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I love the call out at the end. I believe much of the post is a slight at Google (and much of big tech), where building complicated crap is one of the fastest w

I love the call out at the end. I believe much of the post is a slight at Google (and much of big tech), where building complicated crap is one of the fastest ways of promotion. Rachel is completely right, "big tech" has a problem of attracting politician types, who are focused on abusing systems for their own gain. You can hardly blame them though, the company as a whole is doing the same thing. The incentives are misaligned at pretty much every level.

shadowgovt 5y ago
Given when she was with the company, the X in the room is Google+.
- wmf 5y ago
  Google+ actually seemed kind of good to me? Like maybe the problem with Google+ was that not that it existed but that they didn't invest enough in it.
  - int0x2e 5y ago
    I'd argue that they invested way too much into Google+ actually. They tried forcing it on everyone, almost killing the YouTube community in the process, and people started fighting back. Facebook didn't gain its users overnight and without a good amount of manipulation and tricks on their part, but they were smart enough to not make it feel as aggressive or directed as Google did with Google+
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - pornel 5y ago
      G+ had a Real Name Policy, apparently for no reason other than copying Facebook. And then because every Google product had to have G+, Google effectively banned anonymity/pseudonymity everywhere. It was so dumb and heavy-handed. For me that was the end of using Google products.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        G+ had a real names policy because Google's other social network, Orkut, did not, and Google had observed that the average Orkut use had chosen an anonymizing handle. They wanted to do something different with Google+, because the handles in Orkut made it very hard to find people you already knew in real life. Personal opinion, they went about it entirely the wrong way. Facebook does technically have a real name policy, but they got the ecosystem of people using their real name that they have not by strenuously enforcing that policy, but by incentivizing people through the design of the product to use their real name. If memory serves, I got my Facebook account via a link that had been auto-emailed to my college email address, and that link pre-filled in my real name in the account setup process.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    > they didn't invest enough in it. No, it was a good social network on paper, and they threw the whole company behind it. The issue was that it was meant to be a drop-in replacement for existing social networks. Except it didn't really solve any new customer issues, just solved the google issue of google not having a social space.
baby 5y ago
It really is an incentive issue. People are given large amounts of money and promotions and raises are always lurking around. Performance review really incite you to promote your own work and play nice with people instead of acting like a team. It’s quite remarkable I find that companies like that still manage to be productive, but it seems to be working.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > It’s quite remarkable I find that companies like that still manage to be productive, but it seems to be working. They work because they have a quasi-monopoly on something, not because of efficient use of employees time.
pjmlp 5y ago
Just look at the recent UI mess at Microsoft, or ChromeOS vs Android vs PWA vs Flutter at Google, for actual examples of it.
burntoutfire 5y ago
> "big tech" has a problem of attracting politician types, who are focused on abusing systems for their own gain Not just attracts, but selects for them as well. The interviews are set up to select people who are morally ok with doing arbitrary and pointless work (months of leetcoding at home) in order to game the system.

shadowgovt 5y ago

Given when she was with the company, the X in the room is Google+.

wmf 5y ago
Google+ actually seemed kind of good to me? Like maybe the problem with Google+ was that not that it existed but that they didn't invest enough in it.
- int0x2e 5y ago
  I'd argue that they invested way too much into Google+ actually. They tried forcing it on everyone, almost killing the YouTube community in the process, and people started fighting back. Facebook didn't gain its users overnight and without a good amount of manipulation and tricks on their part, but they were smart enough to not make it feel as aggressive or directed as Google did with Google+
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - pornel 5y ago
    G+ had a Real Name Policy, apparently for no reason other than copying Facebook. And then because every Google product had to have G+, Google effectively banned anonymity/pseudonymity everywhere. It was so dumb and heavy-handed. For me that was the end of using Google products.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      G+ had a real names policy because Google's other social network, Orkut, did not, and Google had observed that the average Orkut use had chosen an anonymizing handle. They wanted to do something different with Google+, because the handles in Orkut made it very hard to find people you already knew in real life. Personal opinion, they went about it entirely the wrong way. Facebook does technically have a real name policy, but they got the ecosystem of people using their real name that they have not by strenuously enforcing that policy, but by incentivizing people through the design of the product to use their real name. If memory serves, I got my Facebook account via a link that had been auto-emailed to my college email address, and that link pre-filled in my real name in the account setup process.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > they didn't invest enough in it. No, it was a good social network on paper, and they threw the whole company behind it. The issue was that it was meant to be a drop-in replacement for existing social networks. Except it didn't really solve any new customer issues, just solved the google issue of google not having a social space.

baby 5y ago

It really is an incentive issue. People are given large amounts of money and promotions and raises are always lurking around. Performance review really incite you to promote your own work and play nice with people instead of acting like a team. It’s quite remarkable I find that companies like that still manage to be productive, but it seems to be working.

goodpoint 5y ago
> It’s quite remarkable I find that companies like that still manage to be productive, but it seems to be working. They work because they have a quasi-monopoly on something, not because of efficient use of employees time.

pjmlp 5y ago

Just look at the recent UI mess at Microsoft, or ChromeOS vs Android vs PWA vs Flutter at Google, for actual examples of it.

burntoutfire 5y ago

> "big tech" has a problem of attracting politician types, who are focused on abusing systems for their own gain Not just attracts, but selects for them as well. The interviews are set up to select people who are morally ok with doing arbitrary and pointless work (months of leetcoding at home) in order to game the system.