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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

ln.hixie.ch

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#791

Post by ivancho »

zem wrote: post #381
ivancho wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finance is cut-throat in the upper echelons, and also around culling people producing less value than their salary. But once they find someone willing to produce $400K of value in exchange for $200K salary, who is not otherwise interested in career growth, they usually just leave them be, that's how you see people staying in the same job with roughly the same responsibilities and skills for 10-15 years. Which creates…

> someone willing to produce $400K of value in exchange for $200K salary, who is not otherwise interested in career growth that probably describes a lot of people in tech megacorps too

Big tech, yes, lots, but an extra skill required there is to recognize and actively avoid ambitious managers, who would sacrifice/burn out their own team for self-advancement. Lots of churn in big tech is purely from that. Small tech, I think the capital pressure is much higher, so just getting a steady good deal on labor is not enough, leadership there is constantly optimizing and trying to upgrade the labor value without matching comp (ie, people are expected to always be acquiring more skills, giving internal talks/lectures, mentoring etc, and those who don't, well, they turn out to not be a good culture fit).

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#792

Post by konschubert »

metanonsense wrote: post #148
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…

Well said. I think this happens very naturally with every growing / successful company. Comparing my company of 30 or so with Google is like comparing a bacterium with a race horse, but even at our size being disruptive / staying innovative gets harder every month. Do you assign your best resources to the product that gets the money in? Or can you afford having capable people taking bets on new products, even when yo…

I think it’s fine if big companies stick to their core competencies, return money to shareholders, and the shareholders can then re-invest into innovative startups.

Overall, this leads to better outcomes for everybody involved, except for the CEO who’s ego is scratched by running an “old” company.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#793

Post by slavik81 »

JSavageOne wrote: post #760
greatgib wrote: post #534

I think this guy has a Stockholm syndrom like I saw multiple times with Google employees: ; one of the most annoying is the prevalence of pointless cookie warnings we have to wade through today. 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 opin…

The internet would be better without mandated cookie banners. It's so damn frustrating using the internet in the EU. If you don't want to be tracked just browse in Incognito mode.

Browsing in incognito mode does not prevent the sites you visit from tracking you.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#794

Post by matheusmoreira »

> My mandate was to do the best thing for the web, as whatever was good for the web would be good for Google (I was explicitly told to ignore Google's interests).

> Google's culture eroded. Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.

Brutal. I can only imagine the disillusionment.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#795

Post by bobviolier »

somenameforme wrote: post #786
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…

There was a really interesting interview [1] with Astro Teller, the head of Google's moonshot 'x division', in 2016. In terms of project selection, he focuses on trying to dismiss projects early on, by looking for reasons that a project might fail. And even rewarding employees for scrapping things early on. That doesn't sound particularly unreasonable, but it largely just amounts to a conservative planning process. S…

At that time, others companies were not building most of those things though.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#796

Post by fsndz »

We just have his version of the story though... He might be wrong. It's natural after spending so many years in a company to see change as bad, to miss the good old days... And he sure seems to have a problem with that black leader Jeanine... A guy who never rose from his technical roles is lecturing a VP and the CEO of Google for their "lack of vision and strategy". Come on. Managing is startup and managing a huge behemoth like Alphabet will never be the same

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#798

Post by scaramanga »

There's a great documentary about waco on Netflix and at the end, the guy who is was in command of the troops who massacred 80 women and children concluded (after 30 years of reflection), "you know the real victim was? Me, because the whole fiasco made me look bad."

It's interesting to see how those who appear outwardly evil manage to cling to a self-serving and distorted view of the world in which, if anything, they are the maligned victims.

You can just as easily imagine a SWAT member saying "when we were training to assault civilian homes, it was a wonderful time, everybody was competent and had the right motivations, we were there to protect the good guys and hurt the bad guys - but only as a last resort! Then when we got to the branch davidian compound we applied all of our methods and tactics and it all went downhill from there and, tragically, we ended up in a dark place."

When, from the perspective of even the most casual observer, it was evident from very early on that given the material, resources, methods, tactics, organization, and leadership that was deployed, the outcome that unfolded was actually inevitable.

Getting back on topic, it's not particularly news to anyone to find out that there can be very well run, collegiate, bubbles full of well-meaning individuals doing great work who nevertheless operate within institutions which, on the whole, are a cancer upon society. It's a wonderful privilege and a joy to find yourself inside one of these bubbles compared to all of the worse things that you could be doing to make a living.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#799

Post by ilamont »

cdibona wrote: post #756
jra_samba wrote: post #160

I used to "share" an office with Hixie at Google. Hixie used to store his board game collection in the office we nominally "shared", but he himself very rarely visited. I liked that just fine (let's just say I'm not a fan of "open" shared office spaces). My fondest Google office memories were sharing an office with Hixie, and "Mr Big Printer" which the Google Open Source Team used to print posters. We made an office…

It was a very big printer, Jeremy.

Would be very interested to hear your take on Hixie’s essay and the many reactions from other Xooglers from different eras.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#800

Post by ivancho »

lupire wrote: post #639
zem wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone willing to produce $400K of value in exchange for $200K salary, who is not otherwise interested in career growth that probably describes a lot of people in tech megacorps too

It's nearly impossible to measure the marginal contribution of someone one in a non sales role.

And yet somehow most people in charge of resourcing and budgeting for projects, teams and companies have some idea of who to hire, how much to pay them, etc. How do you think they do that with something that is nearly impossible to measure?

It certainly wouldn't benefit anyone who hires people if those people could estimate their own contribution, or, god forbid, compare it to their compensation. I think there's a term for the difference which now eludes me.

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