" pichette. and I don't say that disparagingly. that was endearing. (i'm probably getting some details of that wrong, it was ... dear lord, a long time ago)

Speaking of TGIF, the day it moved to Thursday is where I start my "beginning of the end" counter.

it was less fun having beers on a thursday afternoon for sure, but I at least understood the fact that the company had thousands of non-US employees and TGIF on a friday afternoon for us was TGIM for everyone else.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#79

Post by closeparen »

heads wrote: post #2

Infinite abundance — free boiled eggs and T-shirts — just felt like an extension of freedom to perform at the fullest of my abilities (which started out pretty meh, but grew quickly over time more than any other time in my career) without having to worry about anything else. There’s something deep in the human mindset about resource anxiety and the importance of that not being a thing can’t be underestimated. So mayb…

It’s hard to imagine an absence of resource anxiety in the land of the six figure mortgage payment. Must have been incredible.

Resource anxiety is exactly the phrase. Two things utterly surprised me about my experience in Silicon Valley: the unbelievable level and growth of TC, and its utter inadequacy/precarity next to the insatiable vacuum of a mortgage here. Strange place.

Re: Culture Change at Google

#80

Post by avgcorrection »

petesergeant wrote: post #18

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…

> Other than people who worked there, and miss the old days … who cares?

So you’re not a Googler? Or a Xoogler? Maybe you identify as a Noogler (never-Googler)?

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