5 ms·

Is Google far too much in love with engineering?

30 points by kadhinn 16y ago

stcredzero 16y ago
The question should be: Is cluelessness in "soft skills" worse than technical cluelessness? Really, both are bad. (Example: Cuil)
- arethuza 16y ago
  Google's success wasn't so much coming up with the best web search technology but finding a way of converting that to billions of dollars in revenues and profits. To me Google have excelled at both the technology and the marketing - which is why they are so successful. Having said that, if you can't manage to be good at both technology and marketing, I suspect that you are better off being weak at technology than marketing. Plenty companies thrive with average/poor technology but an excellent understanding of what the market wants. I've known plenty companies (some from the inside) where the technology was good but the marketing was weak - things generally don't turn out too well.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    Agreed. Anyone that tries big things often enough will have both successes and failures. And I do seem to recall an overwhelming success like Windows starting off as somewhat of a failure.
kiba 16y ago
What's wrong with the Nexus One launch?
- rbranson 16y ago
  Right. The Nexus One is a working, production, reference implementation of what an Android phone SHOULD be, not something Google expected to make them rich.
  - Maven911 16y ago
    Well that makes the point of focusing too much on the engineering side...corporations are for-profit entities and they are not there to make the "perfect" product but rather a marketable product that will generate them net positive cash flows...after all, if you are a shareholder of Google, you expect them to MAXIMIZE their earnings, not just make things for the fun of it, or cause its interesting (example: the free optical network they want to give to a select bunch of small to medium-size cities...)
    - thefool 16y ago
      Honestly, why is it such a bad thing when a company with absurdly high profit margins delegates some of the income back into improving the general standard of living for everyone. Call it what you like. Write it off as them improving their image with the public, or as getting more users into the ecosystem, or becoming more vertically integrated. But fundamentally, why is doing something that is good for people looked at as such a bad thing. From what I understand the public don't even have the majority stake in the company, and don't really have to get a say in how it is run. If they don't like that they can buy other companies stock. If ones goal is to maximize happiness (or some other equivalent metric), there will be times at which the decision to maximize profit will diverge from this goal, and the ethical decision will be to spend money (which you have from profits in other sectors) to develop something at a net loss because you think its right. (I'm not affiliated with google, this is just a broader point that irritates me).
      - Maven911 16y ago
        Most companies try to show they are ethical by donating or being a corporate sponsor for a charity or event. I like Google's concept of just giving things out for free since I am a great benefactor of that. Google can make some of the money back through increased ads, but its not always clear how they do it for some products where there isn't any visible ads at all.
        aaronkaplan 16y ago
- draper 16y ago
  it bomb.
sprout 16y ago
>However, I wonder whether such slight, but no doubt data-driven, infelicities, such as the launch of Google Buzz, the riotously misguided home page designs, or the launch of Nexus One, might have done with one or two fewer data-driven managers and one or two more people who offered suggestions about what real people like and how they might react? It's very easy to look at a company like Google and find examples of significant failures. Though actually, I think the 'failures' he brings up are not quite the failures he thinks they are. They're not actually data-driven decisions. They're data-collecting experiments. Google is in no way wedded to any given device or approach. It's pivot, pivot, pivot, often in eight directions at once. Releasing a polished product with top-notch marketing is a good way to make a lot of money in the short term, but your customers get very attached to what you've given them, and it makes it a lot harder to innovate in the long term.
kwantam 16y ago
The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. No decision-making process is perfect; pointing out the warts in Google's isn't much of an indictment. Really, to my mind the whole thing comes across as a bit whiny.
- nexneo 16y ago
  The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. Engineering mind need real facts :)
- eitally 16y ago
  Here's a personal beef describing how Google places too much emphasis on engineering and too little on the experience paying customers have with its services: Google Apps. Support is almost nonexistent for nearly anything that isn't already on their roadmap, the roadmap is set by engineering and not based on customer feedback, the deployment schedule is completely closed and updates frequently surprise domain admins & their users, billing for various services (GSAs, GAPE, Postini) is non consolidated, and various features break at regular intervals. It doesn't help that a lot of their engineering showcases in Gmail -- Labs features -- they pitch and great improvements to Gmail, but offer zero support for. This included Offline when it was in Labs. Google is a great engineering company, but it still doesn't "get" the enterprise.
  - cglee 16y ago
    I paid for the Premium Google Apps for one of my domains. When it was about to expire, I got emails almost daily reminding me to renew. The day before it was to expire, someone from Google Apps actually called my cell about renewing. For a different domain that I was using regular Google Apps on, I couldn't get an email response to a support question I sent several months prior. Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service.
    - saturdayplace 16y ago
      > Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service. No, that's exactly their focus. You got a lot of attention regarding the product that you were a customer of, the premium paid apps. In the other instance, you were the product: a pair of eyeballs they could sell to advertisers. And the advertisers are the customers in that instance.
draper 16y ago
Google loves engineering so much that they are willing to ignore privacy and security concerns. French regulators: Google snagged passwords, e-mail. Lawsuits have already been filed against Google in the United States. Congressional leaders are also looking into the matter. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20008286-266.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0 http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20008286-266.html?tag=news...
fliph 16y ago
Yeah, Google could be pretty successful if only they didn't focus so much on engineering.
- frossie 16y ago
  Are you arguing that anybody who is successful is by definition doing everything right? Maybe they are successful because they do more rights than wrongs. Or they were in the right place at the right time. Or because they lacked a better competitor. The history of IT is littered with wildly successful yet sub-optimal companies.
shod 16y ago
> Do complex interview questions really test your educational achievement? ... When interviewing prospective software engineer employees, a Google interviewer asks software engineering related questions, to test the interviewee's knowledge of software engineering. Questions like these: http://jpaint.drizzlehosting.com/google.html http://jpaint.drizzlehosting.com/google.html That's a nice illustration of the balance of creativity, lateral thinking, logical thinking, and technical competence Google expects from the engineers it interviews. Note that the interview questions aren't in the form of, "Where did you complete your expected MSc in Computer Science?" Instead, the interviewee is expected to demonstrate real achievement from their education; i.e., knowledge and thinking ability. But Google hires non-engineer craftsmen, too. Catering staff, to steal the article author's example. Just a hunch: Google conducts more than one type of interview: catering staff are not expected to design class libraries or database tables as part of their interview process.
dusklight 16y ago
I think it's funny this article showed up on the front page at the same time as another article about the Dunning-Krueger effect.
SkyMarshal 16y ago
This is how Dodge explained it: "The engineering background brings a rigorous thought process that questions assumptions and requires accurate data in the decision process. That doesn't mean every decision will be perfect, but it will be based on data...not opinions." I think that strategy is unimpeachable. I've worked at plenty of non-engineering companies, and the inability to question assumptions seems rampant. If Google manages to avoid that, then whatever it costs will likely be worth it.

30 points by kadhinn 16y ago

The question should be: Is cluelessness in "soft skills" worse than technical cluelessness? Really, both are bad. (Example: Cuil)

arethuza 16y ago
Google's success wasn't so much coming up with the best web search technology but finding a way of converting that to billions of dollars in revenues and profits. To me Google have excelled at both the technology and the marketing - which is why they are so successful. Having said that, if you can't manage to be good at both technology and marketing, I suspect that you are better off being weak at technology than marketing. Plenty companies thrive with average/poor technology but an excellent understanding of what the market wants. I've known plenty companies (some from the inside) where the technology was good but the marketing was weak - things generally don't turn out too well.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  Agreed. Anyone that tries big things often enough will have both successes and failures. And I do seem to recall an overwhelming success like Windows starting off as somewhat of a failure.

kiba 16y ago

What's wrong with the Nexus One launch?

rbranson 16y ago
Right. The Nexus One is a working, production, reference implementation of what an Android phone SHOULD be, not something Google expected to make them rich.
- Maven911 16y ago
  Well that makes the point of focusing too much on the engineering side...corporations are for-profit entities and they are not there to make the "perfect" product but rather a marketable product that will generate them net positive cash flows...after all, if you are a shareholder of Google, you expect them to MAXIMIZE their earnings, not just make things for the fun of it, or cause its interesting (example: the free optical network they want to give to a select bunch of small to medium-size cities...)
  - thefool 16y ago
    Honestly, why is it such a bad thing when a company with absurdly high profit margins delegates some of the income back into improving the general standard of living for everyone. Call it what you like. Write it off as them improving their image with the public, or as getting more users into the ecosystem, or becoming more vertically integrated. But fundamentally, why is doing something that is good for people looked at as such a bad thing. From what I understand the public don't even have the majority stake in the company, and don't really have to get a say in how it is run. If they don't like that they can buy other companies stock. If ones goal is to maximize happiness (or some other equivalent metric), there will be times at which the decision to maximize profit will diverge from this goal, and the ethical decision will be to spend money (which you have from profits in other sectors) to develop something at a net loss because you think its right. (I'm not affiliated with google, this is just a broader point that irritates me).
    - Maven911 16y ago
      Most companies try to show they are ethical by donating or being a corporate sponsor for a charity or event. I like Google's concept of just giving things out for free since I am a great benefactor of that. Google can make some of the money back through increased ads, but its not always clear how they do it for some products where there isn't any visible ads at all.
      - aaronkaplan 16y ago
draper 16y ago
it bomb.

sprout 16y ago

>However, I wonder whether such slight, but no doubt data-driven, infelicities, such as the launch of Google Buzz, the riotously misguided home page designs, or the launch of Nexus One, might have done with one or two fewer data-driven managers and one or two more people who offered suggestions about what real people like and how they might react? It's very easy to look at a company like Google and find examples of significant failures. Though actually, I think the 'failures' he brings up are not quite the failures he thinks they are. They're not actually data-driven decisions. They're data-collecting experiments. Google is in no way wedded to any given device or approach. It's pivot, pivot, pivot, often in eight directions at once. Releasing a polished product with top-notch marketing is a good way to make a lot of money in the short term, but your customers get very attached to what you've given them, and it makes it a lot harder to innovate in the long term.

kwantam 16y ago

The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. No decision-making process is perfect; pointing out the warts in Google's isn't much of an indictment. Really, to my mind the whole thing comes across as a bit whiny.

nexneo 16y ago
The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. Engineering mind need real facts :)
eitally 16y ago
Here's a personal beef describing how Google places too much emphasis on engineering and too little on the experience paying customers have with its services: Google Apps. Support is almost nonexistent for nearly anything that isn't already on their roadmap, the roadmap is set by engineering and not based on customer feedback, the deployment schedule is completely closed and updates frequently surprise domain admins & their users, billing for various services (GSAs, GAPE, Postini) is non consolidated, and various features break at regular intervals. It doesn't help that a lot of their engineering showcases in Gmail -- Labs features -- they pitch and great improvements to Gmail, but offer zero support for. This included Offline when it was in Labs. Google is a great engineering company, but it still doesn't "get" the enterprise.
- cglee 16y ago
  I paid for the Premium Google Apps for one of my domains. When it was about to expire, I got emails almost daily reminding me to renew. The day before it was to expire, someone from Google Apps actually called my cell about renewing. For a different domain that I was using regular Google Apps on, I couldn't get an email response to a support question I sent several months prior. Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service.
  - saturdayplace 16y ago
    > Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service. No, that's exactly their focus. You got a lot of attention regarding the product that you were a customer of, the premium paid apps. In the other instance, you were the product: a pair of eyeballs they could sell to advertisers. And the advertisers are the customers in that instance.

draper 16y ago

Google loves engineering so much that they are willing to ignore privacy and security concerns. French regulators: Google snagged passwords, e-mail. Lawsuits have already been filed against Google in the United States. Congressional leaders are also looking into the matter. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20008286-266.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0 http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20008286-266.html?tag=news...

fliph 16y ago

Yeah, Google could be pretty successful if only they didn't focus so much on engineering.

frossie 16y ago
Are you arguing that anybody who is successful is by definition doing everything right? Maybe they are successful because they do more rights than wrongs. Or they were in the right place at the right time. Or because they lacked a better competitor. The history of IT is littered with wildly successful yet sub-optimal companies.

shod 16y ago

> Do complex interview questions really test your educational achievement? ... When interviewing prospective software engineer employees, a Google interviewer asks software engineering related questions, to test the interviewee's knowledge of software engineering. Questions like these: http://jpaint.drizzlehosting.com/google.html http://jpaint.drizzlehosting.com/google.html That's a nice illustration of the balance of creativity, lateral thinking, logical thinking, and technical competence Google expects from the engineers it interviews. Note that the interview questions aren't in the form of, "Where did you complete your expected MSc in Computer Science?" Instead, the interviewee is expected to demonstrate real achievement from their education; i.e., knowledge and thinking ability. But Google hires non-engineer craftsmen, too. Catering staff, to steal the article author's example. Just a hunch: Google conducts more than one type of interview: catering staff are not expected to design class libraries or database tables as part of their interview process.

dusklight 16y ago

I think it's funny this article showed up on the front page at the same time as another article about the Dunning-Krueger effect.

SkyMarshal 16y ago

This is how Dodge explained it: "The engineering background brings a rigorous thought process that questions assumptions and requires accurate data in the decision process. That doesn't mean every decision will be perfect, but it will be based on data...not opinions." I think that strategy is unimpeachable. I've worked at plenty of non-engineering companies, and the inability to question assumptions seems rampant. If Google manages to avoid that, then whatever it costs will likely be worth it.