The Crisis at Google | Hacker News Reader

The Crisis at Google

bigtechnology.com

34 pointssamspenc28 comments

> the company’s Trust and Safety leadership called for volunteers to test Gemini’s outputs to prevent further blunders.

How humiliating, for a company that doesn't want to do anything that doesn't scale.

what are you talking about? gemini etc have been open for internal testing for at least a couple of years, soliciting feedback on any topic.

almost every new product is handled that way, it's just that lots of internal feedback is ignored, leading to regular and predictable PR disasters.

Google is a sham but let's not pretend like they give a shit. They don't have to innovate. They print ad money. Do you think morale at Meta was good when Zuckerberg was trying to hawk metaverse for years like a shitty tamale vendor? When FB became a global laughingstock? Sure it was!

Do you think the board cares! NO. Because they PRINT MONEY.

Nothing in this article really that hasn't been said clearly in 3 or 4 major pieces in the last month or so.

There are growing calls for Google CEO Sundar Pichai to step down

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39568016

Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39260956

A Leaked Memo from Google CEO Sundar Pichai Comes Amidst Employee Discontent

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39125467

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39101384

(plus the whole Gemini thing)

Sundar needs to go, period. All these articles undersell how bad the morale is at Google right now. It has been unpopular change after unpopular change, and Googlers have zero trust in the leadership. There's zero psychological safety anymore, and the environment is basically like this[1], but actually worse because even the "sister" teams in the same org are being very territorial.

I don't think the next person is going to be better (because they'll be appointed by the very same board), but Google needs a change at the top.

[1] https://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/201...

Why would he go? Based on the stock price (which is what the board looks at when finding a new CEO), he's doing amazingly. It sucks for employees but unfortunately they have no say in how their CEO is chosen.

The stock doing well doesn't seem to actually suck for employees paid largely with stock grants. At least I suppose many on the outside will be thinking that as they question why the employees are complaining so much.

Indeed, by that metric he's doing quite well.

The share price isn't doing well though. Their peer companies have been growing in value faster on both short and long timescales. Their P/E is also quite low compared not only to other big tech companies, but even large companies in general.

And that's at a time when Google should have been doing a victory lap, as a decade of bleeding edge research into AI pays off.

He is not doing amazingly based on the stock price. We can't compare Google to General Motors or Procter & Gamble, we have to compare it with Microsoft, Meta, NVIDIA, Apple, Amazon, etc which are companies in businesses adjacent to Google. When looking at its peers, Google is mediocre at best.

150% since he took the CEO role is quite substantial.

er what?

he's been CEO for 9 years, in the hottest tech market in history, taking over probably the most successful tech company in history.

it's also apparently ~less than the S&P return from 2015 - 2023: https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/2015?amount=1...

> All these articles undersell how bad the morale is at Google right now... Googlers have zero trust in the leadership.

Not being combative but how would you know?

The articles that have come out have been as opinionated. Many like to see a company they dislike, fail in some way. Many others who view Google pushing an agenda can also being pushing their own agenda. It's hard to say what motivates people to make unfounded statements.

Are you in a position within Google to quantify the statements you've made?

> "Organizationally at this place, it's impossible to navigate and understand who's in rooms and who owns things,” one member of Google’s Trust and Safety team told me. “Maybe that's by design so that nobody can ever get in trouble for failure.”

Ding ding ding. Humanitity 101

Google has monopoly market search in search, web browsers and mobile.

They have access to more data than anyone else, so I'll put my bet on them to win the AI wars.

First you need the data, then the money, then the power.

In 1988, IBM had similar qualities.

As do a trail of other corporate corpses.

And IBM is still around.

I dont use google search, browser or mobile. But youtube is inescapable.

I do use google search, browser, and mobile. I do not use youtube.

YouTube is only inescapable if you're addicted to video entertainment.

Fortunately, I am.

You probably already do, but you should use uBlock Origin or the chrome extension Clear Skies to skip ads...... .| .|

Also, get outside more.

It's a safe bet that they will win. I see a lot of handwringing about bad responses from Gemini or the slowness to roll out ChatGPT competitor but with Gemini 1.5 they're caught up and in a much better position than others going forward because they have the infra (I think probably by far the lowest costs on this side compared to Microsoft, OpenAI, etc.), the data, and the researchers (just in terms of #s)

related from yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39573851

I think Pichai was a terrible CEO, but IMHO, changing the CEO is not going to fix anything. Google has serious culture issues and structural management problems. To turn the ship around they should restructure hard and get rid of the cancer. Re-focus on merit and clear goals.

I seriously doubt they have the guts to do a restructuring. On one hand, Page and Brin probably don't want to risk rocking the boat and they have the lions share of voting shares. On the other hand, advertisers and government agencies have a lot of leverage over Google to force it to stay as woke as it is.

A small side note: actually there was very few blacks in the nazi army. So aside to the polemics it's worth to know this "error" was not so erroneous. Nazis have had black in their armies and have also had a Hebrew SS brigade.

Having recently experienced an interview at Google, I feel scadenfreude.

Their interviewers stood me up twice. And then, when I didn't pass the coding round, the HR reps I initially spoke with completely ignored me and passed me off to some other HR rep who said basically, "Sorry, they're busy. Thanks, goodbye."

Not the level of professionalism I expected.

scha·den·freu·de

pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.

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