4 ms·

Google just lost a top percentile developer over their open floor plan. Literally irreplaceable. But they saved a few dollars on space. That is being penny wise

Google just lost a top percentile developer over their open floor plan. Literally irreplaceable. But they saved a few dollars on space. That is being penny wise and pound foolish, particularly for a company like Google who is not capital constrained. (He may not have quit directly because of the open office plan, but given that it's one of the few complaints he makes, it obviously is a factor.)

solipsism 7y ago
given that it's one of the few complaints he make It's not though. It's merely a qualification to the "Google is comfortable" comment. He says clearly the reason he's leaving is he's a bit bored. And that he doesn't want to be stuck in a comfortable rut. How would making him more comfortable with a private office address those issues?
oblio 7y ago
The thing is, it doesn't matter. To make a parallel with Microsoft in the early 00's and IBM before that: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... > Although there is some truth to the fact that Linux is a huge threat to Microsoft, predictions of the Redmond company’s demise are, to say the least, premature. Microsoft has an incredible amount of cash money in the bank and is still incredibly profitable. It has a long way to fall. It could do everything wrong for a decade before it started to be in remote danger, and you never know… they could reinvent themselves as a shaved-ice company at the last minute. So don’t be so quick to write them off. In the early 90s everyone thought IBM was completely over: mainframes were history! Back then, Robert X. Cringely predicted that the era of the mainframe would end on January 1, 2000 when all the applications written in COBOL would seize up, and rather than fix those applications, for which, allegedly, the source code had long since been lost, everybody would rewrite those applications for client-server platforms. Google has more money than Microsoft had back then and Google's product-market fit has been amazing since day 1. Any 1 individual (or even 100 individuals, 1000 individuals) could mess up royally and Google would still be around in 2050 :-)
- mntmoss 7y ago
  Though I'm tempted to agree, there is an old macroeconomic observation that might throw a wrench in the analysis, which is that the waves of new technology seem to be coming faster and faster, and likewise, the turnover of companies in major stock indexes has also gone faster and faster. In an imagined hyper-accelerated future market where the trend continues, companies will be born, grow large, be disrupted and die in a figurative eyeblink. And Google's lifespan would be cut considerably shorter in such a circumstance, if for example something like Brave's business model were to hockey-stick and disrupt their golden goose. However, the counterfactual to that is that there surely is some kind of end to accelerating turnover in the markets. And it's a statistical rule; individual companies can be hardy survivors given the right circumstances and management, and companies with longstanding platform monopolies, like IBM, MS, Oracle, and now Google tend to have a lot more freedom to redefine themselves; it's the customers that get screwed, not the company. All the company has to do is find a way to move its customers to the next-gen platform, and even when they start failing at that, like IBM, they have a lengthy fall.
- marvin 7y ago
  Well, it's still a mistake, even if it's a survivable and, for some, a relatively inconsequential mistake.
- loco5niner 7y ago
  Being "too big to fail" doesn't mean they should be choosing to make mistakes willy-nilly.

solipsism 7y ago

given that it's one of the few complaints he make It's not though. It's merely a qualification to the "Google is comfortable" comment. He says clearly the reason he's leaving is he's a bit bored. And that he doesn't want to be stuck in a comfortable rut. How would making him more comfortable with a private office address those issues?

oblio 7y ago

The thing is, it doesn't matter. To make a parallel with Microsoft in the early 00's and IBM before that: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost... > Although there is some truth to the fact that Linux is a huge threat to Microsoft, predictions of the Redmond company’s demise are, to say the least, premature. Microsoft has an incredible amount of cash money in the bank and is still incredibly profitable. It has a long way to fall. It could do everything wrong for a decade before it started to be in remote danger, and you never know… they could reinvent themselves as a shaved-ice company at the last minute. So don’t be so quick to write them off. In the early 90s everyone thought IBM was completely over: mainframes were history! Back then, Robert X. Cringely predicted that the era of the mainframe would end on January 1, 2000 when all the applications written in COBOL would seize up, and rather than fix those applications, for which, allegedly, the source code had long since been lost, everybody would rewrite those applications for client-server platforms. Google has more money than Microsoft had back then and Google's product-market fit has been amazing since day 1. Any 1 individual (or even 100 individuals, 1000 individuals) could mess up royally and Google would still be around in 2050 :-)

mntmoss 7y ago
Though I'm tempted to agree, there is an old macroeconomic observation that might throw a wrench in the analysis, which is that the waves of new technology seem to be coming faster and faster, and likewise, the turnover of companies in major stock indexes has also gone faster and faster. In an imagined hyper-accelerated future market where the trend continues, companies will be born, grow large, be disrupted and die in a figurative eyeblink. And Google's lifespan would be cut considerably shorter in such a circumstance, if for example something like Brave's business model were to hockey-stick and disrupt their golden goose. However, the counterfactual to that is that there surely is some kind of end to accelerating turnover in the markets. And it's a statistical rule; individual companies can be hardy survivors given the right circumstances and management, and companies with longstanding platform monopolies, like IBM, MS, Oracle, and now Google tend to have a lot more freedom to redefine themselves; it's the customers that get screwed, not the company. All the company has to do is find a way to move its customers to the next-gen platform, and even when they start failing at that, like IBM, they have a lengthy fall.
marvin 7y ago
Well, it's still a mistake, even if it's a survivable and, for some, a relatively inconsequential mistake.
loco5niner 7y ago
Being "too big to fail" doesn't mean they should be choosing to make mistakes willy-nilly.