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But your integration into Google ecosystem was not an objective, and this is not a mess at all, it worked as intended - a lot of people got promos! Just imagin

by vl 5y ago

But your integration into Google ecosystem was not an objective, and this is not a mess at all, it worked as intended - a lot of people got promos! Just imagine if there is a consistent, coherent multi-year strategy, it would be way harder to get a promotion. (I actually worked on one of the mentioned messaging products, it was a shitshow)

bsaul 5y ago
without giving names or identifiable details, could you explain what a "shitshow" looks like in those kind of environments ? Is it like having an insane amount of validation, or everchanging requirements, or huge technical constraints, demotivated or unqualified people, etc.. what is it ? i still remember the time when google was at the forefront of web app innovation, and it was probably already quite big. So i'm really curious to know what are the things that make it different today.
- vl 5y ago
  The name of product in question hypothetically might have started with A and ended with o. This was last-ditch effort to outwhatsapp WhatsApp. Essentially this is high-risk high-reward project. Google comp is not setup to deal with this. Some people who were early in the game and shipped initial version got their good reviews/promos and quickly left after ship. Rest of the team started a shaky ride trying to find that extra secret feature that will turn this ship around, while metrics were not so good. This lead to worse reviews, management reshuffles, unsteady short-term micromanagement. Which in turn motivated more people to change projects. The failure of enthusiastic VP of Communications and Photos (I kid you fucking not, he traded Hangouts for Photos, he wanted to shutdown Hangouts, but it turned out a lot of enterprise customers depend on it. So GSuite/GCP said they are going to take over Hangouts, so after some politicking he traded it for Photos). Anyway, he’s failure is to setup and manage this project in such a way when smallest negative result doesn’t lead to a shitshow.

by vl 5y ago

bsaul 5y ago

without giving names or identifiable details, could you explain what a "shitshow" looks like in those kind of environments ? Is it like having an insane amount of validation, or everchanging requirements, or huge technical constraints, demotivated or unqualified people, etc.. what is it ? i still remember the time when google was at the forefront of web app innovation, and it was probably already quite big. So i'm really curious to know what are the things that make it different today.

vl 5y ago
The name of product in question hypothetically might have started with A and ended with o. This was last-ditch effort to outwhatsapp WhatsApp. Essentially this is high-risk high-reward project. Google comp is not setup to deal with this. Some people who were early in the game and shipped initial version got their good reviews/promos and quickly left after ship. Rest of the team started a shaky ride trying to find that extra secret feature that will turn this ship around, while metrics were not so good. This lead to worse reviews, management reshuffles, unsteady short-term micromanagement. Which in turn motivated more people to change projects. The failure of enthusiastic VP of Communications and Photos (I kid you fucking not, he traded Hangouts for Photos, he wanted to shutdown Hangouts, but it turned out a lot of enterprise customers depend on it. So GSuite/GCP said they are going to take over Hangouts, so after some politicking he traded it for Photos). Anyway, he’s failure is to setup and manage this project in such a way when smallest negative result doesn’t lead to a shitshow.