Google Executives See Cracks in Their Company's Success (nytimes.com) 84
The seeds of a company's downfall, it is often said in the business world, are sown when everything is going great. It is hard to argue that things aren't going great for Google. Revenue and profits are charting new highs every three months. Google's parent company, Alphabet, is worth $1.6 trillion. Google has rooted itself deeper and deeper into the lives of everyday Americans. But a restive class of Google executives worry that the company is showing cracks. The New York Times: They say Google's work force is increasingly outspoken. Personnel problems are spilling into the public. Decisive leadership and big ideas have given way to risk aversion and incrementalism. And some of those executives are leaving and letting everyone know exactly why. "I keep getting asked why did I leave now? I think the better question is why did I stay for so long?" Noam Bardin, who joined Google in 2013 when the company acquired mapping service Waze, wrote in a blog post two weeks after leaving the company in February. "The innovation challenges," he wrote, "will only get worse as the risk tolerance will go down."
Many of Google's problems, current and recently departed executives said, stem from the leadership style of Sundar Pichai, the company's affable, low-key chief executive. Fifteen current and former Google executives, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering Google and Mr. Pichai, told The New York Times that Google was suffering from many of the pitfalls of a large, maturing company -- a paralyzing bureaucracy, a bias toward inaction and a fixation on public perception. The executives, some of whom regularly interacted with Mr. Pichai, said Google did not move quickly on key business and personnel moves because he chewed over decisions and delayed action. They said that Google continued to be rocked by workplace culture fights, and that Mr. Pichai's attempts to lower the temperature had the opposite effect -- allowing problems to fester while avoiding tough and sometimes unpopular positions. "Google executives proposed the idea of acquiring Shopify as a way to challenge Amazon in online commerce a few years ago. Mr. Pichai rejected the idea because he thought Shopify was too expensive, two people familiar with the discussions said."
Many of Google's problems, current and recently departed executives said, stem from the leadership style of Sundar Pichai, the company's affable, low-key chief executive. Fifteen current and former Google executives, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering Google and Mr. Pichai, told The New York Times that Google was suffering from many of the pitfalls of a large, maturing company -- a paralyzing bureaucracy, a bias toward inaction and a fixation on public perception. The executives, some of whom regularly interacted with Mr. Pichai, said Google did not move quickly on key business and personnel moves because he chewed over decisions and delayed action. They said that Google continued to be rocked by workplace culture fights, and that Mr. Pichai's attempts to lower the temperature had the opposite effect -- allowing problems to fester while avoiding tough and sometimes unpopular positions. "Google executives proposed the idea of acquiring Shopify as a way to challenge Amazon in online commerce a few years ago. Mr. Pichai rejected the idea because he thought Shopify was too expensive, two people familiar with the discussions said."
Re:communist money (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't like that you are laundering our tax dollars through your kids fake jobs at places like burisma.
What Biden's child did a few years ago doesn't have anything to do with Google. But if it did, it is notable that the people who keep making noise about this had no problem with Ivanka and Jared Kushner having official White House positions, far more clear cut cases of nepotism. And the focus on Joe Biden's son is so completely irrational and unrelated to actual facts that it occurs while actually not noticing that there is a problem at the middle level where a whole bunch of current administration aides have gotten cushy jobs for close relatives https://www.axios.com/biden-administration-hiring-family-6ada9852-1565-4803-ba08-a55abcb33111.html [axios.com].
Meanwhile it is worth pointing out that the article is very explicit that Google's current finances are doing very well. The idea that there's some sort of devastating right-wing boycott of Google products just isn't accurate. You don't even need to go to TFA, since the summary itself says "Revenue and profits are charting new highs every three months."
Not everything is about your preferred culture war. Really. In fact, most things aren't.
Mod parent UP! (Score:2)
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"Elizabeth Warren is saying that we should break up Google. And like, I love her but she’s very misguided, like that will not make it better will make it worse because now all these smaller companies who don’t have the same resources that we do will be charged with preventing the next Trump situation, it’s like a small company cannot do that."
"We all got screwed over in 2016. Again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybod
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It's funny that you bring up the communists... This story reminded me of what happened the Chinese Communist Party after the Civil War. After defeating the Kuomintang government, the revolutionaries became the government, and of course they had no idea how to do that. So they do what people always do, which is to fall back on what worked for them in the past. Social crisis and upheaval had got them where they were, so they leaned into a philosophy of "continuous revolution". The result was the Cultural
Re:they have not shown that they can innovate (Score:4, Interesting)
Google isn't especially flat. I only know of a couple of games-related companies that are somewhat flat, or used to be.
Comparing a software company to the extremely capital-intensive stuff Musk deals in makes little sense. Electric cars and reusable booster rockets are cool, but the real miracle is the stock price. And the PR, which they don't even pay for (two sides of the same coin, maybe).
I think there's something to the article's thesis that it's about the culture the leadership creates. The contrast to Microsoft, which has gone the other way to a company you'd almost like to work for, is stark.
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Microsoft, which has gone the other way to a company you'd almost like to work for, is stark.
Is Microsoft an enjoyable place to work these days?
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Microsoft, which has gone the other way to a company you'd almost like to work for, is stark.
Is Microsoft an enjoyable place to work these days?
I've heard it is from multiple sources. Additionally, (and unlike Google), it has recognizable products.
Re: they have not shown that they can innovate (Score:2)
I would say the reason is that Elon Muskâ(TM)s is relatively unconstrained in how he runs his companies and is much less likely to be subject to antitrust given the industries he operates in.
Alphabet / Google is fighting regulatory issues and every action they take can be interpreted adversely for them. Enough to be a drag on any decision.
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Google is psychopathic capitalism personified. The reason they are so risk averse is guilt, they know exactly what kind of evil corporation they are.
The invade the privacy of people to analyse them and target them with advertisments that promote wasteful consumption. Their wealth is the destruction of our environment. The Corporate motto to reflect reality is BE EVIL, consume more, burn more, eat Eat EAT, be the worst wasteful consumption polluter you can be. Face the reality, in a time of catastrophic cli
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A successful rocket company and a successful car company? Impressive but not miracles. Everything else is snake oil.
Re: they have not shown that they can innovate (Score:3)
It wasn't long ago that the idea of successfully bringing a new car company into the mainstream was considered impossible by almost everyone in the industry. The auto industry has been going the other direction for decades.
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I wouldn't call the Boring Company snake oil. There's a lot of potential there.
And with SpaceX, they're turning science fiction into reality, which is sufficiently advanced technology to qualify as miracles.
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Ok, enough with the hyperbole, seriously.
Miracles? Listen to how absurd you sound.
And actually look at the tunnel in Los Vegas. If that isn't snake oil, it is at least a publicity stunt that redirected millions in public funds into Tesla's pockets.
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No, I'm making an Arthur C. Clarke reference, which should be safe here. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Compared to what we were looking at for space flight before SpaceX, they are essentially doing magic. (And yes, several other companies are getting close to doing similar things now, but SpaceX was first.)
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SpaceX is nowhere near sufficiently advanced. To suggest that is downright silly. They are cool rockets, but they are standing on the shoulders of giants.
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No, there isn't [forbes.com]. TL;DR: They don't actually use any innovative technology to bore holes. They just bore them smaller to make them cheaper. But then you can't put large-capacity vehicles (like trains) in them; only cars, which is just dumb.
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They're working on improving the machines. There is potential. And recognizing the tunnels can be smaller if you don't have to provide ventilation for engine exhaust is important, which is also a key part of their plans.
I'll agree that it's not clear yet whether this will turn out to be a mere curiosity or a transportation revolution, but the potential is there, so it's not snake oil.
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Do you think other hole-boring companies aren't working on theirs?
Newsflash: electric trains don't emit exhaust. Bored subway holes are the size they are to fit trains through.
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Ever heard of iterative improvement processes?
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And with SpaceX, they're turning science fiction into reality, which is sufficiently advanced technology to qualify as miracles.
Are. You. F'ing. Serious.
You can go ahead and call out what he think he's done that was ever science fiction, and what qualifies as "advanced technology", and wasn't done 50 years prior. I'll be ready to debunk that.
And keep in mind Musk isn't an engineer. He isn't inventing this stuff, or implementing it either, in any way, shape or form. He's a salesman and that's all. If you want to be in awe of someone, look up to the engineers that are working on Tesla's products.
Re:they have not shown that they can innovate (Score:5, Insightful)
Three successful companies in three very different industries (PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX) is certainly an extremely impressive accomplishment. Of course, none of that success was inevitable even for someone as skilled as Musk, as even he admits he felt there was only a 10% chance SpaceX or Tesla would succeed. Musk got incredibly lucky, but both companies would have had a 100% chance of failure without very impressive leadership. (or at least failure from Musk's point of view, Tesla could have perhaps remained a small niche car manufacturer)
We should be able to both look at Musk's successes and be very impressed, but also not attribute all of that success to some kind of rare genius. Musk has two successful companies today because he made two extremely risky bets instead of just focusing on one of the companies. The bets paid off, but that was extreme luck. A dozen entrepreneurs with the same capability and market opportunity of Musk could try to run their companies like Musk did and probably all would fail. Giving Musk credit for having multiple billion dollar companies isn't much different than giving credit to a lottery winner. But he certainly does deserve credit for being able to build even a single billion dollar company. Not many are capable of that.
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Musk has two successful companies today
You forgot Starlink. The constellation is already in place. Now the work is letting the cash roll on in.
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Musk has two successful companies today
You forgot Starlink. The constellation is already in place. Now the work is letting the cash roll on in.
I don't think he forgot Starlink, since it's part of one of the two companies he mentioned and not a separate entity...
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Musk might not be a genius, but he has a lot of skills without a doubt.
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As successful as Tesla is now, remember that they very nearly ran out of money and failed in 2008 [businessinsider.com].
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As successful as Tesla is now, remember that they very nearly ran out of money and failed in 2008 [businessinsider.com].
Yes, that was the period I was referring to where Musk made extremely risky bets to push forward with both companies at the same time with relatively limited funds. Most companies attempting a similarly risky bet would fail, which is why I claimed giving Musk credit for creating two billion dollar companies at the same time is similar to giving credit to a lottery winner.
Re:they have not shown that they can innovate (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're underrating a number of Google successes. They may not be the financial success of search, but they're still huge.
Google Docs. There was nothing else like this when Google launched it. (Or at least that most people were aware of.)
Google Maps. When Google launched Google Maps where you could click and drag in the map, it was revolutionary. MapQuest and everything else just uses static images. Then they added Streetview. Now it's the clear leader in maps.
Android. Yes, they bought this one, but without Google's commitment, it wouldn't be anything close to where it is today.
Chromebooks. Google owns the low-end laptop ecosystem.
Chrome Browser. Google is clearly dominant in the browser market.
GMail. They took the idea of Hotmail, but did it better.
YouTube. Yes, this was an acquisition where Google Video was failing, but they've done quite well with it.
Waymo. Too early to tell here, but there's a huge potential, and room for multiple winners.
Google+. Much better than the alternatives. I use it for all my social media. Just kidding. They failed big on that one for a variety of reasons.
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Google+. Much better than the alternatives. I use it for all my social media. Just kidding. They failed big on that one
Technically they got what they wanted, which is the name and age of most of their users, so they can use that info to advertise.
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I think the point of the article is that these innovations are in the past: Google is becoming a company that can't innovate anymore, and that will lead to their downfall.
What's the last major thing they did? Chromebooks? That was a while ago.
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They bought Docs.
GMail was revolutionary when it came out. Things like multiple tags per email were new (vs folders). But now all they do is piss about with the UI, making it more grey on grey.
Re:they have not shown that they can innovate (Score:5, Informative)
Google Docs: 2006
Google Maps: 2005
Android: 2008
Chromebooks: 2011
Chrome: 2008
Gmail: 2004
Youtube: 2005
Waymo: 2009
Google+: 2011
The Damore Diversity Memo (Score:2)
Says a lot about Prichai.
It is very hard to know whether a CEO is any good or not. Whether companies thrive because of them or despite them. Especially when that CEO is not the founder. Are they just experts at becoming CEIs?
But the nasty politically correct mishandling of that memo was very telling. It was arrogant and incompetent. If Damore was more aggressive he could have caused Google and Prichai quite some damage -- there are a lot of people that could be convinced to use Duck Duck Go, giving it
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Google+. Much better than the alternatives. I use it for all my social media. Just kidding. They failed big on that one for a variety of reasons.
I actually used to love Google+ .. right up until they forced everyone to have a G+ account. It was a nice setup where you could easily differentiate your contacts. The downfall came the day they forced everyone to have an account and I could no longer tell who was actively using the platform and who was just there because Google automated an account for them. It literally want from cool nice product to unusable in the span of a few weeks
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Google Docs. There was nothing else like this when Google launched it. (Or at least that most people were aware of.)
Google Docs originated from two separate products that Google bought: Writely and XL2Web...
Google Maps. When Google launched Google Maps where you could click and drag in the map, it was revolutionary. MapQuest and everything else just uses static images. Then they added Streetview. Now it's the clear leader in maps.
Google Maps was designed and sold to Google by 2 Danish brothers at a Sydney-based company called "Where 2 Technologies" Google then bought and added bits of Keyhole (geospatial data and sat imagery company), which is where the click-and-drag came from. Then they bought a company called ZipDash to provide the traffic analysis...
Android. Yes, they bought this one, but without Google's commitment, it wouldn't be anything close to where it is today.
Like you said: they bought this one too
Chromebooks. Google owns the low-end laptop ecosystem.
No, they don't. They own the OS for the low-end
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On Google: In general yes, though there is of course also things like Youtube and there are a surprising numbers of companies buying some of their other services.
While search ads is the single major revenue source, Just YouTube revenue would make a large company happy on its own. The same for their cloud services while dwarfed by search ads are still a large revenue source.
As for Elon Musks companies: they take huge risks and they have been close to failing often, but due to his way of running things, abil
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The indications are that they are a one-hit wonder.
This seems to be the big problem for Google. The article brings up a number of cultural issues within Google, but is any of that really much worse than the other trillion dollar companies? My concern for Google is whether they can ever be successful at something other than search. There are some other successes like the proliferation of Android devices, but still almost all their revenue comes from search advertising.
Google Cloud is their second largest segment, but it only makes up 7% of Alphabet's total r
Re:they have not shown that they can innovate (Score:4, Funny)
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Elon was beat to market by Nissan, and is otherwise doing something the US government did 60-years ago without computers.
The US government was not landing orbital class first stage boosters and reusing them 60 years ago.
Before SpaceX did it, no ever had. Before SpaceX did it, it was widely considered impossible. While SpaceX was developing the ability to do it and repeatedly producing fireballs in the Atlantic, the whole aerospace world laughed and laughed and pointed their fingers at those poor fools at SpaceX chasing an impossible dream. And then it started working and is the reason why SpaceX can undercut the entire res
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Google maps is also pretty good. Google translate was the first good translator. Google Docs/Sheets/whatever didn't kill office, but it's certainly the dominant collaborative web software of its kind.
Google has done quite well in its field: web-based software. It's (so far) failed or only had mediocre success in things outside that wheel house. Tesla and SpaceX do very well in their respective areas and have so far mostly resisted the urge to try and expand horizontally. That might have something to do with
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Question. The conflict resolution in the events option. The system doesn't know about conflicts... it just has some rules about valid and not valid state transitions. There are still cases where we have two valid state
Miracles?
You can't argue though that Musk's company did bore a short tunnel in Las Vegas, outfit it with LED lighting, and hire people to drive back and forth in it in Teslas. Doesn't feel like a miracle.
rocked by workplace culture fights (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, "rocked by workplace culture fights" seems like a readily solvable problem.
Just specify in the employee handbook that it creates a hostile workplace environment and terminate violators.
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The problem is almost certainly not "woke ideology" but people who are more interested in politics than in programming.
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Well, the core tenets of woke ideology seem to include the notion that oppression festers in the workplace, and the morally correct thing to do is actively resist it in the workplace. So it is in the nature of the woke ideology to push its adherents to care more about it than programming.
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Google and some of the other tech giants had this wonderful idea that the workplace should be everything to their employees. They were a big family. You could all eat together, work out together, you could even sleep at work! You could make your life about achieving whatever it was you were working on at the company, and that goal was noble and transformative, of course.
Sounds great. Employees who work all the time with unending zeal. Problem is, politics is group decision making. If you make the company ev
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Not sure why Libertardians that that being decent to other people is guaranteed to destroy a business, it's worked really well for Amazon for the last 25 years. I actually think that the dumbest thing that Google has done in its history was to abandon "Don't Be Evil" as their motto.
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Not sure why Libertardians that that being decent to other people is guaranteed to destroy a business, it's worked really well for Amazon for the last 25 years. I actually think that the dumbest thing that Google has done in its history was to abandon "Don't Be Evil" as their motto.
"Don't be evil" does not require "allowing your workplace to be rocked by culture fights"
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Any large enterprise is going to have culture fights, the single monolithic corporate culture is a thing of the past.
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Any large enterprise is going to have culture fights, the single monolithic corporate culture is a thing of the past.
Having a diverse culture does not require "allowing your workplace to be rocked by culture fights"
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Not sure why Libertardians that that being decent to other people is guaranteed to destroy a business, it's worked really well for Amazon for the last 25 years. I actually think that the dumbest thing that Google has done in its history was to abandon "Don't Be Evil" as their motto.
"Don't be evil" does not require "allowing your workplace to be rocked by culture fights"
Anytime a company decides to actively oppose discrimination and harassment by gender, ethnicity, faith or sexuality, it inevitably gets rocked by culture fights from those who just don't like to see a bit of fairness and equality as it pops their notion they are operating in a meritocracy (they aren't.)
This is the same thing people said back in the days during the Civil Rights era ("oh no, this will rock companies with drama, this is going to fast, keep the darkies drinking from the same water fountain an
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Not sure why Libertardians that that being decent to other people is guaranteed to destroy a business, it's worked really well for Amazon for the last 25 years. I actually think that the dumbest thing that Google has done in its history was to abandon "Don't Be Evil" as their motto.
"Don't be evil" does not require "allowing your workplace to be rocked by culture fights"
Anytime a company decides to actively oppose discrimination and harassment by gender, ethnicity, faith or sexuality, it inevitably gets rocked by culture fights from those who just don't like to see a bit of fairness and equality as it pops their notion they are operating in a meritocracy (they aren't.)
This is the same thing people said back in the days during the Civil Rights era ("oh no, this will rock companies with drama, this is going to fast, keep the darkies drinking from the same water fountain and keep them out of upper management, don't rock the boat!")
It is the same shit, down to the same color and texture.
Having an inclusive workplace environment does not require "allowing your workplace to be rocked by culture fights"
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Having an inclusive workplace environment does not require "allowing your workplace to be rocked by culture fights"
Of course. But that's only after an environment becomes inclusive. The challenge is when a company is transitioning into an inclusive environment. Oh God, that's when some employees true colors come to the fore (I've seen it.)
And sometimes it's not even the company, but workers themselves. I've worked in companies that do care about being inclusive, and that actively stamp out any kind of discrimination.
And at the same time, I've seen employees in those companies expressing horrible views against X or Y
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Having an inclusive workplace environment does not require "allowing your workplace to be rocked by culture fights"
Of course. But that's only after an environment becomes inclusive. The challenge is when a company is transitioning into an inclusive environment. Oh God, that's when some employees true colors come to the fore (I've seen it.)
And sometimes it's not even the company, but workers themselves. I've worked in companies that do care about being inclusive, and that actively stamp out any kind of discrimination.
And at the same time, I've seen employees in those companies expressing horrible views against X or Y group, but in private, and then acting on those biases when it comes to interacting with co-workers (or worse, when making hiring decisions.)
And thus, such people end up tarnishing a good company's reputation. A company and upper management can do a good, honest work to be inclusive for years just to get their name thrown into the mud because some rank and file worker or low-level manager decides to act his/her bigotry/sexism.
It happens.
OK, lets take an admittedly simplified example. Company X has a 50:50 male-female workforce. People are paid comparably and happy in their jobs. The females decide to promote "allyship" by insisting that all employees must wear pink pussy hats and anyone who refuses is misogynistic. Should the company allow this to turn into a conflict or put a stop to it?
What about the pressure to demonstrate support for BLM? Pressure to wear BLM apparel, go to protests, donate money, post something on social media.
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Woke ideology isn't "being decent." Rest of your post can be ignored.
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See, such culture wars are breaking out on Slashdot also.
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Culture wars broke out on SlashDot around 1998 . . .
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It's going to get much worse if they continue to let woke ideology permeate their work force.
Woke ideology: learning that harassing or belittling women is not ok, and learning that a person's ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual inclination have no bearing on performance or salaries.
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Big, disruptive, innovative ideas are what turn startups into megacorps. But they are NOT what keep megacorps alive. For every startup that strikes it rich on their brilliant innovation, there are 100 others who were just as brilliant but that busted. We, of course, only ever see or hear about the winners.
Innovation IS to risky for an established business. It doesn't make sense for them to keep trying to land the next big thing, as the result of such efforts are more-often-than-not tremendous amounts of
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Ya, look what it did for IBM, AT&T, GE, etc.
He's right you know (Score:5, Insightful)
If the management team believes it worthwhile to keep the entrepreneurial spirit it should give its employees more leeway to pursue their own interests, and spin off those businesses if they can make a profit.
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One of the most profitable types of search is when someone is looking to buy something. Increasingly people are just going straight to searching Amazon when they want to buy something.
Look at why customers want to leave (Score:5, Insightful)
Search engines like Startpage (the goog but more private) and DuckDuckGo are moving up, and average consumers seem to be reaching the end of their tolerance for the relentless tracking and marketing.
Google was given considerable slack when they actually tried to go by "Don't Be Evil". Now that they've officially abandoned that part of their mission statement, they're just the biggest privacy rapist on the block.
I, for one, won't be sad if they wind up taking a good whipping...maybe not today or tomorrow, but before too long.
Incrementalism is Needed and Isn't Being Done (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is what their executives think its no wonder they have issues.
Incrementalism is how you create, maintain and improve a product - Google for many years now has had the habit of launching half-finished products, not improving upon them, and often allowing even major successes to get worse over time followed by launching a competing product within the company. To me this speaks to a revolving door of employees, and managers failing upwards. Perhaps this should come as no surprise from a company run by a McKinsey [wikipedia.org]-ist
Consider chat at Google: GTalk, Hangouts, Allo/Duo, RCS, Meet, and now Chat. That doesn't strike me as incrementalism or risk aversion, that seems like people wanting to launch products to benefit their own career not the company or the users.
More than that (Score:2)
I worked there as a contractor until very recently, and it's a real cesspool with a very toxic environment. Contractors, who probably make up the bulk of the workforce, are treated like second class citizens at pretty much every turn. They're not allowed to do almost anything the relatively few Google employees can and Google also appears to be using contractors to try to get around labor laws like those covering discrimination and retaliation.
They are also extremely resistant to change. For... reasons... t
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I think their PR has always been of major importance to their success.
For a long time google was considered nice and cool. Their invasion of privacy [theonion.com]on which like Facebook much of their businessmodel is based wasn't considered threatening. Google now has become a lot less nice and therefor their intrusive datagathering is regarded as threatening. That PR problem by itself is very bad for the businessmodel.
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The problem comes when employees are so busy with whatever politics that they forget to keep the company running. As an example: play.google.com/settings/ has basic functionality not working. No one can tell me when it broke or how long it will take to fix. How many bugs like that before customers stop buying things?
How's that IBM stock lately? (Score:2)
Just asking but how's that IBM stock doing? Better yet, GE?
Successful companies can grow too quickly and then be bit by that growth. Eventually, they'll all become withered ghosts.
The risk containment problem (Score:1)
Startups are willing to take more risk because investors typically assume it's a risky proposition. Let's say the product causes consumer hardship and there's a big lawsuit. The startup could simply file for bankruptcy, fade, and that would be the relatively quiet end of it.
But a big company risks loosing everything over one bad product. If the lawsuit itself doesn't take them down, their bad reputation would harm all their product lines. The scope of failure is bigger.
Maybe the should google it? (Score:3)
"Go woke, get broke"?
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You should have read an earlier comment by somebody who actually worked there. Here, I'll help you out with a quote from it: "As much as some people will want to try and make it about being 'woke' or whatever moral outrage has the right falling dramatically onto their fainting couches this week, but the reality is much simpler. As the company grew the ratio between smart, competent and idealist employees to greedy, selfish, sociopaths became increasingly lopsided towards the latter."
I hope that straighten
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I find it amusing that you (and that former googlian) don't question for a moment:
smart = competent = idealist
and
greedy = selfish = sociopath
I've met a lot of smart idealists who would probably qualify as sociopaths as their "ideal" tends to be unrealistic extremist positions.
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He's not the only person I know who worked for Google. He's right. You're wrong.
Cheers.
What Do You Expect of Woke Leadership? (Score:3)
Affable? Sundar Pichai, the mendacious bastard who lied through his teeth about the contents of James Damore's memo just to show how woke he was? (Pichai falsely claimed that Damore said women were not fit for tech jobs. Read the memo yourself; he never says anything like that.)
"A fixation on public perception" -- yeah, showing everyone how woke you are is top priority, right?
Are beat reporters assigned to companies now? (Score:2)
Taking a look at Daisuke Wakabayashi (the authorâ(TM)s) Muckrack page shows that all he does is write about Google.
Are tech reporters nowadays assigned to only work on stories related to specific companies as beats?
These sorts of articles seem to be an odd mishmash of information, some inflammatory, some business-related, and some political. Sometimes the slant is negative, but always sort of meandering and rarely based on anything but self-referential editorials (minus the occasional number or two).