5 ms·

Did Google culture in 2011/2012 then again in 2022/2023. 2011 was watching them recruit and hire everyone smart enough to sit around to just make stuff and eat

Did Google culture in 2011/2012 then again in 2022/2023. 2011 was watching them recruit and hire everyone smart enough to sit around to just make stuff and eat each other's dogfood. There were posters for little experiments to try at the elevators or lobbies. Good times! Will we release this Dropbox clone or not? Should we drop this dorky AR glasses or not? Anything is possible in the quest to organize the world's information and free food! 2022 was watching the new cohorts come in and realize the game is now just throwing stuff against the wall, clinch an exec to back you, get to google scale, and get your bonus so you can finally buy a house in a post-G+ landscape. Oh, on top of that you're really just a pawn in a corrupt game of keepaway from the other companies. Now everything scaled back, a lot of projects get scrutinized, then boom, someone else is taking Google R&D and productizing it better than Google PMs can and we don't know what to do anymore. But we still do leetcode, and if you pass then just press that space bar so you can buzz in during the standup to say all good, no updates. This new silicon valley era is weird.

civilitty 3y ago
At least now the path to unseating Google seems not only possible but inevitable! Anti-trust investigations and lawsuits, the product graveyard, search seemingly degrading, and now getting trounced on AI. I remember back when I felt Google was invincible but it doesn’t feel like that anymore. Can’t wait to see what succeeds them in search.
izzydata 3y ago
Does the TV series Silicon Valley no longer make sense in today's culture?
- flashgordon 3y ago
  Even though it was edgy for its time - it is much more "tamer" compared to what orgs (atleast in tech) are these days. For example I used to think - there is no way that "bear is sticky with honey" can be real. Oh boy! What surprises me is the straight face during the regular utterances (I am saddened and surprised that I am still surprised about it!)
Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
From an outside pov gcloud seems like the next big thing for google. Maybe largest since gmail. Does that match your experience?
- padjo 3y ago
  Any time someone mentions Google cloud all I can think is google will lose interest and shut it down. In reality the risk is probably pretty low but they’re immediately on the back foot with me. I suspect I’m not alone in thinking like this.
hunson_abadeer 3y ago
I know a bunch of ex-Googlers who spent 8+ years with the company, and what cracks me up is that they all have some version of this "how the mighty have fallen" story, but it's always relative to their tenure dates. Some remember Google as being fantastic when they joined in 2005 and then going downhill after. Some think the peak was in 2009. Some in 2012. And I'm sure there are engineers joining now who, in ten years' time, will be reminiscing about the golden days of 2023. In reality, I think we tend to rationalize our decisions to join a company by imagining it's better than it really is, and then rationalize our decision to leave by imagining it's worse. More often than not, the only real change is that we've grown tired of the workplace and need a change of scenery.
- whateverman23 3y ago
  The reason is pretty simple. As companies get larger, the culture dies. Those who joined big-tech early-ish in their career likely see the state of the company at the time as way better than what they're used to. Then it gets worse. It doesn't really matter where you enter in the history of the company, the culture is almost always going to be the best as you know it when you join and get worse over time. Very rarely does the opposite happen.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
    Enshitification affects all things (except, it seems, for the compensation of the CEO, for the that line only goes up).
    - snapplebobapple 3y ago
      On the contrary, higher CEO pay is a symptom of enshitification because it means ownership has dispersed enough and/or the majority owners have checked out enough that there's no strong hand slapping the CEO around when he proposes utter BS for his pay package. I did my undergrad econ final thesis on this subject almost 20 years ago now, it was quite interesting. Over 500k of total compensation a year correlated very heavily with a whole host of policies that indicate CEO board capture (Don't ask me what they were at this point, it's lost to the sands of time) and likely enshitification progression as well since the guys providing the capital have checked out and the CEO's interest is in increasing his comp, not in making sure the capital is well compensated.
deleted 3y ago
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civilitty 3y ago

At least now the path to unseating Google seems not only possible but inevitable! Anti-trust investigations and lawsuits, the product graveyard, search seemingly degrading, and now getting trounced on AI. I remember back when I felt Google was invincible but it doesn’t feel like that anymore. Can’t wait to see what succeeds them in search.

izzydata 3y ago

Does the TV series Silicon Valley no longer make sense in today's culture?

flashgordon 3y ago
Even though it was edgy for its time - it is much more "tamer" compared to what orgs (atleast in tech) are these days. For example I used to think - there is no way that "bear is sticky with honey" can be real. Oh boy! What surprises me is the straight face during the regular utterances (I am saddened and surprised that I am still surprised about it!)

Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago

From an outside pov gcloud seems like the next big thing for google. Maybe largest since gmail. Does that match your experience?

padjo 3y ago
Any time someone mentions Google cloud all I can think is google will lose interest and shut it down. In reality the risk is probably pretty low but they’re immediately on the back foot with me. I suspect I’m not alone in thinking like this.

hunson_abadeer 3y ago

I know a bunch of ex-Googlers who spent 8+ years with the company, and what cracks me up is that they all have some version of this "how the mighty have fallen" story, but it's always relative to their tenure dates. Some remember Google as being fantastic when they joined in 2005 and then going downhill after. Some think the peak was in 2009. Some in 2012. And I'm sure there are engineers joining now who, in ten years' time, will be reminiscing about the golden days of 2023. In reality, I think we tend to rationalize our decisions to join a company by imagining it's better than it really is, and then rationalize our decision to leave by imagining it's worse. More often than not, the only real change is that we've grown tired of the workplace and need a change of scenery.

whateverman23 3y ago
The reason is pretty simple. As companies get larger, the culture dies. Those who joined big-tech early-ish in their career likely see the state of the company at the time as way better than what they're used to. Then it gets worse. It doesn't really matter where you enter in the history of the company, the culture is almost always going to be the best as you know it when you join and get worse over time. Very rarely does the opposite happen.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
  Enshitification affects all things (except, it seems, for the compensation of the CEO, for the that line only goes up).
  - snapplebobapple 3y ago
    On the contrary, higher CEO pay is a symptom of enshitification because it means ownership has dispersed enough and/or the majority owners have checked out enough that there's no strong hand slapping the CEO around when he proposes utter BS for his pay package. I did my undergrad econ final thesis on this subject almost 20 years ago now, it was quite interesting. Over 500k of total compensation a year correlated very heavily with a whole host of policies that indicate CEO board capture (Don't ask me what they were at this point, it's lost to the sands of time) and likely enshitification progression as well since the guys providing the capital have checked out and the CEO's interest is in increasing his comp, not in making sure the capital is well compensated.

deleted 3y ago

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