6 ms·

Given the growing Google graveyard, why would anyone who is serious about building product consider working at Google? Guys, you are destroying your hiring pipe

by pgt 6y ago

Given the growing Google graveyard, why would anyone who is serious about building product consider working at Google? Guys, you are destroying your hiring pipeline. I have stopped using Google search (DuckDuckGo is great), Google Chrome (Firefox is great), Google Domains (use Gandi / Route53). The most difficult products to shake are Gmail, Docs and Sheets, but I am gradually weaning myself off. The only signal that seems to get through to corporates is to vocally withhold your funds. PMs at Google probably underestimate the % of people on HN who control the company purse for software spending. Personally, there is no way I can risk locking myself or my employer (that just raised a Series B) into any Google products at this point. If I were in charge at Google, I would put engineers and PMs / POs on call immediately so they start talking to customers again.

madeofpalk 6y ago
> serious about building product consider working at Google my view is that if you're serious about "building product", then you wouldnt work at google, or Facebook, or for anyone else. You would build and run something yourself. If you like the "building" part but are indifferent about "product" then somewhere like Google seems great.
- ako 6y ago
  Maybe google lets you focus more on the product part? If you run something yourself, most of your time will be building company, not so much product.
- generalk 6y ago
  > if you're serious about "building product" [...] You > would build and run something yourself. Perhaps as a side project, something useful just for yourself. Lots of developers scratch itches they can't scratch at their day job that way; new tech, greenfield ideas instead of maintaining someone else's garbage, etc. And sometimes those devs go into business for themselves and realize that they don't get to spend all their time building product -- now they've got to build the marketing page and write a bunch of copy and take a ton of screenshots (of features they know they're going to change), and figure out how sales funnels work, and all the other things that go into running a business. Building and running your own company is the fastest way to get out of pure product development I've ever seen.
  - madeofpalk 6y ago
    "building a product" and "building a company" are two different things, but i agree that for some kinds of products and scale, you need a company to make it really successful. I think about all the "lifestyle businesses" that are examples of products that don't need full on "companies" to exist. I think that if you are passionate about creating a product for people to use, then you will see through on all the other aspects of making that product survive and be used. Otherwise, what you're interested in is "development", and big places like Google will give you plenty of experience in doing that. This is not a value judgement. Personally, I have no problem working at a company where I'm paid to engineer products from the ground up. Maintaining things is boring. But that's just me.
- pgt 6y ago
  Generally agree, but building product for a wealthy established company can give you an opportunity to reach a wide audience of users with your work.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Why, if you want to keep building an already successful product, like Kubernetes, or Golang, or Chrome (or React, PyTorch, or VSCode, etc) you can join a megacorp and go on. These are going to be around for probably a decade or two. If you want to build an original product, then yes, it can happen not to align with a megacorp's priorities, even if reasonably successful. Found a startup, try to sell it to a megacorp (if it's Google, it will likely discontinue the acquired product anyway), or keep it to yourself if you can afford it.
dsr_ 6y ago
The things that make Docs and Sheets and such attractive aren't really the ability to create and edit documents -- we all have perfectly adequate versions of that on our laptops and desktops already -- so much as the availability of those documents on a shareable networked infrastructure. "Here's the URL to see my doc, here's the URL to edit the same copy in place" are the most powerful features. If, say, Backblaze or Dropbox wanted to put a higher-value service on top of their storage infrastructure, I think that would be a good way to go.
- froh 6y ago
  Like onecloud or nextcloud with libre office plugins? Or office365?
- sfifs 6y ago
  Have you used Office 365 and OneDrive? You actually get a nearly full blown Word and Excel with the same file sharing features :-)
  - selectodude 6y ago
    You can link the desktop versions to OneDrive and get the actual full blown word and excel.
    - deskamess 6y ago
      Is buying desktop versions still a possibility?
      - beauzero 6y ago
        Office 365, 5 desktop install (at one time), ~$99 a year. We do one subscription for our family per year. Gives 1T of onedrive space as well.
  - falcor84 6y ago
    I personally have had very bad experiences with collaborative editing on Word 365, with it locking whole sections of the doc because someone else is editing them, while in Google Docs even editing the same sentence (e.g. adding items to a list) at the same time Just Works™.
pgt 6y ago
Actually, let me put my money where my mouth is. Just signed up for Fastmail. Email and privacy is worth way more than than $5/month. I know not everyone is in that position, but I pay more for Spotify and GitHub already.
- duiker101 6y ago
  Getting a Fastmail was my first step toward de-googling myself. Have been super happy with them. They are really stirring email in the right direction. Their effort on JMAP is also very much appreciated.
- isoprophlex 6y ago
  Get a fun custom tld while youre at it. Fastmail has very good and convenient custom domain support. I did that when getting rid of gmail (have firstname@lastname.email), it still makes me feel cool and defiant every time I enter it somewhere.
  - duiker101 6y ago
    I use surname.io and I can't believe the amount of people that ask me if .io is not a mistake. Makes me realise how much I live a bit in a tech bubble.
    - RegnisGnaw 6y ago
      I have me@firstname.lastname -- so many double takes when I give it out in person or over the phone
    - nvrspyx 6y ago
      My surname ends in "io" and I've been trying to get my <partial_surname>.io domain for years. It's a shame that it's being squatted, especially considering the only people with that surname are directly related to me (great grandpa legally changed his last name to something made up when he left a certain criminal group) and don't do anything with tech. I've been relegated to using a <surname>.me domain.
xvector 6y ago
> Guys, you are destroying your hiring pipeline. Not really, as long as the pay is there, devs will come.
- Retric 6y ago
  Spending a lot of money helps less than you might think. You can definitely get well qualified people, but ‘qualified’ is only a proxy for what you want. For example if people leave after 2-3 years you lose out on massive amounts of institutional knowledge. But, more importantly you select for people that are very good at hacking your processes rather than your problems. Which I suspect is why their search for example has gotten so bad. Google is doing a great many things that look good internally that make search less useful.
- pgt 6y ago
  Some people are willing to take a principled stance. I have personally turned down significant offers at a cost to myself, including: 1. Building an HTTP proxy that inject ads into open WiFi networks, e.g. hotel lobby WiFi. 2. Forking a browser project for a gambling company that would hide their competitors' ads in return for providing free data to East African gambling addicts. 3. Building a website for a health quack with completely made up medical claims.
  - aikinai 6y ago
    None of which seem in the same league as "turning down a little used print protocol."
    - Retric 6y ago
      It’s not about any one project, it’s knowing that your work will either sell more advertising or be tossed aside arbitrarily harming anyone that dared to use your service.
DC-3 6y ago
You're not using YouTube?
- gpvos 6y ago
  For business?
tephra 6y ago
I switched from gmail to mainly using protonmail. I can highly recommend them so far.
ralph87 6y ago
> Docs and Sheets Try out Office online, insanely more featureful. Scold anyone mailing Docs share links by saying you can't open it, insist on a file instead
googleintta 6y ago
> Guys, you are destroying your hiring pipeline. I actually had a former college approach me about an opportunity to work at gcloud and feel like I am a great fit for the position. The work seems fun and the pay is right...but my single biggest concern is the future of the product in terms of longevity. I am strongly considering rejecting any possible offers just for this reason.
- deskamess 6y ago
  Is gcloud = GCP? think GCP is a longerm product. It would be CEO suicide to announce you are not going to compete with AWS or Azure.
  - googleintta 6y ago
    gcloud = GCP in this context, yes. GCP could definitely be a good product and a real competitor to AWS/Azure given Google's technical expertise. Given Google's recent track-record though it isn't clear that the vision is there.
nyxtom 6y ago
My understanding is that Google tends to have internal metrics around all of this stuff, if the data is coming back that usage is declining enough - they usually re-prioritize their efforts. Not necessarily saying I would do the same, but I believe that's how it's supposed to work
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Sure, but even if every product closure they only annoy 1% of their users, a hundred product closures in, that's everybody. Their data-based model fails to account for the fact that they're getting a reputation for not being dependable.
  - wegs 6y ago
    This is the single reason why Google Cloud will never be successful, at least in the next decade. A huge number of software engineers have been burned by being treated as Google statistics. That works great for ads or search, but Google has a reputation as someone you would never, ever, ever, ever build a sustainable business around. There is a critical mass of people who simply won't use Google in a business-critical setting, and it's growing quickly. Now, that adds any GSuite office which relied on Google for working printers. Is that a lot? Probably not. Multiply that times each time this has happened before, and times the never of businesses wacked out-of-business by Google's automated algorithms, and at this point, I think it's quickly reaching the point where most teams have a Google horror story or two. It's fine for purely transactional businesses (ones with zero startup/shutdown costs -- for example, one can arbitrage adwords and referral fees). My guess is that at some point, Google will realize this, either from data or otherwise, and sunset GCE and related services, probably with very short notice, leaving many businesses hanging. Short of giving a 10-year guarantee of keeping services running at specific cost and service levels, with real liability (not externalizing costs to customers again), I don't see how Google could address this.
- pgt 6y ago
  The biggest cultural weakness at Google seems to be the No Human support policy and outsourced regional distribution which fuels a growing divide between engineers and customers. The myopic salarymen who shut down entire product lines based on usage metrics that seem to pale in comparison to Google Search metrics do not understand complex systems, do not understand startups (and the fragility of growth) and certainly don't understand branding or hiring. If these nerds had ever run a business themselves and spent time talking to the customers who pay their salaries, they would spin out these companies instead of sunsetting them.
silicon2401 6y ago
> you are destroying your hiring pipeline. why do you think everybody working at a software company cares about building products? I'm in this field to make a living. The only thing that would turn me off from a company that compensates like Google is a bad work life balance. As a user though, I'm definitely turned off. This year I've started detaching from google as much as possible, and it's great. the main sticky point for me is how to replace Google Photos.
- pgt 6y ago
  You say you're turned off enough as a user to divest your personal life from Google. Who do you think funds the salaries at Google that feeds the compensation? It's you - the customer. Some of these customers are slow-moving businesses, but as an individual you are living in the future. A decline in revenue will follow a decline in product - the question is by how long for a Titanic the size of Google.
  - silicon2401 6y ago
    I gather that your argument is if I don't have confidence in google's products, I shouldn't have confidence in their success as a business either. If that's correct, I think that's a reasonable argument but I'm not really concerned about whether Google as a business will fail 5+ years from today. I would honestly be shocked if they failed in less than 5 years, so I wouldn't hesitate to take their compensation. This is all hypothetical of course. I have no idea what their work-life balance is nor have I tried applying to them
blinding-streak 6y ago
It's not just Google: https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-microsoft-products https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-micros... It's $GIANT_CORPORATION value drift.
bufferoverflow 6y ago
Well, working at Google has clear benefits - insane money + Google on your resume.
sf_rob 6y ago
I love Google sheets but I also work with large enough data sets that it regularly freezes up which is always associated with a frustrating “lost connection” message. I’ve been shifting more and more to Excel because of this. It’s pretty funny to move away from Google because my data is too big.
jlkuester7 6y ago
I have totally replaced Drive/Docs/Sheets with Nextcloud [1] + OnlyOffice [2]. You still get online cloud storage and online editors with the bonus of using the widely popular (OOXML standard). 1. https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ 2. https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/ As far as Gmail goes, I have heard really good things about Fastmail (as others have mentioned) or if you want to host your own, I highly recommend checking out mailu.io.
- part1of2 6y ago
  What do you use to host nextcloud?
  - jlkuester7 6y ago
    I just have it running in Docker on a DigitalOcean droplet (alongside several other services). But there are quite a few other options, from renting a managed instance to buying a hardware device with it preinstalled. https://nextcloud.com/yourdata/ https://nextcloud.com/yourdata/ For anyone who is interested in self-hosting stuff like Nextcloud but is not ready to dive into the deep end of server management, I would highly recommend checking out https://yunohost.org/ https://yunohost.org/. Basically it is a Linux "server" OS that tries to make it as simple as possible to install and manage services like Nextcloud.
patwolf 6y ago
I don't necessarily think the Google graveyard is that much bigger than other companies, it's just more visible to the public. Any large software company is going to have a lot of projects that were sunset early or canceled before the first release. I don't have statistics for this, but Cloud Print lasted for 10 years, and that seems like a fairly typical lifespan for any product. It can be painful seeing the fruits of one's labor killed off by an unsympathetic executive, but it is the nature of the work.
- woofie11 6y ago
  It's not about bigger, so much as about more sudden, arbitrary, and capricious. In most companies, products which consistently don't show a profit are phased out, usually with transition paths. At Google, products that don't show exponential growth are wack-a-moled, offloading costs on customers and dumping them on the ground.
gpvos 6y ago
Nextcloud integrates with Collabora or OnlyOffice. Can anyone here tell if either of them is usable and compare them with the Google offerings?
thethethethe 6y ago
> If I were in charge at Google, I would put engineers and PMs / POs on call immediately so they start talking to customers again. SWEs at Google are certainly on call for pretty much every product. Not really sure how you expect PMs to be on call considering their general lack of technical knowledge. However, PMs and T/PMs are constantly grooming and organizing bug hotlists. Disclaimer: I work at Google opinions are my own
nunez 6y ago
As long as new grads can continue to make $200k out of college, Google's hiring pipeline will continue to be fine.
mraza007 6y ago
I hope they don’t end up killing gmail one day. I was really surprised when they killed there inbox app and it was killed after few years. I was basically using it as a primary email app for the phone
goatinaboat 6y ago
Given the growing Google graveyard, why would anyone who is serious about building product consider working at Google? Guys, you are destroying your hiring pipeline. Actually it sounds great - build whatever you can dream up, but never have to worry about supporting it.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Given the growing Google graveyard, why would anyone who is serious about building product consider working at Google? Guys, you are destroying your hiring pipeline. Given that Google is known for using filtering methods with a high false negative rate because they have a great surplus of qualified candidates that they need to weed out, even if it was true, that's probably not a concern for them.

by pgt 6y ago

madeofpalk 6y ago

> serious about building product consider working at Google my view is that if you're serious about "building product", then you wouldnt work at google, or Facebook, or for anyone else. You would build and run something yourself. If you like the "building" part but are indifferent about "product" then somewhere like Google seems great.

ako 6y ago
Maybe google lets you focus more on the product part? If you run something yourself, most of your time will be building company, not so much product.
generalk 6y ago
> if you're serious about "building product" [...] You > would build and run something yourself. Perhaps as a side project, something useful just for yourself. Lots of developers scratch itches they can't scratch at their day job that way; new tech, greenfield ideas instead of maintaining someone else's garbage, etc. And sometimes those devs go into business for themselves and realize that they don't get to spend all their time building product -- now they've got to build the marketing page and write a bunch of copy and take a ton of screenshots (of features they know they're going to change), and figure out how sales funnels work, and all the other things that go into running a business. Building and running your own company is the fastest way to get out of pure product development I've ever seen.
- madeofpalk 6y ago
  "building a product" and "building a company" are two different things, but i agree that for some kinds of products and scale, you need a company to make it really successful. I think about all the "lifestyle businesses" that are examples of products that don't need full on "companies" to exist. I think that if you are passionate about creating a product for people to use, then you will see through on all the other aspects of making that product survive and be used. Otherwise, what you're interested in is "development", and big places like Google will give you plenty of experience in doing that. This is not a value judgement. Personally, I have no problem working at a company where I'm paid to engineer products from the ground up. Maintaining things is boring. But that's just me.
pgt 6y ago
Generally agree, but building product for a wealthy established company can give you an opportunity to reach a wide audience of users with your work.
nine_k 6y ago
Why, if you want to keep building an already successful product, like Kubernetes, or Golang, or Chrome (or React, PyTorch, or VSCode, etc) you can join a megacorp and go on. These are going to be around for probably a decade or two. If you want to build an original product, then yes, it can happen not to align with a megacorp's priorities, even if reasonably successful. Found a startup, try to sell it to a megacorp (if it's Google, it will likely discontinue the acquired product anyway), or keep it to yourself if you can afford it.

dsr_ 6y ago

The things that make Docs and Sheets and such attractive aren't really the ability to create and edit documents -- we all have perfectly adequate versions of that on our laptops and desktops already -- so much as the availability of those documents on a shareable networked infrastructure. "Here's the URL to see my doc, here's the URL to edit the same copy in place" are the most powerful features. If, say, Backblaze or Dropbox wanted to put a higher-value service on top of their storage infrastructure, I think that would be a good way to go.

froh 6y ago
Like onecloud or nextcloud with libre office plugins? Or office365?
sfifs 6y ago
Have you used Office 365 and OneDrive? You actually get a nearly full blown Word and Excel with the same file sharing features :-)
- selectodude 6y ago
  You can link the desktop versions to OneDrive and get the actual full blown word and excel.
  - deskamess 6y ago
    Is buying desktop versions still a possibility?
    - beauzero 6y ago
      Office 365, 5 desktop install (at one time), ~$99 a year. We do one subscription for our family per year. Gives 1T of onedrive space as well.
- falcor84 6y ago
  I personally have had very bad experiences with collaborative editing on Word 365, with it locking whole sections of the doc because someone else is editing them, while in Google Docs even editing the same sentence (e.g. adding items to a list) at the same time Just Works™.

pgt 6y ago

Actually, let me put my money where my mouth is. Just signed up for Fastmail. Email and privacy is worth way more than than $5/month. I know not everyone is in that position, but I pay more for Spotify and GitHub already.

duiker101 6y ago
Getting a Fastmail was my first step toward de-googling myself. Have been super happy with them. They are really stirring email in the right direction. Their effort on JMAP is also very much appreciated.
isoprophlex 6y ago
Get a fun custom tld while youre at it. Fastmail has very good and convenient custom domain support. I did that when getting rid of gmail (have firstname@lastname.email), it still makes me feel cool and defiant every time I enter it somewhere.
- duiker101 6y ago
  I use surname.io and I can't believe the amount of people that ask me if .io is not a mistake. Makes me realise how much I live a bit in a tech bubble.
  - RegnisGnaw 6y ago
    I have me@firstname.lastname -- so many double takes when I give it out in person or over the phone
  - nvrspyx 6y ago
    My surname ends in "io" and I've been trying to get my <partial_surname>.io domain for years. It's a shame that it's being squatted, especially considering the only people with that surname are directly related to me (great grandpa legally changed his last name to something made up when he left a certain criminal group) and don't do anything with tech. I've been relegated to using a <surname>.me domain.

xvector 6y ago

> Guys, you are destroying your hiring pipeline. Not really, as long as the pay is there, devs will come.

Retric 6y ago
Spending a lot of money helps less than you might think. You can definitely get well qualified people, but ‘qualified’ is only a proxy for what you want. For example if people leave after 2-3 years you lose out on massive amounts of institutional knowledge. But, more importantly you select for people that are very good at hacking your processes rather than your problems. Which I suspect is why their search for example has gotten so bad. Google is doing a great many things that look good internally that make search less useful.
pgt 6y ago
Some people are willing to take a principled stance. I have personally turned down significant offers at a cost to myself, including: 1. Building an HTTP proxy that inject ads into open WiFi networks, e.g. hotel lobby WiFi. 2. Forking a browser project for a gambling company that would hide their competitors' ads in return for providing free data to East African gambling addicts. 3. Building a website for a health quack with completely made up medical claims.
- aikinai 6y ago
  None of which seem in the same league as "turning down a little used print protocol."
  - Retric 6y ago
    It’s not about any one project, it’s knowing that your work will either sell more advertising or be tossed aside arbitrarily harming anyone that dared to use your service.

DC-3 6y ago

You're not using YouTube?

gpvos 6y ago
For business?

tephra 6y ago

I switched from gmail to mainly using protonmail. I can highly recommend them so far.

ralph87 6y ago

> Docs and Sheets Try out Office online, insanely more featureful. Scold anyone mailing Docs share links by saying you can't open it, insist on a file instead

googleintta 6y ago

> Guys, you are destroying your hiring pipeline. I actually had a former college approach me about an opportunity to work at gcloud and feel like I am a great fit for the position. The work seems fun and the pay is right...but my single biggest concern is the future of the product in terms of longevity. I am strongly considering rejecting any possible offers just for this reason.

deskamess 6y ago
Is gcloud = GCP? think GCP is a longerm product. It would be CEO suicide to announce you are not going to compete with AWS or Azure.
- googleintta 6y ago
  gcloud = GCP in this context, yes. GCP could definitely be a good product and a real competitor to AWS/Azure given Google's technical expertise. Given Google's recent track-record though it isn't clear that the vision is there.

nyxtom 6y ago

My understanding is that Google tends to have internal metrics around all of this stuff, if the data is coming back that usage is declining enough - they usually re-prioritize their efforts. Not necessarily saying I would do the same, but I believe that's how it's supposed to work

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Sure, but even if every product closure they only annoy 1% of their users, a hundred product closures in, that's everybody. Their data-based model fails to account for the fact that they're getting a reputation for not being dependable.
- wegs 6y ago
  This is the single reason why Google Cloud will never be successful, at least in the next decade. A huge number of software engineers have been burned by being treated as Google statistics. That works great for ads or search, but Google has a reputation as someone you would never, ever, ever, ever build a sustainable business around. There is a critical mass of people who simply won't use Google in a business-critical setting, and it's growing quickly. Now, that adds any GSuite office which relied on Google for working printers. Is that a lot? Probably not. Multiply that times each time this has happened before, and times the never of businesses wacked out-of-business by Google's automated algorithms, and at this point, I think it's quickly reaching the point where most teams have a Google horror story or two. It's fine for purely transactional businesses (ones with zero startup/shutdown costs -- for example, one can arbitrage adwords and referral fees). My guess is that at some point, Google will realize this, either from data or otherwise, and sunset GCE and related services, probably with very short notice, leaving many businesses hanging. Short of giving a 10-year guarantee of keeping services running at specific cost and service levels, with real liability (not externalizing costs to customers again), I don't see how Google could address this.
pgt 6y ago
The biggest cultural weakness at Google seems to be the No Human support policy and outsourced regional distribution which fuels a growing divide between engineers and customers. The myopic salarymen who shut down entire product lines based on usage metrics that seem to pale in comparison to Google Search metrics do not understand complex systems, do not understand startups (and the fragility of growth) and certainly don't understand branding or hiring. If these nerds had ever run a business themselves and spent time talking to the customers who pay their salaries, they would spin out these companies instead of sunsetting them.

silicon2401 6y ago

> you are destroying your hiring pipeline. why do you think everybody working at a software company cares about building products? I'm in this field to make a living. The only thing that would turn me off from a company that compensates like Google is a bad work life balance. As a user though, I'm definitely turned off. This year I've started detaching from google as much as possible, and it's great. the main sticky point for me is how to replace Google Photos.

pgt 6y ago
You say you're turned off enough as a user to divest your personal life from Google. Who do you think funds the salaries at Google that feeds the compensation? It's you - the customer. Some of these customers are slow-moving businesses, but as an individual you are living in the future. A decline in revenue will follow a decline in product - the question is by how long for a Titanic the size of Google.
- silicon2401 6y ago
  I gather that your argument is if I don't have confidence in google's products, I shouldn't have confidence in their success as a business either. If that's correct, I think that's a reasonable argument but I'm not really concerned about whether Google as a business will fail 5+ years from today. I would honestly be shocked if they failed in less than 5 years, so I wouldn't hesitate to take their compensation. This is all hypothetical of course. I have no idea what their work-life balance is nor have I tried applying to them

blinding-streak 6y ago

It's not just Google: https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-microsoft-products https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-micros... It's $GIANT_CORPORATION value drift.

bufferoverflow 6y ago

Well, working at Google has clear benefits - insane money + Google on your resume.

sf_rob 6y ago

I love Google sheets but I also work with large enough data sets that it regularly freezes up which is always associated with a frustrating “lost connection” message. I’ve been shifting more and more to Excel because of this. It’s pretty funny to move away from Google because my data is too big.

jlkuester7 6y ago

I have totally replaced Drive/Docs/Sheets with Nextcloud [1] + OnlyOffice [2]. You still get online cloud storage and online editors with the bonus of using the widely popular (OOXML standard). 1. https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ 2. https://www.onlyoffice.com/ https://www.onlyoffice.com/ As far as Gmail goes, I have heard really good things about Fastmail (as others have mentioned) or if you want to host your own, I highly recommend checking out mailu.io.

part1of2 6y ago
What do you use to host nextcloud?
- jlkuester7 6y ago
  I just have it running in Docker on a DigitalOcean droplet (alongside several other services). But there are quite a few other options, from renting a managed instance to buying a hardware device with it preinstalled. https://nextcloud.com/yourdata/ https://nextcloud.com/yourdata/ For anyone who is interested in self-hosting stuff like Nextcloud but is not ready to dive into the deep end of server management, I would highly recommend checking out https://yunohost.org/ https://yunohost.org/. Basically it is a Linux "server" OS that tries to make it as simple as possible to install and manage services like Nextcloud.

patwolf 6y ago

I don't necessarily think the Google graveyard is that much bigger than other companies, it's just more visible to the public. Any large software company is going to have a lot of projects that were sunset early or canceled before the first release. I don't have statistics for this, but Cloud Print lasted for 10 years, and that seems like a fairly typical lifespan for any product. It can be painful seeing the fruits of one's labor killed off by an unsympathetic executive, but it is the nature of the work.

woofie11 6y ago
It's not about bigger, so much as about more sudden, arbitrary, and capricious. In most companies, products which consistently don't show a profit are phased out, usually with transition paths. At Google, products that don't show exponential growth are wack-a-moled, offloading costs on customers and dumping them on the ground.

gpvos 6y ago

Nextcloud integrates with Collabora or OnlyOffice. Can anyone here tell if either of them is usable and compare them with the Google offerings?

thethethethe 6y ago

> If I were in charge at Google, I would put engineers and PMs / POs on call immediately so they start talking to customers again. SWEs at Google are certainly on call for pretty much every product. Not really sure how you expect PMs to be on call considering their general lack of technical knowledge. However, PMs and T/PMs are constantly grooming and organizing bug hotlists. Disclaimer: I work at Google opinions are my own

nunez 6y ago

As long as new grads can continue to make $200k out of college, Google's hiring pipeline will continue to be fine.

mraza007 6y ago

I hope they don’t end up killing gmail one day. I was really surprised when they killed there inbox app and it was killed after few years. I was basically using it as a primary email app for the phone

goatinaboat 6y ago

Given the growing Google graveyard, why would anyone who is serious about building product consider working at Google? Guys, you are destroying your hiring pipeline. Actually it sounds great - build whatever you can dream up, but never have to worry about supporting it.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Given the growing Google graveyard, why would anyone who is serious about building product consider working at Google? Guys, you are destroying your hiring pipeline. Given that Google is known for using filtering methods with a high false negative rate because they have a great surplus of qualified candidates that they need to weed out, even if it was true, that's probably not a concern for them.