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> PMs made all the decisions. Engineers (at least at my level) had very little influence. This is interesting given Google used to have a reputation for being

• neatze 5y ago
  seems like this is most relevant video: https://youtu.be/P4VBqTViEx4 https://youtu.be/P4VBqTViEx4
  • monkeywork 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing that - I had never seen that before and it rings incredibly true
    • cube00 5y ago
      Check out "Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview" which is long form footage from the clips used in "Triumph of the Nerds" and "Revenge of the Nerds". Two fantastic documentaries that chronicle the history of personal computing.
  • nbzso 5y ago
    It is not only relevant for Google. Apple is exactly IBM from the past + some design and marketing sprinkled over.
• spicyramen 5y ago
  Still depends on the org. Many orgs still engineering driven. This happens when engineers are more familiar with tech and business than PM, which surprisingly is not that uncommon (GCP)
• Icathian 5y ago
  You either die a hero, etc etc. I wonder if there's any "big, established" company where IC engineers have more weight than the PHB types. I'd be genuinely curious if anyone knows of some good examples, I suppose HN would be the place where people might. It seems like that's one of the natural equilibrating factors that offer some small amount of competitive grace to Davids competing against Goliaths. Google hasn't been David for a long time now, I think.
  • surajrmal 5y ago
    I guess it depends on which organization you're part of. I've never really been told what to do in my 5+ years at Google. I usually just have an idea, say I'm going to work on it, and then do it. Most of my peers also work this way, and while more junior ones usually need some assistance with coming up with ideas which align with priorities, it's not like management is telling them what to do - usually a senior team member helps them. PMs help set higher level goals and priorities, but not unilaterally. Managers provide incentives to align to org level goals and priorities but balance that with bottom up driven ones. This has been true for both teams I've been on in two separate orgs, but I'm sure it's not universally true throughout Google. Prior experience at companies previous to Google gave me almost no autonomy.
  • kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    That can happen when corporate leadership is dominated by a technical founder. Once MBAs and sales/marketing alums run the show it always turns into a grindhouse. They don't fundamentally understand the work that goes into the product and so they rule by metrics to make their dev factory "more efficient".
• technion 5y ago
  As a complete outsider, I have an impression at least that Google PMs have some level of technical knowledge. Which would make them far more "engineer led" than is common.
• Ericson2314 5y ago
  Well there's no grand strategy and it's too big and settled for engineering to have much impact. It's inertia-led. I bet most googlers hate ads so it's a big state of cognitive dissonance too.
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  • jart 5y ago
    If they hate ads then wouldn't that make them the best people to control them?
    • downrightmike 5y ago
      no, that'd hurt shareholders.
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        If they are paid with RSUs, they are also shareholders.
        • downrightmike 5y ago
          good, now the next logical steps is?...
    • gremIin 5y ago
      Turns out love of large paychecks is stronger than hatred of ads.
• s09dfhks 5y ago
  Snowflake is this way too. Its so depressing
• slimsag 5y ago
  You left out the best part: > We were expected to hit precise deadlines on multi-quarter projects (within two weeks), and when that inevitably didn't happen, we had to track all the time we spent on anything in 30 minute increments. It felt very cog-in-the-machine.
  • kevingadd 5y ago
    This is absurd. I haven't been asked to file timesheets (other than for days off) as a sweng in over a decade, including when I was at Google. Management on that team has completely lost it.
    • cube00 5y ago
      I read that as the "30 minute increment" tracking is used as a short term punishment for not meeting the deadline.
      • catillac 5y ago
        Wow I think you’re right upon reread. I read it as having to account for all that time over the previous period to show how they couldn’t have done a better job/
      • ornornor 5y ago
        The beatings will continue until morale improves.
      • pa7ch 5y ago
        That mindset towards workers I think should be considered pretty gross in most contexts. Punishment for not meeting a software deadline? This sounds like highschools with conservative leadership.
  • downrightmike 5y ago
    Some of the best minds in generations, all focused on selling us things we really don't want.
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• nostrebored 5y ago
  The idea that products at large tech companies are going to be lead by engineers who by and large do not talk to people or understand the cross functional relationships and strategies is absurd. This isn't a future engineers want either -- I hear complaints about meetings from nearly every engineer I know. The idea that you should have low level knowledge of the system you're working on and high level knowledge of all the cross functional team's responsibilities along with the responsibility for cultivating those relationships is ridiculous. People say this without having any idea what PMs do.
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  • Jensson 5y ago
    > lead by engineers who by and large do not talk to people Do you think the engineer who leads a 1000 man org is not talking to people? I talked to the engineer leading our 500 man org, he talked to a lot of people and wanted their input and tried to understand the whole to make decisions. He had technical expertise so he could talk to low level engineers as well, but also to business people etc.
    • nostrebored 5y ago
      Yes -- within engineering typically! That is a the role of a PE/Staff Eng.
      • Jensson 5y ago
        Right, and in an engineering lead organization the PM etc are subordinate to engineers. Their job is to research the market and present the results to engineers so engineers can better understand what to build. This is opposite to non-engineers leading and hiring engineers to build the product they want. Ultimately the end result is the same, its just creates a different perspective. So it is easy to evaluate companies like this. Did technical people hire business people to do those tasks for them? Or did business people hire technical people to create a product for them? The first is engineering lead, the second is the standard enterprise.
• mavelikara 5y ago
  Product Management, in many orgs, is the old wine of Taylorism in a new bottle, where there is a "thinking class," and there is a separate "doing class." The stereotype of an engineer with poor social skills who can't grasp the "high-level cross functional relationships and strategies" (from nostrebored's sibling comment) is not very different from Taylor's idea of workers: One of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shall be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type. The man who is mentally alert and intelligent is for this very reason entirely unsuited to what would, for him, be the grinding monotony of work of this character. It is sad to see this happen at places like Google, where engineers had a lot more autonomy. Most knowledge workers who have the mental capacity to grasp deep technical topics will find the "cross functional relationships and strategies" discussed in garden variety business books a light stroll in the park.
  • geodel 5y ago
    I think you have made excellent point here. I absolutely see this behavior at workplaces. The Architects/PMs one side and developers who are mainly Jira/Daily standup chumps on other side.
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  • lordnacho 5y ago
    This is exactly right. I studied both engineering and management, so I have experienced both schools. Actually understanding science and manipulating the world is hard. Try to explain to a non techie how a car moves, or how a web request happens. They can never understand it on the required level to fix things. Now try to explain to an engineer how a bond works, or how industrial strategy works. He can do both his own work and the manager's work. I sound pretty bitter for a guy who's managed to dodge most of the BS things in large corporations his while career, but that's because I really think this aspect of the world needs fixing. It seems like just about every human endeavour is encumbered by MBA people who pretend to understand something hard, who get paid at least as well as those people who can both solve the technical and the strategic problems. This might be more of a problem in the Anglo world. Engineers getting promoted is more common in Europe according to rumor.
• achow 5y ago
  This could be Cloud Org characteristic. Enterprise applications cannot be engineering led as tech does not matter but 'checkboxes' do (features). For checkboxes one needs to be constantly in touch with customers, sales, pre-sales, need to be full time demo giver, etc. These are not the job of engineers and even if it is made so, it is setting them and the team/org/company up for failure on both fronts - frontend and backend.
  • RNCTX 5y ago
    Do you think checkboxes magically spring from the aether just to support sales demos?
    • achow 5y ago
      Don't get your point. I was referring to this statement from OP: Google used to have a reputation for being an "engineer led" organization, I guess that's slowly changing over time. In enterprise applications (which solves for workflows - business, IT etc.) one needs lot of PM thinking for feature identifications, what to prioritize, gathering requirements etc. In Search defined Google one did not need PMs as requirement is pretty straight forward from feature perspective, but one needs deep engineering and computing science knowledge for making the best search algorithm. Whereas in Cloud IT world the focus shifts more towards product & roadmap planning.
      • RNCTX 5y ago
        I think you're over-inflating the value of people fetching specs back and forth between a pool of customers and design / engineering. If you're a software or hardware company, ultimately the people who design and build the software / hardware have to design and build the thing, everything else is ancillary to those tasks.
• SantiagoQ 5y ago
  I can see this as a result from too many employees going from college to Google with nothing in between. They lack real-world experience and ability to grasp non-technical concepts. As a founder, and having worked in multiple startups is hard for me to communicate with their relative worldview. Despite how brilliant they are.