10 ms·

If you're interested in this subject, Robert Hughes wrote a fantastic reflection about the mythic days of generous staff expense accounts at Time. Truly unfatho

If you're interested in this subject, Robert Hughes wrote a fantastic reflection about the mythic days of generous staff expense accounts at Time. Truly unfathomable today. (1) https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/11/robert-hughes-the-spectacle-of-skill https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/11/robert-hughes-the...

ghaff 8y ago
There was a period in my life when that was what I would have liked to have done. But it was always a superstar type of industry and it was at the tail end of the culture in any case.
compiler-guy 8y ago
At some point in the future, the perks one finds today at Facebook and Google will someday be similarly unfathomable. Someone will figure out how to capture the outsize profits they produce, or some technology will come along that they miss, and it will all fade similarly. Don't know what that technology is, or when it will happen, but the fat days for nearly every industry eventually come to an end.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  Some parts of the world would tell you those days have already come with the wages you'll find for engineers of any rank. The last shop that contacted me ranged from 35k to 60k CAD. They couldn't even keep the appointment they had made with me in advance. There's a rise in people who work with technology (procurement managers, for one), however, who are often paid 4x to 6x as much as that last shop. They are, in my experience anyway, half as informed as anyone who has directly worked on similar technologies. But I digress.
  - compiler-guy 8y ago
    Most engineering jobs never had perks like those found at Google and Facebook, just like most journalism jobs never had perks like those found at Time, Inc. Although the cases are quite similar: Magazines and newspapers once were solid industries with some highly-profitable companies and where one could at least get a solid wage, and, if one was lucky, one could live a luxurious life on the company's dime. Now even the strongest newspapers and magazines are struggling, and one is lucky to have a job in the field at all, never mind a basic expense account. Someday that will happen to the Googles and Facebooks of the technology industry, and similarly to the perks they once provided their employees.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
      I still find it completely confusing when programmers say engineering. Are you talking about real engineering jobs like civil and mechanical engineering or do you mean programming?
      - owebmaster 8y ago
        Do you think that engineering a house is more "engineering" than engineering a social network for 2 billion people?
        JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
        Yes I do. If more people got training or specifically we had some building codes or ethics training about how to make a social network that isn’t harmful to those millions that participate in it, we might not be in the state we are in right now.
        pjmorris 8y ago
        "If a builder has built a house for a man, and has not made his work sound, and the house he built has fallen, and caused the death of its owner, that builder shall be put to death." - from Hammurabi's code [0][1], circa 1754 BC. Liability in the case of house-building has been established for millennia. Liability in the case of social networks is somewhat less well-established. I'd argue that being able to deal with the consequences of the results (e.g. the social consequences of ads and posts in the 2016 election, or leaking private conversations, or hitting pedestrians from today's HN front page) is a key part of maturing an engineering field. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi [1] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp
        dredmorbius 8y ago
- zawerf 8y ago
  "Fat days" end for individual companies too. Google had much better perks/food in the early days. Same goes for many profitable startups (like Dropbox) who cut their lavish spendings once they realize they need to go public: http://www.businessinsider.com/cost-cutting-at-dropbox-and-silicon-valley-startups-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/cost-cutting-at-dropbox-and-s...
- simonh 8y ago
  > Someone will figure out how to capture the outsize profits they produce, or some technology will come along that they miss... Bear in mind that with extravagant perks and 20% time, Google's strategy was explicitly to maximize the chance that this new idea would be produced by Google itself. It's interesting to look back at to what extent this has and has not panned out. For example, how come Facebook and Dropbox were not developed at Google and it had to crash-create competing products? Do any of Google's non-search properties count as next big things? Arguably AdSense perhaps, but that depended on being Google to start with.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    WRT Dropbox, Google has their cloud platform. It got off to a bit of rocky start but, today, it's clearly one of the handful of big public cloud platforms which is nothing to sneeze at. I'd argue that being a major public cloud is ultimately more important than having a relatively niche storage offering like Dropbox. Google's big failure has been in social pretty much across the board. It's tried a bunch of things beginning with Orkut and it's all amounted to pretty much zilch. I suspect that there's some fundamental mindset mismatch going on. GSuite/Gmail has been pretty successful (as has maps). Being very competitive with a company (Microsoft) that had a huge incumbent's advantage has to count for something. We'll see if projects like Waymo ever amount to something. IMO commercial applications are further out than many think and it's unclear the degree to which it will be Goggle who makes a lot of money from it.
  - doh 8y ago
    I would say it did panned out. Gmail, Google News, Google Reader, Orkut [released before Facebook and becoming a leading social network in South America for a while] and many other projects were built as part of the 20%. The challenge wasn't to get people to build incredible new ideas, it was the same as in every large company with "an unit" generating ideas, like Xerox -> PARC, Bell Telephone Company -> Bell Labs, etc. The leadership doesn't care about any of this, they want to expand their main business. No executive wants to be made obsolete and be replaced by the next thing run by other executives. Google is no different. For instance Orkut (person, not site) was running the site on his own on couple of servers the whole time. Google paid very little attention to it.
emmelaich 8y ago
Wonderful writing. Robert Hughes was an idol of mine.
- l33tbro 8y ago
  Me too! Such a gigantic talent.

ghaff 8y ago

There was a period in my life when that was what I would have liked to have done. But it was always a superstar type of industry and it was at the tail end of the culture in any case.

compiler-guy 8y ago

At some point in the future, the perks one finds today at Facebook and Google will someday be similarly unfathomable. Someone will figure out how to capture the outsize profits they produce, or some technology will come along that they miss, and it will all fade similarly. Don't know what that technology is, or when it will happen, but the fat days for nearly every industry eventually come to an end.

52-6F-62 8y ago
Some parts of the world would tell you those days have already come with the wages you'll find for engineers of any rank. The last shop that contacted me ranged from 35k to 60k CAD. They couldn't even keep the appointment they had made with me in advance. There's a rise in people who work with technology (procurement managers, for one), however, who are often paid 4x to 6x as much as that last shop. They are, in my experience anyway, half as informed as anyone who has directly worked on similar technologies. But I digress.
- compiler-guy 8y ago
  Most engineering jobs never had perks like those found at Google and Facebook, just like most journalism jobs never had perks like those found at Time, Inc. Although the cases are quite similar: Magazines and newspapers once were solid industries with some highly-profitable companies and where one could at least get a solid wage, and, if one was lucky, one could live a luxurious life on the company's dime. Now even the strongest newspapers and magazines are struggling, and one is lucky to have a job in the field at all, never mind a basic expense account. Someday that will happen to the Googles and Facebooks of the technology industry, and similarly to the perks they once provided their employees.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
    I still find it completely confusing when programmers say engineering. Are you talking about real engineering jobs like civil and mechanical engineering or do you mean programming?
    - owebmaster 8y ago
      Do you think that engineering a house is more "engineering" than engineering a social network for 2 billion people?
      - JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
        Yes I do. If more people got training or specifically we had some building codes or ethics training about how to make a social network that isn’t harmful to those millions that participate in it, we might not be in the state we are in right now.
      - pjmorris 8y ago
        "If a builder has built a house for a man, and has not made his work sound, and the house he built has fallen, and caused the death of its owner, that builder shall be put to death." - from Hammurabi's code [0][1], circa 1754 BC. Liability in the case of house-building has been established for millennia. Liability in the case of social networks is somewhat less well-established. I'd argue that being able to deal with the consequences of the results (e.g. the social consequences of ads and posts in the 2016 election, or leaking private conversations, or hitting pedestrians from today's HN front page) is a key part of maturing an engineering field. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi [1] http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/hamframe.asp
        dredmorbius 8y ago
zawerf 8y ago
"Fat days" end for individual companies too. Google had much better perks/food in the early days. Same goes for many profitable startups (like Dropbox) who cut their lavish spendings once they realize they need to go public: http://www.businessinsider.com/cost-cutting-at-dropbox-and-silicon-valley-startups-2016-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/cost-cutting-at-dropbox-and-s...
simonh 8y ago
> Someone will figure out how to capture the outsize profits they produce, or some technology will come along that they miss... Bear in mind that with extravagant perks and 20% time, Google's strategy was explicitly to maximize the chance that this new idea would be produced by Google itself. It's interesting to look back at to what extent this has and has not panned out. For example, how come Facebook and Dropbox were not developed at Google and it had to crash-create competing products? Do any of Google's non-search properties count as next big things? Arguably AdSense perhaps, but that depended on being Google to start with.
- ghaff 8y ago
  WRT Dropbox, Google has their cloud platform. It got off to a bit of rocky start but, today, it's clearly one of the handful of big public cloud platforms which is nothing to sneeze at. I'd argue that being a major public cloud is ultimately more important than having a relatively niche storage offering like Dropbox. Google's big failure has been in social pretty much across the board. It's tried a bunch of things beginning with Orkut and it's all amounted to pretty much zilch. I suspect that there's some fundamental mindset mismatch going on. GSuite/Gmail has been pretty successful (as has maps). Being very competitive with a company (Microsoft) that had a huge incumbent's advantage has to count for something. We'll see if projects like Waymo ever amount to something. IMO commercial applications are further out than many think and it's unclear the degree to which it will be Goggle who makes a lot of money from it.
- doh 8y ago
  I would say it did panned out. Gmail, Google News, Google Reader, Orkut [released before Facebook and becoming a leading social network in South America for a while] and many other projects were built as part of the 20%. The challenge wasn't to get people to build incredible new ideas, it was the same as in every large company with "an unit" generating ideas, like Xerox -> PARC, Bell Telephone Company -> Bell Labs, etc. The leadership doesn't care about any of this, they want to expand their main business. No executive wants to be made obsolete and be replaced by the next thing run by other executives. Google is no different. For instance Orkut (person, not site) was running the site on his own on couple of servers the whole time. Google paid very little attention to it.

emmelaich 8y ago

Wonderful writing. Robert Hughes was an idol of mine.

l33tbro 8y ago
Me too! Such a gigantic talent.