4 ms·

Are there any places today that are like Google in the early days? I would love to work at a place like this.

by zffr 3y ago

pfannkuchen 3y ago
Probably but by the time the conditions are well known it has started degrading already. I’m convinced that ending up at a place like that in the early days has a massive luck component, even if you are the sort of person who would trivially get in hiring bar wise.
potatolicious 3y ago
IMO no. The unique combination of parameters with early-Google were: - Small, relatively young company. - Absolutely gargantuan amounts of revenue You can't run a company this way unless you have a very large money firehose. The last time this happened was early-Facebook. I don't think there has been a single company since then that fit the description - which IMO is fine, the celestial alignment of factors is pretty rare. Companies nowadays have kind of the opposite problem: lots of hiring, but not enough revenue to show for it. Some tried to build a similar culture on VC funding but imploded once the cash ran out. You really need an intensely profitable product to make this formula work.
- gorbachev 3y ago
  Some of the runaway gaming companies were like this as well. Zynga comes to mind. That changed quite quickly.
- deepGem 3y ago
  I read somewhere that Google had to increase all it's perks just to increase expenses so as to balance out some small revenue %. Their early growth was that insane. No company has such luxury today. The barriers to entry almost everywhere is levelled. No company will have the profit head start that Google had, at least not in tech.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Indeed. I don't know that something like this can ever happen again, barring another major upset. Many people don't realize or remember how transformative the dot-com era really was. The amount of money firehose that was there to go around was staggering. We're just at a much more mature point in the market. Ironically, a lot of the people that make it difficult/impossible to have the money firehose are the ones that made their fortune from that environment! It's still possible for a one-off startup here and there to maybe get into this boat, but at this point the big tech players are there to slurp up the real money makers early and often and assimilate them into the borg. If this sort of environment were what I wanted to work in, I'd probably look at specialized teams/niches inside of big corps. Surely very difficult to find, but they do exist.
- Animats 3y ago
  Roblox was like that for a while. They did some nice work on scaling up big MMOs with user-created content, something I'm into. They overexpanded, losing money on every user. They'd gone public, and the stock is way down. Peaked at $126, now $40. Despite many attempts, they just can't retain users beyond middle school.
  - ufocia 3y ago
    Not to digress too far from the OP, but Roblox graphics are ass. If they could do Fortnite they would capture the more lucrative demographics.
- whatyesaid 3y ago
  I also think that experimental culture is gone due to things like startup culture. Any half viable idea, they leave and create a startup. So Google has really only been doing obvious ideas. Like Pixel phones, Pixel buds, getting into cloud too late.
  - I_AM_A_SMURF 3y ago
    That's true, that's not much incentive for a brilliant individual to do something inside Google when they can do it outside and make a lot more money without any politics. In the 0% interest rate world anyway.
- ramraj07 3y ago
  Google was like this before they identified the ad firehose. Facebook didn’t find its own profits until way after IPO. Thats not the correct answer. It was that they were instantly truly successful without being blatantly exploitative (which Uber et al were). And the investors trusted that they will find their profits somewhere. That environment doesn’t exist anymore. Except maybe in OpenAI.
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    OpenAI seems to be a bunch of people who spend 18 hours a day trying to bring about AGI, though. Driven, sure, but nobody is looking to solve world hunger there unless it involves a cluster of GPUs in some way.
    - ramraj07 3y ago
      I don’t remember Google solving world hunger either?
      - saagarjha 3y ago
        Sure, but they had people who tried. I can’t say that they were effective but you could actually work on “I’m going to work with farmers in China to see if we can boost their crop yields” as your job, at least you could in the past.
    - bakuninsbart 3y ago
      AGI might solve world hunger, although that particular problem seems to be more about societal organization and trust between people. AGI would without doubt lead to an incredible productivity boost though, and that helps solve many existential problems we currently have as well.
      - saagarjha 3y ago
        Right, that’s what I’m talking about. Early Google wasn’t like “oh if we pair people with better ads the markets become more efficient and this society benefits” or whatever. They literally had people working on protein folding because they were interested in it.
- bananapub 3y ago
  > - Absolutely gargantuan amounts of revenue clearly you're incorrect, since Google was (famously!) exactly like this before the ads firehose of cash started.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
neilv 3y ago
I also want to know the answer to this, but I'm starting to think I might not recognize it. Part of Google's perceived aura (IMHO) when they started was that they seemed to be like the nebulous group of pre-Web Internet-savvy techies. Which were a smart group, tending towards altruistic and egalitarian, and wanting to bring Internet goodness to people, and onboard people into Internet culture. What seemed like one sign of this was times that you'd see old-school techies outside of Google treating Google like stewards rather than exploiters. And when they said "Don't Be Evil", I thought I knew exactly what they meant. Well, the dotcom gold rush happened, huge masses of people rushed in looking for what it was about, huge money rushed in and soon tried to landgrab and then exploit those masses rather than onboard them, Doubleclick acquired Google :), techie job interviews started looking like rituals to induct affluent young new grads into their rightful upper-middle career paths, unethical behaviors became so commonplace that people can't even see them, and academia was infected a bit. Which I think means... ...If another Google happened, would we even recognize it? From where could it draw its culture that's not pretty completely overtaken by big money and all that attracts and builds? Maybe the next Google can't be in the space of computing/communications/information at all, because big money and and coattail-riders would be all over that too quickly. Maybe it would instead arise from people that really love to study insects. And they have a cooperative community around that, and have been trying to explain the importance of insects to the world for years, but not many care. Then it turns out that insects are the key to averting an imminent Earth extinction-level event. So the bug nuts get huge infusions of cash, and can work on all the problems they've wanted to. And it'll be at least a few years before people with no interest in insects, other than chasing money, can really take over and start perverting the field, set up gatekeeping to pass people like them, while excluding the actual people who created and loved the field and saved the world, etc. Personally, I have always disliked bugs, and will never be a candidate for Bügle.
- ants_everywhere 3y ago
  > Maybe it would instead arise from people that really love to study insects. Join the ant revolution!
  - baxtr 3y ago
xnx 3y ago
If a company had invented LLMs by themselves (without anyone else having the technology) that would be a very similar situation to what Google was in the early days.
- querez 3y ago
  Unfortunately, that's exactly the thought that killed Google Brain :(

Are there any places today that are like Google in the early days? I would love to work at a place like this.

by zffr 3y ago

Are there any places today that are like Google in the early days? I would love to work at a place like this.

Probably but by the time the conditions are well known it has started degrading already. I’m convinced that ending up at a place like that in the early days has a massive luck component, even if you are the sort of person who would trivially get in hiring bar wise.

potatolicious 3y ago

IMO no. The unique combination of parameters with early-Google were: - Small, relatively young company. - Absolutely gargantuan amounts of revenue You can't run a company this way unless you have a very large money firehose. The last time this happened was early-Facebook. I don't think there has been a single company since then that fit the description - which IMO is fine, the celestial alignment of factors is pretty rare. Companies nowadays have kind of the opposite problem: lots of hiring, but not enough revenue to show for it. Some tried to build a similar culture on VC funding but imploded once the cash ran out. You really need an intensely profitable product to make this formula work.

gorbachev 3y ago
Some of the runaway gaming companies were like this as well. Zynga comes to mind. That changed quite quickly.
deepGem 3y ago
I read somewhere that Google had to increase all it's perks just to increase expenses so as to balance out some small revenue %. Their early growth was that insane. No company has such luxury today. The barriers to entry almost everywhere is levelled. No company will have the profit head start that Google had, at least not in tech.
freedomben 3y ago
Indeed. I don't know that something like this can ever happen again, barring another major upset. Many people don't realize or remember how transformative the dot-com era really was. The amount of money firehose that was there to go around was staggering. We're just at a much more mature point in the market. Ironically, a lot of the people that make it difficult/impossible to have the money firehose are the ones that made their fortune from that environment! It's still possible for a one-off startup here and there to maybe get into this boat, but at this point the big tech players are there to slurp up the real money makers early and often and assimilate them into the borg. If this sort of environment were what I wanted to work in, I'd probably look at specialized teams/niches inside of big corps. Surely very difficult to find, but they do exist.
Animats 3y ago
Roblox was like that for a while. They did some nice work on scaling up big MMOs with user-created content, something I'm into. They overexpanded, losing money on every user. They'd gone public, and the stock is way down. Peaked at $126, now $40. Despite many attempts, they just can't retain users beyond middle school.
- ufocia 3y ago
  Not to digress too far from the OP, but Roblox graphics are ass. If they could do Fortnite they would capture the more lucrative demographics.
whatyesaid 3y ago
I also think that experimental culture is gone due to things like startup culture. Any half viable idea, they leave and create a startup. So Google has really only been doing obvious ideas. Like Pixel phones, Pixel buds, getting into cloud too late.
- I_AM_A_SMURF 3y ago
  That's true, that's not much incentive for a brilliant individual to do something inside Google when they can do it outside and make a lot more money without any politics. In the 0% interest rate world anyway.
ramraj07 3y ago
Google was like this before they identified the ad firehose. Facebook didn’t find its own profits until way after IPO. Thats not the correct answer. It was that they were instantly truly successful without being blatantly exploitative (which Uber et al were). And the investors trusted that they will find their profits somewhere. That environment doesn’t exist anymore. Except maybe in OpenAI.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  OpenAI seems to be a bunch of people who spend 18 hours a day trying to bring about AGI, though. Driven, sure, but nobody is looking to solve world hunger there unless it involves a cluster of GPUs in some way.
  - ramraj07 3y ago
    I don’t remember Google solving world hunger either?
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      Sure, but they had people who tried. I can’t say that they were effective but you could actually work on “I’m going to work with farmers in China to see if we can boost their crop yields” as your job, at least you could in the past.
  - bakuninsbart 3y ago
    AGI might solve world hunger, although that particular problem seems to be more about societal organization and trust between people. AGI would without doubt lead to an incredible productivity boost though, and that helps solve many existential problems we currently have as well.
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      Right, that’s what I’m talking about. Early Google wasn’t like “oh if we pair people with better ads the markets become more efficient and this society benefits” or whatever. They literally had people working on protein folding because they were interested in it.
bananapub 3y ago
> - Absolutely gargantuan amounts of revenue clearly you're incorrect, since Google was (famously!) exactly like this before the ads firehose of cash started.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

neilv 3y ago

I also want to know the answer to this, but I'm starting to think I might not recognize it. Part of Google's perceived aura (IMHO) when they started was that they seemed to be like the nebulous group of pre-Web Internet-savvy techies. Which were a smart group, tending towards altruistic and egalitarian, and wanting to bring Internet goodness to people, and onboard people into Internet culture. What seemed like one sign of this was times that you'd see old-school techies outside of Google treating Google like stewards rather than exploiters. And when they said "Don't Be Evil", I thought I knew exactly what they meant. Well, the dotcom gold rush happened, huge masses of people rushed in looking for what it was about, huge money rushed in and soon tried to landgrab and then exploit those masses rather than onboard them, Doubleclick acquired Google :), techie job interviews started looking like rituals to induct affluent young new grads into their rightful upper-middle career paths, unethical behaviors became so commonplace that people can't even see them, and academia was infected a bit. Which I think means... ...If another Google happened, would we even recognize it? From where could it draw its culture that's not pretty completely overtaken by big money and all that attracts and builds? Maybe the next Google can't be in the space of computing/communications/information at all, because big money and and coattail-riders would be all over that too quickly. Maybe it would instead arise from people that really love to study insects. And they have a cooperative community around that, and have been trying to explain the importance of insects to the world for years, but not many care. Then it turns out that insects are the key to averting an imminent Earth extinction-level event. So the bug nuts get huge infusions of cash, and can work on all the problems they've wanted to. And it'll be at least a few years before people with no interest in insects, other than chasing money, can really take over and start perverting the field, set up gatekeeping to pass people like them, while excluding the actual people who created and loved the field and saved the world, etc. Personally, I have always disliked bugs, and will never be a candidate for Bügle.

ants_everywhere 3y ago
> Maybe it would instead arise from people that really love to study insects. Join the ant revolution!
- baxtr 3y ago

xnx 3y ago

If a company had invented LLMs by themselves (without anyone else having the technology) that would be a very similar situation to what Google was in the early days.

querez 3y ago
Unfortunately, that's exactly the thought that killed Google Brain :(