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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 sca

by 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.

by rleigh 8y ago

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.