4 ms·

Working for Google today is a lot like working for the Microsoft of ~15 years ago. Employees are well paid, benefits are good, it's comfortable. The quality o

Working for Google today is a lot like working for the Microsoft of ~15 years ago. Employees are well paid, benefits are good, it's comfortable. The quality of the hires are still pretty good, but definitely not what they were 5 years ago. The engineering culture is still strong and permeates the entire organization, but the company is so large that less and less flexibility is allowed in each team's process. Thus, engineers (especially those at the lowest levels, like right out of school) aren't exposed to as much interesting work; many will find in 2-3 years that they have career opportunities at Google and companies of similar size but few opportunities at more interesting companies that are looking for someone with a few years experience with newer technologies. Technologies that Google doesn't use. Processes that Googlers don't know because they work in the confines of a huge corporation. Still not a bad place to be 'cause Google pays well and they're comfortable. But then the best and brightest stop coming to Google. And then the company slowly dies a painful death toward irrelevancy that takes decades. I think the comparison to Microsoft is spot on. The exact timeframe remains to be seen.

cperciva 12y ago
The quality of the hires are still pretty good, but definitely not what they were 5 years ago. Funny, I think that's word-for-word identical to what people at Google were telling me in 2006.
- jshen 12y ago
  so it's a steady decline?
  - adventured 12y ago
    More likely a false perception based on the fog of scale and decreased intimacy: as a singular person, you have no idea what most of the people in the company are like once it passes a certain scale, and the larger it gets, the less informed your opinion can realistically be. Not to mention, no organization can hire 100,000 people over time and have them all be top 1% talent. That doesn't mean they're not still acquiring more top 1% talent than anybody else.
    - jshen 12y ago
      Why is that more likely? Many of my former coworkers have gone there and given that sample the bar isn't particularly high.
    - gohrt 12y ago
      Sure, so its possible that Google once was 2000 A+ folks and 1000 B folks, and now they are 4000 A+ folks and 40000 B folks.
xur17 12y ago
Out of curiosity, who is the new Google / Microsoft today?
- justgottasay2 12y ago
  I think the author of the article makes his living telling you the same... for a handsome price. It seems he knows a thing or three about this Native Advertising biz... 'cause that is what this article appears to be.
- 7urk 12y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm a student at MIT Here's a company employment dataset from the University of Waterloo showing where students go from one internship to the next: https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~vlyubine/co-op https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~vlyubine/co-op In this dataset, ELO is employed such that companies earn points if they "beat" another one, which loses points as a result. That is, if someone hops from Company A to Company B, Company A earns points and Company B loses some. Among Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., it was found that Palantir was the only company that never lost a student to another one. If you go to the companies dataset here and sort by ELO: https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~vlyubine/companies https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~vlyubine/companies You'll note that the rankings are: 1. Palantir Technologies 2. Twitter 3. Facebook 4. Google 5. A9.com It appears that Palantir also beats out fellow big corps as well. I think the consensus among Ivy leaguers I know and Stanford/Waterloo is that Palantir's strict hiring criteria and unique culture make it the newer Google of today.
  - gbhn 12y ago
    I still haven't shaken the image of Palantir as the outfit gunning for Wikileaks and building illegal surveillance equipment.
  - Schwolop 12y ago
    I'd love to see this done on a bigger scale. Even just this limited subset is fascinating - poor Blackberry... :-(
  - specialp 12y ago
AznHisoka 12y ago
"few opportunities at more interesting companies that are looking for someone with a few years experience with newer technologies" When will companies realize that knowing how to design a large scale system, or a machine learning algorithm is more useful than knowing AngularJS or NodeJS?
- wldcordeiro 12y ago
  Wasn't Angular created by Google anyways?
  - dmoy 12y ago
    Yup.
- ovi256 12y ago
  The answer is very simple: when they'll need to develop large scale systems or machine learning algos more than AngularJS frontends or node backends. For the vaaast majority of companies, that will be never.
curun1r 12y ago
> many will find in 2-3 years that they have career opportunities at Google and companies of similar size but few opportunities at more interesting companies that are looking for someone with a few years experience with newer technologies. What technologies would those be? I'm scratching my head trying to think of the latest, cool stuff that people want to work with. On the language front, among the hottest right now are NodeJS and Go. Some might argue older languages like Erlang or Haskell are pretty trendy or perhaps Rust, but none of those have the current momentum of the first two and Google is behind the runtime for NodeJS and created Go. On the data front, Hadoop is pretty trendy right now, but that's based almost entirely off stuff that Google pioneered. Other NoSQL databases are pretty popular and, again, Google has its fingerprints all over that. Hell, a bunch of the NoSQL technologies even use LevelDB as a storage backend. Distributed systems? You'll learn more about them at Google than anywhere else. They were first with solutions to distributed consensus and they'll likely be first with whatever new need develops simply because their scale will ensure that they hit problems before almost anyone else. DevOps technologies like Docker? Well, beyond the fact that Docker is implemented in Go, Google has long used internal technology like Docker and have supported Docker by releasing projects like Kubernetes. Perhaps you mean cool hardware technology like self-driving cars, wearable technology, gigabit home internet, balloon-based internet or stuff like Chromecast? So perhaps you can share with us what technology that they'd be exposed to elsewhere that they can't find within Google?
- oscargrouch 12y ago
  Tools != Technology.. The tools could be the same any "mortal" of us techies use, but the technology created using those tools can be something cool, creative and different. The problem is not in the "status quo" of the tools, but in what problems and in what way its aiming at something that can be amusing and exciting, like the Wonka's Chocolate Factory to the next generation of kids. You need to be cool to get the guys that will built the next gen of tech, and with time, tech companies loose their sex appeal, because they become a boring piramid, looking for profit; because after the IPO, you have a board of the same-old-same-old and have to deliver profits to the stock market. Its a like a couple, in the beginning everything is exciting and new, but with time, given they repeat the same things, the same routine, theres nothing new anymore, and the glow of the beggining just fade away Anyway, its the institutionalization effect, if you follow the same path, you will get the same results.. Its the law of impermanence, that anything grow old and dies someday
curiousDog 12y ago
Just curious, do you work for Google now and have you worked for Microsoft in the past?
habosa 12y ago
I'm one of those just out of school Googlers and while I obviously have no experience at MSFT I'll tell you why I don't see myself becoming bored at Google. Google has a best-in-class (top 5?) product in pretty much every category of software. In 10 years a Googler could work on Drive, Android, G+, Gmail, Fiber, and Maps. While working on those things he/she will be exposed to an unparalleled developer infrastructure (Google's internal tools are rigid, but insanely well engineered). So why leave for another company when I could just change managers to work in pretty much any field on software? The only reason to jump ship would be toxic culture or money, and right now Google is at the top of the heap in both culture and pay.
- jodrellblank 12y ago
  You won't get bored at Google because you can spend ten years doing rigid tooled maintenance work on finished products? That's not a very convincing argument.
- depoll 12y ago
  Having been a Microsoft employee years ago, I made the exact same case for why I would never get bored at Microsoft. I was wrong ;)
- wil421 12y ago
  >Google has a best-in-class (top 5?) product in pretty much every category of software. In 10 years a Googler could work on Drive, Android, G+, Gmail, Fiber, and Maps. I would say they have the top 2, Maps and Gmail. G+ is laughable and I still dont know anyone who uses it that wasn't force to sign up. Drive is a dime a dozen and not really very compelling since we have Dropbox, Sugar Sync, SpiderOak, OneDrive, iCloud. The only compelling things MSFT and Google have going is more space. Android is another argument but since I'm currently switching back to iPhone, thats what I favor. Everything else you said is probably true. Google is the top at Search, Mail, and probably Maps.

cperciva 12y ago

The quality of the hires are still pretty good, but definitely not what they were 5 years ago. Funny, I think that's word-for-word identical to what people at Google were telling me in 2006.

jshen 12y ago
so it's a steady decline?
- adventured 12y ago
  More likely a false perception based on the fog of scale and decreased intimacy: as a singular person, you have no idea what most of the people in the company are like once it passes a certain scale, and the larger it gets, the less informed your opinion can realistically be. Not to mention, no organization can hire 100,000 people over time and have them all be top 1% talent. That doesn't mean they're not still acquiring more top 1% talent than anybody else.
  - jshen 12y ago
    Why is that more likely? Many of my former coworkers have gone there and given that sample the bar isn't particularly high.
  - gohrt 12y ago
    Sure, so its possible that Google once was 2000 A+ folks and 1000 B folks, and now they are 4000 A+ folks and 40000 B folks.

xur17 12y ago

Out of curiosity, who is the new Google / Microsoft today?

justgottasay2 12y ago
I think the author of the article makes his living telling you the same... for a handsome price. It seems he knows a thing or three about this Native Advertising biz... 'cause that is what this article appears to be.
7urk 12y ago
Disclaimer: I'm a student at MIT Here's a company employment dataset from the University of Waterloo showing where students go from one internship to the next: https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~vlyubine/co-op https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~vlyubine/co-op In this dataset, ELO is employed such that companies earn points if they "beat" another one, which loses points as a result. That is, if someone hops from Company A to Company B, Company A earns points and Company B loses some. Among Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., it was found that Palantir was the only company that never lost a student to another one. If you go to the companies dataset here and sort by ELO: https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~vlyubine/companies https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~vlyubine/companies You'll note that the rankings are: 1. Palantir Technologies 2. Twitter 3. Facebook 4. Google 5. A9.com It appears that Palantir also beats out fellow big corps as well. I think the consensus among Ivy leaguers I know and Stanford/Waterloo is that Palantir's strict hiring criteria and unique culture make it the newer Google of today.
- gbhn 12y ago
  I still haven't shaken the image of Palantir as the outfit gunning for Wikileaks and building illegal surveillance equipment.
- Schwolop 12y ago
  I'd love to see this done on a bigger scale. Even just this limited subset is fascinating - poor Blackberry... :-(
- specialp 12y ago

AznHisoka 12y ago

"few opportunities at more interesting companies that are looking for someone with a few years experience with newer technologies" When will companies realize that knowing how to design a large scale system, or a machine learning algorithm is more useful than knowing AngularJS or NodeJS?

wldcordeiro 12y ago
Wasn't Angular created by Google anyways?
- dmoy 12y ago
  Yup.
ovi256 12y ago
The answer is very simple: when they'll need to develop large scale systems or machine learning algos more than AngularJS frontends or node backends. For the vaaast majority of companies, that will be never.

curun1r 12y ago

> many will find in 2-3 years that they have career opportunities at Google and companies of similar size but few opportunities at more interesting companies that are looking for someone with a few years experience with newer technologies. What technologies would those be? I'm scratching my head trying to think of the latest, cool stuff that people want to work with. On the language front, among the hottest right now are NodeJS and Go. Some might argue older languages like Erlang or Haskell are pretty trendy or perhaps Rust, but none of those have the current momentum of the first two and Google is behind the runtime for NodeJS and created Go. On the data front, Hadoop is pretty trendy right now, but that's based almost entirely off stuff that Google pioneered. Other NoSQL databases are pretty popular and, again, Google has its fingerprints all over that. Hell, a bunch of the NoSQL technologies even use LevelDB as a storage backend. Distributed systems? You'll learn more about them at Google than anywhere else. They were first with solutions to distributed consensus and they'll likely be first with whatever new need develops simply because their scale will ensure that they hit problems before almost anyone else. DevOps technologies like Docker? Well, beyond the fact that Docker is implemented in Go, Google has long used internal technology like Docker and have supported Docker by releasing projects like Kubernetes. Perhaps you mean cool hardware technology like self-driving cars, wearable technology, gigabit home internet, balloon-based internet or stuff like Chromecast? So perhaps you can share with us what technology that they'd be exposed to elsewhere that they can't find within Google?

oscargrouch 12y ago
Tools != Technology.. The tools could be the same any "mortal" of us techies use, but the technology created using those tools can be something cool, creative and different. The problem is not in the "status quo" of the tools, but in what problems and in what way its aiming at something that can be amusing and exciting, like the Wonka's Chocolate Factory to the next generation of kids. You need to be cool to get the guys that will built the next gen of tech, and with time, tech companies loose their sex appeal, because they become a boring piramid, looking for profit; because after the IPO, you have a board of the same-old-same-old and have to deliver profits to the stock market. Its a like a couple, in the beginning everything is exciting and new, but with time, given they repeat the same things, the same routine, theres nothing new anymore, and the glow of the beggining just fade away Anyway, its the institutionalization effect, if you follow the same path, you will get the same results.. Its the law of impermanence, that anything grow old and dies someday

curiousDog 12y ago

Just curious, do you work for Google now and have you worked for Microsoft in the past?

habosa 12y ago

I'm one of those just out of school Googlers and while I obviously have no experience at MSFT I'll tell you why I don't see myself becoming bored at Google. Google has a best-in-class (top 5?) product in pretty much every category of software. In 10 years a Googler could work on Drive, Android, G+, Gmail, Fiber, and Maps. While working on those things he/she will be exposed to an unparalleled developer infrastructure (Google's internal tools are rigid, but insanely well engineered). So why leave for another company when I could just change managers to work in pretty much any field on software? The only reason to jump ship would be toxic culture or money, and right now Google is at the top of the heap in both culture and pay.

jodrellblank 12y ago
You won't get bored at Google because you can spend ten years doing rigid tooled maintenance work on finished products? That's not a very convincing argument.
depoll 12y ago
Having been a Microsoft employee years ago, I made the exact same case for why I would never get bored at Microsoft. I was wrong ;)
wil421 12y ago
>Google has a best-in-class (top 5?) product in pretty much every category of software. In 10 years a Googler could work on Drive, Android, G+, Gmail, Fiber, and Maps. I would say they have the top 2, Maps and Gmail. G+ is laughable and I still dont know anyone who uses it that wasn't force to sign up. Drive is a dime a dozen and not really very compelling since we have Dropbox, Sugar Sync, SpiderOak, OneDrive, iCloud. The only compelling things MSFT and Google have going is more space. Android is another argument but since I'm currently switching back to iPhone, thats what I favor. Everything else you said is probably true. Google is the top at Search, Mail, and probably Maps.