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Someday, Google will be a business school case study on the dangers of a) having all your money come from one cash cow and b) having too many self-directed engi

Someday, Google will be a business school case study on the dangers of a) having all your money come from one cash cow and b) having too many self-directed engineers with no management vision. Google is a car with a 1,000 horsepower engine but which can't drive in a straight line.

awinter-py 6y ago
this study exists! it's called the resource curse, it's about (I think) weird inflation effects that happen when all your wealth comes from a natural resource like oil
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Ha! Google as an oil emirate is not a bad mental model. Thanx!
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    I’ve usually seen the comparison come up when discussing the toxicity of user tracking and advertising tech.
  - lmkg 6y ago
    The phrase "Data is the new oil" dates back to at least 2014, so it seems rather appropriate.
darepublic 6y ago
Seems like it is easier for a smaller group of capable people to make a big change than a giant org of diverse talented people from different backgrounds
- ativzzz 6y ago
  Pretty sure this was a motivating factor in the re-organization from Google to Alphabet.
- paulsutter 6y ago
  A small focused team of diverse talented people from different backgrounds, can make the biggest-impact. Focus=speed. Focus is what's missing at Google, and why they have such a sprawling staff and politics.
  - darepublic 6y ago
    You're right, diversity is fine, it's the lack of focus I suppose... but even with 'focus' I think the small size aspect is still important.
jcadam 6y ago
I'm starting to think Google (probably Facebook too) scoops up top talent simply to deprive potential competitors (e.g., startups) of the resources they would need to challenge them. Actually having something for them to do is secondary.
- api 6y ago
  I have believed this for a very long time. Both Google and Facebook are well known for hiring top talent at top dollar and then putting them on projects that are far below their ability level. It takes that talent off the market.
  - jcadam 6y ago
    Yea, hard to believe great engineers would be happy that way. They apparently can't even have side/personal projects to scratch that creative itch if the day job isn't providing enough challenge. But leaving or doing a startup would result in a big drop in pay (at least initially). Easy to see how burn-out happens under those conditions. Golden handcuffs, I suppose.
staticassertion 6y ago
> having too many self-directed engineers with no management vision I personally feel it's the opposite. I think management, and Google's internal incentives, lead to a lot of their issues. As one obvious example, the leveling system is totally flawed and creates incentives for their greatest issues, such as releasing many competing projects only to deprecate/ abandon all of them. That's on management, not the engineers who are explicitly being told "To get a promotion we need you to do this type of work, we don't really care what happens after that". A little more control for engineers might mean that passion projects can be taken further, can go in directions that management maybe can't see the immediate "promotable" value from. You wouldn't be incentivized to compete as much, but maybe to collaborate - because you wouldn't need to lead a project to get a promotion, just add value and do good work. If you look at Google's earlier years I think this is evidence. They used to feel a lot more moonshotty, a lot less managery, and perhaps a bit more culty due to the engineering driven culture. There were flops, but it didn't feel quite as ridiculous. Just my observations though, as an outsider with some colleagues there.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  I think in the early days, Google Engineers just worked on whatever they felt like. This resulted in fantastically profitable cool technology, and vast holes in the products for things no one volunteered to work on. Then things were turned around to today's "jump through these hoops and you'll get promoted" system. I was there 2006-2009, and I think the turn happened in that era, though it's hard to tell from "the floor".
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    And for the future it will be tough to change without losing ability to create new things. If they switch their internal incentive structure to maintenance they lose the new ideas.

awinter-py 6y ago

this study exists! it's called the resource curse, it's about (I think) weird inflation effects that happen when all your wealth comes from a natural resource like oil

BurningFrog 6y ago
Ha! Google as an oil emirate is not a bad mental model. Thanx!
- lostlogin 6y ago
  I’ve usually seen the comparison come up when discussing the toxicity of user tracking and advertising tech.
- lmkg 6y ago
  The phrase "Data is the new oil" dates back to at least 2014, so it seems rather appropriate.

darepublic 6y ago

Seems like it is easier for a smaller group of capable people to make a big change than a giant org of diverse talented people from different backgrounds

ativzzz 6y ago
Pretty sure this was a motivating factor in the re-organization from Google to Alphabet.
paulsutter 6y ago
A small focused team of diverse talented people from different backgrounds, can make the biggest-impact. Focus=speed. Focus is what's missing at Google, and why they have such a sprawling staff and politics.
- darepublic 6y ago
  You're right, diversity is fine, it's the lack of focus I suppose... but even with 'focus' I think the small size aspect is still important.

jcadam 6y ago

I'm starting to think Google (probably Facebook too) scoops up top talent simply to deprive potential competitors (e.g., startups) of the resources they would need to challenge them. Actually having something for them to do is secondary.

api 6y ago
I have believed this for a very long time. Both Google and Facebook are well known for hiring top talent at top dollar and then putting them on projects that are far below their ability level. It takes that talent off the market.
- jcadam 6y ago
  Yea, hard to believe great engineers would be happy that way. They apparently can't even have side/personal projects to scratch that creative itch if the day job isn't providing enough challenge. But leaving or doing a startup would result in a big drop in pay (at least initially). Easy to see how burn-out happens under those conditions. Golden handcuffs, I suppose.

staticassertion 6y ago

> having too many self-directed engineers with no management vision I personally feel it's the opposite. I think management, and Google's internal incentives, lead to a lot of their issues. As one obvious example, the leveling system is totally flawed and creates incentives for their greatest issues, such as releasing many competing projects only to deprecate/ abandon all of them. That's on management, not the engineers who are explicitly being told "To get a promotion we need you to do this type of work, we don't really care what happens after that". A little more control for engineers might mean that passion projects can be taken further, can go in directions that management maybe can't see the immediate "promotable" value from. You wouldn't be incentivized to compete as much, but maybe to collaborate - because you wouldn't need to lead a project to get a promotion, just add value and do good work. If you look at Google's earlier years I think this is evidence. They used to feel a lot more moonshotty, a lot less managery, and perhaps a bit more culty due to the engineering driven culture. There were flops, but it didn't feel quite as ridiculous. Just my observations though, as an outsider with some colleagues there.

BurningFrog 6y ago
I think in the early days, Google Engineers just worked on whatever they felt like. This resulted in fantastically profitable cool technology, and vast holes in the products for things no one volunteered to work on. Then things were turned around to today's "jump through these hoops and you'll get promoted" system. I was there 2006-2009, and I think the turn happened in that era, though it's hard to tell from "the floor".
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  And for the future it will be tough to change without losing ability to create new things. If they switch their internal incentive structure to maintenance they lose the new ideas.