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Why? Attach seasoned product teams from Google to the research org and have experienced PMs paired with experienced EMs launch products. Trying to transition a

Why? Attach seasoned product teams from Google to the research org and have experienced PMs paired with experienced EMs launch products. Trying to transition a research org into a product org is going to be needlessly painful, especially since the research org needs to be firing on all cylinders in this hyper-competitive space.

advael 2y ago
God, yea. I've flipped between R&D and product development a few times in my career, sometimes at the same company, and it's a really rough transition even for an individual experienced in both. I can't imagine trying to flip a whole research team to make products is going to go well, especially when the products are getting a ton of well-deserved bad press and a lot of those researchers were coming from academia rather than elsewhere in industry in the first place
gaogao 2y ago
Agreed. As an example of that, Meta's kept its research org, FAIR, still doing fundamental research. Research orgs are great at demos, but actual productionalization takes a different mindset.
- nomad_horse 2y ago
  FAIR is considerably downscaled from what it was before, in eg 2022.
- fooker 2y ago
  Fun anecdote: some folks from FAIR reached out to a friend, asked her to apply, and then rejected her without an interview!
  - htrp 2y ago
    Facebook's recruiting funnel is super broken after they fired a ton of their HR teams
  - bsilvereagle 2y ago
    Referrals are vetted by global teams who are just checking boxes - it's very common to have to reach out to the recruiter for the role directly to resurrect a rejected referral.
oivey 2y ago
More than likely for the sorts of products they want to make you still need very deep research expertise that random product teams won’t have.
- lupire 2y ago
  Deep research expertise into tuning an LLM into a user friendly product? Who do you think has that expertise? The people working on the model or the people studying users?
  - 4death4 2y ago
    Definitely the people working on the model. It ultimately doesn’t matter what the users want because you can’t arbitrarily deliver an experience. You can only deliver what it’s possible to extract from the model, so growing the possible things the model can do well is most important.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Engineering and product are both important. Without engineering, you don't have the capability. Without product, you don't build something users are actually interested in. I've seen too many engineering teams try to productize what they want, not what people not-them want, and then be flummoxed by lack of adoption. Nothing sucks more than burning the midnight oil to nail a target... that ended up being 2m to the right of the actual target.
    - rusticpenn 2y ago
      I have experience in both R&D and product. Both need different approaches to work. The goals of people working on the model will be different from product people. As mentioned by the other user, a product team can look at things produced from research and see how it can bring it to users.
    - hobs 2y ago
      In my mind you could not be proving that we need product people more. They'd never say "It ultimately doesn’t matter what the users want" - they'd say "let's find a way to build what users want" not "let's grow the possible things a model can do well".
lupire 2y ago
The researchers aren't suddenly building products.
Vt71fcAqt7 2y ago
>seasoned product teams from Google .
TaylorAlexander 2y ago
Yep. I joined Google X Robotics (which became Everyday Robots, which got canceled) just as the org was winding down a big R&D push and moving to product development. Engineers were palpably hurt by their various projects being canceled, and in my opinion they never had a viable product strategy beyond “let’s see if we can find a consumer use for this robot”. This strategy ultimately failed and they canceled the project, let go a bunch of the people, and now the robots are being used for AI research. So the whole shift from R&D to product development was a failure. They could have saved a lot of grief and money if they just continued as an R&D org, and in my opinion they would have left open some important doors which would have really helped with AI research.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- astromaniak 2y ago
  I'm afraid this is going to be another Everyday Robots or Boston Dynamics. Google is ruled by managers, not visionaries. Strategy is 'try and see if it works in 4 years. if not cancel'. They followed it in many cases. So, DeepMind's cancellation is long overdue. A couple of years back one of Google's top managers talking about AGI said it's most likely to happen in DM. But current LLM boom happened elsewhere. Likely managers are disappointed in DM.
  - aborsy 2y ago
    To fair, Google invented transformers and contributed a lot of basic research. OpenAI made it bigger.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      And Xerox invented the GUI and Kodak the digital camera, and look at them today. Inventing things is no guarantee of success.
      - robertlagrant 2y ago
dylan604 2y ago
Isn't this the mindset that has PoCs released to production?
boyka 2y ago
Likely that some McKinsey type consultants or ex-consultants in senior management deem this to be absolutely necessary and the only way to go.
stephen_cagle 2y ago
I tend to agree. I'm curious whether this is Deepmind saying "I think we could do things better, let's do this ourselves" or the leadership of Alphabet saying "Get these ivy league intellectuals to prioritize productionizing products!" Would seem far more sensible to allow Deepmind to continue to release hit after hit in the ML research world, and simply embed "fly on the wall" PM's into their org that can independently productionize any golden nuggets they happen to create.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  I feel it's more of leadership of Alphabet saying, "Our people literally invented transformers, so how come we're at the bottom of AI race instead of at the top? A random non-profit took out research and run with it, and they're the hottest company in the world now. This is unacceptable![0]". Bad idea. People good or lucky enough to land in R&D like doing R&D. Force them to be product people, I expect most of them will leave. -- [0] - Like Muffin from Bluey, https://youtu.be/hZVlBQXVtZA?t=8 https://youtu.be/hZVlBQXVtZA?t=8.
  - smallnamespace 2y ago
    Yes, but that doesn't explain how OpenAI able to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time, unless you think there is some extra spark that Google is lacking.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      I think OpenAI was chilled out, and mostly lucky. Chilled in the sense that Google seems to be too full of itself, and their practice of publishing groundbreaking research without actually publishing anything other people can use is, frankly, annoying. OpenAI managed to leapfrog them by slapping a chat interface on a tuned GPT-3 and putting it on the Internet. The chat service bit is them being chill, but the real spark was the model. I say they were lucky, because AFAIK back then no one expected LLMs to show so many and so advanced general capabilities. This took everyone by surprise, and since people could already play with it, ChatGPT took off on its own - it had so much real, transformative value, that it spread out with zero marketing. That's a rare, bona fide case of "word of mouth", it was just that useful. But that wasn't a strategy, that was luck. To their credit though, OpenAI turned this early win into an opportunity and is excellent at exploiting it. Being small helps.
hotstickyballs 2y ago
That would require Google to have enough "seasoned product teams"
- michaelt 2y ago
  Google has cancelled more products that most companies have ever launched. You'd think they'd have plenty of spare people with product launch experience.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    Maybe the only people they retained have product turndown experience.
lenerdenator 2y ago
> Why? Must transfer value, and the guy in charge of the company is not good at allocating the company's resources to do that with an eye on long-term results.
pixiemaster 2y ago
well actually i don’t think google has good PMs - besides adwords and android, there are no really successful products.
nobutterbetter 2y ago
[dead]
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
> Why? Because the current way they were working squandered over a decade lead in the space. Deep Dream was 2015... Google Magenta was 2017...
hot_gril 2y ago
Maybe that's what they're doing. The article just says they're combining the two labs, not much further detail.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

advael 2y ago

God, yea. I've flipped between R&D and product development a few times in my career, sometimes at the same company, and it's a really rough transition even for an individual experienced in both. I can't imagine trying to flip a whole research team to make products is going to go well, especially when the products are getting a ton of well-deserved bad press and a lot of those researchers were coming from academia rather than elsewhere in industry in the first place

gaogao 2y ago

Agreed. As an example of that, Meta's kept its research org, FAIR, still doing fundamental research. Research orgs are great at demos, but actual productionalization takes a different mindset.

nomad_horse 2y ago
FAIR is considerably downscaled from what it was before, in eg 2022.
fooker 2y ago
Fun anecdote: some folks from FAIR reached out to a friend, asked her to apply, and then rejected her without an interview!
- htrp 2y ago
  Facebook's recruiting funnel is super broken after they fired a ton of their HR teams
- bsilvereagle 2y ago
  Referrals are vetted by global teams who are just checking boxes - it's very common to have to reach out to the recruiter for the role directly to resurrect a rejected referral.

oivey 2y ago

More than likely for the sorts of products they want to make you still need very deep research expertise that random product teams won’t have.

lupire 2y ago
Deep research expertise into tuning an LLM into a user friendly product? Who do you think has that expertise? The people working on the model or the people studying users?
- 4death4 2y ago
  Definitely the people working on the model. It ultimately doesn’t matter what the users want because you can’t arbitrarily deliver an experience. You can only deliver what it’s possible to extract from the model, so growing the possible things the model can do well is most important.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Engineering and product are both important. Without engineering, you don't have the capability. Without product, you don't build something users are actually interested in. I've seen too many engineering teams try to productize what they want, not what people not-them want, and then be flummoxed by lack of adoption. Nothing sucks more than burning the midnight oil to nail a target... that ended up being 2m to the right of the actual target.
  - rusticpenn 2y ago
    I have experience in both R&D and product. Both need different approaches to work. The goals of people working on the model will be different from product people. As mentioned by the other user, a product team can look at things produced from research and see how it can bring it to users.
  - hobs 2y ago
    In my mind you could not be proving that we need product people more. They'd never say "It ultimately doesn’t matter what the users want" - they'd say "let's find a way to build what users want" not "let's grow the possible things a model can do well".

lupire 2y ago

The researchers aren't suddenly building products.

Vt71fcAqt7 2y ago

>seasoned product teams from Google .

TaylorAlexander 2y ago

Yep. I joined Google X Robotics (which became Everyday Robots, which got canceled) just as the org was winding down a big R&D push and moving to product development. Engineers were palpably hurt by their various projects being canceled, and in my opinion they never had a viable product strategy beyond “let’s see if we can find a consumer use for this robot”. This strategy ultimately failed and they canceled the project, let go a bunch of the people, and now the robots are being used for AI research. So the whole shift from R&D to product development was a failure. They could have saved a lot of grief and money if they just continued as an R&D org, and in my opinion they would have left open some important doors which would have really helped with AI research.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
astromaniak 2y ago
I'm afraid this is going to be another Everyday Robots or Boston Dynamics. Google is ruled by managers, not visionaries. Strategy is 'try and see if it works in 4 years. if not cancel'. They followed it in many cases. So, DeepMind's cancellation is long overdue. A couple of years back one of Google's top managers talking about AGI said it's most likely to happen in DM. But current LLM boom happened elsewhere. Likely managers are disappointed in DM.
- aborsy 2y ago
  To fair, Google invented transformers and contributed a lot of basic research. OpenAI made it bigger.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    And Xerox invented the GUI and Kodak the digital camera, and look at them today. Inventing things is no guarantee of success.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago

dylan604 2y ago

Isn't this the mindset that has PoCs released to production?

boyka 2y ago

Likely that some McKinsey type consultants or ex-consultants in senior management deem this to be absolutely necessary and the only way to go.

stephen_cagle 2y ago

I tend to agree. I'm curious whether this is Deepmind saying "I think we could do things better, let's do this ourselves" or the leadership of Alphabet saying "Get these ivy league intellectuals to prioritize productionizing products!" Would seem far more sensible to allow Deepmind to continue to release hit after hit in the ML research world, and simply embed "fly on the wall" PM's into their org that can independently productionize any golden nuggets they happen to create.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
I feel it's more of leadership of Alphabet saying, "Our people literally invented transformers, so how come we're at the bottom of AI race instead of at the top? A random non-profit took out research and run with it, and they're the hottest company in the world now. This is unacceptable![0]". Bad idea. People good or lucky enough to land in R&D like doing R&D. Force them to be product people, I expect most of them will leave. -- [0] - Like Muffin from Bluey, https://youtu.be/hZVlBQXVtZA?t=8 https://youtu.be/hZVlBQXVtZA?t=8.
- smallnamespace 2y ago
  Yes, but that doesn't explain how OpenAI able to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time, unless you think there is some extra spark that Google is lacking.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    I think OpenAI was chilled out, and mostly lucky. Chilled in the sense that Google seems to be too full of itself, and their practice of publishing groundbreaking research without actually publishing anything other people can use is, frankly, annoying. OpenAI managed to leapfrog them by slapping a chat interface on a tuned GPT-3 and putting it on the Internet. The chat service bit is them being chill, but the real spark was the model. I say they were lucky, because AFAIK back then no one expected LLMs to show so many and so advanced general capabilities. This took everyone by surprise, and since people could already play with it, ChatGPT took off on its own - it had so much real, transformative value, that it spread out with zero marketing. That's a rare, bona fide case of "word of mouth", it was just that useful. But that wasn't a strategy, that was luck. To their credit though, OpenAI turned this early win into an opportunity and is excellent at exploiting it. Being small helps.

hotstickyballs 2y ago

That would require Google to have enough "seasoned product teams"

michaelt 2y ago
Google has cancelled more products that most companies have ever launched. You'd think they'd have plenty of spare people with product launch experience.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  Maybe the only people they retained have product turndown experience.

lenerdenator 2y ago

> Why? Must transfer value, and the guy in charge of the company is not good at allocating the company's resources to do that with an eye on long-term results.

pixiemaster 2y ago

well actually i don’t think google has good PMs - besides adwords and android, there are no really successful products.

nobutterbetter 2y ago

[dead]

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

> Why? Because the current way they were working squandered over a decade lead in the space. Deep Dream was 2015... Google Magenta was 2017...

hot_gril 2y ago

Maybe that's what they're doing. The article just says they're combining the two labs, not much further detail.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]