9 ms·

I did a double take when I read Tim Armstrong as the new CEO. I remember reading a scathing in-depth piece on him some time ago. Fired a guy in the middle of a

I did a double take when I read Tim Armstrong as the new CEO. I remember reading a scathing in-depth piece on him some time ago. Fired a guy in the middle of a meeting, shamed some employees that had delivery complications with their children. I was surprised he's still around. I suppose the new CEO will be as criticized and unloved as the old one.

elgabogringo 10y ago
Tim and Marissa are both characters. I wonder if they are actually any good. After all, how easy would it be to "succeed" at Google 10 years ago? That's why I'm always a little skeptical about hiring leaders from one-trick pony companies. Many come to mind. Intel (x86), VMWare (vSphere), Google (ad words) and the list goes on. It's likely you could be a very incompetent leader at these companies and still show results because the product sells itself &/or has a virtual monopoly for a number of years. I have seen very, very few Intel execs leave and be successful outside of Intel. In fact, I can't think of any. Are we now seeing the same from Google?
- argonaut 10y ago
  The elephant in the room: Sheryl Sandberg (VP of sales and ops at Google before FB). John Doerr was also a sales executive at Intel in the late 70s. Also, most executives don't become famous. There are dozens of ex-Google and ex-Intel executives you've never heard of chugging away as executives at other companies, presumably succeeding (because they haven't been fired or demoted). But you've never heard of them because they aren't wildly or prominently successful.
  - elgabogringo 10y ago
    Elephant in the room or exception that proves the rule? I would also consider Doerr as starting his career at Intel (back when it didn't have a virtual monopoly) rather than being a senior leader. I think these one-trick ponies are good places to start careers, I just think the market should be more wary when hiring exec leadership (VP to c-level) from them.
    - argonaut 10y ago
      Sure Google and Intel don't have great executives that leave for other companies, if you exclude the really successful ones. /s It's also incredibly rare for executives to leave these companies in the first place. They are compensated wildly; if they leave, it's usually to retire.
      - elgabogringo 10y ago
        not sure why you feel the need to be sarcastic about this. Marissa and Armstrong were big names coming out of Google that many would argue flamed out. The fact that Sheryl Sandberg makes what I would consider is a lateral move to another successful company doesn't really come into play. I'd rather hire the leader from a company with a diverse set of products that was directly accountable for an independent P&L. You don't really get that at Intel as everything is a derivative of x86 and I don't think you get that very much at Google (where the real P&L that matters is still search advertising.) I can speak specifically to Intel, that execs increasingly don't leave because they lack the necessary experience to go run an independent business. Sometimes they manage to get hired elsewhere and, in most cases, they flame out and either retire or return.
        argonaut 10y ago
        Because your logic is obviously fallacious (e.g. moving the goalposts / excluding contrary evidence).
    - eldavido 10y ago
      There's a much bigger insight here. High-flying companies in SV have become another form of cover-your-ass pedigree that allows the entire management chain to pass the buck on hiring decisions. I see this at the lowest level from IC engineering hires up to the CEO. Hiring someone/investing in their company/putting them in any position of trust, after they've been "minted" at the successful big company is "safe"; it hardly matters what the person did, or what results they achieved, just that it's "on their resume". Whereas hiring someone from a scrappy startup that worked their ass off and executed but wasn't in a position to influence strategy will be branded a "loser" and in a much worse position to get hired vs. the safe bigco candidate. This is really a big problem/opportunity, and it's all down to our inability to measure/attribute individual performance in a team setting. But it does make you wonder, from a career-planning perspective, should I optimize for "name" or actual learning? Should we all follow Sandberg's advice and just "Get on a rocket ship" and "let our careers take care of themselves" even if the company is already on a breakout trajectory before we got there? As someone who's spent a lot of time optimizing for actual learning, I'm starting to think it's the losing strategy, but then, all my friends work for big companies like Apple / facebook / google, so maybe their influence is just rubbing off on me.
- ignoramous 10y ago
  Google is far from one trick pony. Android is the most dominant operating system in the world. YouTube the most dominating Video sharing website in the world. Gmail the most widely used web-based email service. Google maps... If my experience being part of the Amazon Echo team has taught me anything, it's that the most simple looking things (like Search, or Voice UI) require the most complex skill set. Even if Google got just one thing right in your eyes (aka Search/AdWords), rest assured, underneath they employed a considerable number of disparate 'tricks' to get that right-- you just chose to umbrella dismiss those many tricks as 'One Trick' (TM).
  - mountaineer22 10y ago
    Most of what you listed were acquisitions, then paired with Adwords.
    - api 10y ago
      Android was an acquisition?
      - mountaineer22 10y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#His... In July 2005, Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million, whose key employees, including Rubin, Miner and White, stayed at the company after the acquisition.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - endemic 10y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
      - karma_vaccum123 10y ago
        Google merely acquired the embryo of modern Android. They can take credit for growing it.
- api 10y ago
  > That's why I'm always a little skeptical about hiring leaders from one-trick pony companies. I'd put it this way: hyper-growth makes everyone look great, but hyper-growth is often a one-off event whose causes are obscure. When someone gallops into town riding a white exponential, ask whether that person had any direct causal influence over the genesis of that exponential. If the answer is no, evaluate them as if they held the same position in an average firm. Unless you designed Google's original search or AdWords, "worked at Google" =~ "worked at IBM."
  - elgabogringo 10y ago
    Very well put. Thank you.
  - jrockway 10y ago
    > Unless you designed Google's original search or AdWords, "worked at Google" =~ "worked at IBM." I'm not sure I agree. Think about all the infrastructure required to run those services; low-latency transactional databases, data centers, network engineering (peering, load balancing), etc., etc. Those are all enormous achievements that are rarely duplicated at other companies. When you "ping google.com" and nothing comes back, do you assume that google.com is down, or that your Internet connection is down? What about "ping ibm.com"? :) (P.S., ibm.com appears to block pings. Or it's down right now!)
    - skewart 10y ago
      I take it the commenter is talking more about business roles than engineering. To be sure, there are unique engineering problems that massive scale companies face. For business leadership roles though, you often see people trying to coast on successes that they had little role in creating. To be fair though, there are great leaders at all kinds of companies. And the success, money, and potential impact one can have at companies like Intel and Google attracts a lot of talented people. I think it's just a matter of not automatically assuming people are great just because of what's on their resume.
      - 10y ago
- nostrademons 10y ago
  Marissa is pretty good (she was the exec sponsor for several of my first projects at Google). Very large ego, but she really is very smart and exceptionally hard-working. She was responsible for some of Google's more innovative org-structure decisions (eg. the APM program), and IMHO Search and Maps really benefitted from her UI restraint while she was there. I know a few people at Yahoo, and the good employees (i.e. the ones who didn't just do 15 minutes of work a day while "telecommuting") tended to speak highly of her too. I think what you're really seeing is Warren Buffett's aphorism, "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." People tend to overestimate the effect of a CEO on the business's returns. Usually the prime drivers of a business's success are external to the business itself (eg. customer preferences, technological shifts, competitive landscape). You can draw your own conclusions about what that should mean about CEO pay, but unfortunately human beings are hard-wired with a cognitive bias to ascribe effects to people, rather than to systemic factors. (As a side note: I wonder if this is what'll happen to Musk regarding Tesla. As amazingly innovative as Tesla has been, the auto industry has a reputation for terrible economics.)
  - elgabogringo 10y ago
    Good comment. And to your side note: I think TSLA goes to zero in the next 5 years.
  - ben_jones 10y ago
    If I had to justify ending a telecommuting program in order to influence engineers to leave willingly before a large round of layoffs were planned, I would tell all my remaining employees that those telecommuters were lazy and only worked 15 minutes a day. Seems like business-cult behavior to label some employees as "the good employees" and everyone else as "the bad employees" where "good" employees work weekends and don't take vacations and so forth. Slippery slope.
    - forgetsusername 10y ago
      The only people who don't like me are jerks and morons.

elgabogringo 10y ago

Tim and Marissa are both characters. I wonder if they are actually any good. After all, how easy would it be to "succeed" at Google 10 years ago? That's why I'm always a little skeptical about hiring leaders from one-trick pony companies. Many come to mind. Intel (x86), VMWare (vSphere), Google (ad words) and the list goes on. It's likely you could be a very incompetent leader at these companies and still show results because the product sells itself &/or has a virtual monopoly for a number of years. I have seen very, very few Intel execs leave and be successful outside of Intel. In fact, I can't think of any. Are we now seeing the same from Google?

argonaut 10y ago
The elephant in the room: Sheryl Sandberg (VP of sales and ops at Google before FB). John Doerr was also a sales executive at Intel in the late 70s. Also, most executives don't become famous. There are dozens of ex-Google and ex-Intel executives you've never heard of chugging away as executives at other companies, presumably succeeding (because they haven't been fired or demoted). But you've never heard of them because they aren't wildly or prominently successful.
- elgabogringo 10y ago
  Elephant in the room or exception that proves the rule? I would also consider Doerr as starting his career at Intel (back when it didn't have a virtual monopoly) rather than being a senior leader. I think these one-trick ponies are good places to start careers, I just think the market should be more wary when hiring exec leadership (VP to c-level) from them.
  - argonaut 10y ago
    Sure Google and Intel don't have great executives that leave for other companies, if you exclude the really successful ones. /s It's also incredibly rare for executives to leave these companies in the first place. They are compensated wildly; if they leave, it's usually to retire.
    - elgabogringo 10y ago
      not sure why you feel the need to be sarcastic about this. Marissa and Armstrong were big names coming out of Google that many would argue flamed out. The fact that Sheryl Sandberg makes what I would consider is a lateral move to another successful company doesn't really come into play. I'd rather hire the leader from a company with a diverse set of products that was directly accountable for an independent P&L. You don't really get that at Intel as everything is a derivative of x86 and I don't think you get that very much at Google (where the real P&L that matters is still search advertising.) I can speak specifically to Intel, that execs increasingly don't leave because they lack the necessary experience to go run an independent business. Sometimes they manage to get hired elsewhere and, in most cases, they flame out and either retire or return.
      - argonaut 10y ago
        Because your logic is obviously fallacious (e.g. moving the goalposts / excluding contrary evidence).
  - eldavido 10y ago
    There's a much bigger insight here. High-flying companies in SV have become another form of cover-your-ass pedigree that allows the entire management chain to pass the buck on hiring decisions. I see this at the lowest level from IC engineering hires up to the CEO. Hiring someone/investing in their company/putting them in any position of trust, after they've been "minted" at the successful big company is "safe"; it hardly matters what the person did, or what results they achieved, just that it's "on their resume". Whereas hiring someone from a scrappy startup that worked their ass off and executed but wasn't in a position to influence strategy will be branded a "loser" and in a much worse position to get hired vs. the safe bigco candidate. This is really a big problem/opportunity, and it's all down to our inability to measure/attribute individual performance in a team setting. But it does make you wonder, from a career-planning perspective, should I optimize for "name" or actual learning? Should we all follow Sandberg's advice and just "Get on a rocket ship" and "let our careers take care of themselves" even if the company is already on a breakout trajectory before we got there? As someone who's spent a lot of time optimizing for actual learning, I'm starting to think it's the losing strategy, but then, all my friends work for big companies like Apple / facebook / google, so maybe their influence is just rubbing off on me.
ignoramous 10y ago
Google is far from one trick pony. Android is the most dominant operating system in the world. YouTube the most dominating Video sharing website in the world. Gmail the most widely used web-based email service. Google maps... If my experience being part of the Amazon Echo team has taught me anything, it's that the most simple looking things (like Search, or Voice UI) require the most complex skill set. Even if Google got just one thing right in your eyes (aka Search/AdWords), rest assured, underneath they employed a considerable number of disparate 'tricks' to get that right-- you just chose to umbrella dismiss those many tricks as 'One Trick' (TM).
- mountaineer22 10y ago
  Most of what you listed were acquisitions, then paired with Adwords.
  - api 10y ago
    Android was an acquisition?
    - mountaineer22 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)#His... In July 2005, Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million, whose key employees, including Rubin, Miner and White, stayed at the company after the acquisition.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - endemic 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
    - karma_vaccum123 10y ago
      Google merely acquired the embryo of modern Android. They can take credit for growing it.
api 10y ago
> That's why I'm always a little skeptical about hiring leaders from one-trick pony companies. I'd put it this way: hyper-growth makes everyone look great, but hyper-growth is often a one-off event whose causes are obscure. When someone gallops into town riding a white exponential, ask whether that person had any direct causal influence over the genesis of that exponential. If the answer is no, evaluate them as if they held the same position in an average firm. Unless you designed Google's original search or AdWords, "worked at Google" =~ "worked at IBM."
- elgabogringo 10y ago
  Very well put. Thank you.
- jrockway 10y ago
  > Unless you designed Google's original search or AdWords, "worked at Google" =~ "worked at IBM." I'm not sure I agree. Think about all the infrastructure required to run those services; low-latency transactional databases, data centers, network engineering (peering, load balancing), etc., etc. Those are all enormous achievements that are rarely duplicated at other companies. When you "ping google.com" and nothing comes back, do you assume that google.com is down, or that your Internet connection is down? What about "ping ibm.com"? :) (P.S., ibm.com appears to block pings. Or it's down right now!)
  - skewart 10y ago
    I take it the commenter is talking more about business roles than engineering. To be sure, there are unique engineering problems that massive scale companies face. For business leadership roles though, you often see people trying to coast on successes that they had little role in creating. To be fair though, there are great leaders at all kinds of companies. And the success, money, and potential impact one can have at companies like Intel and Google attracts a lot of talented people. I think it's just a matter of not automatically assuming people are great just because of what's on their resume.
    - 10y ago
nostrademons 10y ago
Marissa is pretty good (she was the exec sponsor for several of my first projects at Google). Very large ego, but she really is very smart and exceptionally hard-working. She was responsible for some of Google's more innovative org-structure decisions (eg. the APM program), and IMHO Search and Maps really benefitted from her UI restraint while she was there. I know a few people at Yahoo, and the good employees (i.e. the ones who didn't just do 15 minutes of work a day while "telecommuting") tended to speak highly of her too. I think what you're really seeing is Warren Buffett's aphorism, "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." People tend to overestimate the effect of a CEO on the business's returns. Usually the prime drivers of a business's success are external to the business itself (eg. customer preferences, technological shifts, competitive landscape). You can draw your own conclusions about what that should mean about CEO pay, but unfortunately human beings are hard-wired with a cognitive bias to ascribe effects to people, rather than to systemic factors. (As a side note: I wonder if this is what'll happen to Musk regarding Tesla. As amazingly innovative as Tesla has been, the auto industry has a reputation for terrible economics.)
- elgabogringo 10y ago
  Good comment. And to your side note: I think TSLA goes to zero in the next 5 years.
- ben_jones 10y ago
  If I had to justify ending a telecommuting program in order to influence engineers to leave willingly before a large round of layoffs were planned, I would tell all my remaining employees that those telecommuters were lazy and only worked 15 minutes a day. Seems like business-cult behavior to label some employees as "the good employees" and everyone else as "the bad employees" where "good" employees work weekends and don't take vacations and so forth. Slippery slope.
  - forgetsusername 10y ago
    The only people who don't like me are jerks and morons.