11 ms·

Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge

415 points by citizenkeys 16y ago

endlessvoid94 16y ago
I'm really interested in seeing how companies grow; I hadn't realized quite how large of a role non-engineers played in Google's structure. Glad to see it's moving in the right direction.
- gms 16y ago
  It's yet to be determined whether that is the right direction or not.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
CoffeeDregs 16y ago
This is a big story. I'm both an engineer and a manager (to which engineers will say "management!" and managers will say "developer!"), and I haven't seen this pendulum swing back and forth so much as be ripped in half and pulled in opposite directions. Google's obviously got very smart folks in both engineering and management, so it's going to be very interesting to see how this is handled. I can't imagine a Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc going through this exercise, so I'm seriously rooting for Google. It'd be lovely for this change to produce some real knowledge on how to run a modern, big, high-speed tech company without getting trapped in the argument over engineering-vs-management.
- juiceandjuice 16y ago
  I think both have their merits, but I think engineers should be the ones building projects/companies, and management should be the ones who run it. I don't think non-technical management should fundamentally be involved in development unless it's a manager who is also an engineer. In a sense, a traditional non-technical manager should be in charge of the monotonous, boring stuff and that only... stuff like QA, ops, marketing, etc... Basically maintenance-mode autopilots. I'm a big fan of engineers turned manager though, after working with several different projects at my last company. The only problem with that is when their manager isn't an engineer and you end up with the same disconnect that you would normally get at the dev/manager level. It sounds like Google is, in reality, trying to eliminate that disconnect entirely, with managerial engineers the entire way up to CEO.
  - pdaviesa 16y ago
    The problem with this approach is that engineers are going to build things that other engineers like. Add up all the engineers in the world and it's not that much compared with the rest of the global population. A good comment on the original post stated that what Google really needs is to diversify it's workforce. This is the reason Google fails at social.
- shin_lao 16y ago
  Actually AFAIK Microsoft is organized in business units (Windows, XBox, etc.)
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    Right, but even the Windows unit itself is probably at least 7 or 8 layers deep, due to the sheer number of people working on it. With such a massive product, I'm amazed they release it as often as they do, let alone at all.
  - mfukar 16y ago
    Many companies are organized in this manner. I don't see what the big deal is, personally.
- cellshade 16y ago
  Sun went through major re-orgs pretty frequently.
- gscott 16y ago
  I could see something happening like at Yahoo where different groups of people end up developing the same thing, both with different benefits, and have to kill one off.
- Aloisius 16y ago
  Doesn't Microsoft do a major reorganization every few years? I thought moving people around was part of their business philosophy.
clistctrl 16y ago
I think this is a great direction for Google, but it certainly is not a direction most other companies with equivalent growth can pursue. I think one of the unique aspects of Google, is the type of engineer they pursue.
joebadmo 16y ago
It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful. It has always seemed to me that management is an important but overemphasized skill (as a fundamental trait of the way large organizations work) and it's really refreshing to see this happening.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). Even at places like IBM and Intel you generally have engineers running the show at every level of the engineering org. I think what Google will see is that the real problem is the board and shareholder accountability. This creates a special type of short-term malfunction in organizations which often looks like a management problem, but really isn't.
  - sachinag 16y ago
    Hell, Exxon is run by an engineer.
    - al05 16y ago
      People on HN have this weird distinction where if your an engineer you stay an engineer. In the real world, most career structures involve coming in a engineer and then progressing into management. A lot the skills used for management such as negation skills just come with age anyway.
      - bluedanieru 16y ago
        A lot the skills used for management such as negation skills just come with age anyway. Well you get older and fear change a bit more, and you tend to say "no" to more things, but that's not really a management skill.
        Silhouette 16y ago
blinkingled 16y ago
This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and look after the org's interests) - what's the role of the future manager? It sounds inevitable that senior Engineers will double up as managers for their group as and when required (working with marketing etc.) instead of it being a dedicated managerial position.
- aridiculous 16y ago
  Ideally, but power still seems to be centralized to dealmakers (probably a function of human nature), whether they're specially skilled or not. Managers are essentially low-level dealmakers.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Ppl who can make win/win situations out of lose/lose situations are important. Isolated technical decisions are often the easy ones. The tough ones are getting two people or multiple groups to come to an agreement on technical decisions w/o any feeling like they were just burned or stabbed in the back. This is basically Steve Jobs. Steve is the consumate manager. Not an extremely nice guy, not a designer, not all that technical. But people value and respect his opinion. And even more importantly people want to deliver what he wants. You know a great manager/dealmaker because he's the person who when they change groups, you want to go with him because you feel like he'll take care of you and your projects.
    - aridiculous 16y ago
      Agreed. Good post. I probably shouldn't have said "ideally", because that makes it look like I don't see value in dealmaking. I should have said, "ideally (for you)"
- dman 16y ago
noamsml 16y ago
I wonder if part of this is the result of growing competition from the engineer-driven Facebook.
aridiculous 16y ago
Can someone who works at Google chime in with what the organizational temperature is like at Google? Does this whole 'party time's over for the managers' thing we're hearing about have any real weight to it?
- Laments 16y ago
  I'd like to ditto this; the linked article is very speculative, and without a G-employee response, it seems rather foolhardy to extend said speculation.
  - magicalist 16y ago
    agreed, especially in light of the stories we just heard about technical skills being valued less in managers there. I think this is someone just coming up with a nice narrative.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - Laments 16y ago
      To add an unrelated reply to a crowded discussion: I think that what we've seen from Googler manager skillset article in the Times is that Google has had to learn basic managerial attributes organically since that's the Google way -- from this outsider's perspective, it almost sounded like if they didn't invent it, it's hard-to-impossible to adopt given the startup culture. I think that this board in particular has given Facebook a lot of praise; by this, I mean that there's a fascination/silent cheering for their engineering-driven culture. But I think that we're seeing a transition by Google from a startup (Facebook) to a real company (Microsoft); as much as a "management" layer is derided, a lot of Google's projects seem to have little business value; while they may eventually become valuable, it seems like their strategy has been to shy away from placing limits and directing units towards hard business goals (profitability). But I'd argue that the rise of "business" being more important than passion-projects (which is what we implicitly view Google as) has been very visible, just ignored. Android's device manufacturers producing under anti-fragmentation clauses comes to mind as a sterling example of a unit posing to follow Google's motto but in reality has them running in the opposite direction (e.g. away from openness). So, to round back: sure, anything could happen in regard to managers; but Google's in the middle of growing pains, and those pains I believe will end in an increased managerial presence/layer rather than ignored outright.
asknemo 16y ago
Ever since "management" and the dedicated "manager" were invented, we have been told, increasingly in recent decades, that they, rather than talents in other roles, are the key to business success. With the increasing importance and accelerating pace of innovations in our time, it's time to test if to what degree such doctrine would still hold true. Good job Larry. That's some risk worth taking.
- al05 16y ago
  Its a way of making sure the power stays with the powerful.
- GaryOlson 16y ago
  Because the alternative is to become just like HP -- where technology and engineering is just an advertising slogan. And one HP is enough.
hobb0001 16y ago
FTA: That jibes well with Page’s push to whittle down Google’s manager bureaucracy, eliminate politicking and rekindle its start-up spirit. I first read that as "pot-licking" and thought, WTF is that? A new managerial term like dogfooding?
- bproper 16y ago
  Google doesn't need more engineering, it needs better product vision.
SoftwareMaven 16y ago
I question the title. It doesn't sound like engineers are in charge, instead, it sounds like smaller operating units will be in charge. That is a very different thing from having the inmates running the asylum. I have yet to see a large company that successfully treats software as a creative endeavor instead of a production line that still manages to be able to focus on solving customer problems. I really hope that Larry figures this out because, if he does, that will (IMO) be his greatest legacy. What I think will happen, though, is Google will focus even more on technology and care even less about actual users.
- wh-uws 16y ago
  Whomever figures out how build a company with the technical prowess and product aptitude of Google and have a comparative level of custom service will have created something truly great
  - orblivion 16y ago
    They're clever people. You'd think they could come up with a clever way to solve their customer service problem. Maybe it would have to be clever for them to want to bother with it.
    - wh-uws 16y ago
      Didn't mean it couldn't be Google. Just that its something they need to work on and whoever figures it out will get a pretty big spot in the history books
    - rahoulb 16y ago
      I suspect seeing customer service as a problem is the root of it. there's no algorithm for it, just people.
    - mcherm 16y ago
      Here's an approach. Suppose that Google picked 4-10 different startup-sized groups and anointed them as "customer support organizations". The companies could provide customer support for Google applications to the public (and could charge the public as much or as little as they wished for the service). For it to work, Google would have to be willing to be more open with these support companies (hence the anointing of a few). The companies could provide care and hand-holding for customers, but eventually some percentage would need to result in actual bug reports and actual technical troubleshooting that could only be done by Google. Today, no one can offer this service because there's no way to open a support ticket with Google -- they're too closed. If they would open up slightly, even for just a hand-picked few, then this might be a way for Google to offer excellent customer service without doing it themselves. The customer support organizations would compete with each other on customer service and would also compete with each other on how easy-to-work-with they are for Google engineers: perhaps Google should even charge them varying amounts depending on how well they do this ($10 for a well-researched bug report; $150 for a poorly researched one).
akkartik 16y ago
Seems to fit the playbook at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2369445 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2369445 a teensy bit, but not the one at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2405198 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2405198.
spydertennis 16y ago
I hope this doesn't create a Microsoft like situation where its very difficult for departments to work together.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- currywurst 16y ago
  Good point ! Balance is key in everything. There is no one right way, and this is exactly why those in management should have a mature outlook in handling the allocated power. A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to infighting with Windows 7.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to infighting with Windows 7. Care to elaborate on that? edit: after 5 seconds of googling: http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/02/microsofts.lees.blamed.for.kins.early.demise/ http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/02/microsofts.lee... http://www.windows7news.com/2010/06/30/the-life-and-death-of-the-kin/ http://www.windows7news.com/2010/06/30/the-life-and-death-of...
jcampbell1 16y ago
If Google wants to put engineers completely in charge, more power to them, but they need to change the interview process. Fewer questions about Red/Black and Splay Trees, and more questions along the lines of "How do you make a web store that your mother would want to use?" The search business makes money through purely engineering talent, but Google's next big opportunity may not. When we achieve a degree of success, we tend to think our path to success is the one that works the best in the general case. It will be interesting to see how the less bureaucratic and more autonomous engineering units will function. I hope some great products and businesses are made, but it could just end up fostering lots of technical masturbation like Google Wave.
abbasmehdi 16y ago
This is such a good move! It gives Google the nimbleness, hunger, and guerilla mentality of a start-up in new areas it wants to explore through these small mostly-autonomous teams, while simultaneously allowing it to defend the already captured beachheads (search, gmail etc.) - all funded by the deep, deep, Google pockets. In any innovation-oriented org, curious engineers and inventors need to be able to play and push the boundaries, but even large organizations with strong financial backs are so defensive when it comes to innovation, so afraid to fail, or waste resources on experimenting. Google has always been okay with this "waste". If you go back before year 2k and try pitching to a goliath sw company to let 20% of dev time be spent on employees’ projects of choice you'd get assaulted by the CFO. Google was okay with this "waste", because they knew if you let the right players roll the dice, every now and then you’d hit jackpot. And they did! Many of their most successful products came out of the 20% project. Organizations today have split the vision and execution aspects of building something. The vision comes from management and the execution from engineers – this is straight from the defensive playbook - ‘engineers can execute with minimum risk, and managers are close to the customer therefore know what will sell for sure’. This kind of thinking will work when you want to improve marginally (like Henry Ford said something along the lines of 'If I asked my customers what they wanted they’d say a faster horse'), or if you are the market leader, but it will never cause disruption or let you make headway in uncharted territory. It is very important to know when to play offence and when to play defense.
sabat 16y ago
Certainly, Rosenberg has been crucial to Google’s success, so his exit has come as a shock to pretty much everyone to whom I’ve spoken. That said, its timing seems quite convenient, particularly in relationship to what looks very much like a significant reorg that is currently underway at Google, said sources familiar with the situation. Note first that Rosenberg’s replacement wasn’t immediately named and it’s not clear whether Page even feels one is needed. Maybe Rosenburg helped Google do great things. Maybe I'm about to over-simplify. But weren't the things that made Google a true powerhouse created long before guys like this were hired -- back when the company was more engineer-driven? It seems to me that Larry Page's frustration has been growing as he watched MBAs take credit for the success the engineers had created years before. If that's the case then I wish him success in changing the company's structure.
elvirs 16y ago
I wonder if this change will result in Google focusing and releasing more hard core technology products or more social products.
microcentury 16y ago
The reality of a large corporation like Google is nowhere near as simple an engineer-vs-manager dichotomy as many of the comments on this thread would make it. Products need to be developed, but they need to be supported and sold too. Which of these functions is most important depends on your world view and your tolerance for angels-on-a-pinhead debate, but it's undoubted that each of them are crucial. An engineering mindset of automation and solution-by-algorithm gives us the miserable customer service that Google is famous for; a realisation that people are tricky and messy gives us something more like Zappos. The people who are good at support and managing support teams are not like engineers, and the people running sales are an entirely different breed. Rare is it to find someone who can successfully manage all three. Indeed, I would go out on a limb and say - as an engineer myself - that it's easier to find a non-technical person who can make a positive impact in product development than it is to find an engineering who can significantly improve sales or support.
donnyg107 16y ago
I love when companies move back to their purer roots. I don't know where this puts Google's progress as a company over the next few years, but it definitely means we won't be seeing the innovation slowdown that Microsoft experienced after their years of explosion. As long as our tech superstars arn't just turning into company gobbling monsters, but rather are constantly iterating, innovating, and developing their product line like a company should.
rwmj 16y ago
So here's a question for potential HN entrepreneurs: If your company got as big as Microsoft or Google, would you split it up, spinning off subdivisions as separate companies? And (in the case of MSFT/Google) why haven't they done that?
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  In the case of Microsoft, no. The Office and Windows division are mutually-supporting rivers of gold. Everything else is the spaghetti cannon approach they've pursued since the 90s, with the possible exception of the Xbox. Most of what Google does is not actually directly profitable and thus not ideal for spinoffs.
  - Elepsis 16y ago
    I'm not sure why people assume that Microsoft only makes money on Windows and Office. There were 11 separate businesses within Microsoft that brought in a billion dollars or more in revenue last year: http://techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/microsofts_11_billion-dollar_businesses_and_what_they_say_about_the_company.html http://techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/microsofts_11_billion-d...
    - jacques_chester 16y ago
      I was talking about profit, not revenue. Here's what I'm talking about: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-operating-income-by-division-2010-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-op...
      - flomo 16y ago
        Actually, I don't think you understand Microsoft's business model. "Server and Tools" may only generate a modest profit of only a billion dollars per quarter, but it is the foundation of all those Windows sales. The real core of the company is not the end-user stuff, it's .net, Visual Studio, IIS, and SQL Server. If you're actually trying to arguing that MSN/Live/Bing has been an endless waste of money, then of course I'd agree.
dr_ 16y ago
Like I've stated before, this would be the perfect time for Microsoft to take Gundotra back and make him CEO. They desperately need the same type of change at the executive level.
dennisgorelik 16y ago
GOOG is 3% down today (while market overall is about the same). I personally like Larry's change, but average investor seems to be skeptical.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  The average investor went to the same school as the MBAs whose power may be diminished if this is true. Management ideology includes the idea that a good manager can manage anything; that management is a context-free science that should be left to professionals. If you believe that then you believe that this article says Google will be turning over management to amateurs. Naturally you might be suspicious.
  - yuhong 16y ago
    Yea, I know: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118742 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118742 In fact, I know this is only one of the horrible things that MBA courses at least used to teach.
    - jacques_chester 16y ago
      You have a better memory than I do.
- brown9-2 16y ago
  Can you really draw this conclusion based on these two points of data? There is no way to determine cause and effect.
  - dennisgorelik 16y ago
    There is no guarantee of causation, but do you see another explanation of why GOOG dropped 3% today?
    - brown9-2 16y ago
Enlightenment 16y ago
Wrong...you must hire MORE MANAGERS...ask Honeywell, because they have more managers than I've ever seen anywhere else. They could cut 3/4 of the managers and it would NOT hurt anything being shipped.
teyc 16y ago
No, I don't think this will solve anything. The problem with Google is that it is sized to deliver big brands, big scale and big projects. First. Google today cannot deliver small brands because failure is very expensive. Every Wave, Buzz, Knol costs Google because future enterprises are less likely to want to try their products. Startup culture could no longer exist in Google, because the salary means that the people will be taking risk with other people's money, and it doesn't work for early stage projects. Secondly, Google cannot deliver small projects. I can relate this to my past history working at a large mining company, there are some mineral deposits that they may not develop but sell off because it is too small for a company their concern. The management overhead is simply too big. Finally, to deliver large projects require specialist departments. The functional structure is there to deliver this. The alternative would be a matrix structure where there will be a lot of confusion as to who reports to whom, or serious duplication.
6ren 16y ago
It's also similar to how Berkshire Hathaway is run; and how Christensen advocates nurturing disruptive businesses - smaller units can get excited about smaller sales that are a rounding error to Big Google (new markets start small); independent units are free to customize their business model and how they do things to what fits the opportunity (instead of fitting in with the parent's model and processes - which has compelling economies, but only early). e.g. it seems highly unlikely that advertising is the ideal revenue model for every business Google is in. The appropriate fit might be sales, renting, monthly charge, pay-per-use, royalty, per-developer, per-other-metric. It's not necessarily about extracting more money from customers, but revenue that makes sense for customers - that they prefer, that makes sense in the competitive set, that motivates the business to improve along the right dimensions.
ramanujan 16y ago
This may finally lead to outright combat between the ChromeOS and Android groups. Chrome the browser itself is fairly successful, as are Android phones. But Chrome OS vs. Android...that is a huge showdown. ChromeOS is a minimalist OS, whereas Android is a fat client. Philosophies are totally different. Attitude within Google right now is "let the market decide". Only a company with the free cash flow of Google could build two operating systems intended for mobile devices and take that kind of approach. I'll get my popcorn.
- cbr 16y ago
  This doesn't seem all that different from the way car companies run multiple makes. Chevy vs Saturn. Philosophies are totally different (or at least they were) but the market is the same. This way the company does well whichever approach wins out.
jay_kyburz 16y ago
I don't think they should be letting Managers or Engineers run things. I think they need to have... I'm not sure of the title... lets call them Vision Carriers. In the video game industry we call these people Creative Directors. These vision carriers need to understand the product they are building and the people who will use it. They don't need to be good a managing people or budgets, they don't need to write code. They need to understand what is good and what is bad and they need to be able to clearly communicate it to the team.
- jlees 16y ago
  At Google we call them product managers. (Aside: I think the original article does not understand that product managers aren't "managers" in the traditional sense of the word. Much of this discussion should be predicated on this fact!)
drawkbox 16y ago
Seems to work pretty well for Honda. They innovate and everyone still copies their designs and products, but they also have great financial results magically with innovative products. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/112.html http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/112.html [2006] I hope this is a trend in America, Google can set a great example (as all companies early on do) on keeping innovators in charge with a startup culture/meritocracy. Before the recent change in CEO, I felt Google was getting too suits focused and simply competing on a byline/reactionary technique. Bring it back Google.
- 6ren 16y ago
  BTW: I understand that Honda used to be very innovative in disruptive ways, creating entirely new categories of products (e.g. they invented the off-road recreational motorbike) but, like Sony, have instead only made sustaining innovations to existing product categories for the last two or three decades. Are my facts right? (I'm going by Christensen). [I'm guessing merely sustaining innovations is the very thing Larry Page wants to avoid (and separate business units helps with that, because then they're free to fit themselves to the market need - like a startup).]
pdaviesa 16y ago
I'm beginning to worry about Google. Companies don't make these types of changes when everything is going great.
pdaviesa 16y ago
There is a big difference between a manager and a leader. A manager takes the credit for things that go well and looks for people to blame when they don't. A leader understands that they are only successful if their team succeeds. A manager worries about how the team might screw things up. A leader thinks about how the team can exceed their goals. A manager tries to consolidate their power and protect their turf at all costs. A leader knows that the team follows them out of a sense of mutual respect and understands that if they can no longer effectively lead the team than it may be time to step aside. Leaders are not just found at the top of an organization.
sunstone 16y ago
This brings to a head the interesting situation of the modern tech company. Unlike companies in almost all other industries, the average developer at Google (and a lot of other companies) needs to be much smarter to do the job than the manager. So the skill pyramid is actually inverse compared the "military corporation" model. It's also true that many, perhaps even a majority, of the deveopers would be "even better" at management, marketing and strategy etc, than those normally filling these roles. This situation really does beg for a solution beyond what the typical corporation/MBA paradigm has come up with so far. Kudos to Mr. Page for taking a shot at it.
swixmix 16y ago
I mistakenly thought Larry Wall was the new Google CEO. It seemed a little odd at first, but then I thought it was very cool. Now it doesn't seem quite as interesting.

415 points by citizenkeys 16y ago

I'm really interested in seeing how companies grow; I hadn't realized quite how large of a role non-engineers played in Google's structure. Glad to see it's moving in the right direction.

gms 16y ago
It's yet to be determined whether that is the right direction or not.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

CoffeeDregs 16y ago

This is a big story. I'm both an engineer and a manager (to which engineers will say "management!" and managers will say "developer!"), and I haven't seen this pendulum swing back and forth so much as be ripped in half and pulled in opposite directions. Google's obviously got very smart folks in both engineering and management, so it's going to be very interesting to see how this is handled. I can't imagine a Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc going through this exercise, so I'm seriously rooting for Google. It'd be lovely for this change to produce some real knowledge on how to run a modern, big, high-speed tech company without getting trapped in the argument over engineering-vs-management.

juiceandjuice 16y ago
I think both have their merits, but I think engineers should be the ones building projects/companies, and management should be the ones who run it. I don't think non-technical management should fundamentally be involved in development unless it's a manager who is also an engineer. In a sense, a traditional non-technical manager should be in charge of the monotonous, boring stuff and that only... stuff like QA, ops, marketing, etc... Basically maintenance-mode autopilots. I'm a big fan of engineers turned manager though, after working with several different projects at my last company. The only problem with that is when their manager isn't an engineer and you end up with the same disconnect that you would normally get at the dev/manager level. It sounds like Google is, in reality, trying to eliminate that disconnect entirely, with managerial engineers the entire way up to CEO.
- pdaviesa 16y ago
  The problem with this approach is that engineers are going to build things that other engineers like. Add up all the engineers in the world and it's not that much compared with the rest of the global population. A good comment on the original post stated that what Google really needs is to diversify it's workforce. This is the reason Google fails at social.
shin_lao 16y ago
Actually AFAIK Microsoft is organized in business units (Windows, XBox, etc.)
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  Right, but even the Windows unit itself is probably at least 7 or 8 layers deep, due to the sheer number of people working on it. With such a massive product, I'm amazed they release it as often as they do, let alone at all.
- mfukar 16y ago
  Many companies are organized in this manner. I don't see what the big deal is, personally.
cellshade 16y ago
Sun went through major re-orgs pretty frequently.
gscott 16y ago
I could see something happening like at Yahoo where different groups of people end up developing the same thing, both with different benefits, and have to kill one off.
Aloisius 16y ago
Doesn't Microsoft do a major reorganization every few years? I thought moving people around was part of their business philosophy.

clistctrl 16y ago

I think this is a great direction for Google, but it certainly is not a direction most other companies with equivalent growth can pursue. I think one of the unique aspects of Google, is the type of engineer they pursue.

joebadmo 16y ago

It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful. It has always seemed to me that management is an important but overemphasized skill (as a fundamental trait of the way large organizations work) and it's really refreshing to see this happening.

kenjackson 16y ago
In the tech industry this isn't really an issue (management being overemphasized). Even at places like IBM and Intel you generally have engineers running the show at every level of the engineering org. I think what Google will see is that the real problem is the board and shareholder accountability. This creates a special type of short-term malfunction in organizations which often looks like a management problem, but really isn't.
- sachinag 16y ago
  Hell, Exxon is run by an engineer.
  - al05 16y ago
    People on HN have this weird distinction where if your an engineer you stay an engineer. In the real world, most career structures involve coming in a engineer and then progressing into management. A lot the skills used for management such as negation skills just come with age anyway.
    - bluedanieru 16y ago
      A lot the skills used for management such as negation skills just come with age anyway. Well you get older and fear change a bit more, and you tend to say "no" to more things, but that's not really a management skill.
      - Silhouette 16y ago

blinkingled 16y ago

This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify things let's say it's a Tech company). It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics 101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and look after the org's interests) - what's the role of the future manager? It sounds inevitable that senior Engineers will double up as managers for their group as and when required (working with marketing etc.) instead of it being a dedicated managerial position.

aridiculous 16y ago
Ideally, but power still seems to be centralized to dealmakers (probably a function of human nature), whether they're specially skilled or not. Managers are essentially low-level dealmakers.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Ppl who can make win/win situations out of lose/lose situations are important. Isolated technical decisions are often the easy ones. The tough ones are getting two people or multiple groups to come to an agreement on technical decisions w/o any feeling like they were just burned or stabbed in the back. This is basically Steve Jobs. Steve is the consumate manager. Not an extremely nice guy, not a designer, not all that technical. But people value and respect his opinion. And even more importantly people want to deliver what he wants. You know a great manager/dealmaker because he's the person who when they change groups, you want to go with him because you feel like he'll take care of you and your projects.
  - aridiculous 16y ago
    Agreed. Good post. I probably shouldn't have said "ideally", because that makes it look like I don't see value in dealmaking. I should have said, "ideally (for you)"
dman 16y ago

noamsml 16y ago

I wonder if part of this is the result of growing competition from the engineer-driven Facebook.

aridiculous 16y ago

Can someone who works at Google chime in with what the organizational temperature is like at Google? Does this whole 'party time's over for the managers' thing we're hearing about have any real weight to it?

Laments 16y ago
I'd like to ditto this; the linked article is very speculative, and without a G-employee response, it seems rather foolhardy to extend said speculation.
- magicalist 16y ago
  agreed, especially in light of the stories we just heard about technical skills being valued less in managers there. I think this is someone just coming up with a nice narrative.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - Laments 16y ago
    To add an unrelated reply to a crowded discussion: I think that what we've seen from Googler manager skillset article in the Times is that Google has had to learn basic managerial attributes organically since that's the Google way -- from this outsider's perspective, it almost sounded like if they didn't invent it, it's hard-to-impossible to adopt given the startup culture. I think that this board in particular has given Facebook a lot of praise; by this, I mean that there's a fascination/silent cheering for their engineering-driven culture. But I think that we're seeing a transition by Google from a startup (Facebook) to a real company (Microsoft); as much as a "management" layer is derided, a lot of Google's projects seem to have little business value; while they may eventually become valuable, it seems like their strategy has been to shy away from placing limits and directing units towards hard business goals (profitability). But I'd argue that the rise of "business" being more important than passion-projects (which is what we implicitly view Google as) has been very visible, just ignored. Android's device manufacturers producing under anti-fragmentation clauses comes to mind as a sterling example of a unit posing to follow Google's motto but in reality has them running in the opposite direction (e.g. away from openness). So, to round back: sure, anything could happen in regard to managers; but Google's in the middle of growing pains, and those pains I believe will end in an increased managerial presence/layer rather than ignored outright.

asknemo 16y ago

Ever since "management" and the dedicated "manager" were invented, we have been told, increasingly in recent decades, that they, rather than talents in other roles, are the key to business success. With the increasing importance and accelerating pace of innovations in our time, it's time to test if to what degree such doctrine would still hold true. Good job Larry. That's some risk worth taking.

al05 16y ago
Its a way of making sure the power stays with the powerful.
GaryOlson 16y ago
Because the alternative is to become just like HP -- where technology and engineering is just an advertising slogan. And one HP is enough.

hobb0001 16y ago

FTA: That jibes well with Page’s push to whittle down Google’s manager bureaucracy, eliminate politicking and rekindle its start-up spirit. I first read that as "pot-licking" and thought, WTF is that? A new managerial term like dogfooding?

bproper 16y ago
Google doesn't need more engineering, it needs better product vision.

SoftwareMaven 16y ago

I question the title. It doesn't sound like engineers are in charge, instead, it sounds like smaller operating units will be in charge. That is a very different thing from having the inmates running the asylum. I have yet to see a large company that successfully treats software as a creative endeavor instead of a production line that still manages to be able to focus on solving customer problems. I really hope that Larry figures this out because, if he does, that will (IMO) be his greatest legacy. What I think will happen, though, is Google will focus even more on technology and care even less about actual users.

wh-uws 16y ago
Whomever figures out how build a company with the technical prowess and product aptitude of Google and have a comparative level of custom service will have created something truly great
- orblivion 16y ago
  They're clever people. You'd think they could come up with a clever way to solve their customer service problem. Maybe it would have to be clever for them to want to bother with it.
  - wh-uws 16y ago
    Didn't mean it couldn't be Google. Just that its something they need to work on and whoever figures it out will get a pretty big spot in the history books
  - rahoulb 16y ago
    I suspect seeing customer service as a problem is the root of it. there's no algorithm for it, just people.
  - mcherm 16y ago
    Here's an approach. Suppose that Google picked 4-10 different startup-sized groups and anointed them as "customer support organizations". The companies could provide customer support for Google applications to the public (and could charge the public as much or as little as they wished for the service). For it to work, Google would have to be willing to be more open with these support companies (hence the anointing of a few). The companies could provide care and hand-holding for customers, but eventually some percentage would need to result in actual bug reports and actual technical troubleshooting that could only be done by Google. Today, no one can offer this service because there's no way to open a support ticket with Google -- they're too closed. If they would open up slightly, even for just a hand-picked few, then this might be a way for Google to offer excellent customer service without doing it themselves. The customer support organizations would compete with each other on customer service and would also compete with each other on how easy-to-work-with they are for Google engineers: perhaps Google should even charge them varying amounts depending on how well they do this ($10 for a well-researched bug report; $150 for a poorly researched one).

akkartik 16y ago

Seems to fit the playbook at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2369445 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2369445 a teensy bit, but not the one at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2405198 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2405198.

spydertennis 16y ago

I hope this doesn't create a Microsoft like situation where its very difficult for departments to work together.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
currywurst 16y ago
Good point ! Balance is key in everything. There is no one right way, and this is exactly why those in management should have a mature outlook in handling the allocated power. A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to infighting with Windows 7.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to infighting with Windows 7. Care to elaborate on that? edit: after 5 seconds of googling: http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/02/microsofts.lees.blamed.for.kins.early.demise/ http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/02/microsofts.lee... http://www.windows7news.com/2010/06/30/the-life-and-death-of-the-kin/ http://www.windows7news.com/2010/06/30/the-life-and-death-of...

jcampbell1 16y ago

If Google wants to put engineers completely in charge, more power to them, but they need to change the interview process. Fewer questions about Red/Black and Splay Trees, and more questions along the lines of "How do you make a web store that your mother would want to use?" The search business makes money through purely engineering talent, but Google's next big opportunity may not. When we achieve a degree of success, we tend to think our path to success is the one that works the best in the general case. It will be interesting to see how the less bureaucratic and more autonomous engineering units will function. I hope some great products and businesses are made, but it could just end up fostering lots of technical masturbation like Google Wave.

abbasmehdi 16y ago

This is such a good move! It gives Google the nimbleness, hunger, and guerilla mentality of a start-up in new areas it wants to explore through these small mostly-autonomous teams, while simultaneously allowing it to defend the already captured beachheads (search, gmail etc.) - all funded by the deep, deep, Google pockets. In any innovation-oriented org, curious engineers and inventors need to be able to play and push the boundaries, but even large organizations with strong financial backs are so defensive when it comes to innovation, so afraid to fail, or waste resources on experimenting. Google has always been okay with this "waste". If you go back before year 2k and try pitching to a goliath sw company to let 20% of dev time be spent on employees’ projects of choice you'd get assaulted by the CFO. Google was okay with this "waste", because they knew if you let the right players roll the dice, every now and then you’d hit jackpot. And they did! Many of their most successful products came out of the 20% project. Organizations today have split the vision and execution aspects of building something. The vision comes from management and the execution from engineers – this is straight from the defensive playbook - ‘engineers can execute with minimum risk, and managers are close to the customer therefore know what will sell for sure’. This kind of thinking will work when you want to improve marginally (like Henry Ford said something along the lines of 'If I asked my customers what they wanted they’d say a faster horse'), or if you are the market leader, but it will never cause disruption or let you make headway in uncharted territory. It is very important to know when to play offence and when to play defense.

sabat 16y ago

Certainly, Rosenberg has been crucial to Google’s success, so his exit has come as a shock to pretty much everyone to whom I’ve spoken. That said, its timing seems quite convenient, particularly in relationship to what looks very much like a significant reorg that is currently underway at Google, said sources familiar with the situation. Note first that Rosenberg’s replacement wasn’t immediately named and it’s not clear whether Page even feels one is needed. Maybe Rosenburg helped Google do great things. Maybe I'm about to over-simplify. But weren't the things that made Google a true powerhouse created long before guys like this were hired -- back when the company was more engineer-driven? It seems to me that Larry Page's frustration has been growing as he watched MBAs take credit for the success the engineers had created years before. If that's the case then I wish him success in changing the company's structure.

elvirs 16y ago

I wonder if this change will result in Google focusing and releasing more hard core technology products or more social products.

microcentury 16y ago

The reality of a large corporation like Google is nowhere near as simple an engineer-vs-manager dichotomy as many of the comments on this thread would make it. Products need to be developed, but they need to be supported and sold too. Which of these functions is most important depends on your world view and your tolerance for angels-on-a-pinhead debate, but it's undoubted that each of them are crucial. An engineering mindset of automation and solution-by-algorithm gives us the miserable customer service that Google is famous for; a realisation that people are tricky and messy gives us something more like Zappos. The people who are good at support and managing support teams are not like engineers, and the people running sales are an entirely different breed. Rare is it to find someone who can successfully manage all three. Indeed, I would go out on a limb and say - as an engineer myself - that it's easier to find a non-technical person who can make a positive impact in product development than it is to find an engineering who can significantly improve sales or support.

donnyg107 16y ago

I love when companies move back to their purer roots. I don't know where this puts Google's progress as a company over the next few years, but it definitely means we won't be seeing the innovation slowdown that Microsoft experienced after their years of explosion. As long as our tech superstars arn't just turning into company gobbling monsters, but rather are constantly iterating, innovating, and developing their product line like a company should.

rwmj 16y ago

So here's a question for potential HN entrepreneurs: If your company got as big as Microsoft or Google, would you split it up, spinning off subdivisions as separate companies? And (in the case of MSFT/Google) why haven't they done that?

jacques_chester 16y ago
In the case of Microsoft, no. The Office and Windows division are mutually-supporting rivers of gold. Everything else is the spaghetti cannon approach they've pursued since the 90s, with the possible exception of the Xbox. Most of what Google does is not actually directly profitable and thus not ideal for spinoffs.
- Elepsis 16y ago
  I'm not sure why people assume that Microsoft only makes money on Windows and Office. There were 11 separate businesses within Microsoft that brought in a billion dollars or more in revenue last year: http://techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/microsofts_11_billion-dollar_businesses_and_what_they_say_about_the_company.html http://techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/microsofts_11_billion-d...
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    I was talking about profit, not revenue. Here's what I'm talking about: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-operating-income-by-division-2010-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-op...
    - flomo 16y ago
      Actually, I don't think you understand Microsoft's business model. "Server and Tools" may only generate a modest profit of only a billion dollars per quarter, but it is the foundation of all those Windows sales. The real core of the company is not the end-user stuff, it's .net, Visual Studio, IIS, and SQL Server. If you're actually trying to arguing that MSN/Live/Bing has been an endless waste of money, then of course I'd agree.

dr_ 16y ago

Like I've stated before, this would be the perfect time for Microsoft to take Gundotra back and make him CEO. They desperately need the same type of change at the executive level.

dennisgorelik 16y ago

GOOG is 3% down today (while market overall is about the same). I personally like Larry's change, but average investor seems to be skeptical.

jacques_chester 16y ago
The average investor went to the same school as the MBAs whose power may be diminished if this is true. Management ideology includes the idea that a good manager can manage anything; that management is a context-free science that should be left to professionals. If you believe that then you believe that this article says Google will be turning over management to amateurs. Naturally you might be suspicious.
- yuhong 16y ago
  Yea, I know: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118742 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118742 In fact, I know this is only one of the horrible things that MBA courses at least used to teach.
  - jacques_chester 16y ago
    You have a better memory than I do.
brown9-2 16y ago
Can you really draw this conclusion based on these two points of data? There is no way to determine cause and effect.
- dennisgorelik 16y ago
  There is no guarantee of causation, but do you see another explanation of why GOOG dropped 3% today?
  - brown9-2 16y ago

Enlightenment 16y ago

Wrong...you must hire MORE MANAGERS...ask Honeywell, because they have more managers than I've ever seen anywhere else. They could cut 3/4 of the managers and it would NOT hurt anything being shipped.

teyc 16y ago

No, I don't think this will solve anything. The problem with Google is that it is sized to deliver big brands, big scale and big projects. First. Google today cannot deliver small brands because failure is very expensive. Every Wave, Buzz, Knol costs Google because future enterprises are less likely to want to try their products. Startup culture could no longer exist in Google, because the salary means that the people will be taking risk with other people's money, and it doesn't work for early stage projects. Secondly, Google cannot deliver small projects. I can relate this to my past history working at a large mining company, there are some mineral deposits that they may not develop but sell off because it is too small for a company their concern. The management overhead is simply too big. Finally, to deliver large projects require specialist departments. The functional structure is there to deliver this. The alternative would be a matrix structure where there will be a lot of confusion as to who reports to whom, or serious duplication.

6ren 16y ago

It's also similar to how Berkshire Hathaway is run; and how Christensen advocates nurturing disruptive businesses - smaller units can get excited about smaller sales that are a rounding error to Big Google (new markets start small); independent units are free to customize their business model and how they do things to what fits the opportunity (instead of fitting in with the parent's model and processes - which has compelling economies, but only early). e.g. it seems highly unlikely that advertising is the ideal revenue model for every business Google is in. The appropriate fit might be sales, renting, monthly charge, pay-per-use, royalty, per-developer, per-other-metric. It's not necessarily about extracting more money from customers, but revenue that makes sense for customers - that they prefer, that makes sense in the competitive set, that motivates the business to improve along the right dimensions.

ramanujan 16y ago

This may finally lead to outright combat between the ChromeOS and Android groups. Chrome the browser itself is fairly successful, as are Android phones. But Chrome OS vs. Android...that is a huge showdown. ChromeOS is a minimalist OS, whereas Android is a fat client. Philosophies are totally different. Attitude within Google right now is "let the market decide". Only a company with the free cash flow of Google could build two operating systems intended for mobile devices and take that kind of approach. I'll get my popcorn.

cbr 16y ago
This doesn't seem all that different from the way car companies run multiple makes. Chevy vs Saturn. Philosophies are totally different (or at least they were) but the market is the same. This way the company does well whichever approach wins out.

jay_kyburz 16y ago

I don't think they should be letting Managers or Engineers run things. I think they need to have... I'm not sure of the title... lets call them Vision Carriers. In the video game industry we call these people Creative Directors. These vision carriers need to understand the product they are building and the people who will use it. They don't need to be good a managing people or budgets, they don't need to write code. They need to understand what is good and what is bad and they need to be able to clearly communicate it to the team.

jlees 16y ago
At Google we call them product managers. (Aside: I think the original article does not understand that product managers aren't "managers" in the traditional sense of the word. Much of this discussion should be predicated on this fact!)

drawkbox 16y ago

Seems to work pretty well for Honda. They innovate and everyone still copies their designs and products, but they also have great financial results magically with innovative products. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/112.html http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/112.html [2006] I hope this is a trend in America, Google can set a great example (as all companies early on do) on keeping innovators in charge with a startup culture/meritocracy. Before the recent change in CEO, I felt Google was getting too suits focused and simply competing on a byline/reactionary technique. Bring it back Google.

6ren 16y ago
BTW: I understand that Honda used to be very innovative in disruptive ways, creating entirely new categories of products (e.g. they invented the off-road recreational motorbike) but, like Sony, have instead only made sustaining innovations to existing product categories for the last two or three decades. Are my facts right? (I'm going by Christensen). [I'm guessing merely sustaining innovations is the very thing Larry Page wants to avoid (and separate business units helps with that, because then they're free to fit themselves to the market need - like a startup).]

pdaviesa 16y ago

I'm beginning to worry about Google. Companies don't make these types of changes when everything is going great.

pdaviesa 16y ago

There is a big difference between a manager and a leader. A manager takes the credit for things that go well and looks for people to blame when they don't. A leader understands that they are only successful if their team succeeds. A manager worries about how the team might screw things up. A leader thinks about how the team can exceed their goals. A manager tries to consolidate their power and protect their turf at all costs. A leader knows that the team follows them out of a sense of mutual respect and understands that if they can no longer effectively lead the team than it may be time to step aside. Leaders are not just found at the top of an organization.

sunstone 16y ago

This brings to a head the interesting situation of the modern tech company. Unlike companies in almost all other industries, the average developer at Google (and a lot of other companies) needs to be much smarter to do the job than the manager. So the skill pyramid is actually inverse compared the "military corporation" model. It's also true that many, perhaps even a majority, of the deveopers would be "even better" at management, marketing and strategy etc, than those normally filling these roles. This situation really does beg for a solution beyond what the typical corporation/MBA paradigm has come up with so far. Kudos to Mr. Page for taking a shot at it.

swixmix 16y ago

I mistakenly thought Larry Wall was the new Google CEO. It seemed a little odd at first, but then I thought it was very cool. Now it doesn't seem quite as interesting.