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This is interesting for its notes on Google's organizational history and what it got right/wrong, but the bits about other companies don't seem to make sense to

This is interesting for its notes on Google's organizational history and what it got right/wrong, but the bits about other companies don't seem to make sense to me, particularly Facebook: > Facebook is kind of nothing. It’s a product company and I (personally) don’t think the product is very compelling. I think they hit a moment and will see the fate of MySpace in time. I can’t pick out product innovations that were particularly awesome (other than incubating on college campuses and exploiting sex more or less tastefully). And, their infrastructure is pretty crude which means they’ll run into the problem, eventually, hiring the kind of people who can do the kind of scaling they’re going to need. Surely a company that services billions of users (the kind of scale only rivaled by companies like Google) and worth $500b+ got something right when it comes to scaling organizationally/technically. They're Google's arch nemesis when it comes to recruiting, for one. Strange to see such dismissal from someone who purports to be a high level manager at Google. Anecdotally, I've heard that Facebook is less bureaucratic than Google, particularly during promotions.

bamboozled 9y ago
The issue is that there isn't a great deal of talent around and talent does not scale easily. Once you get a critical mass of average people drowning out the talented engineers, it's a slippery slope to the bottom. You're right Facebook is worth a lot of money today and so was Yahoo!
- harlanji 9y ago
  I wonder how much talent is turned away at HR or decides to not even pursue for cultural reasons. The brightest I know are mostly in business for themselves. The only reason I want a job is to work on massive scale problems again, but being an SF city gardener would pay $65k plus benefits and I’d just do that if I weren’t on the hook paying for student loans for my CS degree. Cultural reasons being that IME across 5 jobs in SF that I am not welcome in the profitable tech scene (recent lawsuits and news are vindicating) and also it turns out a lot of people at the top have lied to get and stay there like the truth is a sickness which is antithetical to creative talent.
  - aantix 9y ago
    “Cultural reasons” isn’t very helpful to you or the HN audience in assessing. If you ever want to do a mock interview I’ll gladly do it. There’s probably a few spots where you’re going wrong.
6ak74rfy 9y ago
services billions of users (the kind of scale only rivaled by companies like Google) and worth $500b+ A lot of people, not necessarily including the author, don't realize the niche challenges involved in running really high-scale services. They present hard problems, which just aren't there at low scale. They're Google's arch nemesis when it comes to recruiting, for one. And advertising. Facebook's advertising business is huge, probably only 2nd to Google's. Now, it is possible that Facebook's extreme focus on advertising and user engagement will drive off many of its users, in which case the advertising model won't sustain long-term. However, today it is big.

bamboozled 9y ago

The issue is that there isn't a great deal of talent around and talent does not scale easily. Once you get a critical mass of average people drowning out the talented engineers, it's a slippery slope to the bottom. You're right Facebook is worth a lot of money today and so was Yahoo!

harlanji 9y ago
I wonder how much talent is turned away at HR or decides to not even pursue for cultural reasons. The brightest I know are mostly in business for themselves. The only reason I want a job is to work on massive scale problems again, but being an SF city gardener would pay $65k plus benefits and I’d just do that if I weren’t on the hook paying for student loans for my CS degree. Cultural reasons being that IME across 5 jobs in SF that I am not welcome in the profitable tech scene (recent lawsuits and news are vindicating) and also it turns out a lot of people at the top have lied to get and stay there like the truth is a sickness which is antithetical to creative talent.
- aantix 9y ago
  “Cultural reasons” isn’t very helpful to you or the HN audience in assessing. If you ever want to do a mock interview I’ll gladly do it. There’s probably a few spots where you’re going wrong.

6ak74rfy 9y ago

services billions of users (the kind of scale only rivaled by companies like Google) and worth $500b+ A lot of people, not necessarily including the author, don't realize the niche challenges involved in running really high-scale services. They present hard problems, which just aren't there at low scale. They're Google's arch nemesis when it comes to recruiting, for one. And advertising. Facebook's advertising business is huge, probably only 2nd to Google's. Now, it is possible that Facebook's extreme focus on advertising and user engagement will drive off many of its users, in which case the advertising model won't sustain long-term. However, today it is big.