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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#81

Post by aquova »

paxys wrote: post #41
alberth wrote: post #13

> “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.” Ouch. I know a lot of outsiders believe that, but to have someone who spent 2-decades at Google saying it publicly is rough.

The thing is it's not Sundar's job to be a visionary leader. That's not why the shareholders put him where he is. He is a bean counter and is doing a fantastic job bean counting and increasing Google's share price.

And, as the article postulates, that sort of bean counting goes directly against what used to excite Google's employees, and is leading to their continued disillusionment.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#82

Post by ghaff »

potatopatch wrote: post #64
gowld wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tacky to sling accusations without evidence or examples.

Pretty silly thing to do whether or not you have perfect examples, and strange to follow that up with the fact that you've been offering career advice.. There's not a lot of benefit to making a public discussion out of something like that compared to the pretty personal ramifications to the person brought up, which makes even the most constructive attempts look vindictive.

There's very little to be gained by making a post like that focus on an individual. I do think there are often changes in companies over time as they age and grow--but it really isn't so much about some specific individual much of the time. To some degree, it's inevitable.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#84

Post by FirmwareBurner »

ryandrake wrote: post #67
tyingq wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If true, it does sound terrible. Though, I would focus not so much on one named person. The culture is allowing it, leaders above and around her, whatever feedback systems Google has, and so on.

OP stopped quoting before getting to this other important bit: > I hear other teams (who have leaders more politically savvy than I) have learned how to "handle" her to keep her off their backs, feeding her just the right information at the right time. I don't know this person, but have worked with many like this in my career. When you have a leader like this, it's exhausting. You spend half your time "managing upwar…

>but have worked with many like her in my career

Haven't we all? Unfortunately, in most corporate jobs, your main job is looking good in front of your boss, and making your boss look good in front of his boss, who further perpetuates this theatrical shit-show. Your actual work comes a distant second.

I burned myself once or twice by keeping my head down just focused on doing quality work and helping others, but without taking care that it also had the right upward visibility to my boss and the right people above him, and ended up getting laid off, while people who were experts at pretending to work and glorifying every little achievement kept getting the laurels and promotions.

Such is the case in very large orgs with rotten culture and lack of transparency, and you need to withstand the heat if you're gonna be working in the kitchen.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#85

Post by LargeTomato »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #39
atleastoptimal wrote: post #20

Is Google the new Microsoft?

Eh, I interviewed for both a GCP and multiple Azure teams simultaneously and the difference in talent level was astounding. The latter team leads were anywhere from disinterested, asking basic level leetcode questions I could breeze through, to fucking incompetent who didn't even understand the coding questions they were asking. I was shocked at how different they were in terms of thoughtfulness and intelligence.

This was my experience too as well as some of my college friends who work at MSFT and GOOG. Microsoft engineers aren't stupid (of course they weren't) but there tends to be more dumb people and fewer very very smart people.

This could also be incentives at the companies. I have a buddy who went to Microsoft, worked 30hr weeks, and was bored. Dude is brilliant and level headed. The team was lazy AF. Worked there for 5 years and went to Facebook and is thriving, going from Senior to Staff rather quickly.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#86

Post by pardoned_turkey »

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 dominance, your priorities have to shift. It's no longer "why wouldn't you try this" or "let's do the right thing." It's "why would you rock the boat and risk the nice thing we have?" It's not just about profit. Careers and incomes are at stake. People will get hurt.

Risk tolerance aside, your organizational structure ossifies too. When you have people who have been running processes or departments in a particular way for fifteen or twenty years, they have little desire to start over from scratch. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, because what's the alternative? A cutthroat corporate environment where you're never sure about the future of your job?

I think the only comedy here is that Google looked at these old-school companies like Microsoft or IBM and figured they can be different just because they "get it." And then, over time, they rediscovered the reasons why old companies always end up operating in a particular way.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#87

Post by g-b-r »

Dudester230602 wrote: post #43

> We also didn't follow engineering best practices for the first few years. For example we wrote no tests... Tests are not a best practice but more of a necessary evil for production systems and/or businesses incapable of retaining their best for many years.

Ehm no tests are a best practice

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#88

Post by darig »

JohnFen wrote: post #74
pkasting wrote: post #10

As a current Googler of approximately the same tenure, I can't speak to the comments on Jeanine Banks (never met her), but I agree with every other word of this. It's frustrating to continue to see both the level of genuinely well-intentioned work that the public is unfairly (and often viciously) critical of the motives of, and also the (at this point) complete absence of concern for the user, the long term, and the…

> the public is unfairly (and often viciously) critical of the motives of Is it unfair, though? I went from being a huge fan of Google to being a huge Google critic because of real changes in what Google did. I think it's reasonable to question their motives. This isn't the same as questioning the motives of the engineers, though. I have no doubt that there are a lot of good people who work there. However, their pres…

[dead]

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#89

Post by satvikpendem »

jes5199 wrote: post #51
atleastoptimal wrote: post #20

Is Google the new Microsoft?

and Microsoft the new Google?

Looking at the innovation of the former and the lack thereof of the latter, it sure seems that way. Even after almost half a century, Microsoft still endures.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#90

Post by piva00 »

pkasting wrote: post #10

As a current Googler of approximately the same tenure, I can't speak to the comments on Jeanine Banks (never met her), but I agree with every other word of this. It's frustrating to continue to see both the level of genuinely well-intentioned work that the public is unfairly (and often viciously) critical of the motives of, and also the (at this point) complete absence of concern for the user, the long term, and the…

> It's frustrating to continue to see both the level of genuinely well-intentioned work that the public is unfairly (and often viciously) critical of the motives of, and also the (at this point) complete absence of concern for the user, the long term, and the company culture at the highest levels of Google.

Criticism of Google stems exactly from the culture shift, us customers (even more the tech savvy ones) noticed pretty clearly when that shift started to happen, when we felt betrayed by believing in old-Google. The erosion of this trust fostered the cynicism, the vicious criticism veil was cast over any action that looked, at a glance, somewhat malicious.

How could we tell if it wasn't malicious? I definitely can't anymore.

Google 2005 had almost my complete trust, Google 2015 much less, Google 2023 is the one I've been actively moving away from, closing accounts, including letting go my GMail account from 2004 with a handle that's basically my name.

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