10 ms·

It doesn't make sense to me. Is google turning into a pure cash cow with no ambition? You have this resource, developers, that you invest a lot into; why would

by vicnov 3y ago

It doesn't make sense to me. Is google turning into a pure cash cow with no ambition? You have this resource, developers, that you invest a lot into; why would you get rid of your core asset? Is there no NPV-positive way to allocate this asset? Is there 0 ambition to pursue new projects? If it were any other team I would have understood. but devs? makes no sense.

chpatrick 3y ago
It turned into one about ten years ago.
- wharvle 3y ago
  Slide started when they acquired DoubleClick and the two cultures blurred together (or worse, at the higher levels of the company...) and they were beyond saving when they fully committed to ads-inline-with-search-results rather than just "experimenting" with it.
  - vmfunction 3y ago
    This is type of stuff make me not like big corp, the culture and company value eventually corrupts. And if you are like Apple, after the charismatic founder dies, pretty much it goes to shit as well.
    - tracerbulletx 3y ago
      What makes you think that's happened to Apple yet. Their product ecosystem still feels cohesively designed to me, and the new Macbooks have been a fantastic bit of category leading work.
      - JeffSnazz 3y ago
        I can't name a single software feature that they've come out with in the last few years—that's certainly a notable change from their old release cycle.
        xerox13ster 3y ago
        Live Voicemail
        JeffSnazz 3y ago
        Literally never heard of it before this comment. Thanks for the heads up.
        tracerbulletx 3y ago
        Log Video recording on the iPhone was pretty cool for me. But also coming up this year probably are two huge things, an actually good interface for Apple Vision which is a pretty impressive accomplishment, and I would bet a lot that we see a huge revamp of the iPhone this year with on device LLM features.
        r00fus 3y ago
        They're a hardware and cloud services company. Most of the "software" are features for the hardware.
        JeffSnazz 3y ago
        That's certainly how they may see themselves, but the hardware isn't what I buy Apple products to access. It's just a nice perk that the hardware is so well-manufactured, frankly—it's the software that I actually interact with day in and out. I'd be ecstatic running macOS on a thinkpad.
        CydeWeys 3y ago
        > I'd be ecstatic running macOS on a thinkpad. Weird, I have exactly the opposite view. I love the Mac laptop hardware (it's clearly the best in class, with by far the best battery life), but I don't like MacOS. I would much prefer to run Linux (with proper battery performance tuning) on a nice Macbook Pro.
        3y ago
      - joquarky 3y ago
        Do the new MacBooks let you configure AirPod Pros fully yet? I bought a pair thinking my Macbook would let me configure all the settings that you can on an iOS device.
deadmutex 3y ago
> any other team I would have understood. but devs? makes no sense. Other roles in the company also bring in value, and can be considered a "core asset"
- vicnov 3y ago
  I shouldn't have said that, but with any other resource, I think it could have been more difficult to re-allocate, etc., with SWE. It is just.. odd.
wslh 3y ago
I remember a search engine that they built and now forget things that happened in the past and Bing or ChatGPT are more reliable to quickly search for information. It seems like a new Altavista moment [1]. They were caught in the innovation dilemma [2] where improving the search engine will diminish their revenue. I now see several row of ads after a search. More than a year ago, and a year before that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25477535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25477535 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
parl_match 3y ago
> If it were any other team I would have understood. but devs? makes no sense. lmao
forward1 3y ago
It makes no sense to you because you're seeing it from the inside as a developer. Step outside the echo chamber and realize macro-economic trends have replaced the need to innovate with a basic instinct to just survive the coming storm caused by a decade of free money.
- JeffSnazz 3y ago
  I mean it's not even about innovation per se—we've run out of new frontiers to exploit. First it was a literal frontier, then it was an economic frontier, and finally a computer and internet frontier. Maybe VR is the next thing, but I think we may have hit peak technological usefulness (to consumers) and it's all enshittification from here on out.
  - wg0 3y ago
    Profound observation. Further technology from here onwards is only the science fiction level. Computers that can display information on back of your eye lids maybe (with gadgets no more than an earphone while lasting several days on a charge) so that you don't even have to hold your phone. But that's really far far into future and even probably downright forbidden by the physics.
    - InCityDreams 3y ago
      Didn't everything seem like science fiction at one point (sufficiently in the past)? Steam trains, air-flight, computers...
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - vachina 3y ago
    Feels like nobody wants to sit down and work on those “frontiers” anymore. Because working on fundamental ideas don’t get you paid in dollars, maybe just a pat in the back.
  - dr_kiszonka 3y ago
adrr 3y ago
Google has no ability to execute. So instead of making leadership changes, they are just tightening their belt. They are going to be like IBM and just milk their legacy revenue. Waiting for them to sell off Google Cloud to Oracle or Salesforce.
- trashtester 3y ago
  Or they could become like Microsoft under Ballmer, and recover when they get a better CEO.
IvyMike 3y ago
> Is google turning into a pure cash cow with no ambition? I'm an outsider, but Sundar is a man who knows how to make the money machine print money. I'm sure he would claim that he is all for innovation and research, but if you're at google but not a part of the immediate money machinery, I doubt if he thinks about you at all.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Is he? Seems to me he inherited a money machine at the height of a money printing economy and when it comes to actually competing he’s done squat.
  - IvyMike 3y ago
    Not gonna argue against "when it comes to competing he's done squat" because I think we're saying the same thing. But on the other hand... the money machine keeps printing money. https://companiesmarketcap.com/alphabet-google/earnings/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/alphabet-google/earnings/
chucknthem 3y ago
They did promote their Chief Financial Officer to President not too long ago. The signs have been pointing that way for a while before that though.
crdrost 3y ago
So I actually predicted that "probably next year this time there will be more layoffs" when I was laid off about this same time last year by Google. I'm just surprised that it's in the ballpark of ~1000 and not say ~5000. The basic mindset is summed up by a bunch of Eli Goldratt books, which, y'know, don't make them into a new Bible for business or anything, but they raise better questions than the ones you started with. You, oh corporate leader, look out upon the business and reason, "Well, I'm supposed to increase profits. Profits are revenues minus costs. As for revenues, money is coming in through these pipelines, and that's governed by these deals and those contracts and that's fine, there's not much I can do about that. I've got my sales staff, they are paid on commission, that's humming along just fine. So the main thing to increase my profits must be to cut my costs. So let us engage in broad-spectrum cost-cutting to reduce headcount, reduce benefits where we think we can, tighten belts, and then we'll be running a lean, mean, production machine." This happens especially but not exclusively when companies are either experiencing or worried about hard times and money is getting tight. The problem is, the broad spectrum. The easiest way for me to communicate this is pure numbers. You want to think that your company has an 80/20 rule, so 20% of your employees ultimately drive 80% of your performance. You shrink headcount by 10% and you try really hard to use some objective measurements to target that on the 80% of less-performant employees, but you don't succeed fully. Maybe that 20% becomes 19.5% while the 80% becomes 70.5%, to get your 19.5% + 70.5% = 90% and you have cut 10% of headcount. Great, you did so much better than chance! And in theory your performance is only 96% of what it was, so you take that 6% and pocket it as extra profit, right? Except, wrong. The people who were fired were doing something and even if you can work out ways to cancel half of it, you still have 90% of the people doing 95% of what the company did, and this 5% inefficiency is spread across the whole company with no regard for high or low performers. So you actually basically break even, maybe make 1% more profit but it's hard to tell. And the next cycle you have the exact same calculation. It again seems like you'll make 6% more profit by removing the 10% lowest performers, so you do it again, and you don't make the extra profit again.

by vicnov 3y ago

chpatrick 3y ago

It turned into one about ten years ago.

wharvle 3y ago
Slide started when they acquired DoubleClick and the two cultures blurred together (or worse, at the higher levels of the company...) and they were beyond saving when they fully committed to ads-inline-with-search-results rather than just "experimenting" with it.
- vmfunction 3y ago
  This is type of stuff make me not like big corp, the culture and company value eventually corrupts. And if you are like Apple, after the charismatic founder dies, pretty much it goes to shit as well.
  - tracerbulletx 3y ago
    What makes you think that's happened to Apple yet. Their product ecosystem still feels cohesively designed to me, and the new Macbooks have been a fantastic bit of category leading work.
    - JeffSnazz 3y ago
      I can't name a single software feature that they've come out with in the last few years—that's certainly a notable change from their old release cycle.
      - xerox13ster 3y ago
        Live Voicemail
        JeffSnazz 3y ago
        Literally never heard of it before this comment. Thanks for the heads up.
      - tracerbulletx 3y ago
        Log Video recording on the iPhone was pretty cool for me. But also coming up this year probably are two huge things, an actually good interface for Apple Vision which is a pretty impressive accomplishment, and I would bet a lot that we see a huge revamp of the iPhone this year with on device LLM features.
      - r00fus 3y ago
        They're a hardware and cloud services company. Most of the "software" are features for the hardware.
        JeffSnazz 3y ago
        That's certainly how they may see themselves, but the hardware isn't what I buy Apple products to access. It's just a nice perk that the hardware is so well-manufactured, frankly—it's the software that I actually interact with day in and out. I'd be ecstatic running macOS on a thinkpad.
        CydeWeys 3y ago
        > I'd be ecstatic running macOS on a thinkpad. Weird, I have exactly the opposite view. I love the Mac laptop hardware (it's clearly the best in class, with by far the best battery life), but I don't like MacOS. I would much prefer to run Linux (with proper battery performance tuning) on a nice Macbook Pro.
        3y ago
    - joquarky 3y ago
      Do the new MacBooks let you configure AirPod Pros fully yet? I bought a pair thinking my Macbook would let me configure all the settings that you can on an iOS device.

deadmutex 3y ago

> any other team I would have understood. but devs? makes no sense. Other roles in the company also bring in value, and can be considered a "core asset"

vicnov 3y ago
I shouldn't have said that, but with any other resource, I think it could have been more difficult to re-allocate, etc., with SWE. It is just.. odd.

wslh 3y ago

I remember a search engine that they built and now forget things that happened in the past and Bing or ChatGPT are more reliable to quickly search for information. It seems like a new Altavista moment [1]. They were caught in the innovation dilemma [2] where improving the search engine will diminish their revenue. I now see several row of ads after a search. More than a year ago, and a year before that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25477535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25477535 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma

parl_match 3y ago

> If it were any other team I would have understood. but devs? makes no sense. lmao

forward1 3y ago

It makes no sense to you because you're seeing it from the inside as a developer. Step outside the echo chamber and realize macro-economic trends have replaced the need to innovate with a basic instinct to just survive the coming storm caused by a decade of free money.

JeffSnazz 3y ago
I mean it's not even about innovation per se—we've run out of new frontiers to exploit. First it was a literal frontier, then it was an economic frontier, and finally a computer and internet frontier. Maybe VR is the next thing, but I think we may have hit peak technological usefulness (to consumers) and it's all enshittification from here on out.
- wg0 3y ago
  Profound observation. Further technology from here onwards is only the science fiction level. Computers that can display information on back of your eye lids maybe (with gadgets no more than an earphone while lasting several days on a charge) so that you don't even have to hold your phone. But that's really far far into future and even probably downright forbidden by the physics.
  - InCityDreams 3y ago
    Didn't everything seem like science fiction at one point (sufficiently in the past)? Steam trains, air-flight, computers...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- vachina 3y ago
  Feels like nobody wants to sit down and work on those “frontiers” anymore. Because working on fundamental ideas don’t get you paid in dollars, maybe just a pat in the back.
- dr_kiszonka 3y ago

adrr 3y ago

Google has no ability to execute. So instead of making leadership changes, they are just tightening their belt. They are going to be like IBM and just milk their legacy revenue. Waiting for them to sell off Google Cloud to Oracle or Salesforce.

trashtester 3y ago
Or they could become like Microsoft under Ballmer, and recover when they get a better CEO.

IvyMike 3y ago

> Is google turning into a pure cash cow with no ambition? I'm an outsider, but Sundar is a man who knows how to make the money machine print money. I'm sure he would claim that he is all for innovation and research, but if you're at google but not a part of the immediate money machinery, I doubt if he thinks about you at all.

edgyquant 3y ago
Is he? Seems to me he inherited a money machine at the height of a money printing economy and when it comes to actually competing he’s done squat.
- IvyMike 3y ago
  Not gonna argue against "when it comes to competing he's done squat" because I think we're saying the same thing. But on the other hand... the money machine keeps printing money. https://companiesmarketcap.com/alphabet-google/earnings/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/alphabet-google/earnings/

chucknthem 3y ago

They did promote their Chief Financial Officer to President not too long ago. The signs have been pointing that way for a while before that though.

crdrost 3y ago

So I actually predicted that "probably next year this time there will be more layoffs" when I was laid off about this same time last year by Google. I'm just surprised that it's in the ballpark of ~1000 and not say ~5000. The basic mindset is summed up by a bunch of Eli Goldratt books, which, y'know, don't make them into a new Bible for business or anything, but they raise better questions than the ones you started with. You, oh corporate leader, look out upon the business and reason, "Well, I'm supposed to increase profits. Profits are revenues minus costs. As for revenues, money is coming in through these pipelines, and that's governed by these deals and those contracts and that's fine, there's not much I can do about that. I've got my sales staff, they are paid on commission, that's humming along just fine. So the main thing to increase my profits must be to cut my costs. So let us engage in broad-spectrum cost-cutting to reduce headcount, reduce benefits where we think we can, tighten belts, and then we'll be running a lean, mean, production machine." This happens especially but not exclusively when companies are either experiencing or worried about hard times and money is getting tight. The problem is, the broad spectrum. The easiest way for me to communicate this is pure numbers. You want to think that your company has an 80/20 rule, so 20% of your employees ultimately drive 80% of your performance. You shrink headcount by 10% and you try really hard to use some objective measurements to target that on the 80% of less-performant employees, but you don't succeed fully. Maybe that 20% becomes 19.5% while the 80% becomes 70.5%, to get your 19.5% + 70.5% = 90% and you have cut 10% of headcount. Great, you did so much better than chance! And in theory your performance is only 96% of what it was, so you take that 6% and pocket it as extra profit, right? Except, wrong. The people who were fired were doing something and even if you can work out ways to cancel half of it, you still have 90% of the people doing 95% of what the company did, and this 5% inefficiency is spread across the whole company with no regard for high or low performers. So you actually basically break even, maybe make 1% more profit but it's hard to tell. And the next cycle you have the exact same calculation. It again seems like you'll make 6% more profit by removing the 10% lowest performers, so you do it again, and you don't make the extra profit again.