Posts Tagged ‘Google’
“There must be some other way out of here, said the joker to the thief / There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief”*…
The dangers of rapid scaling: Praveen Seshadri on what ails Google and how it can turn things around…
I joined Google just before the pandemic when the company I had co-founded, AppSheet, was acquired by Google Cloud. The acquiring team and executives welcomed us and treated us well. We joined with great enthusiasm and commitment to integrate AppSheet into Google and make it a success. Yet, now at the expiry of my three year mandatory retention period, I have left Google understanding how a once-great company has slowly ceased to function.
Google has 175,000+ capable and well-compensated employees who get very little done quarter over quarter, year over year. Like mice, they are trapped in a maze of approvals, launch processes, legal reviews, performance reviews, exec reviews, documents, meetings, bug reports, triage, OKRs, H1 plans followed by H2 plans, all-hands summits, and inevitable reorgs. The mice are regularly fed their “cheese” (promotions, bonuses, fancy food, fancier perks) and despite many wanting to experience personal satisfaction and impact from their work, the system trains them to quell these inappropriate desires and learn what it actually means to be “Googley” — just don’t rock the boat. As Deepak Malhotra put it in his excellent business fable, at some point the problem is no longer that the mouse is in a maze. The problem is that “the maze is in the mouse.”
It is a fragile moment for Google with the pressure from OpenAI + Microsoft. Most people view this challenge along the technology axis, although there is now the gnawing suspicion that it might be a symptom of some deeper malaise. The recent layoffs have caused angst within the company as many employees view this as a failure of management or a surrender to activist investors. In a way, this reflects a general lack of self-awareness across both management and employees. Google’s fundamental problems are along the culture axis and everything else is a reflection of it. Of course, I’m not the only person to observe these issues (see the post by Noam Bardin, Waze founder and ex-Googler).
The way I see it, Google has four core cultural problems. They are all the natural consequences of having a money-printing machine called “Ads” that has kept growing relentlessly every year, hiding all other sins.
(1) no mission, (2) no urgency, (3) delusions of exceptionalism, (4) mismanagement…
A provocative diagnosis: “The maze is in the mouse.” Eminently worth reading in full.
* Bob Dylan, “All Along the Watchtower”
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As we go back to basics, we might recall that it was on this date in 1955 that a boy was born to University of Wisconsin graduate students Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali. He was given up for adoption and taken in by a machinist and his wife in Mountain View, California. They named him Steve Jobs.
“Your memory and your senses will be nourishment for your creativity”*…
On which senses do great creators rely? Randall Collins investigates…
Beethoven started going deaf in his late 20s. Already famous by age 25 for his piano sonatas, at 31 he was traumatized by losing his hearing. But he kept on composing: the Moonlight Sonata during the onset of deafness; the dramatic Waldstein Sonata at 32; piano sonatas kept on coming until he was 50. In his deaf period came the revolutionary sounds of his 3rd through 8th symphonies, piano and violin concertos (age 32-40). After 44 he became less productive, with intermittent flashes (Missa Solemnis, Diabelli variations, 9th symphony) composed at 47-53, dying at 56. His last string quartets were composed entirely in his head, left unperformed in his lifetime.
Handel went blind in one eye at age 66; laboriously finished the oratorio he was working on; went completely blind at 68. He never produced another significant work. But he kept on playing organ concertos, “performing from memory, or extemporizing while the players waited for their cue” almost to the day he died, aged 74.
Johann Sebastian Bach fell ill in his 64th year; next year his vision was nearly gone; he died at 65 “after two unsuccessful operations for a cataract.” At 62 he was still producing great works; at 64 he finished assembling the pieces of his B Minor Mass (recycling his older works being his modus operandi). At death he left unfinished his monument of musical puzzles, The Art of the Fugue, on which he had been working since 55.
Can we conclude, it is more important for a composer to see than hear?…
And given examples like Milton, that it’s more critical to poets and writers to hear than see? More at “Deaf or Blind: Beethoven, Handel,” from @sociologicaleye.
* Arthur Rimbaud
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As we contemplate creativity, we might recall that it was on this date in 2013 that Google– Google Search, YouTube, Google Mail, and Google Drive, et al.– went down for about 5 minutes. During that brief window, internet traffic around the world dropped by 40 percent.
“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible”*…
There is an order to the ordered search for ordered understanding…
Science (from Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Modern science is typically divided into three major branches that consist of the natural sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy and Earth science), which study nature in the broadest sense; the social sciences (e.g. psychology, sociology, economics, history) which study people and societies; and the formal sciences (e.g. mathematics, logic, theoretical computer science), which study abstract concepts. There is disagreement, however, on the formal sciences being a science [as they use an a priori, as opposed to empirical, methodology]. Disciplines that use science, such as engineering and medicine, are described as applied sciences…
And there is a dazzling array of “branches” of the scientific endeavor:
• Acanthochronology – study of cactus spines grown in time ordered sequence
• Acarology – study of mites and ticks
• Aceology – science of remedies, or of therapeutics; iamatology
• Acology – study of medical remedies
• Acoustics – science of sound
• Actinobiology – synonymous with radiobiologyAdenology – study of glands…
Browse dozens and dozens at “Index of branches of science,” from Wikipedia… whose contributors may be erring on the generous side, as the list includes such entries as “Hamartiology” (the study of sin) and “Taxidermy” (the art of curing and stuffing animals).
* Albert Einstein
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As we tackle taxonomy, we might recall that it was on this date in 2013 that Google experienced a five-minute outage affecting all of it’s services, including Google Search, YouTube, and Google Drive. During that brief period global internet traffic dropped 40%.
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm”*…
Killed by Google is the Google graveyard; a free and open source list of discontinued Google services, products, devices, and apps. We aim to be a source of factual information about the history surrounding Google’s dead projects.
Contributors from around the world help compile, research, and maintain the information about dying and dead Google products. You can join the discussion on GitHub, or follow us on Twitter. A project by Cody Ogden.
206 projects, and counting– some have been supplanted by newer Google services; some, outmatched by competitors; and some… well, maybe just not such good ideas to begin with: “Killed By Google.”
* Winston Churchill
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As we obsess over obsolescence, we might recall that it was on this date in 1995 that The Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology chronicled the World Wide Web in its A Day in the Life of Cyberspace project.
To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the Media Lab had invited submissions for the days leading up to October 10, 1995, on a variety of issues related to technology and the Internet, including privacy, expression, age, wealth, faith, body, place, languages, and the environment. Then on October 10, a team at MIT collected, edited, and published the contributions to “create a mosaic of life at the dawn of the digital revolution that is transforming our planet.”
“When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses”*…
This month marks the anniversary of the U.S. Business Roundtable’s 2019 call for a shift from “shareholder capitalism” toward “stakeholder capitalism.”…
Business leaders asked us to imagine a transformed world, but a bat virus in Wuhan had its own ambitious plans — and has, for the time being, transformed the world in quite another way. It has thrust government to the center, pushing business, whatever its approach to capitalism, to the sidelines.
Nobody could reasonably expect business alone to fix the pandemic. Nonetheless, some investors under the banner of “impact investing” argue that business alone will be able to fix the other big problems ailing the global economy, such as climate change or global female literacy, without sacrificing commercial returns. This view has garnered interest from major banks, consultancies, business lobby groups, and even former prime ministers. One of impact investing’s leading champions, Sir Ronald Cohen, believes that it could be the “revolution” that will save capitalism and solve many of the world’s greatest problems.
It is an enticing vision of an enlightened post-pandemic economy, and, as an impact investor and economist, we support its ambitions. However, if we really want to reform capitalism, then impact investing as it is traditionally conceived will not be enough. The pandemic is not a mere anomaly; there are profound limits to what business can do profitably in normal times too. We need to reform the rules that govern how our economy works — and impact investors have a critical role to play [in changing those rules]…
From Harvard Business Review, “Impact Investing Won’t Save Capitalism.”
* Shirley Chisholm
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As we endeavor to ensure equitable equities, we might recall that it was on this date (Friday the 13th) in 2013 that Google suffered an outage: all of its services were unavailable for five minutes, including Google Search, YouTube, and Google Drive. During that brief window, internet traffic around the world dropped by 40 per cent.
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