4 ms·

It seems to me like Google is slowly becoming another one of these huge corporations that one works for simply to simply pay the bills. I mean, sure, it may not

It seems to me like Google is slowly becoming another one of these huge corporations that one works for simply to simply pay the bills. I mean, sure, it may not be such at this particular moment, but that's what it seems they are heading towards. Though they still have an amazing reputation, I don't buy it anymore.

eikenberry 8y ago
Seems like they've been there for quite a while now.
curiousDog 8y ago
They have close to a 100k employees. It’s hard to maintain “Googlyness” at even 1/10th of that size.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  It’s not hard. It would just be utter chaos for any executive to oversee or steer in a certain direction. Well, I guess that means it’s hard if you look at it from the perspective of running a listed company.
  - dpark 8y ago
    It’s hard in the sense that they’d probably go bankrupt.
rleigh 8y ago
It already looked this way to me when I interviewed with them 8 years ago. But it takes time for public perception to catch up with the reality. When they scaled up and hired tens of thousands, they became yet another faceless corporate entity. Perhaps not intentionally; I feel this is simply a factor of growing and having to establish the same corporate bureaucracy as all the rest.
- vidarh 8y ago
  This reminded me of Kim Stanley Robinsons "Three Californias" trilogy. One of them is set in a future where to counter many of the effects of large corporations, companies are strictly restricted in terms of number of employees and other things. No company in the novel can have more than 100 employees. For projects that require more, companies have to establish consortia, but each company remained independent. I have no opinion on whether that'd be viable or beneficial, but it's a fascinating idea to think about the consequences of, both externally in terms of effects on wider society, and what it'd mean for corporate cultures.
  - 1123581321 8y ago
    You may be interested in reading the economic paper, “The Nature of the Firm.” Here’s a link to a summary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm Thinking along those lines would suggest we need to reduce a lot of legal and communication friction or else capping corporations will make everything much more expensive. It’d certainly be worth improving those things regardless of the end goal. Whether we would naturally see average company size reduce is unknown, but the theory that they would recognize the financial incentive to do so is plausible.
    - humanrebar 8y ago
      I reference this paper, at least mentally, when explaining to colleagues why using their tech needs to be better for me than using off the shelf tech. If I'm only using in house tech because I can't fire them or if I have to do more work to adopt them compared to using an off the shelf option, they're wasting money, time, and energy.
- usrusr 8y ago
  Wait until they realize that they don't even need those tens of thousands to keep the highly automated ad machine running. I don't think that Google has changed for the last time.
drawkbox 8y ago
Google 2018 == Microsoft 2005 The product people, innovators and engineers are no longer in charge. It appears Google may be entering their Ballmer era where it was marketing/metrics first over value creation. I hope some internal faction of product/developers can take it back.
- jiveturkey 8y ago
  Google 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178227

eikenberry 8y ago

Seems like they've been there for quite a while now.

curiousDog 8y ago

They have close to a 100k employees. It’s hard to maintain “Googlyness” at even 1/10th of that size.

Aeolun 8y ago
It’s not hard. It would just be utter chaos for any executive to oversee or steer in a certain direction. Well, I guess that means it’s hard if you look at it from the perspective of running a listed company.
- dpark 8y ago
  It’s hard in the sense that they’d probably go bankrupt.

rleigh 8y ago

It already looked this way to me when I interviewed with them 8 years ago. But it takes time for public perception to catch up with the reality. When they scaled up and hired tens of thousands, they became yet another faceless corporate entity. Perhaps not intentionally; I feel this is simply a factor of growing and having to establish the same corporate bureaucracy as all the rest.

vidarh 8y ago
This reminded me of Kim Stanley Robinsons "Three Californias" trilogy. One of them is set in a future where to counter many of the effects of large corporations, companies are strictly restricted in terms of number of employees and other things. No company in the novel can have more than 100 employees. For projects that require more, companies have to establish consortia, but each company remained independent. I have no opinion on whether that'd be viable or beneficial, but it's a fascinating idea to think about the consequences of, both externally in terms of effects on wider society, and what it'd mean for corporate cultures.
- 1123581321 8y ago
  You may be interested in reading the economic paper, “The Nature of the Firm.” Here’s a link to a summary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm Thinking along those lines would suggest we need to reduce a lot of legal and communication friction or else capping corporations will make everything much more expensive. It’d certainly be worth improving those things regardless of the end goal. Whether we would naturally see average company size reduce is unknown, but the theory that they would recognize the financial incentive to do so is plausible.
  - humanrebar 8y ago
    I reference this paper, at least mentally, when explaining to colleagues why using their tech needs to be better for me than using off the shelf tech. If I'm only using in house tech because I can't fire them or if I have to do more work to adopt them compared to using an off the shelf option, they're wasting money, time, and energy.
usrusr 8y ago
Wait until they realize that they don't even need those tens of thousands to keep the highly automated ad machine running. I don't think that Google has changed for the last time.

drawkbox 8y ago

Google 2018 == Microsoft 2005 The product people, innovators and engineers are no longer in charge. It appears Google may be entering their Ballmer era where it was marketing/metrics first over value creation. I hope some internal faction of product/developers can take it back.

jiveturkey 8y ago
Google 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178227 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18178227