Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 113 posts

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#71

Post by tech_ken »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67
tech_ken wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure feel free to swap in whatever job role you like, my main point is that I’d rather hear an analysis from someone embedded in the problem space than from someone whose ‘job’ is to squeeze profit off other people’s work. I’m sure there are a few decent and prudent managers of giant capital stacks, but honestly at this guy’s level of removal from the realities of building literally anything I am extremely skeptical…

> I’d rather hear an analysis from someone embedded in the problem space than from someone whose ‘job’ is to squeeze profit off other people’s work Everyone believes someone else is squeezing off their work. In tech, I've heard it from founders and sales about engineers; engineers about everyone else, including every other engineer; the person who keeps the shitshow of a culture hanging by a thread; the lawyers who k…

> it's that the uselessness is probably concentrated in the person complaining and doing nothing about it

So basically this PE guy?

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#72

Post by candiodari »

hot_gril wrote: post #51
adonovan wrote: post #18

This attitude is why private equity is destroying US companies. The hubris and ignorance of investors routinely gets translated into a cull of workers whose jobs they don't understand, leaving behind "lean" organizations that retain only whatever bits are currently most profitable but are less functional, resilient, sustainable, and humane.

There was a real industry-wide hiring glut leading up to this. Once the market changed, a lot of companies had more people than they knew what to do with.

Yeah, but the glut was used for something. And that something was management mandated projects. All successful Google projects were bottom-up ideas or acquisitions, with management usually fighting it as much as they can, because that's what management does.

Management isn't involved in actual functioning of the company, just in how it's organized. And of course, their main skill always turns out to be "organizing" it to their own advantage. Actual good ideas WILL lead to reorganizing work, and rearranging the management deck chairs. So management always turns out to be radically against those.

The engineers at the bottom are not just a necessity, they're THE source of revenue.

But guess what happens when you "trim the fat". Management is really good at keeping themselves in a job, and don't care about sacrificing the bottom. Meaning the worst possible outcome, according to these investors, and I'm 100% sure this happened at Google: the proportion of managers goes up when the layoffs happen. MORE organizing, less work.

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#73

Post by tanx16 »

FredPret wrote: post #25
tanx16 wrote: post #10

> "Another issue with all the 'BS' jobs in large corporations is that it takes profits away from shareholders who are most often the pensioners and retirement accounts of the rest of America," he said. "...they are also taking money away from the rest of the workforce's retirement programs." Oh no, think of the poor retired shareholders!

That's ... basically every old person and everyone with some savings. Even if you don't own Google stock (or even any stock) directly, you likely have exposure to it because it's in the S&P 500, which is used as foundational financial product in many contexts.

Yes, I'm mostly making fun of the fact that this extremely wealthy investor is pointing at the elderly (who likely have a higher percentage of their retirement saved in bonds and less-volatile investments) and distracting everyone from the fact that he benefits massively more if Google decides to make shareholders more money.

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#74

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tech_ken wrote: post #71
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d rather hear an analysis from someone embedded in the problem space than from someone whose ‘job’ is to squeeze profit off other people’s work Everyone believes someone else is squeezing off their work. In tech, I've heard it from founders and sales about engineers; engineers about everyone else, including every other engineer; the person who keeps the shitshow of a culture hanging by a thread; the lawyers who k…

> it's that the uselessness is probably concentrated in the person complaining and doing nothing about it So basically this PE guy?

> So basically this PE guy?

:)

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#75

Post by sys_64738 »

giomasce wrote: post #63
hot_gril wrote: post #19

"Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment" Hah, who exactly did they contact at Google to ask if half their staff are doing nothing useful?

Probably somebody on the wrong half, given that they didn't reply. /s

LOL I almost spat out my dinner. Have an upvote.

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#77

Post by dredmorbius »

adonovan wrote: post #18

This attitude is why private equity is destroying US companies. The hubris and ignorance of investors routinely gets translated into a cull of workers whose jobs they don't understand, leaving behind "lean" organizations that retain only whatever bits are currently most profitable but are less functional, resilient, sustainable, and humane.

Seeing Like a State / Legibility. James C. Scott.

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300078152/seeing-like-a-...>

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#78

Post by dredmorbius »

newfocogi wrote: post #16

Communication costs scale super-linearly with organization size, as does the cost of mistakes. I think a twitter warrior saying some portion of a massive company's engineers 'Do No Real Work' is just a lazy way to get headlines. Throwing shade at the issue isn't novel, but solving it is really, really hard.

Key theme of Geoffrey West's Scale:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/314049/scale-by-geo...>

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#79

Post by dredmorbius »

bifrost wrote: post #69
cdme wrote: post #7

I imagine this guy doesn’t do much real work himself.

He built OpenDNS and exited it, he was pretty technical when I met him. I suspect he doesn't have to work and does so anyways...

As stated in 'graph 4 of TFA (reinforcing your point against OP's shallow dismissal).

Re: VC Says Half of Google Staff Do 'No Real Work'

#80

Post by bdcravens »

hot_gril wrote: post #48
bdcravens wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockholders are the owners.

Yeah but stockholders aren't necessarily retired.

Sure - the state of life an owner is in shouldn't be relevant, in terms of the company's obligation to them.
Post reply on HN