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I was there early on (not in the first 1000 though), and some people did try to point it out, but it was very hard because there's no way to say "maybe we can't

I was there early on (not in the first 1000 though), and some people did try to point it out, but it was very hard because there's no way to say "maybe we can't hire more people without becoming less elite" in a way that sounds non-asshole-ish. So such sentiments tended to be voiced in private. Also it's just so vague. What is the right size for a company like Google? How many people should you hire for projects like AI or self driving cars? And finally, it was totally against the founder's and top executives self image. They felt that the potential of the company was nearly unlimited, that they would never run out of ideas. So they just kept hiring, over and over again, without any connection between headcount and need.

MichaelZuo 4y ago
> but it was very hard because there's no way to say "maybe we can't hire more people without becoming less elite" in a way that sounds non-asshole-ish.' Hmm this sounds like the concern was badly communicated because this phrasing is both unnecessary and not quite correct either. (since it is possible to keep recruiting to a very high standard even during exponential growth via spending exponentially more resources) The straightforward logic of: linear increase in organization size = exponential increase in organization complexity = exponential frictional losses would have been much clearer.
- revelio 4y ago
  >> since it is possible to keep recruiting to a very high standard even during exponential growth via spending exponentially more resources Since when? You're assuming the pool of employees available to recruit is infinite which is clearly not true.
  - MichaelZuo 4y ago
    It's clearly larger then 1 million worldwide, which is what matters to a company of Google's size. It will breakdown if the company wants to run multiple Manhattan Projects simultaneously, but anything short of that is technically possible.
    - revelio 4y ago
      Is that clear? How did you arrive at that number? Just because people exist and have some skills doesn't mean a company can find them and hire them. There are lots of reasons why that might not be the case. Even when I first joined the company very early on, they were struggling to recruit in the USA despite spending vast resources on the effort, and this was what pushed them into international expansion.
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        > Just because people exist and have some skills doesn't mean a company can find them and hire them. I claimed it's technically possible with 'exponentially more resources', not that any private organization could feasibly possess the resources or cachet to, in practice, hire a million top notch people. Maintaining the literal same average quality with Googler #1001 to #10000 would probably have required spending 10x more per hire, compared to hiring #1 to #1000.

MichaelZuo 4y ago

> but it was very hard because there's no way to say "maybe we can't hire more people without becoming less elite" in a way that sounds non-asshole-ish.' Hmm this sounds like the concern was badly communicated because this phrasing is both unnecessary and not quite correct either. (since it is possible to keep recruiting to a very high standard even during exponential growth via spending exponentially more resources) The straightforward logic of: linear increase in organization size = exponential increase in organization complexity = exponential frictional losses would have been much clearer.

revelio 4y ago
>> since it is possible to keep recruiting to a very high standard even during exponential growth via spending exponentially more resources Since when? You're assuming the pool of employees available to recruit is infinite which is clearly not true.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  It's clearly larger then 1 million worldwide, which is what matters to a company of Google's size. It will breakdown if the company wants to run multiple Manhattan Projects simultaneously, but anything short of that is technically possible.
  - revelio 4y ago
    Is that clear? How did you arrive at that number? Just because people exist and have some skills doesn't mean a company can find them and hire them. There are lots of reasons why that might not be the case. Even when I first joined the company very early on, they were struggling to recruit in the USA despite spending vast resources on the effort, and this was what pushed them into international expansion.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      > Just because people exist and have some skills doesn't mean a company can find them and hire them. I claimed it's technically possible with 'exponentially more resources', not that any private organization could feasibly possess the resources or cachet to, in practice, hire a million top notch people. Maintaining the literal same average quality with Googler #1001 to #10000 would probably have required spending 10x more per hire, compared to hiring #1 to #1000.