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Steve Yegge Quits, Saying Google Is 100% Competitor Focused

• mattmcknight 9y ago
  Surprised that a programmer quitting is covered by the financial press.
  • busterarm 9y ago
    Steve Yegge is a widely respected programmer who is also a bit known for making big predictions about the future of tech and generally being (directionally) correct about them.
    • stcredzero 9y ago
      Is there a list of his predictions somewhere?
      • Techonomicon 9y ago
        google? https://www.google.com/search?q=Steve+Yegge+predictions&oq=Steve+Yegge+predictions&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.1441j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=Steve+Yegge+predictions&oq=S...
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • CobrastanJorji 9y ago
      He's also not a half-bad science fiction writer.
  • mslate 9y ago
    Does it get clicks? It is press
• ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Previous discussion is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16220666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16220666
  • otp124 9y ago
    I've been reading through those comments, and all the top comments are about Grab, not about Google. So while the previous discussion is relevant, I wouldn't call this a dupe per se.
• stuffedBelly 9y ago
  > becoming "100% competitor-focused" and said the company "can no longer innovate." I understand that from a nowadays developer perspective, innovation is held in high regard and rightfully so. However, NO ONE can innovate constantly and forever. A competition race such as the cloud pricing Google vs. Amazon he mentioned is actually a good thing for customers from a economic standpoint. At some point, all companies have to slow down innovation and focus more on competitions and it's not necessarily a bad thing. That usually means refining existing products, rethinking strategies, retiring things that do not work and expanding to a new market space with a "me too" product (a "me too" product is a common strategy to tread new territory with relatively low risk).
  • QasimK 9y ago
    Surely large companies should be capable of having some people that are innovating while others are focusing on competition?
    • stuffedBelly 9y ago
      Agree. I just don't really buy his "100% competitor focused" statement. Isn't Google X and moonshot projects serve as Google's innovation hub?
      • soperj 9y ago
        those aren`t part of google any more.
        • ocdtrekkie 9y ago
          They've also been massively cut back on, and anything that doesn't look like a sure path to profitability has been killed by the CFO, Ruth Porat.
      • skywhopper 9y ago
        Those things exist, but are they successful?
• chris_wot 9y ago
  I’m afraid his comments on not because my customer focussed enough jibe with my experience of Google. Google has done great UX, but two examples of dreadful customer apps are Google Groups and the Google Admin interface. I have to daily make routine changes to accounts and Google Admin is so unbelievably slow that I curse it every time I have to login to it (which is incredibly frequently). The UI is slow, non-intuitive and confusing. And for a search company, it’s ability to search for Group addresses is appalling. And don’t get me started on Collaborative Inboxes... Google has innovated in the past, but it seems there is no polish and no attempt at fully developing products. They aren’t terribly great for enterprise management, which is sad for me because they have so much potential.
  • bitexploder 9y ago
    Yes. Google admin is very opaque and docs seem to always be subtly or outright out of date. It is not fun.
  • kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
    Google Groups has been on life support for 15+ years. If they knew what they were doing it could have been a Reddit killer integrated into a functioning G+.
    • cromwellian 9y ago
      Google groups is not a Reddit Killer, it is basically an evolved DejaNews, essentially the Archive.org of USENET. Perhaps the real flaw was abandoning the federated architecture of USENET for the centralized architecture of say Reddit or Facebook. Maybe we should bring back UUCP. :)
    • chris_wot 9y ago
      Except it is used as a distribution list. It’s not the same as groups.google.com
  • kevingadd 9y ago
    Google's incentive and performance review systems reward shipping and don't reward finishing or maintaining. That's a root cause of many bad/rotting Google products (though hardly the only one). For things involving open source or standards processes, it's really transparent when this has happened - Web Audio is the most notable one I've had the misfortune of interacting with, but there are some other cases where a pet project or prototype was kicked out the door and handed off to someone else (or no one).
• andrewstuart 9y ago
  The question is, where IS the innovation? Which big companies are doing an impressive job of innovating? Remember when Tim Cook was criticised for not constantly bringing out new product lines? Yo don't hear that any more - people seem to have forgotten about the idea that Apple might be a company that actually comes up with entirely new product categories. Indeed Apple hardly even releases updates to its computers any more, and was savaged for that a year or two back, promised solemnly that it really does know how to release new computers, but for example the Mac Mini was last updated 4 years ago in 2014. Amazon is certainly innovating in the cloud space. Sony is having a go with VR. What other examples are there of companies that remain innovative, not just reactionary? Out in the startup world innovation seems to have declined - reviewing the next batch of startups from any incubator/early stage VC you're bound to see the same types of companies that are fixing insurance, delivering food to people and basically doing the same things over and over. I feel like the real innovation happens on github but most of the projects don't bother trying to become businesses.
  • Apocryphon 9y ago
    From an economic/investment standpoint, Apple has negated the need for new product lines for the time being by its advance into untapped markets, especially China. From an innovation for the sake of innovation standpoint, they can still be criticized for that. But not to single out Apple- as you pointed out, many startups are doing the same thing over and over again. Guess this is the consolidation and make profits stage of the tech cycle.
  • randomsearch 9y ago
    Amazon is innovating in many many spaces simultaneously. That’s where the innovation is amongst the big tech monoliths right now.
  • shaggerty 9y ago
    Apple is rumored to be launching an AR product line in 2019. https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/8/16622802/apple-ar-headset-augmented-reality-plans-rumors-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/8/16622802/apple-ar-headset...
• gstar 9y ago
  Grab must have absolutely incredible internal comms and leadership.
  • draw_down 9y ago
    Or it’s a recruiting post. Don’t get me wrong, I like the guy, but there’s a reason he’s writing so effusively about the Uber of SE Asia. It’s contained in the closing sentence of his post.
• sushisource 9y ago
  I do find the irony of him jumping ship to a company that's copying other ride sharing companies pretty hysterical given his complaint. Not to say that invalidates what he's saying or anything but it's a little humorous.
  • ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
    I only knew about him from his posts about interviewing and technical interviews and in addition to the irony you point out I wonder whether there's more irony around the possibility it could be the hiring practices he seems ok with that may also be shutting the potential innovators out. I've worked at tech companies and I feel there's a bit of a mono culture among many programmers.
• acover 9y ago
  Blog post the article is about: https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc0be84 https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-gr...
• rconti 9y ago
  Why was he still there, after 13 years? He should have been able to retire ages ago, or if he wants to keep working, should have gone somewhere innovative half a decade ago.
  • mcphage 9y ago
    The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • oh_sigh 9y ago
    Perhaps because he thought he was working on something interesting, and they kept giving him stock grant refreshes to keep him there?
    • stevenwoo 9y ago
      From his blog post there's one sentence where it sounds like he was already gone the past few years, looking for greener pastures.
  • dgacmu 9y ago
    Because - as he noted - Google is a fantastic place to work. > Even after almost 20 years of operation, Google is still one of the very best places to work on Earth, just about any way you care to measure it. And I'll echo it - Google is an amazing place to work. It's a company that puts very serious efforts into making its employees productive and trying to help them stay happy and healthy. It's got a quite amazing collection of very talented engineers. While I haven't worked at a huge number of companies, it's the best in this respect that I've ever seen. (None of that means it's the best place for any given person - I know several people, including at least one of my former Ph.D. students and several former undergrads - who left because they wanted a more hard-charging startup environment. And I know others who took such a move, and returned. I don't think they regretted either decision. Everyone's mileage will vary.)
• suckmydang 9y ago
  Once a company attains majority market share, it's not in their best interest to disrupt the market anymore.
• adrxyz 9y ago
  Once a company attains majority market share, it's not in their best interest to disrupt the market anymore.
• foxfired 9y ago
  What I find funny is how mild his opinion about google was. I read his post on medium and it's true that he showed some of the problems google have but it wasn't as poignant. He mostly focused on his new venture Now CNBC takes it and puts it on steroids. > GOOGLE CAN NO LONGER INNOVATE!!! says former big shot employee I won't be surprised if this also affects their stock price.
• redleggedfrog 9y ago
  Holy crap, that has got to be some tasty Kool-Aid. Reading the blog post, it seems curious to me that much of what his startup is predicted on is lack of any kind of governmental oversight, standards, and enforcement. It actually seems to be more taking advantage of an undesirable 3rd world situation than improving it.
  • ztjio 9y ago
    So ... exactly like Uber in the beginning. Seems reasonable from a business standpoint given the historical precedent there then.
    • falcolas 9y ago
      But not a very ethical one, or one with great long-term stability. As much as I respect some of Steve Yegge's writing, there's some serious delusion/justification that seems to be going on. "[...] people are generally pretty clever about optimizing their income" is flat out wrong, and to base your view of the morality of an industry on such shaky foundations is a recipe for a rude awakening. People work for Uber because it's a job. Not necessarily because it's a well paying job or a job with anything resembling a future, but it's an easy-to-obtain job.
• yuhong 9y ago
  My favorite is Eric Schmidt leaving after https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-google-new-america.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/us/politics/eric-schmidt-...
  • kyrra 9y ago
    Eric did not leave Google or alphabet, it was just a change in roles. He is still on the board of directors, and he is still employed as a consultant. He just no longer holds the title of executive chairman.
• shawn 9y ago
  Hello. I noticed Steve is writing a book about his time at Google: I have a lot of good stories saved up that I’d love to share. Google corporate didn’t much care for my blogging, and even though they never outright forbade it, I received a lot of indirect pressure from various VPs. So eventually I stopped. Sad. But that’s not where my mind’s at today. Those stories will have to wait for my book. I can completely relate with this. I used to work at S2 games on Dota 2, and at Matasano as a pentester. Both cases led to a lot of interesting stories, and I have often thought of writing a book collecting these into a single work from the perspective of a programmer, simply putting thoughts to paper. There is a book, With the Old Breed https://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195 https://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/08914... It's the perspective of a WW2 solider, and simply chronicles events one after another with very little personal flair. Simply a linear sequence of events. The end result is fascinating, and works like this seem rarely published. My question is, how can I do this without ruining my career prospects? Is that a valid concern? All of my stories are generally positive, and I don't think any of them would cause drama. I just want to reminisce about the good times, and collate the perspective of fellow devs and pentesters. Obviously, sharing specific details that were covered under NDA is out. That's not what this is about. But I do want to be careful not to gain a reputation as someone who will reveal company secrets if you hire me. Any tips? It's a scary prospect, but it seems worth doing.
  • harlanji 9y ago
    Why is it scary? Rejection from some hypothetical group that obviously doesn't share your values? Nobody wants to close doors, but that mindset closes the only worthwhile doors anyway. Not saying make a priority, but consider where that fear is coming from. No doubt you have programming that makes pain centers activate from your writing.
  • davidw 9y ago
    I get the impression 'his book' is something vague in the future, rather than a concrete project. He says he's "all in" for his startup.
  • luckydata 9y ago
    That's what anonymous blogs are for. Pick a pseudonym and get going.
• jmadler 9y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with Steve that Google is 100% competitor focused. Yes, there are lots of fast-follows, but the fast-follows are innovative (such as Google Home), and the PM teams definitely focus more on user research than on competitive research. I mean, Google didn't exactly invent the Search Engine... I do however believe that it is increasingly difficult at Google to enter new markets as an individual contributor. Nearly all new products require executive support before they can be meaningfully commenced. There are definitely increasingly strict controls on any public releases (even silent ones) centered around protecting the Google brand. It kinda seems like Yegge was ready to move on and created post-hoc rationalization for it that was too broadly sweeping. I also don't think the fetishization around innovation is really that useful. It's an ill-defined and abused buzzword.
  • ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    What's innovative about Google Home? Every component of it, Home itself (Echo), the Home mini (Echo Tap), etc. are all clones of products that already existed. It doesn't do anything particularly better than it's competitors, and in many cases performs worse, including issues like embarrassingly incorrect answers, killing Wi-Fi networks, accidentally recording all voice even when it's not supposed to... Google Home is the exact embodiment of a "me too" product. And it's not even a good one.
• bogomipz 9y ago
  >"He wrote this new blog post after deciding to join the Southeast Asian ride-hailing company Grab" Grab is a ride-haling app that is identical to Uber and Lyft. Where is their innovation exactly? And Grab is obsessed with their competitors Go-Jek and Uber.
• eligundry 9y ago
  This is a perfect time to re-read his rant about Google vs Amazon and dogfooding. https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX
• RandyRanderson 9y ago
  It's hard to understand his criticism of g+ as his post of quite a ramble. If g+ had APIs it would have been successful how? He makes several conjectures but either doesn't provide an argument or just a passing one. Also being a developer, he is qualified to comment on the business directions of some of the large companies in the world because ... Even in all my hubris, I would feel compelled to add several "just my opinion" caveats. Does anyone have a link to the google lunch lady's blog? I heard she has some great tax advice that a lot of CFOs should hear.
  • ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Communities like social networks heavily depend on their celebrities/engagers to get people regularly participating. Google+'s own UI was easily overwhelmed by the dreaded "99+ notifications", and the lack of competent content management features. With APIs, these "big" users would have an easier time working with the network. Similarly, third party apps and tools are key in bringing multi-network entities into engaging on your network. Note that Facebook massively profited from people integrating with their platform both internally and externally, bringing games in (Google did try this... poorly) and bringing Facebook right into their own websites.
• voicedYoda 9y ago
  Easily my favorite quote: "I’m getting myself involved in a land war in Asia."