Comment by alaskamiller | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alaskamiller | Hacker News Reader

Did Google culture in 2011/2012 then again in 2022/2023.

2011 was watching them recruit and hire everyone smart enough to sit around to just make stuff and eat each other's dogfood. There were posters for little experiments to try at the elevators or lobbies. Good times! Will we release this Dropbox clone or not? Should we drop this dorky AR glasses or not? Anything is possible in the quest to organize the world's information and free food!

2022 was watching the new cohorts come in and realize the game is now just throwing stuff against the wall, clinch an exec to back you, get to google scale, and get your bonus so you can finally buy a house in a post-G+ landscape. Oh, on top of that you're really just a pawn in a corrupt game of keepaway from the other companies.

Now everything scaled back, a lot of projects get scrutinized, then boom, someone else is taking Google R&D and productizing it better than Google PMs can and we don't know what to do anymore. But we still do leetcode, and if you pass then just press that space bar so you can buzz in during the standup to say all good, no updates.

This new silicon valley era is weird.

I know a bunch of ex-Googlers who spent 8+ years with the company, and what cracks me up is that they all have some version of this "how the mighty have fallen" story, but it's always relative to their tenure dates.

Some remember Google as being fantastic when they joined in 2005 and then going downhill after. Some think the peak was in 2009. Some in 2012. And I'm sure there are engineers joining now who, in ten years' time, will be reminiscing about the golden days of 2023.

In reality, I think we tend to rationalize our decisions to join a company by imagining it's better than it really is, and then rationalize our decision to leave by imagining it's worse. More often than not, the only real change is that we've grown tired of the workplace and need a change of scenery.

The reason is pretty simple. As companies get larger, the culture dies.

Those who joined big-tech early-ish in their career likely see the state of the company at the time as way better than what they're used to. Then it gets worse.

It doesn't really matter where you enter in the history of the company, the culture is almost always going to be the best as you know it when you join and get worse over time. Very rarely does the opposite happen.

Enshitification affects all things (except, it seems, for the compensation of the CEO, for the that line only goes up).

On the contrary, higher CEO pay is a symptom of enshitification because it means ownership has dispersed enough and/or the majority owners have checked out enough that there's no strong hand slapping the CEO around when he proposes utter BS for his pay package. I did my undergrad econ final thesis on this subject almost 20 years ago now, it was quite interesting. Over 500k of total compensation a year correlated very heavily with a whole host of policies that indicate CEO board capture (Don't ask me what they were at this point, it's lost to the sands of time) and likely enshitification progression as well since the guys providing the capital have checked out and the CEO's interest is in increasing his comp, not in making sure the capital is well compensated.

When I joined (2007 or 2008) there was actually a huge amount of literature on previous cultures, as well as people who had been there a long time.

I watched enough of the recorded Bedtime Stories (or whatever they called them, it was basically a bunch of nooglers in jammies listening to a distinguished engineer talk about the old days) and talked to enough old timers to learn that the period after the early search engine problems and ad revenue problems were solved, so about 2002-2004, was definitely a highlight that was better than my time.

For example: the microkitchens were all loaded to the gills with tons of amazing snacks. By the time I arrived they were downsized for cost and health reasons and when I left in 2021 they were only a shadow of their previous self.

My point is that some of us did research and saw that the earlier days before our tenure were even better.

Charlie was still present in his cafe (or its predecessor) and often cooked a whole cow for lunch every day. By the time I joined, Charlie's was just a long line for crappy food.

I've heard mixed results about the very early days- absolutely thrilling, but totally terrifying and stressful.

They could all be right. 2005 Google can be a much better place to work than 2015 Google, which can also be a much better place to work than 2023 Google, which can still be better than many other large companies out there. When your starting point is as good as Google's early days was there's a lot of room to get steadily worse over the years.

At least now the path to unseating Google seems not only possible but inevitable! Anti-trust investigations and lawsuits, the product graveyard, search seemingly degrading, and now getting trounced on AI.

I remember back when I felt Google was invincible but it doesn’t feel like that anymore. Can’t wait to see what succeeds them in search.

Does the TV series Silicon Valley no longer make sense in today's culture?

Even though it was edgy for its time - it is much more "tamer" compared to what orgs (atleast in tech) are these days. For example I used to think - there is no way that "bear is sticky with honey" can be real. Oh boy! What surprises me is the straight face during the regular utterances (I am saddened and surprised that I am still surprised about it!)

From an outside pov gcloud seems like the next big thing for google. Maybe largest since gmail. Does that match your experience?

Any time someone mentions Google cloud all I can think is google will lose interest and shut it down. In reality the risk is probably pretty low but they’re immediately on the back foot with me. I suspect I’m not alone in thinking like this.

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