30 ms·

4chan founder Chris Poole has left Google

209 points by b5 5y ago

adamrezich 5y ago
he'd only been at Google for five years? seems like a lifetime ago!
blissofbeing 5y ago
"only five years" that's a long time in my opinion to be at one company.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  >only five years" that's a long time in my opinion to be at one company I've never worked anywhere where people were much use before 2-3 years in harness. Too much domain knowledge maybe.
- carabiner 5y ago
  The original CNBC article https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/4chan-founder-chris-poole-moot-has-left-google.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/4chan-founder-chris-poole-mo... lacks this editorial spin. Tech people hop around a lot, 5 years is a solid tenure.
  - scotth 5y ago
    And three positions inside the company seems about right as well.
    - seattle_spring 5y ago
      > Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to hiring to vest They make it sound like he barely managed to get any stock. That's like saying, "person worked at X for 1 year, just long enough to get 1 year's salary." Well, yeah, but if they left in 11 months they'd get 11 months salary. It's not like if Poole left at 1 year or 4 years or anything in between he would have left with anything different proportionally to his tenure. What an odd article.
      - dmoy 5y ago
        Also it doesn't really match with reality, since they'd usually get refresh grants and have a rolling four year window at all times. The article sounds like the reporter heard a soundbyte about google's typical four year vesting period, and then did zero actual research into what that means.
        ryandrake 5y ago
        I don't know--I've heard a lot of people here noting the "4 year cliff" at most tech companies, not just Google. Not all companies give refreshes, and of those that do, it's usually not enough to make up for the initial grant going away. I left my last job pretty much on the day of my 4 year anniversary because I'd otherwise be taking a 25% comp hit in year 5. It's definitely a thing.
        pmkiwi 5y ago
        Pardon my ignorance but what is the "4 year cliff" exactly?
        bzbarsky 5y ago
        When you initially start at Google, say, you get an RSU grant that vests over 4 years. So for 4 years you are getting your salary and on some schedule also getting stock. The stock can be a quite large portion of your total compensation (as in, comparable to the base salary). After 4 years, unless you got refresher grants, your compensation is just your salary, so you effectively make less money than during the first 4 years. At that point the incentive is to move to some other company and start the 4-year clock again...
        pmkiwi 5y ago
        Ok got it! So I guess the only way for Google to keep the best performers is to eliminate this cliff by giving RSU and/or offering a significant pay increase. Thank you for the explanation ;)
  - russdpale 5y ago
    Depends on the company, I work in tech but for an old company, 5 years isn't very long and there isn't much room for any movement.
    - tedivm 5y ago
      The fact that there's not room for movement is exactly why people leave companies, not a reason to stay.
      - russdpale 5y ago
        True, but this is a company where when I logged on the other day there was an article about a guy retiring after 52 years as a delivery driver. Yes, that's right, fifty two years at one company, although I imagine he did small package delivery and feeder work (trailer loads). So not just one position, but pretty close.
      - meepmorp 5y ago
        On the other hand, that kind of job is stable, pays well enough, and doesn't demand much outside of 9-5. For people with families, that's a lot more appealing than you'd think.
    - karmasimida 5y ago
      For Google it definitely is. Most people jump at 4 year cliff, if they have the option
  - dang 5y ago
    Ah ok, we'll change the URL to that from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-chris-poole-leaves-google/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-chris-.... Thanks! Actually we should already have changed it - that's standard practice when one article cribs from another. But I missed it in this case.
- theandrewbailey 5y ago
  Sounds like he moved around a bit, so it's not like he was working on just one thing for 5 years.
- techsupporter 5y ago
  Meanwhile, I've been at the same company for longer than a couple of my coworkers have been alive (though I've changed jobs twice in that time) so "only five years" sounds comparatively short to me.
  - xtracto 5y ago
    My wife has been at her current company (large like freescale, flexctronics, jabil) for 8 solid years , and she is still going strong. Meanwhile I've been at 4 startups, from seed to Series B . I just get bored so easy.. after 3 or so years I NEED a change. Or maybe is because startups dont care about w/l balance and drain you until you quit.
    - datameta 5y ago
      This is not a hot take - genuinely curious as someone who had been at a few startups: do you think the fintech side of startups embodies the burn and churn strategy moreso than other sectors?
    - Graffur 5y ago
      So you never stick around to see your production code?
- Andrex 5y ago
  Ron Amadeo is a talented reporter but his transparent smarminess towards anything Google-related has become exhausting in recent years. A lot of the time it may be warranted. But just as often, like in this article, it definitely is not.
ibn-python 5y ago
Him becoming a PM for Google Maps seems surprising to me considering his entrepreneurial background, but I can’t deny I’ve also considered making the jump now and then from The dev life
- rodolphoarruda 5y ago
  > "Him becoming a PM for Google Maps seems surprising to me considering his entrepreneurial background (...)" Yes. This is an extraordinary business case for strategic HCM discussions.
  - yaacov 5y ago
    I don’t know what that means, can you elaborate?
    - phonethrowaway 5y ago
      human capital management
rubyist5eva 5y ago
I didn't even know moot was there to begin with.
Apocryphon 5y ago
What did he actually do there?
- hatsunearu 5y ago
  PM for google maps
- adamrezich 5y ago
  seems like, initially, they hoped he'd help make Google+ the Next Big Thing
- zamadatix 5y ago
  "Google hired Poole in 2016 to work on the company's doomed social media project, Google+... After Google+, Poole apparently joined Google's experimental "Area 120" group and eventually moved on to be a product manager for Google Maps."
  - jandrese 5y ago
    An uncharitable opinion might be that Google hired someone with previous social media experience in a last ditch effort to figure out a way to make Google+ a success.
    - meepmorp 5y ago
      How's that uncharitable? That's probably why the hired him.
      - jandrese 5y ago
        It paints a picture of a panicked Google exec going "oh shit G+ is swirling the drain, is there anybody at all with successful social media experience that can save it?" Then they hire the first guy they find, even though his site and G+ are almost polar opposites. G+ fails shortly afterward. Not exactly a fair assessment of the situation.
newsclues 5y ago
I miss canv.as
- adamrezich 5y ago
  canv.as always seemed like a great idea, ahead of its time, as far as letting people make memes easier... but now, flash forward to today, and original content on 4chan is at a proportional all-time low. users there always say things like "someone take this image and shop [x] in" instead of doing it themselves in mspaint.
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    Unfortunately, this happens in all kinds of communities, physical and digital. A place is hip because creative types concentrate there, contribute to each other, pushing each other's boundaries to create new things. Consumers notice these new things, come in to consume, but make no effort to contribute back to the community. The creatives eventually move on either because they've become unwelcome or realize they have not much new to learn, and the consumers are left behind wondering why their community doesn't feel hip any more. I never try to take for granted when I'm involved in artists' spaces, FOSS projects, hacker spaces, etc. The point is to continue a cycle of learning and contributing back, not consume until all the resources are sucked dry...
- koboll 5y ago
  Same. Managed to capture the creative aspects of 4chan meme culture without the toxicity. I loved creating memes there. I had a little following too. Then it died and it all went up in smoke and there's nowhere else like it.
russdpale 5y ago
Literal definition of failing upwards. He isn't a boy genuis, he copied code from japanese websites and then fostered one of the most toxic communities in human history. At google, he took a job from someone who was almost certainly way more qualified, both technically and morally.
- chad_strategic 5y ago
  > At google, he took a job from someone who was almost certainly way more qualified, both technically and morally. Get the impression you work at google?
  - russdpale 5y ago
    No, I don't work and google and wouldn't work at google, but I know a lot of people who do.
  - chad_strategic 5y ago
    I'm always perplexed that I get down-voted. Seems like a reasonable question. The reason I asked the question, well because I was curious to see if the commentator had more in depth insight into the google / Moot issue. Google seems to make a ton of money in advertising, etc. But it can’t seem to create a social media network that anybody want to use. I'm not exactly sure that a commenter has the ability to judge someone's experience and potential job performance. It also sound a little bitter and not support with any facts to support the claim. I don't know Chris Moot and know a little bit about 4chan. I'm not a big fan of google either. It seems like Google execs wanted to hire what they thought was the hot new star. You see this happen a lot in Hollywood. If you can't produce new ideas from within your organization, it smart to out source that talent. Those execs that probably dropped a lot of money Moot are probably out of a job as well.
    - russdpale 5y ago
      "I don't know Chris Moot and know a little bit about 4chan." Ok well you should probably just sit out the conversation then if you are so ignorant of the situation.
devenblake 5y ago
> Poole's 4chan is an anonymous, ephemeral imageboard that is often given the title "cesspool of the Internet." The site is broken up into boards of various topics, and some of the more lawless boards are home to all of the worst characters on the Internet, like school shooters, child pornographers, and racists. It's also the birthplace of a lot of Internet culture, like Rickrolling, lolcats, and, more recently, Pepe the frog memes and the alt-right. The site gave rise to the Internet hacktivist group Anonymous and is often used as a dumping ground for various hacks like the Nintendo Gigaleak. Poole sold 4chan back in 2015, a year before joining Google. I don't think it's fair to say this without clarifying that a lot of the Q and other deranged stuff started happening after moot left. Nor is Pepe really a recent meme (somewhere I have Pepes saved from like the mid '00s), nor is Anonymous really a group (but that's questionable and a debate that isn't really relevant)... I know there's very little expectations when it comes to reporting on web subcultures but come on, this is common knowledge (maybe that's why it isn't clarified?).
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  you'd think this would be common knowledge given 4chan is literally an open website, but I always hear these mythologised recountings of it like it's some kind of mysterious inaccessible cult. It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    "Reddit without the good manners"
  - HerbMcM 5y ago
    Anyone admitting that they browse 4chan risks losing social cachet. Risk is too great either in an internet forum or news articles. The recent Q documentary on HBO was refreshing in that the person doing it actually knew how to explain things even if it feels like it's filler though. Then again that's someone on HBO who's been given permission to be edgy (try pausing some of the posts in the first few minutes).
  - Rompect 5y ago
ericbarrett 5y ago
Chris Poole visited the Facebook campus in 2011, while he was still running 4chan, for an hour-long talk and some questions. About thirty engineers attended. The Anonymous hacks had been all over the news for the last year or so, so a couple of jokers showed up in Guy Fawkes masks, and kept them on for the whole thing. During the Q&A, Poole answered a question from one of the masked employees. After his answer, he asked, "Did that help, Steve?" Shocked, and no doubt a bit intimidated, the employee asked how Poole knew his name. His answer: "Well, I read your name on the badge clipped to your belt." Poole was smart and thoughtful and I was quite impressed (not just with his eye for detail). Not surprised he lasted so long at Google.
- yreg 5y ago
  He was interviewed on TED around that time https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_fo...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- zumu 5y ago
  > Not surprised he lasted so long at Google. Is it hard to 'last' at google? I have never gotten that impression.
  - seriousquestion 5y ago
    HBO's Silicon Valley even lampooned how easy it is to stick around, with "Big Head" and others hanging out on the roof all day. "Rest and Vest" is a thing.
    - birdyrooster 5y ago
      I spent four months at Google collecting double pay and stocks and had no responsibilities. They literally paid me to vacation (e.g. I went to visit Google Japan while chilling), rest and to enjoy life without work. I didn't like any of the other teams at Google which I was eligible for so I left for Apple.
RobRivera 5y ago
heres to you, nicola and bart
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
johngehrig 5y ago
Long time HN lurker here -- I find the mention that he was a PM with Google Maps to be particularly interesting. In case it has gone unnoticed, "Google Maps" and Google's associated business product "Google My Business" appear to be silently being developed into Google's successor product for Google+. Google My Business now allows business owners to "post" updates to their Google Business listing which appear on Google Maps as posts "From the owner," and, once posted, users with Google Accounts can interact with and "share" these posts. Google My Business also appears to be replacing Google Beacon, a physical device once needed for location-based ad-targeting, now deprecated in favor of directing businesses to connect their Google My Business listing to their Google Ads (AdWords) account.
- WanderPanda 5y ago
  And there is also this thing (don't recall its name) where celebs can post short stories now, answering e.g. questions
moksly 5y ago
It’s interesting to see how Moot gets the blame for the all the things that happened after he sold off 4chan. Especially when you consider how anonymous and the occupy movements were all the rage among woke leftists a few years back, and they originated from 4chan.
- moate 5y ago
  1- who the hell is "Moot"? 2- Back in the moot-run days of 4chan, it really was a completely different world. All the weird meme-culture we have now started there. /b/ was both the greatest and worst thing simultaneously. You had literal nazis and neckbeards working together to dox pedos. It was just a completely different place from what it's become all these years later.
  - moksly 5y ago
    I think the internet is just different. Content creation has become something people do in pursuit of profit rather than something they do out of interest or just the lulz. People don’t spend 9 days creating the perfect YTMND thing because they can spend that time on Instagram, YouTube or whatever in pursuit of enough fame to create a career out of it. The only reason we still have so many memes and so many (less than an A4 page) blog posts is because of how little effort it requires with modern tech. I think 4chan is actually one of the places that has changed the least. I mean, /b/ without talented users is just 100% shit instead of only being 99% shit, but /tg/ is exactly the way I left it a decade ago.
    - moate 5y ago
      I completely agree. The internet is a completely different space from where it was 20 years ago. Tech ate everything, so everything is the internet now. Back then we cheered when "legit" tech appreciated those of us from the backwater meme-world by hiring our "leader". Now it seems like tons of people get into things with that as the goal.
    - redwall_hp 5y ago
      > I think the internet is just different. Content creation has become something people do in pursuit of profit rather than something they do out of interest or just the lulz. This is something I've been kind of depressed about lately. I grew up with the internet of the early 2000s, through the blog boom and the early days of YouTube. I used RSS, and was into things like Creative Commons and GPL. Free culture stuff. We had a wealth of cool things that people were making just because they wanted to, and crass commercial motive was hardly something that crossed peoples' mind. Just as app stores killed free web games (far more than the demise of Flash), the growing commercialization of the Web has eroded the wonderful mashup culture that permeated it. I've been thinking about it a bit lately because I got turned onto actually listening to Hatsune Miku music, and it's a terrific example of what once was: remixing, memetic evolution and building something bigger collaboratively. (Miku has been vaguely on my radar all along, but I never bothered to give the stuff a fair chance until I realized a Wagakki Band song I liked was a cover of one of the most popular vocaloid songs, Senbonzakura.) * The Leakspin meme was a thing in the early 2000s, combining the Finnish folk song Ievan Polkka with a random anime clip. That was all over the place back then, and I wasn't even a 4chan user. * Some guy in Japan used the relatively new synth voice bank VC01 Hatsune Miku to release a sort of cover of Ievan Polkka, including a silly redrawing of the box art, which blew up on the Japanese streaming site Niconico and later made it onto YouTube. Which has lead to the character being associated with leaks/spring onions. [1] * Someone else made the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya" with the same voice, which was later covered with another synth voice and then paired with a now famous animation of a pop tart cat. [2] * The growing "memetic velocity" surrounding a character derived from a synth voice and the anime art on the box it came in resulted in an absolutely fascinating music scene where synth artists bill themselves as producers and give a performance credit to the synth, releasing their amateur music for free on video sites (and sometimes getting album deals as they grew in popularity). And eventually you get a worldwide phenomenon with global tours of a hologram performing with a live band, drawing from thousands of songs and visual artwork created by whoever wants to contribute. A "wiki celebrity," so to speak. Kind of random, I guess, but reading up on how that all connects (and was going on in the background of related memes that I was aware of) has kind of restored my faith in the Internet. I think that if you get enough creative people together, you're going to end up with some cool stuff. The question remains, though...would it happen today? (And if not, what do we need to torch to fix it?) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku#Cultural_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku#Cultural_impact [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat
khazhoux 5y ago
Only met him briefly and spent about an hour with him, but he left a huge impression. Great guy, and good luck to him on whatever's next!
cavisne 5y ago
“ Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to hiring to vest. It sounds like Poole never found a solid landing spot at Google, as he had three different positions during his five years.” Lol such a dishonest representation of FANG employment. Well above average (2 years) a year past the vesting cliff, and about average in terms of team switches
- staticassertion 5y ago
  5 years at Google is forever, and it's not uncommon at all for people to jump around projects at the company. It's also a full year beyond what's necessary to vest. Really silly way to write that.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    European here - what's it mean to vest shares? It sounds like some sort of stock options became unlocked? I haven't heard of this thing before, just of stocks being part of salary for small startups that don't have actual money to pay you (or at least, that's what I've heard warnings for on HN).
    - johnzim 5y ago
      Yep - your options trickle in over a vesting period. Typically there’s also a ‘Cliff’ at the start - a period during which no options are available to you. addendum: the ‘standard’ Silicon Valley stock option deal is: 4 year vest, 1 year cliff. Eg: first 12 months, no options Day 1 of 13th month - 25% of your options are available to you Then the rest of the 3 years vest at a regular pace with the remaining 75% of your options dropping on a monthly cadence The exception being Amazon who basically give you nothing for 2 years and then ramp up significantly.
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        Worth noting that Google and Facebook no longer have a cliff, and Google has also started experimenting with frontloading your initial vest (something like 40/30/20/10) to avoid the "dreaded" fifth year drop.
okareaman 5y ago
I've spent a fair amount of time on 4chan/pol/ for over a decade and my opinion is moot is a decent guy who sold it after he tried to reign in GamerGate and was loudly criticized on the site for it. I don't think Google would have hired him if it weren't for that redeeming quality. I'm fascinated by 4chan because it is a kind of underground United Nations. It's anonymous so people around the world can express themselves - even in a way I might find horrifying - and I can get an idea of concerns people have, though they might be concerns left unsaid im polite society. It's anonymous but your national flag is automatically assigned, and if you hide this or use a "meme flag' like a pirate flag, you will be criticized and ignored as a likely troll, trying a "false flag" operation. 4chan/pol/ is interesting, I don't know about the other boards since I don't visit them.
- at_a_remove 5y ago
  I have been on 4chan since at least '05, according to my files. The way people write about it is just ... such a Rorschach blot. Just as an example, that "redeeming" word you used, I would have said "damning." I watched the spin machine rev up like a centrifuge before that really hit the press, I read the ZoePost early on and thought Depression Quest was just awful before I knew word one about who wrote it. There's so many boards, each with its own culture, but people get out of it whatever bugbear they desire.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Depression quest being good or not, being only for some kind of person or all is completely irrelevant. And should be irrelevant to anything that happened after. Even if it would be the worst game in the world. Cause the really normal response to and small game you don't like is to not play it and maybe write a bad review. Not what happened.
    - at_a_remove 5y ago
      Correct, but also correct that afterward, you could not critique the game at all without being "a literal Nazi." The journos (as shown in their private mailing list) closed ranks amazingly quickly. I watched perfectly reasonable critiques get removed from comment sections before the comment sections were inevitably shut down "to promote better discourse." As usual, it isn't the crime, it's the coverup that gets you, and GamerGate was a great example of that.
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
It's hilarious after all these years shitty journalists still believe Anonymous is a hacker group rather than just some kids trolling. I mean imagine if Facebook had the option to be anonymous somehow on their platform and called everyone Unnamed who hadn't finished their registration or didn't want to. You'd see Unnamed responsible for nation-state sponsored terrorism and manipulating the votes of other countries. What a joke.
- cl0ne 5y ago
  "the hacker known as 4chan"
- cygx 5y ago
  Curious definition of 'kids trolling', I have to say. DDoS attacks as well as actual hacks were performed in the name of 'Anonymous', and at the time of the Stratfor hack, various LulzSec members were already in their late twenties...
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  They were indeed a hacker group at one point. The "everyone is Anonymous" thing worked as an effective smokescreen for a while, and a pool for recruiting. It's like gaming, or sports: tons of people do it casually on the edges, and a handful at the top do it at a very high level for high stakes. Eventually they moved beyond fun, simple little social causes to more seriously disruptive and economically/politically dangerous stuff, and at that point, not surprisingly, the alphabet agencies slipped in and broke up the party.
vmception 5y ago
weird article, who cares? I care enough to point out the following: like literally what is the point of this to lead people to talk about unrelated aspects of 4chan and maybe how that influenced his time at Google but the article describes an extremely normal and extremely extended time at Google what...?
AzzieElbab 5y ago
It is amazing how consistently tech journalists manage to outdo mainstream journalists in incompetence and ill intent
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fudged71 5y ago
The topic of him working at Google came up very recently. Is that why he’s leaving?
Graffur 5y ago
Crazy that he is 'Google caliber'. Kinda reduces the allure of the Googler tbh How he avoid cancel culture is beyond me
ramosu 5y ago
What will be left for Google?
Balgair 5y ago
Hey moot, we know you're reading this. Just want to say you did a good job, thanks for being you and doing your thing. I know it's been tough and all, so thanks for the hard work. Dunno about google maps though, that seemed to have taken a dive since ~2013. Maybe look into biotech and that jazz, it needs people like you. Still, be good to see what you're doing next. Keep up that hard work and effort, it shows.
ergot_vacation 5y ago
Wonder what he'll do now. On the one hand, no one would blame him for just continuing to drift off into obscurity. On the other, he's a smart guy, and smart guys tend to be restless. Add to this that the hurricane of anti-trust lawsuits happening right now may result in a re-shuffling of the deck when it comes to the landscape of the web in a few years, and there's some real potential for new projects on the world-wide information superhighway, in a way there hasn't been in some time.

209 points by b5 5y ago

adamrezich 5y ago

he'd only been at Google for five years? seems like a lifetime ago!

blissofbeing 5y ago

"only five years" that's a long time in my opinion to be at one company.

kingsuper20 5y ago
>only five years" that's a long time in my opinion to be at one company I've never worked anywhere where people were much use before 2-3 years in harness. Too much domain knowledge maybe.
carabiner 5y ago
The original CNBC article https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/4chan-founder-chris-poole-moot-has-left-google.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/4chan-founder-chris-poole-mo... lacks this editorial spin. Tech people hop around a lot, 5 years is a solid tenure.
- scotth 5y ago
  And three positions inside the company seems about right as well.
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    > Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to hiring to vest They make it sound like he barely managed to get any stock. That's like saying, "person worked at X for 1 year, just long enough to get 1 year's salary." Well, yeah, but if they left in 11 months they'd get 11 months salary. It's not like if Poole left at 1 year or 4 years or anything in between he would have left with anything different proportionally to his tenure. What an odd article.
    - dmoy 5y ago
      Also it doesn't really match with reality, since they'd usually get refresh grants and have a rolling four year window at all times. The article sounds like the reporter heard a soundbyte about google's typical four year vesting period, and then did zero actual research into what that means.
      - ryandrake 5y ago
        I don't know--I've heard a lot of people here noting the "4 year cliff" at most tech companies, not just Google. Not all companies give refreshes, and of those that do, it's usually not enough to make up for the initial grant going away. I left my last job pretty much on the day of my 4 year anniversary because I'd otherwise be taking a 25% comp hit in year 5. It's definitely a thing.
        pmkiwi 5y ago
        Pardon my ignorance but what is the "4 year cliff" exactly?
        bzbarsky 5y ago
        When you initially start at Google, say, you get an RSU grant that vests over 4 years. So for 4 years you are getting your salary and on some schedule also getting stock. The stock can be a quite large portion of your total compensation (as in, comparable to the base salary). After 4 years, unless you got refresher grants, your compensation is just your salary, so you effectively make less money than during the first 4 years. At that point the incentive is to move to some other company and start the 4-year clock again...
        pmkiwi 5y ago
        Ok got it! So I guess the only way for Google to keep the best performers is to eliminate this cliff by giving RSU and/or offering a significant pay increase. Thank you for the explanation ;)
- russdpale 5y ago
  Depends on the company, I work in tech but for an old company, 5 years isn't very long and there isn't much room for any movement.
  - tedivm 5y ago
    The fact that there's not room for movement is exactly why people leave companies, not a reason to stay.
    - russdpale 5y ago
      True, but this is a company where when I logged on the other day there was an article about a guy retiring after 52 years as a delivery driver. Yes, that's right, fifty two years at one company, although I imagine he did small package delivery and feeder work (trailer loads). So not just one position, but pretty close.
    - meepmorp 5y ago
      On the other hand, that kind of job is stable, pays well enough, and doesn't demand much outside of 9-5. For people with families, that's a lot more appealing than you'd think.
  - karmasimida 5y ago
    For Google it definitely is. Most people jump at 4 year cliff, if they have the option
- dang 5y ago
  Ah ok, we'll change the URL to that from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-chris-poole-leaves-google/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/4chan-founder-chris-.... Thanks! Actually we should already have changed it - that's standard practice when one article cribs from another. But I missed it in this case.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
Sounds like he moved around a bit, so it's not like he was working on just one thing for 5 years.
techsupporter 5y ago
Meanwhile, I've been at the same company for longer than a couple of my coworkers have been alive (though I've changed jobs twice in that time) so "only five years" sounds comparatively short to me.
- xtracto 5y ago
  My wife has been at her current company (large like freescale, flexctronics, jabil) for 8 solid years , and she is still going strong. Meanwhile I've been at 4 startups, from seed to Series B . I just get bored so easy.. after 3 or so years I NEED a change. Or maybe is because startups dont care about w/l balance and drain you until you quit.
  - datameta 5y ago
    This is not a hot take - genuinely curious as someone who had been at a few startups: do you think the fintech side of startups embodies the burn and churn strategy moreso than other sectors?
  - Graffur 5y ago
    So you never stick around to see your production code?
Andrex 5y ago
Ron Amadeo is a talented reporter but his transparent smarminess towards anything Google-related has become exhausting in recent years. A lot of the time it may be warranted. But just as often, like in this article, it definitely is not.

ibn-python 5y ago

Him becoming a PM for Google Maps seems surprising to me considering his entrepreneurial background, but I can’t deny I’ve also considered making the jump now and then from The dev life

rodolphoarruda 5y ago
> "Him becoming a PM for Google Maps seems surprising to me considering his entrepreneurial background (...)" Yes. This is an extraordinary business case for strategic HCM discussions.
- yaacov 5y ago
  I don’t know what that means, can you elaborate?
  - phonethrowaway 5y ago
    human capital management

rubyist5eva 5y ago

I didn't even know moot was there to begin with.

Apocryphon 5y ago

What did he actually do there?

hatsunearu 5y ago
PM for google maps
adamrezich 5y ago
seems like, initially, they hoped he'd help make Google+ the Next Big Thing
zamadatix 5y ago
"Google hired Poole in 2016 to work on the company's doomed social media project, Google+... After Google+, Poole apparently joined Google's experimental "Area 120" group and eventually moved on to be a product manager for Google Maps."
- jandrese 5y ago
  An uncharitable opinion might be that Google hired someone with previous social media experience in a last ditch effort to figure out a way to make Google+ a success.
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    How's that uncharitable? That's probably why the hired him.
    - jandrese 5y ago
      It paints a picture of a panicked Google exec going "oh shit G+ is swirling the drain, is there anybody at all with successful social media experience that can save it?" Then they hire the first guy they find, even though his site and G+ are almost polar opposites. G+ fails shortly afterward. Not exactly a fair assessment of the situation.

newsclues 5y ago

I miss canv.as

adamrezich 5y ago
canv.as always seemed like a great idea, ahead of its time, as far as letting people make memes easier... but now, flash forward to today, and original content on 4chan is at a proportional all-time low. users there always say things like "someone take this image and shop [x] in" instead of doing it themselves in mspaint.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  Unfortunately, this happens in all kinds of communities, physical and digital. A place is hip because creative types concentrate there, contribute to each other, pushing each other's boundaries to create new things. Consumers notice these new things, come in to consume, but make no effort to contribute back to the community. The creatives eventually move on either because they've become unwelcome or realize they have not much new to learn, and the consumers are left behind wondering why their community doesn't feel hip any more. I never try to take for granted when I'm involved in artists' spaces, FOSS projects, hacker spaces, etc. The point is to continue a cycle of learning and contributing back, not consume until all the resources are sucked dry...
koboll 5y ago
Same. Managed to capture the creative aspects of 4chan meme culture without the toxicity. I loved creating memes there. I had a little following too. Then it died and it all went up in smoke and there's nowhere else like it.

russdpale 5y ago

Literal definition of failing upwards. He isn't a boy genuis, he copied code from japanese websites and then fostered one of the most toxic communities in human history. At google, he took a job from someone who was almost certainly way more qualified, both technically and morally.

chad_strategic 5y ago
> At google, he took a job from someone who was almost certainly way more qualified, both technically and morally. Get the impression you work at google?
- russdpale 5y ago
  No, I don't work and google and wouldn't work at google, but I know a lot of people who do.
- chad_strategic 5y ago
  I'm always perplexed that I get down-voted. Seems like a reasonable question. The reason I asked the question, well because I was curious to see if the commentator had more in depth insight into the google / Moot issue. Google seems to make a ton of money in advertising, etc. But it can’t seem to create a social media network that anybody want to use. I'm not exactly sure that a commenter has the ability to judge someone's experience and potential job performance. It also sound a little bitter and not support with any facts to support the claim. I don't know Chris Moot and know a little bit about 4chan. I'm not a big fan of google either. It seems like Google execs wanted to hire what they thought was the hot new star. You see this happen a lot in Hollywood. If you can't produce new ideas from within your organization, it smart to out source that talent. Those execs that probably dropped a lot of money Moot are probably out of a job as well.
  - russdpale 5y ago
    "I don't know Chris Moot and know a little bit about 4chan." Ok well you should probably just sit out the conversation then if you are so ignorant of the situation.

devenblake 5y ago

> Poole's 4chan is an anonymous, ephemeral imageboard that is often given the title "cesspool of the Internet." The site is broken up into boards of various topics, and some of the more lawless boards are home to all of the worst characters on the Internet, like school shooters, child pornographers, and racists. It's also the birthplace of a lot of Internet culture, like Rickrolling, lolcats, and, more recently, Pepe the frog memes and the alt-right. The site gave rise to the Internet hacktivist group Anonymous and is often used as a dumping ground for various hacks like the Nintendo Gigaleak. Poole sold 4chan back in 2015, a year before joining Google. I don't think it's fair to say this without clarifying that a lot of the Q and other deranged stuff started happening after moot left. Nor is Pepe really a recent meme (somewhere I have Pepes saved from like the mid '00s), nor is Anonymous really a group (but that's questionable and a debate that isn't really relevant)... I know there's very little expectations when it comes to reporting on web subcultures but come on, this is common knowledge (maybe that's why it isn't clarified?).

beaconstudios 5y ago
you'd think this would be common knowledge given 4chan is literally an open website, but I always hear these mythologised recountings of it like it's some kind of mysterious inaccessible cult. It's just reddit for people who hate reddit.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  "Reddit without the good manners"
- HerbMcM 5y ago
  Anyone admitting that they browse 4chan risks losing social cachet. Risk is too great either in an internet forum or news articles. The recent Q documentary on HBO was refreshing in that the person doing it actually knew how to explain things even if it feels like it's filler though. Then again that's someone on HBO who's been given permission to be edgy (try pausing some of the posts in the first few minutes).
- Rompect 5y ago

ericbarrett 5y ago

Chris Poole visited the Facebook campus in 2011, while he was still running 4chan, for an hour-long talk and some questions. About thirty engineers attended. The Anonymous hacks had been all over the news for the last year or so, so a couple of jokers showed up in Guy Fawkes masks, and kept them on for the whole thing. During the Q&A, Poole answered a question from one of the masked employees. After his answer, he asked, "Did that help, Steve?" Shocked, and no doubt a bit intimidated, the employee asked how Poole knew his name. His answer: "Well, I read your name on the badge clipped to your belt." Poole was smart and thoughtful and I was quite impressed (not just with his eye for detail). Not surprised he lasted so long at Google.

yreg 5y ago
He was interviewed on TED around that time https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_moot_poole_the_case_fo...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
zumu 5y ago
> Not surprised he lasted so long at Google. Is it hard to 'last' at google? I have never gotten that impression.
- seriousquestion 5y ago
  HBO's Silicon Valley even lampooned how easy it is to stick around, with "Big Head" and others hanging out on the roof all day. "Rest and Vest" is a thing.
  - birdyrooster 5y ago
    I spent four months at Google collecting double pay and stocks and had no responsibilities. They literally paid me to vacation (e.g. I went to visit Google Japan while chilling), rest and to enjoy life without work. I didn't like any of the other teams at Google which I was eligible for so I left for Apple.

RobRivera 5y ago

heres to you, nicola and bart

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

johngehrig 5y ago

Long time HN lurker here -- I find the mention that he was a PM with Google Maps to be particularly interesting. In case it has gone unnoticed, "Google Maps" and Google's associated business product "Google My Business" appear to be silently being developed into Google's successor product for Google+. Google My Business now allows business owners to "post" updates to their Google Business listing which appear on Google Maps as posts "From the owner," and, once posted, users with Google Accounts can interact with and "share" these posts. Google My Business also appears to be replacing Google Beacon, a physical device once needed for location-based ad-targeting, now deprecated in favor of directing businesses to connect their Google My Business listing to their Google Ads (AdWords) account.

WanderPanda 5y ago
And there is also this thing (don't recall its name) where celebs can post short stories now, answering e.g. questions

moksly 5y ago

It’s interesting to see how Moot gets the blame for the all the things that happened after he sold off 4chan. Especially when you consider how anonymous and the occupy movements were all the rage among woke leftists a few years back, and they originated from 4chan.

moate 5y ago
1- who the hell is "Moot"? 2- Back in the moot-run days of 4chan, it really was a completely different world. All the weird meme-culture we have now started there. /b/ was both the greatest and worst thing simultaneously. You had literal nazis and neckbeards working together to dox pedos. It was just a completely different place from what it's become all these years later.
- moksly 5y ago
  I think the internet is just different. Content creation has become something people do in pursuit of profit rather than something they do out of interest or just the lulz. People don’t spend 9 days creating the perfect YTMND thing because they can spend that time on Instagram, YouTube or whatever in pursuit of enough fame to create a career out of it. The only reason we still have so many memes and so many (less than an A4 page) blog posts is because of how little effort it requires with modern tech. I think 4chan is actually one of the places that has changed the least. I mean, /b/ without talented users is just 100% shit instead of only being 99% shit, but /tg/ is exactly the way I left it a decade ago.
  - moate 5y ago
    I completely agree. The internet is a completely different space from where it was 20 years ago. Tech ate everything, so everything is the internet now. Back then we cheered when "legit" tech appreciated those of us from the backwater meme-world by hiring our "leader". Now it seems like tons of people get into things with that as the goal.
  - redwall_hp 5y ago
    > I think the internet is just different. Content creation has become something people do in pursuit of profit rather than something they do out of interest or just the lulz. This is something I've been kind of depressed about lately. I grew up with the internet of the early 2000s, through the blog boom and the early days of YouTube. I used RSS, and was into things like Creative Commons and GPL. Free culture stuff. We had a wealth of cool things that people were making just because they wanted to, and crass commercial motive was hardly something that crossed peoples' mind. Just as app stores killed free web games (far more than the demise of Flash), the growing commercialization of the Web has eroded the wonderful mashup culture that permeated it. I've been thinking about it a bit lately because I got turned onto actually listening to Hatsune Miku music, and it's a terrific example of what once was: remixing, memetic evolution and building something bigger collaboratively. (Miku has been vaguely on my radar all along, but I never bothered to give the stuff a fair chance until I realized a Wagakki Band song I liked was a cover of one of the most popular vocaloid songs, Senbonzakura.) * The Leakspin meme was a thing in the early 2000s, combining the Finnish folk song Ievan Polkka with a random anime clip. That was all over the place back then, and I wasn't even a 4chan user. * Some guy in Japan used the relatively new synth voice bank VC01 Hatsune Miku to release a sort of cover of Ievan Polkka, including a silly redrawing of the box art, which blew up on the Japanese streaming site Niconico and later made it onto YouTube. Which has lead to the character being associated with leaks/spring onions. [1] * Someone else made the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya" with the same voice, which was later covered with another synth voice and then paired with a now famous animation of a pop tart cat. [2] * The growing "memetic velocity" surrounding a character derived from a synth voice and the anime art on the box it came in resulted in an absolutely fascinating music scene where synth artists bill themselves as producers and give a performance credit to the synth, releasing their amateur music for free on video sites (and sometimes getting album deals as they grew in popularity). And eventually you get a worldwide phenomenon with global tours of a hologram performing with a live band, drawing from thousands of songs and visual artwork created by whoever wants to contribute. A "wiki celebrity," so to speak. Kind of random, I guess, but reading up on how that all connects (and was going on in the background of related memes that I was aware of) has kind of restored my faith in the Internet. I think that if you get enough creative people together, you're going to end up with some cool stuff. The question remains, though...would it happen today? (And if not, what do we need to torch to fix it?) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku#Cultural_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku#Cultural_impact [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyan_Cat

khazhoux 5y ago

Only met him briefly and spent about an hour with him, but he left a huge impression. Great guy, and good luck to him on whatever's next!

cavisne 5y ago

“ Poole lasted just five years at Google, which CNBC notes is usually just long enough for any employee's shares attached to hiring to vest. It sounds like Poole never found a solid landing spot at Google, as he had three different positions during his five years.” Lol such a dishonest representation of FANG employment. Well above average (2 years) a year past the vesting cliff, and about average in terms of team switches

staticassertion 5y ago
5 years at Google is forever, and it's not uncommon at all for people to jump around projects at the company. It's also a full year beyond what's necessary to vest. Really silly way to write that.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  European here - what's it mean to vest shares? It sounds like some sort of stock options became unlocked? I haven't heard of this thing before, just of stocks being part of salary for small startups that don't have actual money to pay you (or at least, that's what I've heard warnings for on HN).
  - johnzim 5y ago
    Yep - your options trickle in over a vesting period. Typically there’s also a ‘Cliff’ at the start - a period during which no options are available to you. addendum: the ‘standard’ Silicon Valley stock option deal is: 4 year vest, 1 year cliff. Eg: first 12 months, no options Day 1 of 13th month - 25% of your options are available to you Then the rest of the 3 years vest at a regular pace with the remaining 75% of your options dropping on a monthly cadence The exception being Amazon who basically give you nothing for 2 years and then ramp up significantly.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      Worth noting that Google and Facebook no longer have a cliff, and Google has also started experimenting with frontloading your initial vest (something like 40/30/20/10) to avoid the "dreaded" fifth year drop.

okareaman 5y ago

I've spent a fair amount of time on 4chan/pol/ for over a decade and my opinion is moot is a decent guy who sold it after he tried to reign in GamerGate and was loudly criticized on the site for it. I don't think Google would have hired him if it weren't for that redeeming quality. I'm fascinated by 4chan because it is a kind of underground United Nations. It's anonymous so people around the world can express themselves - even in a way I might find horrifying - and I can get an idea of concerns people have, though they might be concerns left unsaid im polite society. It's anonymous but your national flag is automatically assigned, and if you hide this or use a "meme flag' like a pirate flag, you will be criticized and ignored as a likely troll, trying a "false flag" operation. 4chan/pol/ is interesting, I don't know about the other boards since I don't visit them.

at_a_remove 5y ago
I have been on 4chan since at least '05, according to my files. The way people write about it is just ... such a Rorschach blot. Just as an example, that "redeeming" word you used, I would have said "damning." I watched the spin machine rev up like a centrifuge before that really hit the press, I read the ZoePost early on and thought Depression Quest was just awful before I knew word one about who wrote it. There's so many boards, each with its own culture, but people get out of it whatever bugbear they desire.
- watwut 5y ago
  Depression quest being good or not, being only for some kind of person or all is completely irrelevant. And should be irrelevant to anything that happened after. Even if it would be the worst game in the world. Cause the really normal response to and small game you don't like is to not play it and maybe write a bad review. Not what happened.
  - at_a_remove 5y ago
    Correct, but also correct that afterward, you could not critique the game at all without being "a literal Nazi." The journos (as shown in their private mailing list) closed ranks amazingly quickly. I watched perfectly reasonable critiques get removed from comment sections before the comment sections were inevitably shut down "to promote better discourse." As usual, it isn't the crime, it's the coverup that gets you, and GamerGate was a great example of that.

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

It's hilarious after all these years shitty journalists still believe Anonymous is a hacker group rather than just some kids trolling. I mean imagine if Facebook had the option to be anonymous somehow on their platform and called everyone Unnamed who hadn't finished their registration or didn't want to. You'd see Unnamed responsible for nation-state sponsored terrorism and manipulating the votes of other countries. What a joke.

cl0ne 5y ago
"the hacker known as 4chan"
cygx 5y ago
Curious definition of 'kids trolling', I have to say. DDoS attacks as well as actual hacks were performed in the name of 'Anonymous', and at the time of the Stratfor hack, various LulzSec members were already in their late twenties...
ergot_vacation 5y ago
They were indeed a hacker group at one point. The "everyone is Anonymous" thing worked as an effective smokescreen for a while, and a pool for recruiting. It's like gaming, or sports: tons of people do it casually on the edges, and a handful at the top do it at a very high level for high stakes. Eventually they moved beyond fun, simple little social causes to more seriously disruptive and economically/politically dangerous stuff, and at that point, not surprisingly, the alphabet agencies slipped in and broke up the party.

vmception 5y ago

weird article, who cares? I care enough to point out the following: like literally what is the point of this to lead people to talk about unrelated aspects of 4chan and maybe how that influenced his time at Google but the article describes an extremely normal and extremely extended time at Google what...?

AzzieElbab 5y ago

It is amazing how consistently tech journalists manage to outdo mainstream journalists in incompetence and ill intent

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fudged71 5y ago

The topic of him working at Google came up very recently. Is that why he’s leaving?

Graffur 5y ago

Crazy that he is 'Google caliber'. Kinda reduces the allure of the Googler tbh How he avoid cancel culture is beyond me

ramosu 5y ago

What will be left for Google?

Balgair 5y ago

Hey moot, we know you're reading this. Just want to say you did a good job, thanks for being you and doing your thing. I know it's been tough and all, so thanks for the hard work. Dunno about google maps though, that seemed to have taken a dive since ~2013. Maybe look into biotech and that jazz, it needs people like you. Still, be good to see what you're doing next. Keep up that hard work and effort, it shows.

ergot_vacation 5y ago

Wonder what he'll do now. On the one hand, no one would blame him for just continuing to drift off into obscurity. On the other, he's a smart guy, and smart guys tend to be restless. Add to this that the hurricane of anti-trust lawsuits happening right now may result in a re-shuffling of the deck when it comes to the landscape of the web in a few years, and there's some real potential for new projects on the world-wide information superhighway, in a way there hasn't been in some time.