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Google Cloud is full of ex-McKinsey people in middle management positions. Add ex-Oracle to that mix and you got yourself a culture war with old-time Googlers.

by osipov 7y ago

jorblumesea 7y ago
It's interesting how high the technical bar is for ICs and "normal staff", but how low the bar is set, or seems to be set, for management and their backgrounds. Their head of cloud is an ex-Oracle guy that led their disastrous cloud initiative. CFO from Goldman Sacks, McKinsey MBAs and mediocre tech managers galore. Earnings expectations clearly favored over product development, and not an engineering led company anymore. Just looking at their hires, you can almost see the cultural shift play out.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  At the executive level, your options are typically people who've never had embarassing failures or people who've never accomplished much in the first place. Kurian was the head of product at Oracle at the beginning of their cloud efforts - but he was also the head of product at Oracle, bringing a level of enterprise experience and credibility that Google Cloud has historically been in desperate need of.
  - jorblumesea 7y ago
    Amazon and Microsoft have extremely deep benches of talent when it comes to cloud, and both have a huge % of the market share combined. Google has had presences in Seattle for almost a decade. I really don't see the logic with the kind of money Google is throwing around. It's not like Kurian was cheap. I think it's more a failure of leadership and vision on Google's part. A symptom of the company transitioning from engineering led to MBA/Business.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      I'd agree with the last part. I just think that Google is explicitly trying to execute that transition; they think, I'd argue correctly, that you can't succeed in the enterprise market with Google's historically low levels of business-side focus.
    - thu2111 7y ago
      The logic was straightforward and probably correct: Google has great tech but sucks (and has always sucked) at selling software to companies. A culture forged in an environment where your users are hundreds of millions of anonymous, low value individuals rather than e.g. a single CEO who will sign a $100M deal with you if he likes the cut of your jib means Google always under-valued relationship building. The exception was their ad sales department, which under Nikesh Arora did develop a capability to build and sign large ad deals. But it took a long time because you didn't really need that for text ads, only for stuff like "rent the YouTube homepage for a day". But for everything else they didn't really have it or care about it, institutionally. Now look at Oracle. Weak tech, huge experience in high-touch enterprise sales. And say what you like about Oracle but they have an enormous customer base and are deeply entrenched for valid reasons. So combine Oracle's sales and relationship-oriented culture with Google's raw tech prowess and you have a potentially great combination.
  - rckoepke 7y ago
    In all honesty I've felt that Google's Cloud Platform has been delivering really great product during Thomas Kurian's time. Not sure if that's actually related to him being there, but I've been super impressed with GCP when compared to AWS and Azure.

Google Cloud is full of ex-McKinsey people in middle management positions. Add ex-Oracle to that mix and you got yourself a culture war with old-time Googlers.

by osipov 7y ago

Google Cloud is full of ex-McKinsey people in middle management positions. Add ex-Oracle to that mix and you got yourself a culture war with old-time Googlers.

jorblumesea 7y ago

It's interesting how high the technical bar is for ICs and "normal staff", but how low the bar is set, or seems to be set, for management and their backgrounds. Their head of cloud is an ex-Oracle guy that led their disastrous cloud initiative. CFO from Goldman Sacks, McKinsey MBAs and mediocre tech managers galore. Earnings expectations clearly favored over product development, and not an engineering led company anymore. Just looking at their hires, you can almost see the cultural shift play out.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
At the executive level, your options are typically people who've never had embarassing failures or people who've never accomplished much in the first place. Kurian was the head of product at Oracle at the beginning of their cloud efforts - but he was also the head of product at Oracle, bringing a level of enterprise experience and credibility that Google Cloud has historically been in desperate need of.
- jorblumesea 7y ago
  Amazon and Microsoft have extremely deep benches of talent when it comes to cloud, and both have a huge % of the market share combined. Google has had presences in Seattle for almost a decade. I really don't see the logic with the kind of money Google is throwing around. It's not like Kurian was cheap. I think it's more a failure of leadership and vision on Google's part. A symptom of the company transitioning from engineering led to MBA/Business.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    I'd agree with the last part. I just think that Google is explicitly trying to execute that transition; they think, I'd argue correctly, that you can't succeed in the enterprise market with Google's historically low levels of business-side focus.
  - thu2111 7y ago
    The logic was straightforward and probably correct: Google has great tech but sucks (and has always sucked) at selling software to companies. A culture forged in an environment where your users are hundreds of millions of anonymous, low value individuals rather than e.g. a single CEO who will sign a $100M deal with you if he likes the cut of your jib means Google always under-valued relationship building. The exception was their ad sales department, which under Nikesh Arora did develop a capability to build and sign large ad deals. But it took a long time because you didn't really need that for text ads, only for stuff like "rent the YouTube homepage for a day". But for everything else they didn't really have it or care about it, institutionally. Now look at Oracle. Weak tech, huge experience in high-touch enterprise sales. And say what you like about Oracle but they have an enormous customer base and are deeply entrenched for valid reasons. So combine Oracle's sales and relationship-oriented culture with Google's raw tech prowess and you have a potentially great combination.
- rckoepke 7y ago
  In all honesty I've felt that Google's Cloud Platform has been delivering really great product during Thomas Kurian's time. Not sure if that's actually related to him being there, but I've been super impressed with GCP when compared to AWS and Azure.