5 ms·

Well, Google and GitHub built fantastic engineering departments with that decision, beating the pants off several companies that followed "common knowledge." It

by geofft 7y ago

Well, Google and GitHub built fantastic engineering departments with that decision, beating the pants off several companies that followed "common knowledge." It was (and still is) a cliche that you get better results by hiring like Google than by hiring like everyone used to hire. What they're now learning is that this decision is incompatible with certain forms of revenue like military or immigration-enforcement contracts. That doesn't mean that the right answer is that you should accept such forms of revenue and reject the employees who don't support it. That just means you have to choose. What they're regretting is simply that they can't have it both ways. (Also, GitHub in particular is trying to endorse a particular form of politics at work - they've been defending the practices of ICE in their internal and external communications. If opposition to ICE is political, support of ICE is political too, no?) Google and GitHub are trying to turn into IBM and Oracle. That's fine, but they should remember that they were originally trying to beat IBM and Oracle. And they shouldn't be surprised if a company that explicitly embraces activist engineers and forswears sources of revenue incompatible with that activism, a company that says "We will talk about politics at the workplace and this is our particular form of politics," one day beats the pants off them.

bendbro 7y ago
> And they shouldn't be surprised if a company that explicitly embraces activist engineers and forswears sources of revenue incompatible with that activism, a company that says "We will talk about politics at the workplace and this is our particular form of politics," one day beats the pants off them. They should be surprised as it hasn't ever happened before. That's not to say that it won't or shouldn't happen, it just would be surprising.
- geofft 7y ago
  Didn't it happen with Google? Did they not build a more productive engineering department because they said "Bring your whole self to work, and bring your dog too" and not "We want your butt in a cubicle for 40 hours and this is just a job"? I suspect if a company says "Bring your whole self to work, and we're actually serious about it, only bother applying if you think you'll gel with the folks already here," they'll still be able to hire as many people as they need and they'll deliver better products because of it.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    How are they “more productive” than the other tech behemoths? I would argue that they are less productive seeing that after all these years they haven’t diversified from advertising - where 90% of their profit comes from - as compared to Apple or Microsoft or even Amazon.
    - crooked-v 7y ago
      They're very productive, but much of that productivity gets spent reinventing the same products and services over and over.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
aprdm 7y ago
I read the "how Google works " book and I can't help but question myself if they built what they built despite of the culture. The best recipe for a company that isn't printing billions of dollars from Advertising to go bankrupt is try to follow their book and culture. If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? My guess is that it wouldn't. Google feels sometimes very much like startups with VC money just being inefficient and burning other people money, except of course, Google is burning it's own money that is generated from the non sexy / cool stuff (ads and enterprise email / storage )...
- lisper 7y ago
  > If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? My guess is that it wouldn't. Google in the early days didn't have infinite money nor market dominance and it obviously worked out. Doing what they did is what got them from A to B.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    And Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are nothing like that and two of the three are more profitable. Correlation is not causation.
    - lisper 7y ago
      I didn't say it was. But the GP asked: > If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? And the answer to that is clearly: yes. It would because it did.
- ggm 7y ago
  Is there a variant of Godwin's law/meme that all conversations on HN about politics degenerate to hitting each other over neoliberal economics, the CoC and men's rights?
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
cmdshiftf4 7y ago
This is historically revisionist. Google was a money-making behemoth with its tentacles in many areas of innovation before it became the politicized entity we know it to be today. Google only really became politicized a couple of years ago when certain media publications started making demands for diversity numbers within the organization and publicly shaming them for not meeting some imaginary bar in the area. Github was the premier hosted SCM solution long before it literally pulled its meritocracy rug from under it [0] and has been living off first-mover advantage since, succeeding in spite of the activists it now employs, not because of. I personally _would be_ very surprised to see an identity politics focused company beat either, not merely because of their [Google, Github] current status but because those in question haven't shown themselves to be capable of building much at all. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocracy-rug-2014-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocr...
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Google sheets had the gay pride flag Easter egg for almost a decade. Company has been political for awhile.
  - nostromo 7y ago
    That's no more political than it is to celebrate Cinco de Mayo or Saint Patrick's Day with a custom logo or easter egg.
    - shadowgovt 7y ago
      A lot has changed in the US in a decade. Case in point: a person could make the above claim with a straight face now. ;) Obergefell v. Hodges was only four years ago. American conservatives are still trying to reverse gay marriage.
      - buzzkillington 7y ago
        Not in SF.
jorblumesea 7y ago
Nah, there's a much simpler and more factually correct explanation. Google developed a natural monopoly using smart people. It then had very high hiring standards and higher salaries, and hired more very smart people in order to wrap its tentacles and create more competition crushing apps and features. It gave these smart people more freedom and money compared to what they were used to, and allowed them to freely innovate and task risks. This all happened before the political era we know today. None of Google's success it had to do with identity politics. In many ways, you could argue Google was a-political for most of its life.
- lanstin 7y ago
  It seems likely that this is not a conflict between politics and non-politics, or even between left and right, but between labor and management. The people that built Google are shocked that management is not making the decisions they would make (especially about things a bit less functional than most corporate decisions, e.g. whom to do business with). I'm pretty sure that if all the programmers at Google decided Google should not do something as a company, they actually have the power to stop it. I am not sure they want to exercise this power in some coordinated fashion.

by geofft 7y ago

bendbro 7y ago

> And they shouldn't be surprised if a company that explicitly embraces activist engineers and forswears sources of revenue incompatible with that activism, a company that says "We will talk about politics at the workplace and this is our particular form of politics," one day beats the pants off them. They should be surprised as it hasn't ever happened before. That's not to say that it won't or shouldn't happen, it just would be surprising.

geofft 7y ago
Didn't it happen with Google? Did they not build a more productive engineering department because they said "Bring your whole self to work, and bring your dog too" and not "We want your butt in a cubicle for 40 hours and this is just a job"? I suspect if a company says "Bring your whole self to work, and we're actually serious about it, only bother applying if you think you'll gel with the folks already here," they'll still be able to hire as many people as they need and they'll deliver better products because of it.
- scarface74 7y ago
  How are they “more productive” than the other tech behemoths? I would argue that they are less productive seeing that after all these years they haven’t diversified from advertising - where 90% of their profit comes from - as compared to Apple or Microsoft or even Amazon.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    They're very productive, but much of that productivity gets spent reinventing the same products and services over and over.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

aprdm 7y ago

I read the "how Google works " book and I can't help but question myself if they built what they built despite of the culture. The best recipe for a company that isn't printing billions of dollars from Advertising to go bankrupt is try to follow their book and culture. If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? My guess is that it wouldn't. Google feels sometimes very much like startups with VC money just being inefficient and burning other people money, except of course, Google is burning it's own money that is generated from the non sexy / cool stuff (ads and enterprise email / storage )...

lisper 7y ago
> If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? My guess is that it wouldn't. Google in the early days didn't have infinite money nor market dominance and it obviously worked out. Doing what they did is what got them from A to B.
- scarface74 7y ago
  And Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are nothing like that and two of the three are more profitable. Correlation is not causation.
  - lisper 7y ago
    I didn't say it was. But the GP asked: > If you remove infinite money and market dominance would it still work out in the end ? And the answer to that is clearly: yes. It would because it did.
ggm 7y ago
Is there a variant of Godwin's law/meme that all conversations on HN about politics degenerate to hitting each other over neoliberal economics, the CoC and men's rights?
- shadowgovt 7y ago

cmdshiftf4 7y ago

This is historically revisionist. Google was a money-making behemoth with its tentacles in many areas of innovation before it became the politicized entity we know it to be today. Google only really became politicized a couple of years ago when certain media publications started making demands for diversity numbers within the organization and publicly shaming them for not meeting some imaginary bar in the area. Github was the premier hosted SCM solution long before it literally pulled its meritocracy rug from under it [0] and has been living off first-mover advantage since, succeeding in spite of the activists it now employs, not because of. I personally _would be_ very surprised to see an identity politics focused company beat either, not merely because of their [Google, Github] current status but because those in question haven't shown themselves to be capable of building much at all. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocracy-rug-2014-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocr...

shadowgovt 7y ago
Google sheets had the gay pride flag Easter egg for almost a decade. Company has been political for awhile.
- nostromo 7y ago
  That's no more political than it is to celebrate Cinco de Mayo or Saint Patrick's Day with a custom logo or easter egg.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    A lot has changed in the US in a decade. Case in point: a person could make the above claim with a straight face now. ;) Obergefell v. Hodges was only four years ago. American conservatives are still trying to reverse gay marriage.
    - buzzkillington 7y ago
      Not in SF.

jorblumesea 7y ago

Nah, there's a much simpler and more factually correct explanation. Google developed a natural monopoly using smart people. It then had very high hiring standards and higher salaries, and hired more very smart people in order to wrap its tentacles and create more competition crushing apps and features. It gave these smart people more freedom and money compared to what they were used to, and allowed them to freely innovate and task risks. This all happened before the political era we know today. None of Google's success it had to do with identity politics. In many ways, you could argue Google was a-political for most of its life.

lanstin 7y ago
It seems likely that this is not a conflict between politics and non-politics, or even between left and right, but between labor and management. The people that built Google are shocked that management is not making the decisions they would make (especially about things a bit less functional than most corporate decisions, e.g. whom to do business with). I'm pretty sure that if all the programmers at Google decided Google should not do something as a company, they actually have the power to stop it. I am not sure they want to exercise this power in some coordinated fashion.