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Founder who sold startup to Google says G has lost its mission, is mismanaged

37 points by remote_phone 4y ago

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Add one more to the pile. Seriously, though, why all the Google hate all of a sudden? It didn't seem like it was that much more mismanaged than any other big tech company.
- sxp 4y ago
  As a Xoogler, I was really annoyed that Google has massive layoffs while raking in so much profit. It shows a level of short-sightedness that went against the ideal Google culture mentioned in the original article.
  - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    Devil's advocate but a company doesn't "owe it" to their employees to sacrifice their profitability (keep them hired) if they aren't bringing the company value. Or honestly, they don't even really need an explanation. It's a privilege to be hired by a company. You need to do what they want you to or else they'll replace you with someone who will. If they don't need you or don't want you, they reserve the right to look out for themselves for whatever reason and cut you loose. If they ran around worried about "let's sacrifice profit to keep random people we accidentally overhired happy from a moral perspective", they would little by little seize to exist (and piss off their entire "profit-focused" board of directors, shareholders, etc.) They most likely over-hired, like almost everybody else during COVID. Why do they deserve criticism for laying people off instead of "praise" for offering 150,000+ people "good" high paying jobs? https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/number-of-employees#:~:text=Interactive%20chart%20of%20Alphabet%20(GOOG,a%2015.67%25%20increase%20from%202020 https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/numb.... I don't think it's a realistic view to say "they should sacrifice their profit to keep people on board".
    - jahsome 4y ago
      Perhaps not in a fiduciary sense, but I feel it kinda does mean something if that's what they promised to those employees when they were hired.
      - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
        What would you say is a realistic expectation when you are hired? "We guarantee you a job for the next 25 years of your life no matter what as long as you perform well?" You and I can both agree that's probably not realistic. So what is a realistic expectation? 10 years? 5 years? 18 months? It'd be pretty unfortunate for a company to hire you and then lay you off within 3-6 months but... to hold it against the company as if they should've treated you better instead of looking out for themselves is a pretty weird way to walk through life?
        JohnFen 4y ago
        It all depends. If the company hired me knowing that there was a significant chance I'd be laid off so quickly, the company has behaved very badly. If it was a surprise to everyone, that's just the breaks.
        jahsome 4y ago
        I think my point is that I'd have different expectations about duty of care from a company with billions in the bank, and a mom and pop general store. I recognize "it's all business" but if either of said businesses are boasting "we have the best culture and our employees are like family" then dawg, it's not just about business anymore.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      > It's a privilege to be hired by a company. No, it's not. It's a business deal that benefits both parties. Nothing more.
- jmeister 4y ago
  Not sudden https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-so-long-noam-bardin https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-s... https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/google-as-fat-elvis/ https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/google-as-fat-...
- ronsor 4y ago
  Criticisms of Google have been piling up over the past half-decade especially. It's not that sudden.
- randomdata 4y ago
  We've been picking on the mismanagement at Google for years around here. Just look at the monthly discussion about Google's new chat app replacing the one released the previous month.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
  The company has a huge impact on the internet. If they are underperforming, we all suffer from it.
- nugget 4y ago
  I wonder if perversely all the bad press could actually help Google by lessening antitrust scrutiny. If they're perceived to be setting themselves up for failure, do they become less of a target?
- Calvin02 4y ago
  To add to this, can we put a rest to asking founders who sold out and are no longer connected with the acquiring company about their opinions? It isn't like Google's advertising model was a secret or difficult to envision where it was going. If that wasn't a problem when you sold out, why is it a problem now? Or if you were already worried about this, why'd you sell to Google?
sxp 4y ago
Original article discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34799308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34799308
robbie-c 4y ago
Side note, what does "Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment." mean? That sounds like extremely poor journalism, has anybody ever immediately responded to anything?
- randomdata 4y ago
  The request to Bard timed out, presumably.
- neodypsis 4y ago
  Yes, I'd consider that poor journalistic practice.
- sedatk 4y ago
  First, it means that they asked Google for their opinion, and would update the article once they get it. Second, yes, media contacts can answer the phone and provide a prepared statement for certain news which makes it an instant response.
- dylan604 4y ago
  You see this all the time, and of all things to say is poor journalism, this one offends me the least. Even a response of "let me get back to you" upon receiving a request is at least a response. That pretty much infers that you've caught your contact unawares and they need to get up to speed. So instead of looking out of touch, these contacts just let voicemails, emails, texts/chats go unanswered providing a bit of plausible deniability of sorts. Better to say nothing than the wrong thing.
- jahsome 4y ago
  It's actually a quite common practice. Google has an entire in house PR team literally at the ready to field media questions and respond. The fact they did not respond, or gave the infamous "no comment" does say _something_ though admittedly not much. But that's why it's a disclaimer. Often "immediately" means something different than the literal definition too. I.e. it's a super safe way to say "they may have actually responded sometime since we asked, but not in time to be included here." It's not _great_ journalism but it is transparent.
hankman86 4y ago
While this is only a singular opinion, Google’s problems to successfully innovate are in plain sight. Google Research produces the seminal paper on Transformers - only to see others pick up their work and run with it. Android is losing market share. Stadia flopped. ChromeOS is on life support. Search is subjectively getting worse (albeit still insanely profitable). Google Cloud market share is nowhere near AWS or Azure. The whole company feels like it’s frozen in time.
- cma 4y ago
  > Google Research produces the seminal paper on Transformers - only to see others pick up their work and run with it. Is the take away that they should have hidden it, or just that they should have come up with ChatGPT first? Would the researchers who came up with it have worked there in the first place if they weren't allowed to publish? There are lots of copyright issues up in the air and going through courts now with generative models that Microsoft is able to presumably insulate from by delegating to an under-capitalized (relative to potential liability) startup. Especially if lots of their investment into that startup is non-transferable Chuckee Cheese tokens (Azure credits) that disappear as a liability to MS in an OpenAI bankruptcy.
O1111OOO 4y ago
I feel like lots of people react emotionally to Big Tech firms. Google gets hit pretty hard with lots of doom and gloom stuff. I thought the numbers below were appropriate here: Revenue ....... : US $282.8 billion (2022) Operating income: US $ 74.84 billion (2022) Net income..... : US $ 59.97 billion (2022) Total assets .. : US $365.3 billion (2022) Total equity .. : US $256.1 billion (2022) (Source: wikipedia/alphabet) I remember IBM from the 1980s. They were so fascinating to watch as a consumer company. Personal Computers, PC-DOS and a Chess Program - that's all I mostly knew them to be. I thought they were great! Suddenly, they vanished. Yet, still to this day... they employ more people worldwide than Microsoft or Google (source: Wikipedia). As endUsers we have expectations of companies. In our minds, we limit them to Search or Online Videos when in fact, they can be doing so much more. The appSheet creator? I don't know what his expectations were. These expectations might have been selfish (ie; focused only on his immediate needs. A sprinter in a company running a marathon.) Google is doing pretty well financially - it seems to me. It is a multinational and a leader of several tech sectors. Maybe they are not in the business(es) lots of people think they are. Maybe they're just in the business of making money and in the process building (mostly) better solutions than their competitors. Maybe decision making isn't done by looking at the next few weeks but by looking at the next several years.

37 points by remote_phone 4y ago

Add one more to the pile. Seriously, though, why all the Google hate all of a sudden? It didn't seem like it was that much more mismanaged than any other big tech company.

sxp 4y ago
As a Xoogler, I was really annoyed that Google has massive layoffs while raking in so much profit. It shows a level of short-sightedness that went against the ideal Google culture mentioned in the original article.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  Devil's advocate but a company doesn't "owe it" to their employees to sacrifice their profitability (keep them hired) if they aren't bringing the company value. Or honestly, they don't even really need an explanation. It's a privilege to be hired by a company. You need to do what they want you to or else they'll replace you with someone who will. If they don't need you or don't want you, they reserve the right to look out for themselves for whatever reason and cut you loose. If they ran around worried about "let's sacrifice profit to keep random people we accidentally overhired happy from a moral perspective", they would little by little seize to exist (and piss off their entire "profit-focused" board of directors, shareholders, etc.) They most likely over-hired, like almost everybody else during COVID. Why do they deserve criticism for laying people off instead of "praise" for offering 150,000+ people "good" high paying jobs? https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/number-of-employees#:~:text=Interactive%20chart%20of%20Alphabet%20(GOOG,a%2015.67%25%20increase%20from%202020 https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/numb.... I don't think it's a realistic view to say "they should sacrifice their profit to keep people on board".
  - jahsome 4y ago
    Perhaps not in a fiduciary sense, but I feel it kinda does mean something if that's what they promised to those employees when they were hired.
    - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
      What would you say is a realistic expectation when you are hired? "We guarantee you a job for the next 25 years of your life no matter what as long as you perform well?" You and I can both agree that's probably not realistic. So what is a realistic expectation? 10 years? 5 years? 18 months? It'd be pretty unfortunate for a company to hire you and then lay you off within 3-6 months but... to hold it against the company as if they should've treated you better instead of looking out for themselves is a pretty weird way to walk through life?
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        It all depends. If the company hired me knowing that there was a significant chance I'd be laid off so quickly, the company has behaved very badly. If it was a surprise to everyone, that's just the breaks.
      - jahsome 4y ago
        I think my point is that I'd have different expectations about duty of care from a company with billions in the bank, and a mom and pop general store. I recognize "it's all business" but if either of said businesses are boasting "we have the best culture and our employees are like family" then dawg, it's not just about business anymore.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > It's a privilege to be hired by a company. No, it's not. It's a business deal that benefits both parties. Nothing more.
jmeister 4y ago
Not sudden https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-so-long-noam-bardin https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-did-i-leave-google-stay-s... https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/google-as-fat-elvis/ https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/google-as-fat-...
ronsor 4y ago
Criticisms of Google have been piling up over the past half-decade especially. It's not that sudden.
randomdata 4y ago
We've been picking on the mismanagement at Google for years around here. Just look at the monthly discussion about Google's new chat app replacing the one released the previous month.
fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
The company has a huge impact on the internet. If they are underperforming, we all suffer from it.
nugget 4y ago
I wonder if perversely all the bad press could actually help Google by lessening antitrust scrutiny. If they're perceived to be setting themselves up for failure, do they become less of a target?
Calvin02 4y ago
To add to this, can we put a rest to asking founders who sold out and are no longer connected with the acquiring company about their opinions? It isn't like Google's advertising model was a secret or difficult to envision where it was going. If that wasn't a problem when you sold out, why is it a problem now? Or if you were already worried about this, why'd you sell to Google?

sxp 4y ago

Original article discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34799308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34799308

robbie-c 4y ago

Side note, what does "Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment." mean? That sounds like extremely poor journalism, has anybody ever immediately responded to anything?

randomdata 4y ago
The request to Bard timed out, presumably.
neodypsis 4y ago
Yes, I'd consider that poor journalistic practice.
sedatk 4y ago
First, it means that they asked Google for their opinion, and would update the article once they get it. Second, yes, media contacts can answer the phone and provide a prepared statement for certain news which makes it an instant response.
dylan604 4y ago
You see this all the time, and of all things to say is poor journalism, this one offends me the least. Even a response of "let me get back to you" upon receiving a request is at least a response. That pretty much infers that you've caught your contact unawares and they need to get up to speed. So instead of looking out of touch, these contacts just let voicemails, emails, texts/chats go unanswered providing a bit of plausible deniability of sorts. Better to say nothing than the wrong thing.
jahsome 4y ago
It's actually a quite common practice. Google has an entire in house PR team literally at the ready to field media questions and respond. The fact they did not respond, or gave the infamous "no comment" does say _something_ though admittedly not much. But that's why it's a disclaimer. Often "immediately" means something different than the literal definition too. I.e. it's a super safe way to say "they may have actually responded sometime since we asked, but not in time to be included here." It's not _great_ journalism but it is transparent.

hankman86 4y ago

While this is only a singular opinion, Google’s problems to successfully innovate are in plain sight. Google Research produces the seminal paper on Transformers - only to see others pick up their work and run with it. Android is losing market share. Stadia flopped. ChromeOS is on life support. Search is subjectively getting worse (albeit still insanely profitable). Google Cloud market share is nowhere near AWS or Azure. The whole company feels like it’s frozen in time.

cma 4y ago
> Google Research produces the seminal paper on Transformers - only to see others pick up their work and run with it. Is the take away that they should have hidden it, or just that they should have come up with ChatGPT first? Would the researchers who came up with it have worked there in the first place if they weren't allowed to publish? There are lots of copyright issues up in the air and going through courts now with generative models that Microsoft is able to presumably insulate from by delegating to an under-capitalized (relative to potential liability) startup. Especially if lots of their investment into that startup is non-transferable Chuckee Cheese tokens (Azure credits) that disappear as a liability to MS in an OpenAI bankruptcy.

O1111OOO 4y ago

I feel like lots of people react emotionally to Big Tech firms. Google gets hit pretty hard with lots of doom and gloom stuff. I thought the numbers below were appropriate here: Revenue ....... : US $282.8 billion (2022) Operating income: US $ 74.84 billion (2022) Net income..... : US $ 59.97 billion (2022) Total assets .. : US $365.3 billion (2022) Total equity .. : US $256.1 billion (2022) (Source: wikipedia/alphabet) I remember IBM from the 1980s. They were so fascinating to watch as a consumer company. Personal Computers, PC-DOS and a Chess Program - that's all I mostly knew them to be. I thought they were great! Suddenly, they vanished. Yet, still to this day... they employ more people worldwide than Microsoft or Google (source: Wikipedia). As endUsers we have expectations of companies. In our minds, we limit them to Search or Online Videos when in fact, they can be doing so much more. The appSheet creator? I don't know what his expectations were. These expectations might have been selfish (ie; focused only on his immediate needs. A sprinter in a company running a marathon.) Google is doing pretty well financially - it seems to me. It is a multinational and a leader of several tech sectors. Maybe they are not in the business(es) lots of people think they are. Maybe they're just in the business of making money and in the process building (mostly) better solutions than their competitors. Maybe decision making isn't done by looking at the next few weeks but by looking at the next several years.