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Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

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Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#91

Post by paxys »

hemloc_io wrote: post #59
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.

It feels like tech generally has a CEO vision problem. Andy Jassy + Sudar for example. off the top of my head I can only think of Zuckerburg, and maybe Satya. (Although Satya is more an exceptional operator than visionary.)

Tech started to have a vision problem the moment big money (and people with big money) entered the picture and started calling the shots. Sundar, Jassy, Satya, Tim Cook are all cut from the same cloth. Their job is to appease the shareholders and not much else.

Zuckerberg is probably the only founder/majority shareholder still involved in the weeds of running his ~trillion dollar company day to day and executing his vision, and you have to give him kudos for that. He could easily go buy multiple countries instead and live out his life with a lot less stress.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#92

Post by JohnFen »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #31
hnthrowaway0328 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it was the Alphabet saga? It's all like this. I have decided that if given the chance, I'd never work in companies with more than 1,000 persons.

Not even if they pay well enough that you can quit and still afford having a family in only 5 years, instead of 20?

Can't speak for OP, of course, but for me -- no, not even then. There really are things money can't buy.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#93

Post by jillesvangurp »

markdog12 wrote: post #3

> Take Jeanine Banks, for example, who manages the department that somewhat arbitrarily contains (among other things) Flutter, Dart, Go, and Firebase. Her department nominally has a strategy, but I couldn't leak it if I wanted to; I literally could never figure out what any part of it meant, even after years of hearing her describe it. Her understanding of what her teams are doing is minimal at best; she frequently m…

Slightly above that comment is this line:

> 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.

I've been calling that out for years as it is obvious from the outside: Pichai is not a leader but a care taker. He has no vision that anyone can seem to articulate. And apparently he's restructured the company to not have any people reporting to him that have one either. Shocking to get some inside confirmation of what is clear to see from the outside.

I was reading Hixie's blog when he was working on WhatWG. He was one of the main authors of the HTML 5 spec. Always had great respect for how he communicated. Him being this explicit is a message in itself. He was juggling highly opinionated people arguing all sorts of things when he was writing that spec. Part of the reason why that worked was his pragmatism and ability to stay calm. This is a really strongly worded message and people at Google and in their board would do well to take note of it and take action.

My recommendation: time for some leadership changes. Doing more of the same isn't going to work. Do it more smartly than OpenAI. But don't wait.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#94

Post by g-b-r »

AlbertCory wrote: post #17

Yet another "famous" Googler whom I didn't know. He joined one month before I did. I did know Chris DiBona, at least. Didn't know this Jeanine person. I wrote a number of articles about working there in the early (or earlier) days. Chronologically: https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-enterp... https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-google-ads https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/working-at-go…

He was famous (or infamous) way before joining Google

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#95

Post by stefan_ »

t8sr wrote: post #35
hnthrowaway0328 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it was the Alphabet saga? It's all like this. I have decided that if given the chance, I'd never work in companies with more than 1,000 persons.

Google in 2015 had probably 30,000 employees, maybe more. And it was still completely open internally and had a real community feel to it. One time, I was stuck in Montreal for 7 days for personal reasons (a vacation plan that exploded). I walked into the Google office there, made some friends, worked on a random project they were doing and ended up collaborating on an OKR a year later. It is entirely possible to kee…

Ok, but you also just non ironically said "collaborating on an OKR".

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#96

Post by chatmasta »

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.

I also noticed the bit about offering career advice to people in Google, but I found it odd for a different reason. How can someone who's spent 18 years of their career (and I'm guessing, almost all of it) at Google possibly be qualified to give career advice? They can give excellent advice for working at Google. But if they haven't left the company in 18 years, then surely they don't have the experience to give useful career advice that isn't at least heavily biased toward the idiosyncrasies of their one job. Even if they had a decade of experience prior to Google, how useful is pre-2005 career advice now?

That's not to say the author couldn't give valuable advice, especially in more generalized areas like the craft of programming, or even navigating office politics. It's just that any advice will inevitably be specific to Google. It seems strange to offer career advice when you've not had a "career" per se - more like you've had one really long job.

And who's asking him for this advice? Did people get wind that he might be looking for other jobs, and so he became the "career guy?" If so, that's a revealing insight into the culture at Google, evocative of flock animals asking their least risk averse member what he saw on his adventure beyond the paddock...

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#97

Post by hshsbs84848 »

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.

Yeah that’s what I don’t understand, what is the incentive to preserve the culture?

Outcomes follow incentives

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#98

Post by Obergruppen »

markdog12 wrote: post #3

> Take Jeanine Banks, for example, who manages the department that somewhat arbitrarily contains (among other things) Flutter, Dart, Go, and Firebase. Her department nominally has a strategy, but I couldn't leak it if I wanted to; I literally could never figure out what any part of it meant, even after years of hearing her describe it. Her understanding of what her teams are doing is minimal at best; she frequently m…

[flagged]

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#99

Post by LargeTomato »

lesuorac wrote: post #33
nostrademons wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not localStorage.

Non-sequitor. If you look back the at the original post I say "Hard drive" not the "localStorage object". And they are indeed stored are your system and not the servers. https://allaboutcookies.org/what-is-a-cookie-file#:~:text=In... .

You do say hard drive but you also imply that permission to store cookies is as good as permission to mine cryptocurrency simply because the user allowed access to storage.

The argument these other commenters are trying to make hinges on the idea that the type of storage for cookies wouldn't work that well for crypto mining.

You're calling that argument nonsequitor and I don't think it is. It's immediately applicable to explaining the gap in your reasoning. That gap, for the record, being Cookies Storage == Crypto Mining.

Finally, let me give an example. "I own my house and my land so therefore I'm a sovereign citizen." That's a bad argument for largely the same reasons.

Re: Reflecting on 18 Years at Google

#100

Post by sidcool »

The following is a pretty damning statement.

> 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. A symptom of this is the spreading contingent of inept middle management.

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