3 ms·
> Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals as a CEO are? I'd say he's trying not to be remembered as the "Steve Ballmer" of Google. You know
by oofbey 4y ago
> Can someone please explain what Sundar Pichai's big goals as a CEO are?
I'd say he's trying not to be remembered as the "Steve Ballmer" of Google. You know - that second-run CEO who drove the company into the ground while keeping the wall street numbers looking good. Cuz that's exactly where he's heading right now.
I think he knows he needs to fundamentally change the culture of the company. He's been making public statements as such. He knows it's a problem that Googlers have been treated as unicorn snowflakes with free massages and all the gourmet food they can complain about, with zero accountability for getting anything done. And despite this obvious rot, most of the world (like everybody here who dreams of a google job) still reveres Google as an idyllic place to work. Which makes it all the harder for the company to admit to itself that anything is wrong.
Cultural change is really hard. And it's not at all clear that he's got what it takes to do it successfully. Googlers are so pampered that any attempt to push them out of their comfort zone is going to get serious pushback. I say this as a former googler. There was a hilarious post on HN not long ago which I can't find where a googler said something to the effect of "no way in hell my manager is gonna make me work."
The entire company is built around solving HARD problems, not USEFUL problems. Obviously they've pulled off a lot of truly amazing things, but that difference is pretty important when your company's entire revenue stream is still coming from key insights made in the late 1990s. To me it's clear they need to change their promotion criteria, which solidifies this and drives so much of people's energy and bad patterns. But the arrogance built into the culture of "solving the world's hardest problems" means that any changes there are likely to insult the fragile egos of all those snowflakes and cause them to go on strike or make the good ones just leave.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoHe structured it as Alphabet. As in 26 different companies. Google can't VC new projects with a 50 billion to play with in excess/above line revenue to fund them a year? How does google not have self driving car revenue? They should have highway driving (as in trucks on superhighways) solved 10 years ago and been rolling in money. How does google not have a competitive IaaS offering? How does google not have THREE competitive IaaS offerings? Buy one or two, and have them compete against each other internally and externally. Why doesn't google have a competitive Desktop OS based on some combination of Linux / Android / Chrome and Macbook pro level hardware? Their AI products are all dystopian. ChatsChatsChatsChatsChatsChats. Why didn't they buy Java/Sun. Stupid. Why don't they buy Keybase? Actually don't then the servers will be shut down. Silicon Valley is too woke? Start new branches. What is the biggest recent success of Google? Chrome. Why not repeat that a dozen times over? Take important Open Source software, and make it good, and don't make it utterly dystopian until 10 years later. Linux Desktop? Open Office? WINE? Steam clone on Linux? You know, why not have a hardware division that can deliver? For IoT, Google Glasses, an actual decent phone, self driving sensors. Be good at software. Be good at hardware. What a clown show.
- ktzar 4y agoCouldn't agree more. The problem in Google started as soon as it went public. Then "Don't be evil" went through the window and it's all a short-sighted vision driven by making as much money as possible for investors and pay dividends.
- PoignardAzur 4y agoThis post feels like it's been written by GPT-3. I'm reading a lot of keywords and hot takes and not much analysis.
- unity1001 4y ago> Googlers have been treated as unicorn snowflakes with free massages and all the gourmet food they can complain about, with zero accountability for getting anything done As a user, and customer of some Google services, I don't care about that. They should give a pink unicorn to each Googler if they want to. These are not relevant to me, as the user. What I care about is the stuff that I am using not getting deprecated on my face because some mba thinks that it is not making enough gobs of cash and they should shut it down and do something else that will make more gobs of cash. Cherishing and building up user trust. That's what is missing from Google. And that's not the engineers' fault.
- HWR_14 4y ago> like everybody here who dreams of a google job I'm supposed to dream of a Google job? Man I've been messing up.
- oofbey 4y ago300k/yr with amazing perks for sitting on your ass. Lots of people think that's the best thing evar. Unless you care about, say, building novel things people actually use. Then it's a dystopian nightmare.