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I've heard that the reason launch and kill is so prevalent at Google is that creating a new product is a great way to be promoted while supporting an existing o
by Taylor_OD 7y ago
I've heard that the reason launch and kill is so prevalent at Google is that creating a new product is a great way to be promoted while supporting an existing one, even building extensive new and well-recived features, is not.
I'm grouping here but engineers that work at Google are likely to be the type of person who is looking to continue to move up the career ladder. Seems like a good option would be to outsource some of these products but that doesn't seem like Googles M.O. either.
- Analemma_ 7y agoI just interviewed at Google on Friday, and actually brought this up with my lunchtime interviewer. According to him, Google recognized this problem about a year or two ago, and rejiggered their promotion system to place less emphasis on product launches and more on long-term usage and stability. If that's true (and I only had his word on it), it may just be that they're currently "flushing the pipeline" of all the promotion-fueled products that got started before this change went in, or maybe the change hasn't permeated all the way through the company yet. So it's possible Google's frantic pace of launching doomed products will taper off in time.
- telltruth 7y agoI also noticed they seem to shutdown products when the main guy behind it leaves. Typically no one has interest in taking over because it was niche stuff with little chance to go big. Also, original guy would have already milked out credits and there is no career path at Google to be the maintainer in charge. So the sequence of events are: - founding guy leaves - new guy becoming in charge sees career going down drain - makes case for shutdown/half assed merge with other products to get out as soon as possible