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Am a googler (hence throwaway account) & I can easily tell you why this shit keeps happening! Google featureless ZERO penalties for fucking shit up! Zero! Do y

Am a googler (hence throwaway account) & I can easily tell you why this shit keeps happening! Google featureless ZERO penalties for fucking shit up! Zero! Do you know what the people who wasted two years on Allo got after it was canned? Nothing! Some of them actually got promoted! Google GREATLY encourages "launches" - releasing something publicly. And keep in mind - no penalties if the shit is half baked, not working, only works on chrome, or some such nonsense! This is the norm! Why? Promotion. You cannot get promoted beyond a certain level in this place unless you "launch" something big. So what do you get when you add of all these perverse incentives? Nine thousand, eight hundred, and eighty-three chat apps, and a never-ending chain of redesigns and relaunches so some people can get promoted. Do you know how many bugs you need to fix to get promoted? Infinity. No matter how many you fix, it will never get you enough "impact" for promotion. Never. How many useless redesigns do you need to launch to get promoted? ONE! Extra fun: people internally usually warn about this shit, complain about it, file bugs about shitty performance, etc. It is ALL ignored. Most people who've been here for over a few years have given up filing bugs even. Because the reply is always the same: "you're not the target audience"! And we all know it! We all do! Some quit when they realize it, others just begin optimizing for promotion as opposed to optimizing for what is good for the user or the company. And this is how you get new gmail, for example. EDIT: replaced underscores with proper profanity as had been requested

bhairoxx 8y ago
Exact same situation at Amazon. Launches (doesn't matter how useless and broken) >> Fixes
CoolGuySteve 8y ago
Classic: You get what you measure. But years ago the same thing happened to me at Apple. I was fixing bugs in every part of a major framework to help SnowLeopard ship only to get passed over for a minor promotion because I wasn't "critical on any one project". I thought it was especially ironic since SnowLeopard was supposed to be a stability/performance release only to get massively delayed by people "shipping" things like the Objective-C garbage collection that made XCode unusable for months. The same stability/performance release that had a day-1 point release.
- shittyadmin 8y ago
  Maintenance is thankless work - it's that way in just about every industry around, short of total disaster no one is going to congratulate you for making something work the way it was supposed to work.
  - therealdrag0 8y ago
    Personally I've had good reception of performance and security bug fixes at my current job. Even got a private bonus from CTO for one. (Small-Medium company) But I can see how that'd be the exception.
- ericd 8y ago
  Thanks for contributing that to Snow Leopard. It is my all time favorite OS X release precisely because it felt solid and fast, and didn’t add a bunch of useless new cruft to the interface or mess up anything I relied on. I haven’t felt that with any release since. It’s a depressingly rare feeling with something as fundamental as an OS.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  Your bosses may be clueless, but at least folks at HN - that is actual Apple customers - really appreciate your hard work. It is thanks to people like you many of us still use Apple hardware.
  - Elidrake24 8y ago
    > Actual Apple customers I mean, I get what you're attempting to say, but this is so delusional when looking at the most successful business in the world that it's almost farcical.
aikinai 8y ago
Comment deleted since the parent was updated.
- throwaway140 8y ago
  Was not sure if that was allowed here. Updated now.
the_af 8y ago
Ah! I often wonder, how and why does Google decide to change the UI to well established products like Gmail? It's certain to annoy veteran users, so I'm particularly puzzled when the decide to shake things up, UX wise, for no apparent usability or feature gain. I suppose your post is at least partly an explanation.
- crazygringo 8y ago
  In this particular case, Gmail surely needed to be brought in line with Material Design (as has been happening to all Google apps, like Keep last week)... and the fact it now works offline (in its native interface, not the old kludge) is the biggest usability/feature gain (pretty huge, really). They've actually been adding a ton of new features over the past year, especially with Inbox functionality being merged in.
  - nailer 8y ago
    In split view, clicking a message to view it also adds 'archive' buttons under the mouse. So viewing a message immediately archives it. Even if you could type text and have it appear on screen in a reasonable time, the current state of gmail is /insane/.
  - the_af 8y ago
    Oh, I'm sure it's not random. I bet there's a rationale for almost every change in every piece of software UI. These are not bullies making changes just to annoy me; I know that. I can even understand why they stopped supporting the old look & feel after a grace period. I'm a software dev too, after all. But from the point of view of a random user (me), it seems bizarre. The Gmail team changed things for no apparent gain. I don't care about Material Design -- I don't even know what that is! All I know is that the immediately previous incarnation of Gmail looked less cluttered and felt snappier. I know it's not accurate, but sometimes it feels they make UI changes just to show the app is not abandoned, whether this changes make sense or not.
    - eh78ssxv2f 8y ago
tx21 8y ago
Sounds like a novel Joseph Heller wrote I read in high school featuring Major Major Major Major and a guy named Oar rowing to Sweden.
tfehring 8y ago
Reminds me of this account: https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/
- jinushaun 8y ago
  OMG! This!! Why have I not seen this before? So depressingly true.
- nwrk 8y ago
  thanks
crazygringo 8y ago
I just want to say, this is my favorite HN comment edit ever. :)
unlimit 8y ago
Looks like my job at the IT service company has a similarity with Google. We cared a lot about our clients when we were small.
mdgrech23 8y ago
Sounds like Google has become just another big company.
beerlord 8y ago
Unfortunately a lot of product manager roles are hired based on how many new products/features that person launched, and not the actual impact to the company or customers (that information is usually confidential or impossible to tease out from one product anyway). In reality the Product Manager roles should often be to nurture products to perfection over the long-term, and to be an absolute expert on the category. Often though those people who want to nurture great products over the long-term just go on to start their own businesses! So the field is left with flashy people who launch flashy products very often, but who don't really understand the business, the industry, or their customers.
- crazygringo 8y ago
  This is absolutely true. The problem is, it's easy to measure launches and their effects. It's almost impossible to measure "nurturing" or separate out its effects. So that isn't rewarded. So you're right -- if you know you're going to do an amazing ongoing job with a product, it makes far more sense to do it as an owner (reap the rewards) than as a salaried PM.
nimchimpsky 8y ago
Allo is canned ? wait, what - I use it every day !
rayvy 8y ago
As someone who works at a company similar to Google (not FAANG, but just below), this is hilariously accurate. > You cannot get promoted beyond a certain level in this place unless you... YES! It's soooo not about smarts/(true) impact/anything truly relevant - it's about racing to the bottom via launches, and crazy ways to generate revenue. I find is so funny looking back, that pre-undergrad-graduation, I thought promotions came via actually doing great things. > people internally usually warn about this shit, complain about it, file bugs about shitty performance, etc. It is ALL ignored It's hilarious how L2s and L3s truly just don't give a damn about the opinions of those working at the company (first-level employees and those just above that) After this job, I AM DONE with this big company ish. I'll leave that to the new-grads who still believe you get promoted by being smart ;) rant over
- pvinis 8y ago
  Which big company starts with "N"? I can only think of Nintendo..
  - artwr 8y ago
    Nvidia? Netflix?
  - hvnsweeting 8y ago
    Netflix?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - jinushaun 8y ago
    The N in FAANG stands for Netflix, because people needed an N and FAAG would be awkward.
    - pvinis 8y ago
      Thanks for the answer and the jokey comment. :)
    - 8y ago
lgregg 8y ago
I just got my first non-gmail email account a few weeks ago, been slowly switching over. Zero, performance issues with ProtonMail.
mehrdada 8y ago
Xoogler here. The most fun thing was the time when the lazy-ass billionaires who manage the place and are completely out of touch with the realities of the world (and randomly boast things like "don't be promo focused"--just slave out for us at our mercy while we collect our hundreds of millions[1] and give some as severance pay[2] to sexually-harassing buddies) decided to "fix" the problem by issuing a memo promoting "landings" and not "launches". Guess what? Tada! Nothing, of course--with the exception that everyone now simply does 's/launch/landing/g' in their performance reviews. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/google-ceo-pichai-poised-to-cash-in-380-million-award-this-week https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/google-ce... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-...
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
I can understand these reasons, but come on, at least some of the execs must have noticed that the new Gmail is a total mess, I simply can't believe they're all clueless. This actually made me and people like me to migrate away from Gmail. Do they really want to loose the competitive advantage they used to have?
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  The execs probably know but are also victims of the same perverse incentives. It's not their fault it's worse, they did an excellent job of launching the update!
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    This means people at the very top should look back and see where they fucked up as it looks like this machine got a life on its own and starts to act against the best interests of the company.
dbmk 8y ago
Google Fit is a good example of this. It was a simple app that worked extremely well in showing how many steps you took today. But they had to do a major redesign and emphasize newly invented, meaningless stats like 'Heart Points'.
clarky07 8y ago
Any chance we can get inbox “relaunched” instead of shut down? It’s miles better than gmail and my favorite google product by far. That they are killing it is absolutely insane.
- i_cant_speel 8y ago
  I went back to Gmail to get used to it before Inbox was officially shut down. It was so unbearable to use I went back to Inbox in hopes that Gmail is uncrippled by the time I'm forced to use it. We'll see but I'm not holding my breath.
kamaal 8y ago
>>others just begin optimizing for promotion as opposed to optimizing for what is good for the user or the company. "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy": In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
ganqqwerty 8y ago
Look at that naïve little coder who thinks that the company benefits from the bugless products. Google launched a new service. Google stocks grew. Everyone is happy, you just helped people make some millions.
- hashhar 8y ago
  Just creating an account to post snark is not in the spirit of HN I believe.
runn1ng 8y ago
Allo is canned?
mvgmvg 8y ago
That answers my question : why do these guys keep redesigning a perfectly fine UI, making it actually worse than it was, not solving any real UX issues?

bhairoxx 8y ago

Exact same situation at Amazon. Launches (doesn't matter how useless and broken) >> Fixes

CoolGuySteve 8y ago

Classic: You get what you measure. But years ago the same thing happened to me at Apple. I was fixing bugs in every part of a major framework to help SnowLeopard ship only to get passed over for a minor promotion because I wasn't "critical on any one project". I thought it was especially ironic since SnowLeopard was supposed to be a stability/performance release only to get massively delayed by people "shipping" things like the Objective-C garbage collection that made XCode unusable for months. The same stability/performance release that had a day-1 point release.

shittyadmin 8y ago
Maintenance is thankless work - it's that way in just about every industry around, short of total disaster no one is going to congratulate you for making something work the way it was supposed to work.
- therealdrag0 8y ago
  Personally I've had good reception of performance and security bug fixes at my current job. Even got a private bonus from CTO for one. (Small-Medium company) But I can see how that'd be the exception.
ericd 8y ago
Thanks for contributing that to Snow Leopard. It is my all time favorite OS X release precisely because it felt solid and fast, and didn’t add a bunch of useless new cruft to the interface or mess up anything I relied on. I haven’t felt that with any release since. It’s a depressingly rare feeling with something as fundamental as an OS.
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
Your bosses may be clueless, but at least folks at HN - that is actual Apple customers - really appreciate your hard work. It is thanks to people like you many of us still use Apple hardware.
- Elidrake24 8y ago
  > Actual Apple customers I mean, I get what you're attempting to say, but this is so delusional when looking at the most successful business in the world that it's almost farcical.

aikinai 8y ago

Comment deleted since the parent was updated.

throwaway140 8y ago
Was not sure if that was allowed here. Updated now.

the_af 8y ago

Ah! I often wonder, how and why does Google decide to change the UI to well established products like Gmail? It's certain to annoy veteran users, so I'm particularly puzzled when the decide to shake things up, UX wise, for no apparent usability or feature gain. I suppose your post is at least partly an explanation.

crazygringo 8y ago
In this particular case, Gmail surely needed to be brought in line with Material Design (as has been happening to all Google apps, like Keep last week)... and the fact it now works offline (in its native interface, not the old kludge) is the biggest usability/feature gain (pretty huge, really). They've actually been adding a ton of new features over the past year, especially with Inbox functionality being merged in.
- nailer 8y ago
  In split view, clicking a message to view it also adds 'archive' buttons under the mouse. So viewing a message immediately archives it. Even if you could type text and have it appear on screen in a reasonable time, the current state of gmail is /insane/.
- the_af 8y ago
  Oh, I'm sure it's not random. I bet there's a rationale for almost every change in every piece of software UI. These are not bullies making changes just to annoy me; I know that. I can even understand why they stopped supporting the old look & feel after a grace period. I'm a software dev too, after all. But from the point of view of a random user (me), it seems bizarre. The Gmail team changed things for no apparent gain. I don't care about Material Design -- I don't even know what that is! All I know is that the immediately previous incarnation of Gmail looked less cluttered and felt snappier. I know it's not accurate, but sometimes it feels they make UI changes just to show the app is not abandoned, whether this changes make sense or not.
  - eh78ssxv2f 8y ago

tx21 8y ago

Sounds like a novel Joseph Heller wrote I read in high school featuring Major Major Major Major and a guy named Oar rowing to Sweden.

tfehring 8y ago

Reminds me of this account: https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/

jinushaun 8y ago
OMG! This!! Why have I not seen this before? So depressingly true.
nwrk 8y ago
thanks

crazygringo 8y ago

I just want to say, this is my favorite HN comment edit ever. :)

unlimit 8y ago

Looks like my job at the IT service company has a similarity with Google. We cared a lot about our clients when we were small.

mdgrech23 8y ago

Sounds like Google has become just another big company.

beerlord 8y ago

Unfortunately a lot of product manager roles are hired based on how many new products/features that person launched, and not the actual impact to the company or customers (that information is usually confidential or impossible to tease out from one product anyway). In reality the Product Manager roles should often be to nurture products to perfection over the long-term, and to be an absolute expert on the category. Often though those people who want to nurture great products over the long-term just go on to start their own businesses! So the field is left with flashy people who launch flashy products very often, but who don't really understand the business, the industry, or their customers.

crazygringo 8y ago
This is absolutely true. The problem is, it's easy to measure launches and their effects. It's almost impossible to measure "nurturing" or separate out its effects. So that isn't rewarded. So you're right -- if you know you're going to do an amazing ongoing job with a product, it makes far more sense to do it as an owner (reap the rewards) than as a salaried PM.

nimchimpsky 8y ago

Allo is canned ? wait, what - I use it every day !

rayvy 8y ago

As someone who works at a company similar to Google (not FAANG, but just below), this is hilariously accurate. > You cannot get promoted beyond a certain level in this place unless you... YES! It's soooo not about smarts/(true) impact/anything truly relevant - it's about racing to the bottom via launches, and crazy ways to generate revenue. I find is so funny looking back, that pre-undergrad-graduation, I thought promotions came via actually doing great things. > people internally usually warn about this shit, complain about it, file bugs about shitty performance, etc. It is ALL ignored It's hilarious how L2s and L3s truly just don't give a damn about the opinions of those working at the company (first-level employees and those just above that) After this job, I AM DONE with this big company ish. I'll leave that to the new-grads who still believe you get promoted by being smart ;) rant over

pvinis 8y ago
Which big company starts with "N"? I can only think of Nintendo..
- artwr 8y ago
  Nvidia? Netflix?
- hvnsweeting 8y ago
  Netflix?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jinushaun 8y ago
  The N in FAANG stands for Netflix, because people needed an N and FAAG would be awkward.
  - pvinis 8y ago
    Thanks for the answer and the jokey comment. :)
  - 8y ago

lgregg 8y ago

I just got my first non-gmail email account a few weeks ago, been slowly switching over. Zero, performance issues with ProtonMail.

mehrdada 8y ago

Xoogler here. The most fun thing was the time when the lazy-ass billionaires who manage the place and are completely out of touch with the realities of the world (and randomly boast things like "don't be promo focused"--just slave out for us at our mercy while we collect our hundreds of millions[1] and give some as severance pay[2] to sexually-harassing buddies) decided to "fix" the problem by issuing a memo promoting "landings" and not "launches". Guess what? Tada! Nothing, of course--with the exception that everyone now simply does 's/launch/landing/g' in their performance reviews. [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/google-ceo-pichai-poised-to-cash-in-380-million-award-this-week https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/google-ce... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-...

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago

I can understand these reasons, but come on, at least some of the execs must have noticed that the new Gmail is a total mess, I simply can't believe they're all clueless. This actually made me and people like me to migrate away from Gmail. Do they really want to loose the competitive advantage they used to have?

brokenmachine 8y ago
The execs probably know but are also victims of the same perverse incentives. It's not their fault it's worse, they did an excellent job of launching the update!
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  This means people at the very top should look back and see where they fucked up as it looks like this machine got a life on its own and starts to act against the best interests of the company.

dbmk 8y ago

Google Fit is a good example of this. It was a simple app that worked extremely well in showing how many steps you took today. But they had to do a major redesign and emphasize newly invented, meaningless stats like 'Heart Points'.

clarky07 8y ago

Any chance we can get inbox “relaunched” instead of shut down? It’s miles better than gmail and my favorite google product by far. That they are killing it is absolutely insane.

i_cant_speel 8y ago
I went back to Gmail to get used to it before Inbox was officially shut down. It was so unbearable to use I went back to Inbox in hopes that Gmail is uncrippled by the time I'm forced to use it. We'll see but I'm not holding my breath.

kamaal 8y ago

>>others just begin optimizing for promotion as opposed to optimizing for what is good for the user or the company. "Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy": In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

ganqqwerty 8y ago

Look at that naïve little coder who thinks that the company benefits from the bugless products. Google launched a new service. Google stocks grew. Everyone is happy, you just helped people make some millions.

hashhar 8y ago
Just creating an account to post snark is not in the spirit of HN I believe.

runn1ng 8y ago

Allo is canned?

mvgmvg 8y ago

That answers my question : why do these guys keep redesigning a perfectly fine UI, making it actually worse than it was, not solving any real UX issues?