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Google of 2008 didn't do this, I was there. The difference is that current Google is full of non-tech non-sales people who fight with eachother to reorganize t

Google of 2008 didn't do this, I was there. The difference is that current Google is full of non-tech non-sales people who fight with eachother to reorganize tech people who are trying to build things. Other tech people change the API for no reason and give work to 1000 more people to ,,upgrade to the newer system'' and stop maintaining the old system. Also the new CEO is not a software engineer, so he doesn't understand the problems they are facing day to day.

kderbyma 4y ago
Pinchai has been a Terrible pick. He made google just worse. Like a passive aggressive leader...
- peanuty1 4y ago
  Do you attribute that to his lack of EECS background like the poster above you? Also, is Pinchai a typo or a play on words with "penny-pincher"?
- ptero 4y ago
  Not to defend him, but I think by 2015 google has already lost its way, focusing not on developing groundbreaking technology, but on using it's dominance to squeeze any money even if it meant encouraging addictive behaviors.
  - kccqzy 4y ago
    2015 sounds about right. Three Years of Misery Inside Google is one of the best articles you can find about the seemingly sudden change of culture that made working at Google miserable. https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery...
    - user_7832 4y ago
      Wow, thanks for that article. It’s quite a long read, though a bit sad/disappointing, as someone who once believed in Google.
  - fooker 4y ago
    I interned at Google around 2015 and again 2019 as a grad student. The culture was dramatically different, even in a very similar team.
    - rightbyte 4y ago
      Care to elaborate. In what way? I have always though their crazy hiring rate would erase their "culture" like every two years.
      - fooker 4y ago
        TGIF was not a thing people watched or went to anymore. The number of meetings doubled. Employees were actively discouraged to look through code in google3 and design documents that did not concern their work (search for 'need to know' in Memegen if it still exists). The main thing that weirded me out and ultimately caused me to decide not to work for Google was that everyone was talking about perf and promotions all the time. Everyone in the team structured their work accordingly, and tales of people who obtained promotions because of heroic effort for achieving something was a recurring topic in group conversations. There was cost cutting efforts everywhere. There was significantly more red tape involved in requisitioning a heavy duty computer needed for my work (compiler development). The food in the micro kitches were toned down in variety and quality. Food trucks disappeared. The food in the cafes was unchanged but dinner was no longer served at about half of the cafes.
  - epolanski 4y ago
    Stadia was launched after 2015, best streaming service for games by far. Then they killed it.
- cptskippy 4y ago
  I always assumed his appointment was strategic, Pichai got his position shortly after Nadella took over Microsoft. This coincided with announcements like Android One and other products targeting or focusing on the Indian market which is emerging as a force on the global stage.
  - FearlessNebula 4y ago
    You think they chose an Indian CEO to appeal to the Indian market? I can’t imagine they’d make such a huge decision over a factor like that.
    - cptskippy 4y ago
      Companies do it all the time for diversity and inclusion reasons. I'm not suggesting either CEO is un/under qualified for the position, but rather given a pool of highly qualified candidates they chose to sort the list for a particular attribute.
- warning26 4y ago
  I’ve seen him speak in person, and this is completely correct. He just chases shiny things; there’s no vision for the company at all, just “oh well this seems interesting”.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    He’s thoughtful
  - commandlinefan 4y ago
    > just “oh well this seems interesting” To play devil's advocate (I'm no fan of Google in any way), but this is also how Elon Musk operates, and it seems to be going well for him.
    - azinman2 4y ago
      Is that sarcasm? I can’t tell
      - commandlinefan 4y ago
        Not at all. He did lose a lot of money recently, but most of that is "on paper" - he still has at least that much left over. I'd be more than happy to have his problems. He's in a valley right now, but his batting average is very high.
    - xiphias2 4y ago
      Elon Musk is strongly outspoken, and has strong vision, communicates the vision, although it can change in a day. But at least everybody in the company (or rather everybody on Twitter) knows the plan to execute on. When Sundar speaks he speaks politically, so that he can never be wrong (at the same time if I just watched his talks, I couldn't even know that I'm at a search company).
      - warning26 4y ago
        > communicates the vision He seemed to do a pretty good job with that at Tesla/SpaceX, but I’d argue he’s really dropped the ball at Twitter. No one seems to have any idea what “Twitter 2.0” even is supposed to be.
- karmasimida 4y ago
  Maybe. But they should really keep the companies leaner than it currently is … The self motivated bottom up Google way can’t scale like this.
- browningstreet 4y ago
  Who has the harder/worse job: CEO of Microsoft or CEO of Alphabet/Google?
  - eftychis 4y ago
    Neither? My prediction is the latter will retire coming up and have the next one clean the mess. Personal opinion and jaded perspective of course. Disclaimer: don't like shortsighted "follow the shiny thing" decisions. I haven't seen evidence the CEO of Google has positioned the company for the long term or to survive. Namely, the bus would have been going fine if not better without some if not all of the Google leadership on the wheel. I hope I am wrong.
- nova22033 4y ago
  Google market cap has more than doubled since he took over.
peanuty1 4y ago
> Also the new CEO is not a software engineer I looked up Sundar's background before joining Google out of curiosity and it looks like his educational background is in "metallurgical engineering" (IIT Kharagpur), materials science (Stanford), and MBA (UPenn). And stints at Applied Materials and McKinsey.
- ttul 4y ago
  It’s safe to say he is intelligent and effective in all the ways that matter.
  - dontblink 4y ago
    Is it though? He hasn't really moved the needle for Google at all other than capitalizing on growth laid out by his predecessors. Satya is far more admired for his accomplishments comparitivly.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      Satya is favorably compared to Balmer, whose effectiveness is constantly understated for reasons unknown to me. Anyone who takes over from an unpopular leader gets bimus points for not being unpopular.
      - geodel 4y ago
        Agreed. I have seen this similar scenario played in many context An organization is failing. Owners / Board of directors decides to put in new leader and outgoing leader will take all the blame, valid or not. I think all parties agree on this so that incoming leader can start afresh and also taking credit successes of past initiatives while failures attributed to past leaders. That way they can add to credibility of new leader.
marvin 4y ago
> The difference is that current Google is full of non-tech non-sales people who fight with eachother to reorganize tech people who are trying to build things. Is this true? If so, how can a historically disruptive and innovtive tech company like Google make that kind of blatant mistake?
- DarkNova6 4y ago
  For companies of this size this is the norm, not the exception.
- neel8986 4y ago
  Google's sole purpose now is to increase profit by > 15% till eternity. No innovative tech can give >15% growth in profit every year like a clockwork. So they attracted bunch of number pushers who kept on putting more and more ads in youtube and search. They started chasing Amazon or Apple in Cloud or Phone hardware. They became 100% competition focussed and completely ignored their strength. They completely forgot that they are sitting on the next goldmine like LLM. It baffles me the the company which invented Transformer and has the worlds largest index can not build something like ChatGPT. But that is not going increase their profit in the next quarterly earning.
  - zwily 4y ago
    They say they have a better ChatGPT, but it’s too dangerous to let into the hands of the genpop.
- Redoubts 4y ago
  Growing past thousands of people is very hard to do “correctly”. Maybe it’s not even possible.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Large organizations are pulled very strongly toward mediocrity. What's unique about Google is not that they ended up there. It's how they avoided it for so long.
- 4y ago
EthanHeilman 4y ago
> Google of 2008 didn't do this, I was there. I lost touch with Google's internal culture around 2011-ish. What is your take? When did you think Google changed and what drove the change? How gradual was?
- xiphias2 4y ago
  For me the two big changes were when Larry took over from Eric and when Amit was fired for harassment. Larry may have been good or bad leader, but he was just super serious and boring. Eric was amazing at trying to make us think in grand visions and be optimists, what is needed in tech. With Sundar TGIFs were not about organizing Google to a common goal, it was much more like watching advertisements. Big team meetings started to be anti-harassment training camps. I started to not participate in any team events and just code, as the leaders stopped giving us real honest guideance.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dekhn 4y ago
    During the deep dark days of Google+, at one TGIF a senior (very senior) search engineer stood up and asked Larry why they had to do everything Vic asked, like removing long-term search features and counting logins to Google as Google+ users, and Larry just sort of stood there, confused, and asked the crowd "can't you all just get along?" It was at that moment I saw the stark difference between Eric and Larry (and later, the difference between them and Sundary). Eric was a leader. He knew how to rally the troops (his speech at TGIF right after the US economy shut down was amazing). he saw economic downturns as times for Google to grow its strengths, not shed its weaknesses. What's amazing is how much the engineers at Google had to do to convince leadership that our pursuit of social (with the exception of youtube comments) was hurting our brand, and distracting us from the next profitable venture (cloud). I have eternal respect for the people who patiently convinced Yonatan Zunger (who wrote the infrastructure code implementing Real Names) that Real Names was a huge waste of time. At this point it's clear there's nobody at the top of Google who really has a clue how to move the company forward. They should just put Ruth in charge and complete their transition to being a post-innovator focused entirely on maintaining their monopoly positions.
whymauri 4y ago
The MBAification of Google.
- mcrad 4y ago
  [dead]
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  SOP for a McKinsey product.
anxman 4y ago
I worked on Sundars team at Google in 2006. He is highly technical and understands the nuance of software.
- myko 4y ago
  Could he have lost that in the intervening time?
  - simonswords82 4y ago
    As somebody who started my software company in 2007 and stopped coding full time around 2012/2013 I'd say if you did it long enough you never lose the abstract concepts. I understand everything my head of engineering tells me and don't need it ELI5'd. However being told it, and being asked to do it are two different things. I would be a very useful or productive coder if I went back in to the trenches.
    - myko 4y ago
      > I would be a very useful or productive coder if I went back in to the trenches. Would or would not? After being in management for years I sometimes feel like I would not be, at least not without 6-12 months of doing it every day.
- ActionHank 4y ago
  I doubt you can "understand the nuance of software" without having been in the trenches, even a little. Managing software roadmaps and projects or people is vastly different to dealing with systems and code.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  CEO of Google should be a software engineer. There are many execs at Google that can do a better job than uninspiring Sundar. If I were a shareholder of Google/Alphabet, I would be demanding a better CEO.
- xiphias2 4y ago
  Sorry, but I haven't seen his code base, and I don't know any significant technical achievement of his other than spamming everybody with Chrome download links everywhere to make it the number 1 browser (it was a great strategy, but not enough to run a company). Google is paying Jeff Dean, the guy who even after was famous for a lot of things, after imagenet challenge result came out, stopped everything else, read research papers for a week, and implemented a system that separates dogs from cats with unprecedented precision. People like Jeff Dean or Demis Hassabis are the kind of people who can make me stop everything I'm doing and listen to them when they say that the company should go into a direction.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Around '08 or '09 is when IMO it became visible from the outside that Google's culture had shifted radically. I've read comments before claiming that when Google acquired DoubleClick, Google became more DoubleClick than the other way around. Basically, that the Google we liked was destroyed by that acquisition, and something new emerged. That certainly squares with the timeline.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  > DoubleClick Inc. was an advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google Checks out alright.
- Jerrrry 4y ago
  Google buying Double Click is actually the most profitable acquisition in the history of business, nearly dwarfing the Robber Baron era and the Russians selling us Alaska.
  - ambicapter 4y ago
    Makes sense that they would become the dominant culture in Google then, no?
    - mathteddybear 4y ago
      No, Search Ads dwarfs it.
karmasimida 4y ago
Google is too big to be efficient Layoff would be inevitable. Reading its past history, the current Google is nothing like what is was. It used to be a pretty intense place where creators are eager to work (check the history of Android book, it is very informative on that) Now it is famous for getting paid without caring
jbirer 4y ago
It's really unfair that the incompetent have so much power over the competent and block their potential.
- jimbokun 4y ago
  Only if the competent let them. You could argue that the whole point of something like Y Combinator is to back hungry competent founders over stagnant incompetent people working at behemoth companies.
  - TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    You could also argue that the whole point of YC is to provide a passive(ish) income for Paul Graham by turning small hungry companies into behemoths via rapid forced growth and IPO. Like some kind of battery farming.
    - FearlessNebula 4y ago
      Foie gras
- lazide 4y ago
  Eh, Google long ago passed the point where it was about making things, and has been at the point where 99.99% of its energy has to go towards stopping itself from imploding. Which means processes, approvals, triple checks, departments/groups fighting each other (to protect themselves), etc. It’s a natural part of the lifecycle and every organization gets there eventually. What you’re talking about is frustration when you’re part of the picture (and individual ability to get things done) is blocked by the overall organizations dysfunction/morass.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > over the competent and block their potential “I’m competent but I can’t reach my potential because others are blocking me.”
  - 4y ago
MattGaiser 4y ago
> The difference is that current Google is full of non-tech non-sales people who fight with eachother to reorganize tech people who are trying to build things. This seems to be inevitable anywhere. In the social games, biz types beat the nerds.
stickfigure 4y ago
> Other tech people change the API for no reason and give work to 1000 more people to ,,upgrade to the newer system'' and stop maintaining the old system. We're in the middle of rewriting our auth system because Google Sign In is being replaced with Sign In With Google. Incredibly, I didn't just make that up: https://developers.googleblog.com/2021/08/gsi-jsweb-deprecation.html https://developers.googleblog.com/2021/08/gsi-jsweb-deprecat...
- xiphias2 4y ago
  I tried Google APIs as well, and also gave up at authentication, even though I just wanted something super simple and small (push messages to mobile phone). Nowdays I'm just using nostr for storing simple data, as it's super simple with no vendor lockin (I can encrypt messages if needed).
adamsb6 4y ago
> Other tech people change the API for no reason and give work to 1000 more people to ,,upgrade to the newer system'' and stop maintaining the old system. This was a good 15% of what I used to do at Facebook. Adapting to the useless changes, that is, not making them. It felt like if your changes weren't backwards incompatible then they were less visible, and therefore less impactful for your performance reviews. If you made them backwards incompatible you could boast about coordinating hundreds of engineers to transition to the new system. If the transition is seamless, all you have to brag about are improvements from the old system, and frequently there were none.
crdrost 4y ago
I made it my goal to get to Google several years back precisely because of stories like these about the Google of 2005 and whatever, Bock’s “Work Rules!” and all that. And I made it! And now I have lost it, I am part of the unfortunate 6%. The old-timers I knew there must be shocked. They all said “that's just not what we do” when this was rumored months ago. “If those conversations are happening, I haven't heard about it, my managers haven't either.” The culture that hired them told them both explicitly and implicitly “we did not hire you to do a job, we hired you because you are smart and effective, we trust that you will hate boredom and use your grit to make hard things happen and do the best work of your life.” The reality from my little spot inside Google Cloud was much more sobering. In my first performance review I was making my bosses happy but not pleasing some faceless committee so the rating came as a shock to both of us. We worked our way out of that pit and then all our incoming headcount was cancelled because Sundar demanded we “sharpen focus,” and so we had to cancel a bunch of planned growth tasks and work on tech debt cleanup and security features, which are less sexy but keep the lights running. The kicker is, just yesterday I was talking to the team about an experiment for a better way to improve our work, I was helping our new team lead onboard, AND I put out some new code for review that would solve a major pain point. So like I was “in the zone” today, I was legit ready to create a ton of business value. And like last night I woke up hearing the work laptop reboot in the other room and thought “that was weird” but did not give it much more thought, and then today I go to quickly skim HN, “all right let's kick some a... ... ... The affected have already gotten an email, I didn't get an email, I am safe right? ... I also didn't get the emails that we're over some quota, but maybe Kate or Martin fixed that ...? Okay work phone isn't helping, let's check the work laptop....” Amazingly bad. Just have my manager tell the group, let us all cry together... Not like this.
- ckdarby 4y ago
  Did your manager survive the cut? Google should have started there before ICs.
  - crdrost 4y ago
    I think so? I don't have contact with my immediate manager, only my skip-level, who is still there. (I was reorged under a new manager middle of last year and then again at the end of last year.)

kderbyma 4y ago

Pinchai has been a Terrible pick. He made google just worse. Like a passive aggressive leader...

peanuty1 4y ago
Do you attribute that to his lack of EECS background like the poster above you? Also, is Pinchai a typo or a play on words with "penny-pincher"?
ptero 4y ago
Not to defend him, but I think by 2015 google has already lost its way, focusing not on developing groundbreaking technology, but on using it's dominance to squeeze any money even if it meant encouraging addictive behaviors.
- kccqzy 4y ago
  2015 sounds about right. Three Years of Misery Inside Google is one of the best articles you can find about the seemingly sudden change of culture that made working at Google miserable. https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery...
  - user_7832 4y ago
    Wow, thanks for that article. It’s quite a long read, though a bit sad/disappointing, as someone who once believed in Google.
- fooker 4y ago
  I interned at Google around 2015 and again 2019 as a grad student. The culture was dramatically different, even in a very similar team.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    Care to elaborate. In what way? I have always though their crazy hiring rate would erase their "culture" like every two years.
    - fooker 4y ago
      TGIF was not a thing people watched or went to anymore. The number of meetings doubled. Employees were actively discouraged to look through code in google3 and design documents that did not concern their work (search for 'need to know' in Memegen if it still exists). The main thing that weirded me out and ultimately caused me to decide not to work for Google was that everyone was talking about perf and promotions all the time. Everyone in the team structured their work accordingly, and tales of people who obtained promotions because of heroic effort for achieving something was a recurring topic in group conversations. There was cost cutting efforts everywhere. There was significantly more red tape involved in requisitioning a heavy duty computer needed for my work (compiler development). The food in the micro kitches were toned down in variety and quality. Food trucks disappeared. The food in the cafes was unchanged but dinner was no longer served at about half of the cafes.
- epolanski 4y ago
  Stadia was launched after 2015, best streaming service for games by far. Then they killed it.
cptskippy 4y ago
I always assumed his appointment was strategic, Pichai got his position shortly after Nadella took over Microsoft. This coincided with announcements like Android One and other products targeting or focusing on the Indian market which is emerging as a force on the global stage.
- FearlessNebula 4y ago
  You think they chose an Indian CEO to appeal to the Indian market? I can’t imagine they’d make such a huge decision over a factor like that.
  - cptskippy 4y ago
    Companies do it all the time for diversity and inclusion reasons. I'm not suggesting either CEO is un/under qualified for the position, but rather given a pool of highly qualified candidates they chose to sort the list for a particular attribute.
warning26 4y ago
I’ve seen him speak in person, and this is completely correct. He just chases shiny things; there’s no vision for the company at all, just “oh well this seems interesting”.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  He’s thoughtful
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > just “oh well this seems interesting” To play devil's advocate (I'm no fan of Google in any way), but this is also how Elon Musk operates, and it seems to be going well for him.
  - azinman2 4y ago
    Is that sarcasm? I can’t tell
    - commandlinefan 4y ago
      Not at all. He did lose a lot of money recently, but most of that is "on paper" - he still has at least that much left over. I'd be more than happy to have his problems. He's in a valley right now, but his batting average is very high.
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    Elon Musk is strongly outspoken, and has strong vision, communicates the vision, although it can change in a day. But at least everybody in the company (or rather everybody on Twitter) knows the plan to execute on. When Sundar speaks he speaks politically, so that he can never be wrong (at the same time if I just watched his talks, I couldn't even know that I'm at a search company).
    - warning26 4y ago
      > communicates the vision He seemed to do a pretty good job with that at Tesla/SpaceX, but I’d argue he’s really dropped the ball at Twitter. No one seems to have any idea what “Twitter 2.0” even is supposed to be.
karmasimida 4y ago
Maybe. But they should really keep the companies leaner than it currently is … The self motivated bottom up Google way can’t scale like this.
browningstreet 4y ago
Who has the harder/worse job: CEO of Microsoft or CEO of Alphabet/Google?
- eftychis 4y ago
  Neither? My prediction is the latter will retire coming up and have the next one clean the mess. Personal opinion and jaded perspective of course. Disclaimer: don't like shortsighted "follow the shiny thing" decisions. I haven't seen evidence the CEO of Google has positioned the company for the long term or to survive. Namely, the bus would have been going fine if not better without some if not all of the Google leadership on the wheel. I hope I am wrong.
nova22033 4y ago
Google market cap has more than doubled since he took over.

peanuty1 4y ago

> Also the new CEO is not a software engineer I looked up Sundar's background before joining Google out of curiosity and it looks like his educational background is in "metallurgical engineering" (IIT Kharagpur), materials science (Stanford), and MBA (UPenn). And stints at Applied Materials and McKinsey.

ttul 4y ago
It’s safe to say he is intelligent and effective in all the ways that matter.
- dontblink 4y ago
  Is it though? He hasn't really moved the needle for Google at all other than capitalizing on growth laid out by his predecessors. Satya is far more admired for his accomplishments comparitivly.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    Satya is favorably compared to Balmer, whose effectiveness is constantly understated for reasons unknown to me. Anyone who takes over from an unpopular leader gets bimus points for not being unpopular.
    - geodel 4y ago
      Agreed. I have seen this similar scenario played in many context An organization is failing. Owners / Board of directors decides to put in new leader and outgoing leader will take all the blame, valid or not. I think all parties agree on this so that incoming leader can start afresh and also taking credit successes of past initiatives while failures attributed to past leaders. That way they can add to credibility of new leader.

marvin 4y ago

> The difference is that current Google is full of non-tech non-sales people who fight with eachother to reorganize tech people who are trying to build things. Is this true? If so, how can a historically disruptive and innovtive tech company like Google make that kind of blatant mistake?

DarkNova6 4y ago
For companies of this size this is the norm, not the exception.
neel8986 4y ago
Google's sole purpose now is to increase profit by > 15% till eternity. No innovative tech can give >15% growth in profit every year like a clockwork. So they attracted bunch of number pushers who kept on putting more and more ads in youtube and search. They started chasing Amazon or Apple in Cloud or Phone hardware. They became 100% competition focussed and completely ignored their strength. They completely forgot that they are sitting on the next goldmine like LLM. It baffles me the the company which invented Transformer and has the worlds largest index can not build something like ChatGPT. But that is not going increase their profit in the next quarterly earning.
- zwily 4y ago
  They say they have a better ChatGPT, but it’s too dangerous to let into the hands of the genpop.
Redoubts 4y ago
Growing past thousands of people is very hard to do “correctly”. Maybe it’s not even possible.
BurningFrog 4y ago
Large organizations are pulled very strongly toward mediocrity. What's unique about Google is not that they ended up there. It's how they avoided it for so long.
4y ago

EthanHeilman 4y ago

> Google of 2008 didn't do this, I was there. I lost touch with Google's internal culture around 2011-ish. What is your take? When did you think Google changed and what drove the change? How gradual was?

xiphias2 4y ago
For me the two big changes were when Larry took over from Eric and when Amit was fired for harassment. Larry may have been good or bad leader, but he was just super serious and boring. Eric was amazing at trying to make us think in grand visions and be optimists, what is needed in tech. With Sundar TGIFs were not about organizing Google to a common goal, it was much more like watching advertisements. Big team meetings started to be anti-harassment training camps. I started to not participate in any team events and just code, as the leaders stopped giving us real honest guideance.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dekhn 4y ago
  During the deep dark days of Google+, at one TGIF a senior (very senior) search engineer stood up and asked Larry why they had to do everything Vic asked, like removing long-term search features and counting logins to Google as Google+ users, and Larry just sort of stood there, confused, and asked the crowd "can't you all just get along?" It was at that moment I saw the stark difference between Eric and Larry (and later, the difference between them and Sundary). Eric was a leader. He knew how to rally the troops (his speech at TGIF right after the US economy shut down was amazing). he saw economic downturns as times for Google to grow its strengths, not shed its weaknesses. What's amazing is how much the engineers at Google had to do to convince leadership that our pursuit of social (with the exception of youtube comments) was hurting our brand, and distracting us from the next profitable venture (cloud). I have eternal respect for the people who patiently convinced Yonatan Zunger (who wrote the infrastructure code implementing Real Names) that Real Names was a huge waste of time. At this point it's clear there's nobody at the top of Google who really has a clue how to move the company forward. They should just put Ruth in charge and complete their transition to being a post-innovator focused entirely on maintaining their monopoly positions.

whymauri 4y ago

The MBAification of Google.

mcrad 4y ago
[dead]
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
SOP for a McKinsey product.

anxman 4y ago

I worked on Sundars team at Google in 2006. He is highly technical and understands the nuance of software.

myko 4y ago
Could he have lost that in the intervening time?
- simonswords82 4y ago
  As somebody who started my software company in 2007 and stopped coding full time around 2012/2013 I'd say if you did it long enough you never lose the abstract concepts. I understand everything my head of engineering tells me and don't need it ELI5'd. However being told it, and being asked to do it are two different things. I would be a very useful or productive coder if I went back in to the trenches.
  - myko 4y ago
    > I would be a very useful or productive coder if I went back in to the trenches. Would or would not? After being in management for years I sometimes feel like I would not be, at least not without 6-12 months of doing it every day.
ActionHank 4y ago
I doubt you can "understand the nuance of software" without having been in the trenches, even a little. Managing software roadmaps and projects or people is vastly different to dealing with systems and code.
systemvoltage 4y ago
CEO of Google should be a software engineer. There are many execs at Google that can do a better job than uninspiring Sundar. If I were a shareholder of Google/Alphabet, I would be demanding a better CEO.
xiphias2 4y ago
Sorry, but I haven't seen his code base, and I don't know any significant technical achievement of his other than spamming everybody with Chrome download links everywhere to make it the number 1 browser (it was a great strategy, but not enough to run a company). Google is paying Jeff Dean, the guy who even after was famous for a lot of things, after imagenet challenge result came out, stopped everything else, read research papers for a week, and implemented a system that separates dogs from cats with unprecedented precision. People like Jeff Dean or Demis Hassabis are the kind of people who can make me stop everything I'm doing and listen to them when they say that the company should go into a direction.

yamtaddle 4y ago

Around '08 or '09 is when IMO it became visible from the outside that Google's culture had shifted radically. I've read comments before claiming that when Google acquired DoubleClick, Google became more DoubleClick than the other way around. Basically, that the Google we liked was destroyed by that acquisition, and something new emerged. That certainly squares with the timeline.

moffkalast 4y ago
> DoubleClick Inc. was an advertisement company that developed and provided Internet ad serving services from 1995 until its acquisition by Google Checks out alright.
Jerrrry 4y ago
Google buying Double Click is actually the most profitable acquisition in the history of business, nearly dwarfing the Robber Baron era and the Russians selling us Alaska.
- ambicapter 4y ago
  Makes sense that they would become the dominant culture in Google then, no?
  - mathteddybear 4y ago
    No, Search Ads dwarfs it.

karmasimida 4y ago

Google is too big to be efficient Layoff would be inevitable. Reading its past history, the current Google is nothing like what is was. It used to be a pretty intense place where creators are eager to work (check the history of Android book, it is very informative on that) Now it is famous for getting paid without caring

jbirer 4y ago

It's really unfair that the incompetent have so much power over the competent and block their potential.

jimbokun 4y ago
Only if the competent let them. You could argue that the whole point of something like Y Combinator is to back hungry competent founders over stagnant incompetent people working at behemoth companies.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  You could also argue that the whole point of YC is to provide a passive(ish) income for Paul Graham by turning small hungry companies into behemoths via rapid forced growth and IPO. Like some kind of battery farming.
  - FearlessNebula 4y ago
    Foie gras
lazide 4y ago
Eh, Google long ago passed the point where it was about making things, and has been at the point where 99.99% of its energy has to go towards stopping itself from imploding. Which means processes, approvals, triple checks, departments/groups fighting each other (to protect themselves), etc. It’s a natural part of the lifecycle and every organization gets there eventually. What you’re talking about is frustration when you’re part of the picture (and individual ability to get things done) is blocked by the overall organizations dysfunction/morass.
andsoitis 4y ago
> over the competent and block their potential “I’m competent but I can’t reach my potential because others are blocking me.”
- 4y ago

MattGaiser 4y ago

> The difference is that current Google is full of non-tech non-sales people who fight with eachother to reorganize tech people who are trying to build things. This seems to be inevitable anywhere. In the social games, biz types beat the nerds.

stickfigure 4y ago

> Other tech people change the API for no reason and give work to 1000 more people to ,,upgrade to the newer system'' and stop maintaining the old system. We're in the middle of rewriting our auth system because Google Sign In is being replaced with Sign In With Google. Incredibly, I didn't just make that up: https://developers.googleblog.com/2021/08/gsi-jsweb-deprecation.html https://developers.googleblog.com/2021/08/gsi-jsweb-deprecat...

xiphias2 4y ago
I tried Google APIs as well, and also gave up at authentication, even though I just wanted something super simple and small (push messages to mobile phone). Nowdays I'm just using nostr for storing simple data, as it's super simple with no vendor lockin (I can encrypt messages if needed).

adamsb6 4y ago

> Other tech people change the API for no reason and give work to 1000 more people to ,,upgrade to the newer system'' and stop maintaining the old system. This was a good 15% of what I used to do at Facebook. Adapting to the useless changes, that is, not making them. It felt like if your changes weren't backwards incompatible then they were less visible, and therefore less impactful for your performance reviews. If you made them backwards incompatible you could boast about coordinating hundreds of engineers to transition to the new system. If the transition is seamless, all you have to brag about are improvements from the old system, and frequently there were none.

crdrost 4y ago

I made it my goal to get to Google several years back precisely because of stories like these about the Google of 2005 and whatever, Bock’s “Work Rules!” and all that. And I made it! And now I have lost it, I am part of the unfortunate 6%. The old-timers I knew there must be shocked. They all said “that's just not what we do” when this was rumored months ago. “If those conversations are happening, I haven't heard about it, my managers haven't either.” The culture that hired them told them both explicitly and implicitly “we did not hire you to do a job, we hired you because you are smart and effective, we trust that you will hate boredom and use your grit to make hard things happen and do the best work of your life.” The reality from my little spot inside Google Cloud was much more sobering. In my first performance review I was making my bosses happy but not pleasing some faceless committee so the rating came as a shock to both of us. We worked our way out of that pit and then all our incoming headcount was cancelled because Sundar demanded we “sharpen focus,” and so we had to cancel a bunch of planned growth tasks and work on tech debt cleanup and security features, which are less sexy but keep the lights running. The kicker is, just yesterday I was talking to the team about an experiment for a better way to improve our work, I was helping our new team lead onboard, AND I put out some new code for review that would solve a major pain point. So like I was “in the zone” today, I was legit ready to create a ton of business value. And like last night I woke up hearing the work laptop reboot in the other room and thought “that was weird” but did not give it much more thought, and then today I go to quickly skim HN, “all right let's kick some a... ... ... The affected have already gotten an email, I didn't get an email, I am safe right? ... I also didn't get the emails that we're over some quota, but maybe Kate or Martin fixed that ...? Okay work phone isn't helping, let's check the work laptop....” Amazingly bad. Just have my manager tell the group, let us all cry together... Not like this.

ckdarby 4y ago
Did your manager survive the cut? Google should have started there before ICs.
- crdrost 4y ago
  I think so? I don't have contact with my immediate manager, only my skip-level, who is still there. (I was reorged under a new manager middle of last year and then again at the end of last year.)