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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#821

Post by immibis »

strangescript wrote: post #694
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…

Companies confuse their initial product success with general success. "We made this amazing thing, so everything we do is amazing". The logic is flawed but can carry the company a tremendous distance before becoming unsustainable. Google is reaching the early steps of the unsustainable phase, and their initial product success is finally being threatened via AI. Working on an open source library for 9 years and then c…

I've seen a hypothesis that Google has never created anything new worth anything to anyone, after it created search and ads. Gmail is a clone of Hotmail, and YouTube and Android were acquisitions.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#822

Post by immibis »

JSavageOne wrote: post #752
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…

You've just described why once prominent companies fade into shadows of their former glory (eg. Kodak, Blackberry, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft). Definitely not inevitable and could be avoided with better leadership.

But not a problem, either. Turnover is natural. Nobody but the investors care very much whether Kodak pivots to digital cameras, or whether Kodak remains the leading film camera company as the industry shrinks, and a different company makes digital cameras. In fact the latter is often better for the economy and consumers, due to the better specialization.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#823

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

glimshe wrote: post #191
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 is one of the worst CEOs in modern American corporate history. Anyone can keep Google profitable, but only the most inept could mismanage, to such a magnitude, the "Dream Team" of Engineers that Google used to be and, to some extent, still is. Google hasn't created a new major product in years, despite having some of the best paid professionals in the market. I know many Googlers; people at the top of their ga…

Given Google's current reputation killing of products left and right, lately I don't bother even trying new things they roll out, and building anything dependent on it is completely out of the question. No.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#824

Post by JSavageOne »

speedgoose wrote: post #820
JSavageOne wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GDPR doesn’t mandate cookies banner but requires informed consent. Browsing in incognito doesn’t prevent all kinds of tracking by the way.

Right so every website needing a cookie banner to comply with EU regulations is not only a UX nightmare, but it doesn't even prevent tracking. Horrible pointless legislation.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#825

Post by [deleted] »

dvirsky wrote: post #301
aappleby wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the "12 years at Google" commenter from below. Got a personal email from Craig Silverstein my first day at Google welcoming me to the company and thanking me for my work on hash functions. Chatted with him occasionally after that. Good guy.

Reminds me of a funny story - the first day at Google (2018) I got a chat from an SVP, I forgot who, saying "Hi!". At first I was blown, wow, what a company! SVPs greeting new engineers! A minute later they were like "oops, my bad, wrong person". They intended to message someone else with my first name, so my guess is they used to type that name and hit tab to start the chat, and that person was no longer the first o…

[deleted]

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#826

Post by hot_gril »

immibis wrote: post #818
Andrex wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has been trying very hard to diversify, mostly through Cloud. How well they are succeeding at that is up to interpretation but they are chipping away at Ads' percentage of revenue. It used to be higher than 85% but as of 2022 it's down to only being 58% of operating revenue[0]. 0. https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/05/18/how-does-google-make-mon...

When companies figure out that cloud is a waste of money, this might not work.

Which mid to large companies have made this decision so far? I know there's Facebook, but their use case is exceptional.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#827

Post by I-M-S »

sealeck wrote: post #569
layer8 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He grew up in Europe, which may have given him different sensibilities.

What is that supposed to mean?

As an European who worked in both North Americans and European companies I can attest European business communication is much more direct and less averse to confrontations.

Having said that, I'm not sure we can assign this difference in mentality to author's decision to name the VP (which I personally find valiant, but probably short-sighted).

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#828

Post by tdeck »

sawyna wrote: post #535
tdeck wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(un?)fortunately I haven't had access to Memegen since 2020.

Why don't you have access? I'm curious

Actually I got the date wrong, but it's because I quit my job at Google in late 2020 and my last day was in early 2021 :). I wanted to work somewhere where I'd get to do something interesting and have a meaningful impact in a reasonable time frame. Based on my experience, I felt that would be hard to find at Google.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#829

Post by justin66 »

ajkjk wrote: post #767
justin66 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of professionals resist the urge to call out their manager on a blog after they quit a job. Even without Googlegeist.

imo, they should not resist it. It is shameful to let bad things bad stay in the world unless you really need the self-preservation, and somebody with 18 years of google money does not.

> It is shameful to let bad things bad stay in the world

It's incredibly goofy to characterize trashing someone in a blog post as a battle to destroy evil.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#830

Post by globular-toast »

ainzzorl wrote: post #218

When did it become acceptable to write things about other people as he writes about Jeanine Banks? Even if everything he says about her is true, it still feels incredibly rude to say it in public.

Why? Jeanine Banks is probably paid millions a year. People in such roles with such disproportionately high rewards should be constantly evaluated. But if you read between the lines here she's basically unfirable for reasons nobody would dare to mention. I think people should go even further.
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