4 ms·

Don't think the Bell Labs people were pulling Google tier TC.

nonameiguess 3y ago
This is the real core of the problem. Bell Labs was populated by hackers who were perfectly content to earn double to triple what an average factory worker was getting for less toil while doing cool shit. FAANGs became too profitable and attracted people who would have been finance bros in the 90s. Engineers expected to be compensated like quants and directors like portfolio managers. You don't get a Skunk Works or DARPA from that. Moonshot basic research like that may or may not make money. Your fundamental motivating force has to be doing cool shit, not getting rich. If you want something like Google X to work, the culture has to be such that no one is going to jump ship when Netflix offers to double your cash compensation. How do you get this? I don't even know. As far as I can tell, a lot of 20th century Skunk Works and Bell Labs type of stuff was motivated by heavy government investment and individual patriotism in trying to outdo Nazis and Soviets for the sake of free civilization. Bell himself was an interesting case. He only invented the telephone in the first place as part of his research into helping deaf people and he invested most of his riches from the invention back into research for helping deaf people. He rather presciently never even owned a telephone and refused to allow one in his personal workspace because of fear it would distract from the work.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  You make a lot of good points, but was the failure of Google moonshots really the fault of the workers who were easily lured by comp, or management who were impatient about seeing material results? Seems like either could have been chasing higher returns. Initiatives like Google Fiber flaming out were certainly not the fault of anyone at the company. Maybe for drastically underestimating the difficulty of the problem. Actually, maybe that’s a reoccurring issue with these moonshots.
  - nonameiguess 3y ago
    I try to look at systems level more than blaming certain individuals. I'm sure a lot of engineers working on Google X projects honest to God cared deeply about the specific problem they were tackling. My own wife was once pretty close to taking a job there. But unless they're going to donate labor by working for free, they can't fund the projects themselves. The company has to be willing to lose money on most if not all of their work. I guess that worked for a while when ads were so profitable and no one else did them well enough. I may be misremembering my history, but as far as I understood, Bell Labs had to do this kind of public good work as a condition of being granted a national monopoly. At the cultural level, though, during periods like the space race and cold war, there seemed to be a national zeitgeist such that companies, their owners, their directors, were all willing to sacrifice some profit to serve a common national mission. Maybe it was just the fact that the CEOs had grown up in a time when food was rationed and factories were ordered by federal fiat to produce war materiel. I don't actually think this type of culture is completely dead, for what it's worth. But it's not exactly in vogue. I personally work in defense, I served in the Army, and I make more than enough money but quite a bit less than Netflix likely would have paid me, but I work on products that serve US strategic interests. Entire companies exist explicitly for this purpose, but they're not Google scale and never will be. I don't think very many people on Hacker News would even consider this good, though. Witness the backlash to OpenAI even being willing to work on military applications at all. The readership is so cynical that they can't imagine a military serving any purpose aside from valueless destruction. In the 20th century when militaries saved the world from German and Japanese conquest and mass genocide, that kind of thinking was a lot less prevalent. I also don't think these are the only two options, either. People can also be motivated purely by the science itself or by the global wellbeing of all mankind. I just don't know that, historically speaking, those bring large-scale resource mobilization to bear quite as well as getting rich and ensuring the continued strategic dominance of a way of life represented by a country of birth you deeply believe in. As people come to believe less and less in their own countries, we seem to be left mostly with getting rich as the only viable option.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      If I had to guess, it's because from the Iraq War to modern day border theater, popular image of the military ain't what it used to be. It also seems like tech intended for defense is adjacent to civilian intelligence and law enforcement use, of which there is also cynicism and fears of surveillance- see Palantir viewed as the commercial equivalent to PRISM, for instance. The public has had substantial loss of faith in its institutions in the past couple of decades, and the military is not exempt from it. America's foreign policy has come a long way since WWII. Politics aside, I've also seen cynicism towards Silicon Valley tech from the defense world- USAF vet and commentator Mike Black's vitriolic criticism of Anduril and other defense startups, for instance (e.g. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1575677683211505665.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1575677683211505665.html https://twitter.com/mikeblack114/status/1730453326817276026 https://twitter.com/mikeblack114/status/1730453326817276026 https://twitter.com/MikeBlack114/status/1736481633358770353 https://twitter.com/MikeBlack114/status/1736481633358770353 https://twitter.com/MikeBlack114/status/1741366626006560864 https://twitter.com/MikeBlack114/status/1741366626006560864). Though that is tangential to your point. But I don't think all is lost. I'm pretty sure solidly civilian organizations like United States Digital Service and 18F have good reputations, much like the Postal Service does. But all of them receive a pittance of investment compared to defense spending.
- dmoy 3y ago
  > How do you get this? I don't even know. Well one component that has changed there is that the marginal tax rate on the inflation-equivalent of a Google Director pay back then was 80-90%, so there wasn't really a point in enticing people with large salaries. Also, the factory workers you mentioned could afford houses in a big city on a single income. Now a single FAANG eng struggles to do the same unless they get N promotions, and even moreso if you tack childcare costs on top.
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    150% nailed what happened to the culture in the most concise way I've ever seen anyone do it. Absolutely not: re factory workers affording houses in big city on single income in 1960s.
ash 3y ago
What's TC?
- Fripplebubby 3y ago
  total compensation

This is the real core of the problem. Bell Labs was populated by hackers who were perfectly content to earn double to triple what an average factory worker was getting for less toil while doing cool shit. FAANGs became too profitable and attracted people who would have been finance bros in the 90s. Engineers expected to be compensated like quants and directors like portfolio managers. You don't get a Skunk Works or DARPA from that. Moonshot basic research like that may or may not make money. Your fundamental motivating force has to be doing cool shit, not getting rich. If you want something like Google X to work, the culture has to be such that no one is going to jump ship when Netflix offers to double your cash compensation. How do you get this? I don't even know. As far as I can tell, a lot of 20th century Skunk Works and Bell Labs type of stuff was motivated by heavy government investment and individual patriotism in trying to outdo Nazis and Soviets for the sake of free civilization. Bell himself was an interesting case. He only invented the telephone in the first place as part of his research into helping deaf people and he invested most of his riches from the invention back into research for helping deaf people. He rather presciently never even owned a telephone and refused to allow one in his personal workspace because of fear it would distract from the work.

Apocryphon 3y ago
You make a lot of good points, but was the failure of Google moonshots really the fault of the workers who were easily lured by comp, or management who were impatient about seeing material results? Seems like either could have been chasing higher returns. Initiatives like Google Fiber flaming out were certainly not the fault of anyone at the company. Maybe for drastically underestimating the difficulty of the problem. Actually, maybe that’s a reoccurring issue with these moonshots.
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  I try to look at systems level more than blaming certain individuals. I'm sure a lot of engineers working on Google X projects honest to God cared deeply about the specific problem they were tackling. My own wife was once pretty close to taking a job there. But unless they're going to donate labor by working for free, they can't fund the projects themselves. The company has to be willing to lose money on most if not all of their work. I guess that worked for a while when ads were so profitable and no one else did them well enough. I may be misremembering my history, but as far as I understood, Bell Labs had to do this kind of public good work as a condition of being granted a national monopoly. At the cultural level, though, during periods like the space race and cold war, there seemed to be a national zeitgeist such that companies, their owners, their directors, were all willing to sacrifice some profit to serve a common national mission. Maybe it was just the fact that the CEOs had grown up in a time when food was rationed and factories were ordered by federal fiat to produce war materiel. I don't actually think this type of culture is completely dead, for what it's worth. But it's not exactly in vogue. I personally work in defense, I served in the Army, and I make more than enough money but quite a bit less than Netflix likely would have paid me, but I work on products that serve US strategic interests. Entire companies exist explicitly for this purpose, but they're not Google scale and never will be. I don't think very many people on Hacker News would even consider this good, though. Witness the backlash to OpenAI even being willing to work on military applications at all. The readership is so cynical that they can't imagine a military serving any purpose aside from valueless destruction. In the 20th century when militaries saved the world from German and Japanese conquest and mass genocide, that kind of thinking was a lot less prevalent. I also don't think these are the only two options, either. People can also be motivated purely by the science itself or by the global wellbeing of all mankind. I just don't know that, historically speaking, those bring large-scale resource mobilization to bear quite as well as getting rich and ensuring the continued strategic dominance of a way of life represented by a country of birth you deeply believe in. As people come to believe less and less in their own countries, we seem to be left mostly with getting rich as the only viable option.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    If I had to guess, it's because from the Iraq War to modern day border theater, popular image of the military ain't what it used to be. It also seems like tech intended for defense is adjacent to civilian intelligence and law enforcement use, of which there is also cynicism and fears of surveillance- see Palantir viewed as the commercial equivalent to PRISM, for instance. The public has had substantial loss of faith in its institutions in the past couple of decades, and the military is not exempt from it. America's foreign policy has come a long way since WWII. Politics aside, I've also seen cynicism towards Silicon Valley tech from the defense world- USAF vet and commentator Mike Black's vitriolic criticism of Anduril and other defense startups, for instance (e.g. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1575677683211505665.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1575677683211505665.html https://twitter.com/mikeblack114/status/1730453326817276026 https://twitter.com/mikeblack114/status/1730453326817276026 https://twitter.com/MikeBlack114/status/1736481633358770353 https://twitter.com/MikeBlack114/status/1736481633358770353 https://twitter.com/MikeBlack114/status/1741366626006560864 https://twitter.com/MikeBlack114/status/1741366626006560864). Though that is tangential to your point. But I don't think all is lost. I'm pretty sure solidly civilian organizations like United States Digital Service and 18F have good reputations, much like the Postal Service does. But all of them receive a pittance of investment compared to defense spending.
dmoy 3y ago
> How do you get this? I don't even know. Well one component that has changed there is that the marginal tax rate on the inflation-equivalent of a Google Director pay back then was 80-90%, so there wasn't really a point in enticing people with large salaries. Also, the factory workers you mentioned could afford houses in a big city on a single income. Now a single FAANG eng struggles to do the same unless they get N promotions, and even moreso if you tack childcare costs on top.
- refulgentis 3y ago
  150% nailed what happened to the culture in the most concise way I've ever seen anyone do it. Absolutely not: re factory workers affording houses in big city on single income in 1960s.

ash 3y ago

What's TC?

Fripplebubby 3y ago
total compensation