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>Google Cloud is not the real Google. Culture-wise, you are closer to Oracle. Incorrect. Google's culture has shifted. Culture-wise, Google is closer to Oracle

>Google Cloud is not the real Google. Culture-wise, you are closer to Oracle. Incorrect. Google's culture has shifted. Culture-wise, Google is closer to Oracle than what people think is Google. 20% hasn't been a thing in Google for a long time. Exists only on paper. Source: I worked at Google when we all got the memo that all information access within the company is now on a need-to-know basis, and that accessing information that you don't need to know for your job is a fireable offense. Default level of sharing technical documentaiton is fully private, so tech docs are not searchable in company search engine (read this again). Good luck re-using the code without design docs. Also good luck starting a project if your team doesn't own the data. Hot take: Google doesn't have a strategy, period. Neither copmany, nor product.

vrc 4y ago
To further your point — 20% time was barely a thing in 2010… And they killed all of the OC/Founders awards subsequently so there was really no focus on maverick innovation from then on. Coincided with the end to oysters on Fridays
htrp 4y ago
> Google doesn't have a strategy, period Probably not so hot of a take. They basically have a monopoloy (kinda like late 1990s Microsoft)
throwaway_gc 4y ago
Google cloud has a strategy / OKR process. It’s called Amazon Re:invent. The blog had some good points but was totally off of Cloud being bottom up. It couldn’t be as it was so far behind others — you don’t have time to think up something new when the competition has already done something. Decisions came from the top down. The author was right in that there’s a lot of smart people there. By far the best place I’ve been for that.
- romwell 4y ago
  >The author was right in that there’s a lot of smart people there. By far the best place I’ve been for that. Oh, Google had the most amazing intelligent bright coworkers when I was there. The saddest part was seeing these people directing their energy into great hamster wheels that Google made for them.
zahllos 4y ago
Never worked for Google, but. This shouldn't be surprising. Perhaps comparing it to Oracle might not be quite right, I leave that to people who know, but Google is pretty obviously not the startup/disrupter of 2000-2004 any more. It is now 20+ years old and huge, and that means it is going to be somewhat like any very large organization: internal politics/empire defending, standardised compensation and management, mission, vision and values, etc. Your experience likely varies greatly depending on where in the org you land and who with - some people will come out writing blog posts and some people will find their happy place and never leave. The interesting part around Google is that they had a kind of mythical status amongst techies that's lasted quite a lot longer than the early days. But they're just another big company now.
redditor98654 4y ago
Amazon is also slowly moving to this "private tech document" as a side effect of using Quip instead of putting them in the company wiki searchable for all. I hate this.
bitL 4y ago
> Google's culture has shifted. It's sad how once a great company decided to shift towards mushroom management and coding sweatshops like Amazon in just a few years... The amazing Google of 2008 is no more.

vrc 4y ago

To further your point — 20% time was barely a thing in 2010… And they killed all of the OC/Founders awards subsequently so there was really no focus on maverick innovation from then on. Coincided with the end to oysters on Fridays

htrp 4y ago

> Google doesn't have a strategy, period Probably not so hot of a take. They basically have a monopoloy (kinda like late 1990s Microsoft)

throwaway_gc 4y ago

Google cloud has a strategy / OKR process. It’s called Amazon Re:invent. The blog had some good points but was totally off of Cloud being bottom up. It couldn’t be as it was so far behind others — you don’t have time to think up something new when the competition has already done something. Decisions came from the top down. The author was right in that there’s a lot of smart people there. By far the best place I’ve been for that.

romwell 4y ago
>The author was right in that there’s a lot of smart people there. By far the best place I’ve been for that. Oh, Google had the most amazing intelligent bright coworkers when I was there. The saddest part was seeing these people directing their energy into great hamster wheels that Google made for them.

zahllos 4y ago

Never worked for Google, but. This shouldn't be surprising. Perhaps comparing it to Oracle might not be quite right, I leave that to people who know, but Google is pretty obviously not the startup/disrupter of 2000-2004 any more. It is now 20+ years old and huge, and that means it is going to be somewhat like any very large organization: internal politics/empire defending, standardised compensation and management, mission, vision and values, etc. Your experience likely varies greatly depending on where in the org you land and who with - some people will come out writing blog posts and some people will find their happy place and never leave. The interesting part around Google is that they had a kind of mythical status amongst techies that's lasted quite a lot longer than the early days. But they're just another big company now.

redditor98654 4y ago

Amazon is also slowly moving to this "private tech document" as a side effect of using Quip instead of putting them in the company wiki searchable for all. I hate this.

bitL 4y ago

> Google's culture has shifted. It's sad how once a great company decided to shift towards mushroom management and coding sweatshops like Amazon in just a few years... The amazing Google of 2008 is no more.