'Reflecting on 18 Years at Google' (hixie.ch) 91
Ian Hickson, a software engineer at Google who left the company after 18 years, reflects on his time at the firm in a blog post and why he thinks the firm lost its way. He joined in 2005 when its culture genuinely prioritized doing good, but over time he saw that culture erode into one focused on profits over users, he writes. The recent layoffs have damaged trust and morale across the company, he writes. An excerpt from the post: Much of these problems with Google today stem from a lack of visionary leadership from Sundar Pichai, and his clear lack of interest in maintaining the cultural norms of early Google. A symptom of this is the spreading contingent of inept middle management. Take Jeanine Banks, for example, who manages the department that somewhat arbitrarily contains (among other things) Flutter, Dart, Go, and Firebase. Her department nominally has a strategy, but I couldn't leak it if I wanted to; I literally could never figure out what any part of it meant, even after years of hearing her describe it. Her understanding of what her teams are doing is minimal at best; she frequently makes requests that are completely incoherent and inapplicable. She treats engineers as commodities in a way that is dehumanising, reassigning people against their will in ways that have no relationship to their skill set. She is completely unable to receive constructive feedback (as in, she literally doesn't even acknowledge it). I hear other teams (who have leaders more politically savvy than I) have learned how to "handle" her to keep her off their backs, feeding her just the right information at the right time. Having seen Google at its best, I find this new reality depressing.
There are still great people at Google. [...] In recent years I started offering career advice to anyone at Google and through that met many great folks from around the company. It's definitely not too late to heal Google. It would require some shake-up at the top of the company, moving the centre of power from the CFO's office back to someone with a clear long-term vision for how to use Google's extensive resources to deliver value to users. I still believe there's lots of mileage to be had from Google's mission statement (to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful). Someone who wanted to lead Google into the next twenty years, maximising the good to humanity and disregarding the short-term fluctuations in stock price, could channel the skills and passion of Google into truly great achievements.
I do think the clock is ticking, though. The deterioration of Google's culture will eventually become irreversible, because the kinds of people whom you need to act as moral compass are the same kinds of people who don't join an organisation without a moral compass.
There are still great people at Google. [...] In recent years I started offering career advice to anyone at Google and through that met many great folks from around the company. It's definitely not too late to heal Google. It would require some shake-up at the top of the company, moving the centre of power from the CFO's office back to someone with a clear long-term vision for how to use Google's extensive resources to deliver value to users. I still believe there's lots of mileage to be had from Google's mission statement (to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful). Someone who wanted to lead Google into the next twenty years, maximising the good to humanity and disregarding the short-term fluctuations in stock price, could channel the skills and passion of Google into truly great achievements.
I do think the clock is ticking, though. The deterioration of Google's culture will eventually become irreversible, because the kinds of people whom you need to act as moral compass are the same kinds of people who don't join an organisation without a moral compass.
We could use a counter balance to AI (Score:5, Insightful)
I originally used Google because they did a good job of identifying authoritative content. That has been corrupted to identifying profitable content, sadly. But they could recover their reputation by identifying AI biases and hallucinations for us. That would be very useful. Say someone files a lawsuit with AI-generated citations in it. We run that through Google, and it shows which cites were made up and which are factual. Google actually has facts and it has information about who is authoritative, so it is uniquely poised to serve this role.
18 Years is too long *anywhere* (Score:2)
Speaking from experience. You become too emotionally
invested in a technology, product, team, desk, etc.
Something always changes, like when the lunchroom
fridge is replaced, and you end up feeling like the place
has gone to the dogs, and quit - feeling bitter about it.
Change jobs bfore that happens.
Death of Empires (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect Google's demise is more or less inevitable. If Pichai is responsible for it, then it's the boards mistake in hiring him and not firing him. If the board is responsible, then it's the shareholders mistake for not making clear what they wanted the company to do on their behalf.
I suspect though, the shareholders have been abundantly clear what they want the company to do for them. The board then is acting in line with their wishes (which they should), and Pichai is doing what the board wants (which he should).
Once you get shareholders, then you don't get to run the company as you like any longer. It's likely impossible to get to the size and influence required to become globally significant without without an awful lot of investment (ie. lots of shareholders). At the moment, that means going public, but I suspect in a couple of decades you might do it without going public per-se (although the investors you have will want you to do so - "the greater fool" and all that). As such, if the natural state of globally significant brands is to have lots of shareholders (more than can be 'controlled' by the board), then self-destruction is also inevitable.
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If Pichai is responsible for it, then it's the boards mistake in hiring him
Pichai's job is to make Google profitable, not keep it idealistic.
Many companies start out with an idealistic vision. None of them stay that way.
Re:Death of Empires (Score:5, Insightful)
Many stay that way, they just aren't household names.
Re:Death of Empires (Score:4, Insightful)
Idealism and profits are not mutually exclusive.
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Pichai's job is to make Google profitable, not keep it idealistic.
Many companies start out with an idealistic vision. None of them stay that way.
There are different kinds of profitability. There is short term profitable, and there is long term profitable. Empires that went into decline, at some point were no longer profitable. If direction is set based on a next-quarter-financials focus, then long-term profitability will typically hurt. Annoying your user base causes users to be less happy with you and your products, making them more likely to defect. This gets worse over time as the user accumulates negative experience, and at some point you get so
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Yet Google still hasn't entered the Chinese market. Apple and Microsoft have, Nvidia has, AMD has...
Android is widely used in China, without Google services. They are leaving a lot of profit on the table by not being there. Their stated reason for not entering the market is being unwilling to cooperate with the Chinese government over access to user data in their products.
Re:Death of Empires (Score:4, Interesting)
"Once you get shareholders, then you don't get to run the company as you like any longer."
False. Only when you lose controlling interest.
"It's likely impossible to get to the size and influence required to become globally significant without without an awful lot of investment (ie. lots of shareholders)."
False. It happened to Google.
"At the moment, that means going public, but I suspect in a couple of decades you might do it without going public per-se (although the investors you have will want you to do so - "the greater fool" and all that)."
False, for two reasons. First, there is plenty of investment that does not require "going public" and, second, "going public" does not require giving up controlling interest. Finally, "the inventors you have" could be anything.
"if the natural state of globally significant brands is to have lots of shareholders (more than can be 'controlled' by the board), then self-destruction is also inevitable."
Laughably false.
The narrative you wish to drive is clear, sad that you provide such lame arguments. Corporate profits are not the only way to drive a publicly held company, sad so many are brainwashed to believe otherwise.
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What are the post-Gmail alternatives, for someone with 20yrs of stuff stuck in the borg?
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I suspect Google's demise is more or less inevitable.
Yeah, sure. I can remember when people were telling me Apple's demise was inevitable.
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If Steve hadn't come back then they likely wouldn't still be here today. Maybe as a sub-brand owned by HP or IBM.
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Indeed.
That is similar to what the article clearly says in that Apple did also bring in someone to manage the company from an economic standpoint. It then lost it's vision and Google is currently in the same situation.
So for Google to thrive they need to become technology focused again, releasing products that people actually want to use. Steve brought that back to Apple.
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Sorry, but you really need to check yourself into a mental health facility.
Re: DEPORT THE WOKE (Score:2)
Why? His former manager's Twitter username (@femtechie) says it all.
Highly likely a diversity hire who indeed according to her resume never had a coding job & spent her early career far from the people who write code. Why would would put someone like that in charge of google-dev relations.
Immature opinions (Score:5, Interesting)
You can not take a company the size of Google and make it work like some high-minded startup. It's logistically impossible.
For one thing, there's not enough good people in the world to make it work. Most people are just not all that great at working, and almost all of them don't care about mission statements. Remember there's more than 100,000 full time employees spread all over the world.
For another, it's impossible to prevent bad employees from cropping up. He savagely throws this one executive under the bus - and maybe she even deserves it? But it doesn't matter, because take her out and you'll just get another one eventually. You have to take the bad with the good, there's no perfect company and no perfect leadership.
Finally, there's too much money at stake. If you try to right a train too quickly it's going to go off the rails, and this gravy train is overloaded. Money is a catalyst and incentive. Once you start rocking the train, people are gonna wanna get off. A public company is vulnerable to perception and stockholders hate risk and uncertainty. If you don't maintain the status quo you risk derailment.
I'm sure this guy is a decent engineer, but clearly he's not an MBA. Maybe if he'd worked at more companies he'd have learned that Google is, despite being in a better position than most, still subject to the forces of the vast ecumenical holding company of the universe.
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The guy specifically complained about poor management, he didn't say there weren't "enough good people in the world to make it work". And if management is poor, the company, the products, and the employees will surely suffer. I've worked at a number of large companies and what he is saying could be applied to all of them. It isn't inevitable, there can be good management. The management culture at these companies is what leads to promotion of mediocracy.
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The parent post is what you get from someone with no idea what good leadership looks like, or what the purpose of leadership even is. A good leader can utilize "not great workers" who "don't care about mission statements" for the larger purpose. Leadership's job is to corral them into the right actions, or avoid/fire them if it comes to that. No successful enterprise was ever composed of a 100% homogeneous mixture of people with identical opinions and goals.
I don't particularly blame the poster for not havi
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This post makes way too much sense to be on Slashdot.
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Re:Immature opinions (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of people have been at companies for 18 years, and they leave and bitch about it to friends. So why is this very common story about Google important and the others arent? Even tiny companies have morons working for them. Even google when it was ony one year old. That's how the world works. Management is crap at the majority of companies, that's very normal.
I think this is just sour grapes from someone who had some ideals too high who finally came down to earth. Not a story. People have known Google was a mess for longer than this guy worked there.
Possibly an issue is that in the early days, Google incubated this idea that it and its employees are special people and not just another company and its workers. Such as the early model where they pretended to be a lot like a university campus where you could work on your own projects, which lasted only a short time. I know several ex-Googlers and they all seemed happier post-Google.
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For another, it's impossible to prevent bad employees from cropping up. He savagely throws this one executive under the bus - and maybe she even deserves it? But it doesn't matter, because take her out and you'll just get another one eventually. You have to take the bad with the good, there's no perfect company and no perfect leadership.
All we have is his opinion on her; and he even states another group has learned to work with her and doesn't have the same problem. It's also possible he was part of the problem and doesn't want to admit he is. The truth is probably somewhere in-between.
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Yeah, I know nothing about Google except the parts I dislike, but was really surprised to see what a lot of people would consider a character attack on someone calling them out by name in the article summary. How is this acceptable in any way?
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You can not take a company the size of Google and make it work like some high-minded startup. It's logistically impossible.
This.
At some point, the various divisions at Google become little more than collectible cards that upper management buys, sells and trades. Your group can go from a "core competency" to an asset ready to be spun off overnight. And the manager assigned could be tasked with nothing more than to make sure the employees don't strip it of the plumbing fixtures and doorknobs before it gets sold. And you, the lowly employee, will never be privy to this. Because that could tip the hand of management to potential b
Re: Immature opinions (Score:2)
He doesn't just "throw one executive under tue bus".
She's not just one executive but his direct manager and the VP of Developer Relations at Google. He calls both her and Pichai out. The Flutter team losing someone like Hixie is a big loss to everyone. It is very much possible Tim also left Flutter because of her.
It appears that management has zero accountability within the org structure, sub-optimal signals like these must do.
So this is the next best thing. Good feedback should make specific propositions a
Typical "It was great when I got here" nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear this from lots of ex-Googlers. All of them are wrong. I dealt with Google in 2005, when this guy started there and Google was already only doing what was best for Google. They all think it was fine when they got there and got bad later, but that's just not true. It got worse, but it was never the place they all remember it having been.
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I have no experience with Google, but it is the people that change. I worked for a different, rapidly growing and successful tech company and it was the individual perspective that changed, the culture never did. Unlike Google (apparently), it was a culture of greed from the start.
Employees transition from just doing their job with some degree if satisfaction to believing that they're wealthier because they're smarter and more deserving, then on to full pull-up-the-ladder mode once they get cash in pocket
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It's not always easy to see the rot when you first join. It's not like the leadership will openly say "Hey, we suck" or promote that as the general vibe around the office. I suppose that employees gradually notice it over time. Also, employees tend to become more deeply embedded within an organization over time.
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I did interview back in the day at one company where the hiring manager did tell me they sucked but were working hard at fixing it. Although I appreciated his honesty I didn't take the job. :-)
The place had clearly gone through about 90% layoffs and was a ghost town when I visited. Even the company dog looked depressed.
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The first time I interviewed at Google (2008), I was through the process, had met the people I was going to work with, and was then informed that there was a hiring freeze. This is probably a red flag that I missed.
I interviewed with them again around 2015/2016 or so, and during the interview I was flat-out told, "Google is an advertising company".
Re:Typical "It was great when I got here" nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Xoogler here. It *was* a lot better back then. (Score:5, Informative)
So, I'm one of those Xooglers (the proper term for ex-Googler, btw). 2007-2021.
When I started, the org chart was *flat*; as an individual contributor, I was 3 hops from Larry and Sergey. The code was open. Leadership did really listen to the engineers, and not just reply with some platitude half-answer and go on with business as usual. People took doing the right thing for the users seriously.
No, it wasn't some perfect tech-utopia run *only* for the benefit of the users. No for-profit company ever will be. But Google pre-2009 was a lot closer to that than *anywhere* else I worked before that.
Obviously, it's not (((we interrupt this sentence for an unskippable 15-second ad))) that way now.
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The engineers were great. They however were not actually running the company, even if Sergey and Larry were in charge. There was a whole layer of business people who ran the company, and they ran it like every other company. Google did nothing unless they saw something to be gained from it. As an engineer there you had the illusion it was a different kind of company than it already was, because you were protected from those people, at least for a while. I have no doubt it's gotten a lot worse on the insid
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Google did nothing unless they saw something to be gained from it.
You're (falsely) implying this is zero-sum. That is, doing something where Google gains must mean it does not benefit users, and vice-versa.
As an engineer there you had the illusion it was a different kind of company than it already was
Oh, trust me. We all knew Google was in it to make money. The obvious clue is that we expected to get paid (well) for our efforts.
Re: Xoogler here. It *was* a lot better back then. (Score:2)
Search is dead. (Score:2)
Google .. had a good run.
They clearly don't have an answer for AI, and the world is moving on.
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They clearly don't have an answer for AI, and the world is moving on.
This is an interesting take, but what about AI do they need an "answer" for? Is it that we think AI is going to replace traditional search engines? I've only seen evidence of that in the tech world and, even then, people often point out how current AI is unable to give you sources which is often important.
I'm not a fan of Google, and abandoned Google search a few years ago, but it seems to me that they were actually ahead of the current AI trend by giving you answers to questions without having to click thr
Re: Search is dead. (Score:2)
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Search is fine, by the grace of Apple. Their business services and their consumer electronic ecosystem is dying.
He's right about layoffs (Score:5, Interesting)
My first layoff experience was in the 80s (I survived that one). My company was applying microprocessors to military test equipment, literally replacing walls of equipment with a box the size of 2 briefcases. This was during Reagan's buildup so money was flowing. One quarter we were only going to make 30% profit, instead of the 33% Wall Street wanted. So management laid off a bunch of folks. Instantly company culture changed. Nobody trusted management. People formed cliques to protect themselves. 6 years later the company got bought out by a large defense company. I'm sure management made out like bandits, but the working stiff got screwed.
25 years later same thing happened at Qualcomm. I was a consultant then, but when QC did their first layoff in the late 90s the effects were drastic. Trust in management evaporated. Going the extra mile was no longer a thing. Granted, the stock price did good, that's when it did it's 20 to 1 rise in the late 90s. Most employees had stock options so that alleviated the hit somewhat, but the company was never the same.
Re:He's right about layoffs (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm retired now but I lived through several layoffs and got caught in a couple. The big thing that doesn't show up on a spreadsheet is morale. When your team is thinking of the project and is invested in it's success good things happen. Fire a couple of team members, who's work is good, and everybody else on the team quits putting in the extra effort, longer lunches are taken with people talking about layoffs, and essentially the whole gestalt of the workplace changes.
It's not just that. The team has to figure out how to do the things that the laid-off person did, or at least redistribute the ones that can't be eliminated. And the team has to figure out how to recreate lost institutional knowledge and relearn lost critical skills. So that means you don't just lose the 10,000 employees that got laid off. You also lose a third of the time of another 20,000 employees scrambling to figure out how their team will survive the next quarter.
Re:He's right about layoffs (Score:5, Insightful)
Somewhat true. However while it may look like those who stay behind stop putting in extra effort, usually it's that they're doing what they always did but not it's more obvious that they weren't the top players. Even if great people are left behind, what often happens is that work being done by 10 people is now being done by 7 people, so of course everyone is stretched too thin.
I see this even when the people who left were the mediocre workers. Especially if they leave and you can't hire replacements - half the time there's a hiring freeze, and the other half the HR can't find competent candidates. So good people get stretched out.
I think for most employees, their morale doesn't derive from the company's successes. Who really cares if the CEO gets rich? The morale is from enjoying the job, or the perks, or the ability to stop working and go home on time, or enjoying your co-workers. The morale drops when it feels like a chore to do a job, when there's dread to attend a meething, or when the stress levels go up and don't go back down.
Re: He's right about layoffs (Score:2)
The end game... (Score:3)
For the end game, go look at any of the surviving titans of their era. Offshoring, cyclical layoffs, innovation by acquisition only, profits above all else.
At one of these shell-of-a-titan's... I got to experience a forced transfer that made no sense at all. I was lured back to a company by some old teammates I had worked with for almost a decade. Hired for specific rather arcane technical skills, and promised some training in the "new shiney". Ten weeks later I was forcibly transferred to some mundane "we need this feature too" project that I had no understanding of or interest in, and required 4+ years of "the new shiney". I was placed under a manager that was used to having mostly H1B's as employees, and could bully and mistreat them. The stress did permanent damage to my health. When you cross paths with these managers, destroy them. Because they will destroy you.
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Why did you stay through all that?
The only time I ever put up with that shit was for a brief while post doctor when there were literally no jobs available but I split instantly the moment the job market started to recover.
Re:The end game... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why did you stay through all that?
Hiring bonus with a payback clause, plus a fat RSU, and my wife was off work. I stayed and tried to work it via HR, but HR is mostly a waste of time for IC's. Once I determined HR was in on the play I quit and walked away, leaving the RSU on the table. When they asked for the hiring bonus back I pointed out they breached the agreement first. I was never provided the training I told them I required in the first interview, and they didn't provide the position I agreed to. That they had an involuntary transfer policy openly known to all managers, and not disclosed was also a problem. I would not have entered into the agreement had the policy been disclosed. I told them if they wanted it back to start arbitration. I satisfied 85% of the term, and they satisfied none of their promises.
It's been several years. I haven't heard anything more, but I keep a file on it just in case I need to lawyer up. And I keep a legal coverage plan.
If you accept a hiring bonus, my advice is require a pro-rate by month, and if you can wrangle it, an escape clause for an involuntary transfer. If they can't agree, you're setting yourself up to get played.
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HR exists to fuck over employees. They serve no other purpose. I tell you this as a former long time exec. And even as an exec when it's your turn to get fucked over by a C level they treat you exactly the same as staff. They ultimately serve the CEO and no others. HR is like the CEO's Gestapo and personal guard. HR is -never- there to help you as an employee if it's you vs. an exec or the company in some way. They are absolutely not ever a neutral or helpful organization.
Keep your file but they're n
This doesn't sound unusual. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly, Jeanine Banks sounds like every other IT manager I've ever worked for.
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Re:This doesn't sound unusual. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you've ever worked for someone like that, been frustrated by their incompetence and the apparent lack of concern by upper management who seem content to blame the resulting issue on you and your peers instead of the manager causing the issues...
I gotta tell ya... Fuck them. They survive because everyone is afraid to call them out. You owe them malice for what they did to your career, job satisfaction, and quality of life.
Just make sure you stick to the facts. Libel ain't cool.
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There is not a single falsifiable concrete claim here and she has no opportunity to respond. It's equally likely that he is an asshole taking revenge for well deserved low performance ratings. I am not saying I have any evidence for that either and I did have a manager that perfectly fit this description. But the only fact I have so far is that he doxxed his manager, and that points towards asshole hypothesis. Of course, there could be multiple assholes in the story.
Her department nominally has a strategy, but I couldn't leak it if I wanted to; I literally could never figure out what any part of it meant, even after years of hearing her describe it. Her understanding of what her teams are doing is minimal at best; she frequently makes requests that are completely incoherent and inapplicable. She treats engineers as commodities in a way that is dehumanising, reassigning people against their will in ways that have no relationship to their skill set. She is completely unable to receive constructive feedback (as in, she literally doesn't even acknowledge it). I hear other teams (who have leaders more politically savvy than I) have learned how to "handle" her to keep her off their backs, feeding her just the right information at the right time.
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If it affects her career, she has the option of challenging him in court over it. Financially, she's likely in the superior position and would have an advantage.
Then it's a matter of corroborating witnesses, or, more realistically, is settled out of court one way or the other.
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I have less problem with someone presenting verifiable and falsifiable facts about a named person. These can be judged by courts or less formally by society. Here it's just a "you suck" opinion that nobody can disprove about themselves.
Re: This doesn't sound unusual. (Score:2)
Re: This doesn't sound unusual. (Score:2)
He didn't just "throw one executive under the bus".
First of all she's not just one executive but his direct manager and the VP of Developer Relations at Google. He also calls both her and Pichai out.
Good feedback should make specific propositions about specific exemplars. The alternative is to make generalities that are hard to falsify.
The Flutter team losing someone like Hixie is a big loss to everyone. It is very much possible Tim also left Flutter because of her.
It appears that management has zero accoun
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Don't be evil (Score:1)
Very "Death to the minotaur" (Score:1)
founders (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies are never the same once the visionary founders are gone. It's the way of the world. Enjoy the ride while it lasts.
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A visionary is just someone who sees things that aren't there, like the homeless guy that's searching through the company's trash bins. Sometimes when the starting visionaries leave the company does better. Very often the founders have so little to with the core operation of a company, they're outdated with the tech, they have no ideas, and they do nothing except to be a figurehead.
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My understanding (someone correct me if I am wrong) is the visionary founders still have controlling interest. Pick one:
1) Sundar successfully lied through multiple interviews with dozens of different people, none of whom picked up on it.
2) The founders are so hands off they no longer give a shit about their creation.
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You think this is reversible? I think that ship has sailed a long time ago and they are right in the middle of their enshittification process.
Greed messes up everything (Score:4, Insightful)
Google is just an example case for that.
There are forces outside Google's control (Score:2)
Almost all of silicon valley is built off two things: plenty of young technologists ready to put in huge amounts of effort, and plentiful capital so those people could get paid for long periods of time before a few of the good ideas paid off. Both of those previously plentiful resources are gone, and neither of them are coming back anytime soon. The large millennial generation is getting older and it's being replaced with a smaller gen z, and that smaller generation is more in-demand (i.e. more expensive)
the cycle is accelerating (Score:2)
Two incompatible thoughts (Score:2)
I fail to understand how incompetence and moral compass can be used in the same criticism. That said, this sounds like a case of the Peter Principle: people rise to their own level of incompetence. It happens as companies mature and become the hulking giants that they are. Independence and drive to create cool stuff is gone because the people above you have no vision and just want to hang on to their jobs. That's still incompetence of a sort. Somewhere along the road, they ran out of good ideas. Morality ha
The poison of publicly-traded companies (Score:2)
Good profits can delight the owners of a private enterprise. Good profits mean NOTHING to the owners of most public companies. The measure of success ceases to be come profit -- it becomes the rate of change of profit. In the case of a widely-embraced company, this invariably requires them to shortchange employess and customers when growth of marketshare can no longer provide a "sufficient" increase in earnings.
Googler here - he's sadly pretty spot on (Score:1)
Posting AC for obvious reasons. I joined Google in 2017, and at the time Google's culture was still pretty strong. Larry and Sergey still gave candid answers at TGIF every week, and all my colleagues were smart, dedicated, helpful people.
It was not the same as back in 2005, obviously. I got to know many long-tenured Googlers and I got a picture of what the company had been like. By 2017, management chains were very long, and there were many projects that were undertaken to get a promotion rather than becaus
Choose Your CEO (Score:2)
you choose the direction of your company. Its been my theory that unless your business is commoditized your CEO should be a product person. The business may continue to be successful in the near term but over time the company will make product missteps.
Perhaps its reductive but Pichai's background is the management consultancy McKinsey [wikipedia.org], it shouldn't be surprising that he created a bureaucracy. Similarly Satya is a cloud guy and Windows is being enshitified, Ballmer completely missed smart phones along with
Post-Google (Score:2)
I can't wait to see a post-Google world. I think it will be so much richer.
Out of Touch (Score:2)
Has there ever been a white person who got rich and old and didn't grow out of touch and distant from the rest of the world? The founders couldn't care less. They're off enjoying their multi billions and doing god knows what. And I can't even blame them, I'd probably do the same. Pichai is just the manifestation of Page and Sergey not caring what happens at their own company.
Moral of the story? (Score:2)
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I bet she is heavily involved in DEI/DIB efforts.
Looking at her bio "I learned to code at Brookhaven National Lab in 9th grade" (lol, ok), and her list of experiences and how she describes them, I know exactly what she is.
Sadly I can tell you that she exists in every company and it's virtually impossible to get rid of them.
They are like termites, takes a few to get started, but once they are in, they will hollow out the company from within, sucking out equity and setting up a hierarchy that creates circular
Constant change (Score:1)
ORLY (Score:1)
Hixie is EXX personified (Score:2)
I don't know what he's talking about, Hixie was on the front lines of running Embrace, Extend, Extinguish over HTML, with the goal of turning Web browsers into a proprietary operating system. He's the figure primarily responsible for Google abandoning the W3C (the organization that standardizes most Web media types and other layers above HTTP, including XML, HTML, CSS, EPUB, PNG, and scripting APIs like WebRTC, DOM, and IndexedDB).
He went so far as to personally write a competitor HTML spec, the WHATWG spec
The good old days (Score:2)