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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

ln.hixie.ch

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#801

Post by amf12 »

kelnos wrote: post #238
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…

Yup, agreed. My view is that the people on the inside often can't see the forest for the trees. They look at their immediate team/group, love the autonomy/transparency/"don't be evil"-mandate/etc. that they have and follow, and look around and see some of that in other groups, and think, "wow, this company is great, doesn't care about all that big-bad-company stuff". But people outside can look at a company that gets…

> My view is that the people on the inside often can't see the forest for the trees.

Agreed. But it's also a problem of partial information - on both sides. People on the outside also have partial information about things coming from tech. We sometimes believe something done was definitely intended to be "evil", but usually isn't the case. We just have partial information about the actual reasons, and fill the rest in with our bias.

What I've usually noticed on HN is, if Apple does something "bad", people find mindbending justifications for it. But if Google/Microsoft does it, it was definitely "intended to be evil". Not that I agree with everything Google or Microsoft does.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#802

Post by sidcool »

I haven't seen anyone [at] Sundar on X (FKA Twitter) yet. I am not sure how Sundar would be feeling about this. Hostility for Hixie probably. And it's safe to say that Hixie's return to Google has no chances now, not that he would want to return anyway.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#804

Post by JSavageOne »

What a sad but refreshingly honest article. I never worked at Google, but this aligns with my impressions from the outside, as well as everything else I've read (eg. that recent article here from a founder who's startup was acquired by Google and she left due to the stifling bureaucracy). The company hasn't innovated much recently and its products like Google Search have deteriorated in quality tremendously. At this rate Google may be on its way to becoming the next has-been tech company (eg. sort of like what happened to IBM).

The management and bureaucracy depicted in the article sound like a corporate nightmare and unappealing place to work. I didn't know that Google had non-engineers running dev tool teams. Can this VP even reverse a linked list? /s

Seems like Google needs a change in leadership, starting with replacing CEO Sundar Pichar.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#805

Post by ssd532 »

jjulius wrote: post #484
e_y_ wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On paper, Google's throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks strategy (that has lead to a substantial Google Graveyard) seems like it was intended to allow for some parts of the company to innovate while keeping the core products stable and boring. In practice, many of those innovations (Google Inbox, anyone?) were not deemed profitable enough to keep around. Others were never given the resources to grow beyon…

>Google Inbox Still so damn bitter about that death.

It is the best email client I have ever used.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#806

Post by strunz »

nova22033 wrote: post #726
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.

Sundar became CEO in 2015. The author quit this year. Was his "lack of visionary leadership" not that obvious for 8+ years? Or did the author stay because the stock price and his TC kept going up?

Just because you stay in a job doesn't mean you can't criticize the company and its leadership.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#807

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

dazzlefruit wrote: post #139
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…

The Chrome versions of the first few years were so nice to use. It was the _lightest_ major browser for a time. It's insane how it has drifted since then.

It also looked much nicer. These thick curved tab decorations, unnecessary ovals everywhere, yuck.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#808

Post by callalex »

dmazzoni wrote: post #709
dazzlefruit wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chrome versions of the first few years were so nice to use. It was the _lightest_ major browser for a time. It's insane how it has drifted since then.

Did it really? Because browsers got good, the web got orders of magnitude more complex. If you try loading a modern web page in an old version of Chrome, you'll see just how much faster Chrome has gotten. Or alternatively, try viewing an old webpage in new Chrome. It's still super light and zippy.

Yes, feature creep has happened in a really big way because there is an obvious profit incentive to Google if every last bit of computing happens in-browser. Glossing over the thorny topics like “my browser shouldn’t care what hardware I run it on”, the Web* set of standards hasn’t stopped ballooning since the release of chrome. WebRTC made sense. But WebUSB? WebGPU? WebAssembly? etc. etc. Each can have interesting use cases individually, but in aggregate they have become a whole second operating system filled with compromise and bloat.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#809

Post by sidcool »

asim wrote: post #239

"...She treats engineers as commodities in a way that is dehumanising, reassigning people against their will in ways that have no relationship to their skill set..." You know, I remember a time I said, management just think of engineers as a resource and refer to us as such. But when the word "dehumanising" is used it strikes me a lot clearer. When this disconnected occurs between different layers of the same corpora…

I still feel it's not professional to name the manager. Hixie could very well have just said "my manager", and many people would have understood.
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