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This article really lends credence to the idea that Mayer was hated inside Google. She set up her very own Waffen-SS of unskilled, inexperienced credit takers
by codeonfire 14y ago
This article really lends credence to the idea that Mayer was hated inside Google. She set up her very own Waffen-SS of unskilled, inexperienced credit takers who were undoubtedly at odds with the rest of the company or at least the technical talent.
This article also has a good example of the blatant anti-intellectualism used in tech management:
"The ideal applicants must have technical talent, but not be total programming geeks — APMs had to have social finesse and business sense."
Obviously anybody 'too geeky' couldn't possibly have social finesse or business sense, but these APMs, with less than 18 months experience, were supposedly the uber-elite commandos at everything. The article goes further with the common theme of trying to confuse the source of technical talent. It claims that "Yahoo will be hiring great managers and product people" which will (of course) solve the problem that "the best techies have gone elsewhere."
Business schools espouse the same kind of inner-circle-ism: anoint the inexperienced, give them access, and tell them they are special and they will be under your control. B-Schools do it to get people to pay $100k+ for a degree program while Mayer seems to have done this for power. It's not a bad strategy political-wise, but it only works in the short term.
- plinkplonk 14y agoWhy is this downvoted? While the tone (especially of the first para) could be improved, the author has a point. It is hard to escape the implication that these youngsters who "must have technical talent, but not be total programming geeks" end up with far more power in the organization than hard core engineers with similar experience ever could. I am not saying that's the way it works at Google, but that is the impression the article gives. (If the article is true) It looks like the best way to get promoted at Google is to be "not too geeky" and join the APM program than join as an engineer with the same level of experience, where the chances are you'll get assigned to some creaking legacy code bug fixing with not much chance of creating an impact on the organization. Middle Management vs Engineering as the fast track career path in large companies. Not much of a contest.
- aboodman 14y agoI've worked with a couple of these APMs and they were awesome. I've never experienced or heard of this credit-jealousy around APMs that you're describing (I have seen it with other employees though). Obviously, I'm just one data point.
- plinkplonk 14y agosince I didn't say anything about anyone's feelings (including jealousy, for credit or otherwise), I suspect you maybe reacting to another post(possibly the OP)?