7 ms·

Google employees blast 'profoundly boring' management lacking 'visionary leader'

45 points by IndoCanada 3y ago

bell-cot 3y ago
Reaction: Um, kids? You're working for a number-8-in-the-Fortune-500 company, with a "keep turning our monopoly-business crank to make yet more money" financial model. Where are you getting the idea that the management of such a business should be non-boring, let alone visionary?
- Alifatisk 3y ago
  Why did you have to prefix your comment with “reaction”? Isn’t that assumed? Or can people interpret it in another way?
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    It's a disclaimer of sorts - "this is my immediate reaction, probably somewhat emotional, which should not be taken too personally nor too seriously".
    - AznHisoka 3y ago
      If you don’t want anyone to take it personally or seriously, then maybe don’t post it
      - bell-cot 3y ago
        Such things are matters of degrees, and humans use all sorts of intonations, gestures, tags, emoticons, and such, to provide similar disclaimers. Being neither young nor on-line enough to feel myself fluent in the current local dialect of those, I fall back to something that feels workable, if rather clumsy.
      - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
        Yes I suppose that there are always going to be people that respond with vitriol, yourself included.
      - Alifatisk 3y ago
        I think it’s fine, I was just curious.
johnny99k 3y ago
Of course they are boring. Non-boring means taking huge risk and chances. Something Google hasn't had to do for at least a decade. If you want interesting, join a startup. But you might end up without a job when they lose funding/run out of money.
- danielbln 3y ago
  Considering tech layoffs, that's a very real chance in a mega corp as well.
- dartos 3y ago
  Can confirm. Had an interesting job at a startup. Now looking for new work.
hardware2win 3y ago
Dont get baited folks Those are companies hiring 100Ks of ppl, of course some of them are frustrated but it is not as relevant as news try to make it. I bet you could read 10s of posts like that monthly about MSFT 15 years ago What stock market taught me is that snarky comments under articles or reddit arent good future perf. predictor
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
thiago_fm 3y ago
You don't need to be a Google employee to know its products lack innovation from day 1. It's a one trick pony company, having just created search, rest is only buy/copy/steal. It's a company rotten to the core. It bought a few companies back then and helped scale it with capital (Android, YouTube...), also copied others, like there's a whole Netflix documentary about Google Maps. Don't come saying that Gmail was genius. There were so many free web mail offerings at the time. The only thing they did differently was giving 5GB storage because they never needed to make money with it, as search was a money printer. Now that there is no ad space left to be added on their products, it's a sinking ship. Also with their dieing cash cow search business, with Perplexity and OpenAI eating their lunch. It you still look at Google and don't see IBM, you need new glasses
- bradhe 3y ago
  Even if Gmail was genius, it's almost 20 years old and hasn't really evolved that much since day 0.
  - idontwantthis 3y ago
    How would you want it to evolve? It shows and sends emails good. The promotions and social tabs are nice but I’d probably rather those all just went to spam instead.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >How would you want it to evolve? It shows and sends emails good. Yahoo mail is better for me because it implements the use of tabs, making e-mail multitasking a breeze. Also Yahoo's UI is more compact and less wasteful of screen real estate and just feels snappier while Gmail feels sluggish even on modern machines. So yes, there's definitely room for Gmail to evolve beyond just barebones sending and receiving emails, as there's dozens of other companies who can do that just the same or better, because otherwise why use Gmail beyond the Google brand name, network effect, and integration to the wider Google-Chrome-Android ecosystem which is it's biggest strength and selling point, but as a stand alone email service it's pretty lackluster and unimpressive.
TrackerFF 3y ago
My real issue with google, and google products, would be the uncertainty. They release a decent product that sees some growth, but unfortunately it doesn't scale to their standards, and it gets sunset. It makes me extremely hesitant to commit to new products - no mater how good and seamless the integration is to their other existing (and still surviving) products. I love using sheets, colab, drive, gmail, photos.
jasfi 3y ago
I'd say they're slow, not boring. But this is good for a multitude of startups, including OpenAI. This is why startups can succeed, because they move faster than the bigger companies. So is anything really wrong?
CuriouslyC 3y ago
Sundar Pichai is a MBA-bot. He's going to chase fads in a me-too fashion while running the tired MBA playbook until they give him the boot or he runs the company into an unrecoverable senescence.
foobarxyzzy 3y ago
if the Google employees don't like their leaders, they can leave and setup themselves.
- lupire 3y ago
  Many have, and those competitors are eating away at Google.
beryilma 3y ago
> profoundly boring management Is there any other type of management at big companies? I am yet to see a violation of the Peter Principle when it comes to middle to higher management.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] More discussion on around the linkedin post mentioned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082599
rlupi 3y ago
I have thought about this as an employee. I think which point of view you have matters. The problem is that the best interest for the company and for the individual employee do not align in most cases. If someone wants to move fast and innovate, an employee or a large company like Google, it needs to invest time to do things differently. Given a finite amount of resources, you can spend them part on "speed" of execution, to keep up with in AI race, or "acceleration", to innovate and move faster in the future. If you are a company CEO or senior leader and you think we are in a paradigm shift that threatens the very core products of your company, you cut what you think won't bring future revenue or better revenue growth; then, to maintain speed, you focus fewer resources on mature products that have less space to growth or fewer risks to be challenged in the short term; then, and use all resources that you freed up to accelerate. (Whenever a leader is visionary and good or not impacts the quality of these decisions; this is not an endorsement or rebuttal of Google's leaders) The problem as an employee is that you are only in one of those buckets. Depending on where you are in these buckets and in your personal point in life, the consequences can be very different. It colors how you view the choices of those leaders in these surveys. - cut + early career = can be challenging and demoralizing, but in my past experience these moments were those that pushed me into a higher trajectory. - speed + early career = can be very comfortable to be here, but you're learning less variety than if you see more companies/roles. In the long run, it could make you less successful. - innovate + early career = be blessed, you're very well paid and you learn state of the art that will hopefully be very marketable. If the bets of the industry do not play out and sentiment/hype on AI cools down, be prepared for a drop in earning down the line and save; - cut + mid career = depending on your early career choices and marketable skills and personal inclination for risks, this can be quite challenging or push you out of your comfort zone, into another (hopefully upward) trajectory. - speed + mid career = very comfortable position, but the most risky on long term trajectory. (1) If the AI paradigm shift materializes, your skills could likely become outdated/largely reduced value and you are at risk of being automated away. (2) - innovate + mid career = nice place to be, very highly paid and very hard to replace. I can't comment on late career, I am not there yet. I'd expect it really depends on your priority and inclinations. My judgement is also likely influenced by the fact that I started as a generalist and contractor/small-business-owner; if you move from education right into FAANG, you'll likely have a more organized but less innovative personal drive/risk tolerance. (1) I think I am here, and that's why I decided in late last year to move to (60%) part time and invest a significant portion of time, beyond what I can do at work (learn to do things differently, and learn about other industries, how they solve similar/adjacent problems and what is unique about them), on my own improvement/innovation at a significant personal cost (40% less income). (2) IMHO the risk as an employee in "speed+mid career" in one of the companies in the AI race can be much higher than in other companies, automating SWE/eng roles requires a lot more mature tech infrastructure (e.g. good testing of very large systems is tricky to get right, but it enables closed-loop automated AI improvements) than many non-tech companies have.

45 points by IndoCanada 3y ago

Reaction: Um, kids? You're working for a number-8-in-the-Fortune-500 company, with a "keep turning our monopoly-business crank to make yet more money" financial model. Where are you getting the idea that the management of such a business should be non-boring, let alone visionary?

Alifatisk 3y ago
Why did you have to prefix your comment with “reaction”? Isn’t that assumed? Or can people interpret it in another way?
- bell-cot 3y ago
  It's a disclaimer of sorts - "this is my immediate reaction, probably somewhat emotional, which should not be taken too personally nor too seriously".
  - AznHisoka 3y ago
    If you don’t want anyone to take it personally or seriously, then maybe don’t post it
    - bell-cot 3y ago
      Such things are matters of degrees, and humans use all sorts of intonations, gestures, tags, emoticons, and such, to provide similar disclaimers. Being neither young nor on-line enough to feel myself fluent in the current local dialect of those, I fall back to something that feels workable, if rather clumsy.
    - cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
      Yes I suppose that there are always going to be people that respond with vitriol, yourself included.
    - Alifatisk 3y ago
      I think it’s fine, I was just curious.

johnny99k 3y ago

Of course they are boring. Non-boring means taking huge risk and chances. Something Google hasn't had to do for at least a decade. If you want interesting, join a startup. But you might end up without a job when they lose funding/run out of money.

danielbln 3y ago
Considering tech layoffs, that's a very real chance in a mega corp as well.
dartos 3y ago
Can confirm. Had an interesting job at a startup. Now looking for new work.

hardware2win 3y ago

Dont get baited folks Those are companies hiring 100Ks of ppl, of course some of them are frustrated but it is not as relevant as news try to make it. I bet you could read 10s of posts like that monthly about MSFT 15 years ago What stock market taught me is that snarky comments under articles or reddit arent good future perf. predictor

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

thiago_fm 3y ago

You don't need to be a Google employee to know its products lack innovation from day 1. It's a one trick pony company, having just created search, rest is only buy/copy/steal. It's a company rotten to the core. It bought a few companies back then and helped scale it with capital (Android, YouTube...), also copied others, like there's a whole Netflix documentary about Google Maps. Don't come saying that Gmail was genius. There were so many free web mail offerings at the time. The only thing they did differently was giving 5GB storage because they never needed to make money with it, as search was a money printer. Now that there is no ad space left to be added on their products, it's a sinking ship. Also with their dieing cash cow search business, with Perplexity and OpenAI eating their lunch. It you still look at Google and don't see IBM, you need new glasses

bradhe 3y ago
Even if Gmail was genius, it's almost 20 years old and hasn't really evolved that much since day 0.
- idontwantthis 3y ago
  How would you want it to evolve? It shows and sends emails good. The promotions and social tabs are nice but I’d probably rather those all just went to spam instead.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >How would you want it to evolve? It shows and sends emails good. Yahoo mail is better for me because it implements the use of tabs, making e-mail multitasking a breeze. Also Yahoo's UI is more compact and less wasteful of screen real estate and just feels snappier while Gmail feels sluggish even on modern machines. So yes, there's definitely room for Gmail to evolve beyond just barebones sending and receiving emails, as there's dozens of other companies who can do that just the same or better, because otherwise why use Gmail beyond the Google brand name, network effect, and integration to the wider Google-Chrome-Android ecosystem which is it's biggest strength and selling point, but as a stand alone email service it's pretty lackluster and unimpressive.

TrackerFF 3y ago

My real issue with google, and google products, would be the uncertainty. They release a decent product that sees some growth, but unfortunately it doesn't scale to their standards, and it gets sunset. It makes me extremely hesitant to commit to new products - no mater how good and seamless the integration is to their other existing (and still surviving) products. I love using sheets, colab, drive, gmail, photos.

jasfi 3y ago

I'd say they're slow, not boring. But this is good for a multitude of startups, including OpenAI. This is why startups can succeed, because they move faster than the bigger companies. So is anything really wrong?

CuriouslyC 3y ago

Sundar Pichai is a MBA-bot. He's going to chase fads in a me-too fashion while running the tired MBA playbook until they give him the boot or he runs the company into an unrecoverable senescence.

foobarxyzzy 3y ago

if the Google employees don't like their leaders, they can leave and setup themselves.

lupire 3y ago
Many have, and those competitors are eating away at Google.

beryilma 3y ago

> profoundly boring management Is there any other type of management at big companies? I am yet to see a violation of the Peter Principle when it comes to middle to higher management.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] More discussion on around the linkedin post mentioned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082599

rlupi 3y ago

I have thought about this as an employee. I think which point of view you have matters. The problem is that the best interest for the company and for the individual employee do not align in most cases. If someone wants to move fast and innovate, an employee or a large company like Google, it needs to invest time to do things differently. Given a finite amount of resources, you can spend them part on "speed" of execution, to keep up with in AI race, or "acceleration", to innovate and move faster in the future. If you are a company CEO or senior leader and you think we are in a paradigm shift that threatens the very core products of your company, you cut what you think won't bring future revenue or better revenue growth; then, to maintain speed, you focus fewer resources on mature products that have less space to growth or fewer risks to be challenged in the short term; then, and use all resources that you freed up to accelerate. (Whenever a leader is visionary and good or not impacts the quality of these decisions; this is not an endorsement or rebuttal of Google's leaders) The problem as an employee is that you are only in one of those buckets. Depending on where you are in these buckets and in your personal point in life, the consequences can be very different. It colors how you view the choices of those leaders in these surveys. - cut + early career = can be challenging and demoralizing, but in my past experience these moments were those that pushed me into a higher trajectory. - speed + early career = can be very comfortable to be here, but you're learning less variety than if you see more companies/roles. In the long run, it could make you less successful. - innovate + early career = be blessed, you're very well paid and you learn state of the art that will hopefully be very marketable. If the bets of the industry do not play out and sentiment/hype on AI cools down, be prepared for a drop in earning down the line and save; - cut + mid career = depending on your early career choices and marketable skills and personal inclination for risks, this can be quite challenging or push you out of your comfort zone, into another (hopefully upward) trajectory. - speed + mid career = very comfortable position, but the most risky on long term trajectory. (1) If the AI paradigm shift materializes, your skills could likely become outdated/largely reduced value and you are at risk of being automated away. (2) - innovate + mid career = nice place to be, very highly paid and very hard to replace. I can't comment on late career, I am not there yet. I'd expect it really depends on your priority and inclinations. My judgement is also likely influenced by the fact that I started as a generalist and contractor/small-business-owner; if you move from education right into FAANG, you'll likely have a more organized but less innovative personal drive/risk tolerance. (1) I think I am here, and that's why I decided in late last year to move to (60%) part time and invest a significant portion of time, beyond what I can do at work (learn to do things differently, and learn about other industries, how they solve similar/adjacent problems and what is unique about them), on my own improvement/innovation at a significant personal cost (40% less income). (2) IMHO the risk as an employee in "speed+mid career" in one of the companies in the AI race can be much higher than in other companies, automating SWE/eng roles requires a lot more mature tech infrastructure (e.g. good testing of very large systems is tricky to get right, but it enables closed-loop automated AI improvements) than many non-tech companies have.