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A long time ago at Google ,,fun'' was equal to user and customer obsession (looking at logs and other data and trying to understand how to make the products bet

A long time ago at Google ,,fun'' was equal to user and customer obsession (looking at logs and other data and trying to understand how to make the products better). Sundar is an amazing sales person and PM, but Google went too much on the PM/Sales side and puts too much pressure and impossible amount of work on engineers (I started my last quarter by knowing that I won't be able to finish most of the OKRs that were put on by other people from other teams to me, I signaled to my TL, but I didn't care at that point as I was planning to quit anyways). The pressure is so high that the best engineers and engineering managers there that I know are moving to research where they are left alone to do great and fun stuff.

mushufasa 4y ago
> puts too much pressures and impossible amount of work on engineers My understanding is this varies widely by department/manager, and that on average big tech companies work way less hours per day than engineers at startups, for higher base pay & more liquid options. With much more support structure as well.
scarface74 4y ago
When was Google about anything more than collecting user data to display ads. No user has ever said “it would really be great if we had more ads”. Giving the user what they want is antithetical to profitability for any company whose business model is anything else besides “customer gives us money and we give them goods and services”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  This is such a reductive view of most tech companies that have ads. Sometimes "giving customers [most of] what they want" is profitable - so they come back later and have a multi-year relationship and use a variety of profit-generating products. Even if that means forgoing short-term profit from extra ads.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Google’s entire business model is giving users stuff for free to serve ads - as is FB. We aren’t talking about Apple giving three months free to entice customers to subscribe to AppleTV+ or Apple Music.
    - vineyardmike 4y ago
      Have you ever been to one of those websites that had so many ads you couldn’t see the content (when it loaded 30 seconds later)? Banners and pop up’s and auto playing video all stacked on top of each other… Google and Facebook don’t look like that. Those sort of sites will never become a lasting concern like google or Facebook because users hate it. Google could make more money if 50% of search results were ads but then people would stop using search and they’d lose all their business. Instead they put less ads and hope you use maps, which also has a few ads, then YouTube which has a few ads then… then… then… It’s a lot more sustainable to “increase inventory” by increasing surface area for customers than using a bigger % of existing area. Same reason cable gets more channels instead of bigger % of existing airtime going to ads. Just like television- you can have a good show, even though ads are in between. that doesn’t make the writing any worse, the writers will still do their best. If you have a good experience with search, you’ll use it for years, and you may use other products since you had a good experience.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        The first 7 out of 10 items in my FB feed just now were promoted posts. I just searched for “bicycles” on my iPad. I don’t see any organic results without scrolling when I disable ad blocking. The writing is definitely worse with ads. Writers write in a specific format to allow ad breaks. Also, if you compare the quality and number of Emmy’s that ad supported TV gets to streaming/premium channels it’s much lower. I don’t watch TV with commercials. I very much live by the “I pay them money and they give me stuff” motto. I pay for content whenever possible to avoid ads including streaming services and a few podcasts.
m00x 4y ago
Hasn't been my experience at all. I worked mostly decent hours at G, while at startups they demanded 10-12h of work a day, if not more, with little to no perks and lower comp. Google is far down on the path to becoming a "rest and vest" place like Microsoft, and they don't want that to happen. When you say you wouldn't be able to make OKRs, is that working normal hours, or working extra hours? From my understanding, Google OKRs are only supposed to be hit at 70%-90%. If you hit 100%, they failed at putting the bar high enough.
endtime 4y ago
I never had an experience like this in ten years at Google. If I ever felt done trying to get promoted, I'm confident I could have worked 25 hours a week and gotten "meets expectations" forever.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  That kind of work doesn't satisfy many people. Especially not people who manage to get a job at Google. I went crazy resting and vesting once I realized that 5 -> 6 would be nearly impossible in the position I had.
  - endtime 4y ago
    It wouldn't have satisfied me either, I just wanted to counterbalance the idea that Google consistently demands 50 hour weeks.
htrp 4y ago
So basically Google starting to look like Apple with Pichai looking like Sculley?
unity1001 4y ago
> Google went too much on the PM/Sales side Did they? They are still deprecating products on people's faces. And combining/renaming/tweaking product names.

mushufasa 4y ago

> puts too much pressures and impossible amount of work on engineers My understanding is this varies widely by department/manager, and that on average big tech companies work way less hours per day than engineers at startups, for higher base pay & more liquid options. With much more support structure as well.

scarface74 4y ago

When was Google about anything more than collecting user data to display ads. No user has ever said “it would really be great if we had more ads”. Giving the user what they want is antithetical to profitability for any company whose business model is anything else besides “customer gives us money and we give them goods and services”

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
vineyardmike 4y ago
This is such a reductive view of most tech companies that have ads. Sometimes "giving customers [most of] what they want" is profitable - so they come back later and have a multi-year relationship and use a variety of profit-generating products. Even if that means forgoing short-term profit from extra ads.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Google’s entire business model is giving users stuff for free to serve ads - as is FB. We aren’t talking about Apple giving three months free to entice customers to subscribe to AppleTV+ or Apple Music.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    Have you ever been to one of those websites that had so many ads you couldn’t see the content (when it loaded 30 seconds later)? Banners and pop up’s and auto playing video all stacked on top of each other… Google and Facebook don’t look like that. Those sort of sites will never become a lasting concern like google or Facebook because users hate it. Google could make more money if 50% of search results were ads but then people would stop using search and they’d lose all their business. Instead they put less ads and hope you use maps, which also has a few ads, then YouTube which has a few ads then… then… then… It’s a lot more sustainable to “increase inventory” by increasing surface area for customers than using a bigger % of existing area. Same reason cable gets more channels instead of bigger % of existing airtime going to ads. Just like television- you can have a good show, even though ads are in between. that doesn’t make the writing any worse, the writers will still do their best. If you have a good experience with search, you’ll use it for years, and you may use other products since you had a good experience.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      The first 7 out of 10 items in my FB feed just now were promoted posts. I just searched for “bicycles” on my iPad. I don’t see any organic results without scrolling when I disable ad blocking. The writing is definitely worse with ads. Writers write in a specific format to allow ad breaks. Also, if you compare the quality and number of Emmy’s that ad supported TV gets to streaming/premium channels it’s much lower. I don’t watch TV with commercials. I very much live by the “I pay them money and they give me stuff” motto. I pay for content whenever possible to avoid ads including streaming services and a few podcasts.

m00x 4y ago

Hasn't been my experience at all. I worked mostly decent hours at G, while at startups they demanded 10-12h of work a day, if not more, with little to no perks and lower comp. Google is far down on the path to becoming a "rest and vest" place like Microsoft, and they don't want that to happen. When you say you wouldn't be able to make OKRs, is that working normal hours, or working extra hours? From my understanding, Google OKRs are only supposed to be hit at 70%-90%. If you hit 100%, they failed at putting the bar high enough.

endtime 4y ago

I never had an experience like this in ten years at Google. If I ever felt done trying to get promoted, I'm confident I could have worked 25 hours a week and gotten "meets expectations" forever.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
That kind of work doesn't satisfy many people. Especially not people who manage to get a job at Google. I went crazy resting and vesting once I realized that 5 -> 6 would be nearly impossible in the position I had.
- endtime 4y ago
  It wouldn't have satisfied me either, I just wanted to counterbalance the idea that Google consistently demands 50 hour weeks.

htrp 4y ago

So basically Google starting to look like Apple with Pichai looking like Sculley?

unity1001 4y ago

> Google went too much on the PM/Sales side Did they? They are still deprecating products on people's faces. And combining/renaming/tweaking product names.