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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#871

Post by berkes »

paxys wrote: post #159

Every bit of innovation in the AI space today originated at Google. The company poured probably tens of billions into its Brain division, sponsored and made public every bit of research, and pretty much created the field of modern AI. So what was the outcome? When the employees realized they had struck gold they figured they'd rather go join startups or found their own companies instead, because regardless of the amo…

> Every bit of innovation in the AI space today originated at Google.

It all originated at universities.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#872

Post by davedx »

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…

> 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.

Many will laugh, but I'd make the case that in general (of course there are some nasty exceptions), Apple has managed to keep prioritising its customers even after achieving their current market share.

It's a conscious choice by leadership, not some inevitable destiny.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#873

Post by devnullbrain »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #711
devnullbrain wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean managers are incentivised not to let go of underperformers?

Yes absolutely. I was explicitly told I could get away with doing nothing for 12 months before I’d get fired. I decided to quit instead.

Either I've read a blog post you've written before or this is a common occurrence.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#874

Post by berkes »

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.

You don't need a cookie banner if you don't have 3rd party tracking cookies. It's really that simple.

The fact that all sites have them, shows us a terrifying truth: all websites are tracking us with 3rd party tools. "all" websites send our browsing habits off to (many) companies that will sell, mine or otherwise monetize our data.

Again: A cookie banner is not needed if you don't have 3rd party and/or tracking cookies. E.g. With matomo on your own domain, plausible analytics, or simply mining your servers logs with math, you won't need cookie banners.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#875

Post by davedx »

saagarjha wrote: post #842
JW_00000 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the Android app store and GCP loss leaders? I assumed those two would be profitable at least.

GCP burns massive amounts of cash and was a loss for many years. It just barely pulled a profit this year, though it looks more like some accounting tricks to make a small negative number look like a small positive one to make things look better during a downturn.

IIRC most of the public clouds changed their depreciation accounting recently. So all that cloud hardware is now good for 20 years instead of 10 years or something. Quite a boost to the old bottom line when you do that.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#876

Post by beambot »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #866
jacquesm wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They made - and still make - one crucial error: you need to spin those projects that are simply viable out immediately after they take root. Otherwise you will end up with the brand advantage but there will always be the pressure to use the resources (people, mostly) more efficiently in terms of ROI. And so nothing ever lasts and slowly but surely your reputation as a reliable partner for new products is eroded. You…

In addition, I don't understand why they stopped them entirely, instead of spin them off as subsidiaries under e.g. Alphabet; make them financially self-reliant, have Google/Alphabet as the main shareholder, and give the people that worked on it (and whoever else wants to) the opportunity to continue working on the product. Some wouldn't have been viable, sure. Others were probably too ingrained in Google's hardware/…

Most of them were probably built on Google's core infrastructure in ways that make them difficult to externalize at sub scale. There's also compensation disparity - it's virtually impossible for a new startup / spinout to pay FAANG comp and remain profitable & nimble. This results in braindrain.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#877

Post by rvba »

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…

Did Astro Teller have any successful project? A lot of money was spent, but what are the results? Looking at the wikipedia page it seems this whole Google X thing is a place where senior people have fun, while the rest of the company is undetstaffed. (E.g. no money for human customer service)

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#878

Post by davedx »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #486
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…

> the prescription is always to go back in time I read it more as an indictment of layoffs being treated as business as usual. A company that grows a bit more modestly during boom times, fires fast continuously and maintains adequate buffers shouldn’t have to lay people off. Ever. The advantages of that haven’t been well explored. Ian makes a compelling argument that it should be.

> A company that grows a bit more modestly during boom times, fires fast continuously and maintains adequate buffers shouldn’t have to lay people off.

Kind of like Apple.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#879

Post by davedx »

surgical_fire wrote: post #418
rkagerer wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're never too big put the user first. When you stop doing that, someone else will and in time your customers will go there instead.

This is provably false. Customers are anything but rational, and pick things out that play against their best interests all the time. Be it due to fashion, social pressure, brand recognition, cultural norms, et cetera and so forth.

I doubt it's provably true or false, as psychology tends to be.

Largely I agree with the OP though - treat your customers bad enough and unless there's something stopping them, they'll go elsewhere. That's how the free market works.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#880

Post by snickmy »

There are few points that resonate with my personal experience (2012-2017).

- Finance is running the company - HR has lost the original shepherding of the culture in favour of risks mitigation - Reduction of transparent leadership comms in favour of corp speak - Horrible middle management (senior managers up to VP1). Either because we promoted great engineers into a people role, or because we hired consultants to run engineering organization (favouring navigating the complexity of the org, over managing innovation).

I did rationalise all those changes as something that was obvious from a short term optimization standpoint: the company was in the mist of PR fights, leaks , growing incredibly fast, etc. It's clear, 6 years later, that a sustained approach to this type of leadership has reduced the company to a shadow of itself. Less innovative, less talent driven.

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