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Comment by ayberk | Hacker News Reader

As a Google engineer, it's really saddening to see the Welchism completely taking over Google. There are more than enough examples showing focusing on bottomline to increase shareholder value doesn't work in the long run, but it's obvious the current leadership doesn't care.

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It hurts in so many ways.

I re-read How Google Works, Engineering at Google, etc. Kind of ironically, YT delivered these fantastic talks from 2011:

Google I/O 2011: HTML5 versus Android: Apps or Web for Mobile Development? https://youtu.be/4f2Zky_YyyQ?si=rbKgYi7Rck-6y3qE

Or HTML5, CSS3, and DOM Performance, Breaking News at 1000ms with Patrick Hamann

This was and still is fantastic stuff.

The next step would be to drop the unofficial requirement that every manager be able to code. MBAs at Google: regression to the mean.

Old Google was inspirational; new Google seems to evolve into yet another drawing board MBA construct.

I’m surprised HTML5 never took off. Browsers ended up regressing on some features like offline apps. Honestly with things like web components, you can bypass a lot of the needed steps to make halfway decent multiplatform applications by relying on a browser engine.

Sure you could use a react based app with some of the compilers but it’s like opening another bag of worms.

I don’t think HTML5 had anything to do with the fall of offline apps.

We have much better features for building offline apps than we did before html5 anyway (local and session storage and web workers)

Offline apps aren’t as common because they don’t make money and if someone is using a web browser 9 out of 10 times, they have an internet connection.

Looking at your profile, on the bright side I have heard GCP is still more of a forward looking unit, and Google Cloud Run for example is a pleasure to use, especially for small side projects.

This is an interesting corporate paradox that existed forever. It boils down to this: profit centers are always more frugal than cost centers. With cost centers you can say “you gotta spend money to make money” and PHBs will nod their heads. With established profit centers the most profitable (in the short run) course of action is to cut cost.

I would say this slightly differently. Cost Centres are increadibly focussed on the bottom line costs, but they fight fiercely to defend necessary spend and are not scared of spending astronomically higher amounts to get to a better place longterm. Mostly I believe because cost centres retain staff and have to have a long term outlook.

Profit centres, lacking any understanding of costs, are scared to increase them and fixed on reducing them, even when short-term profit destroys long term market share. Mostly because profit centres reward on a short cycle and have high turnover as staff seek bigger profits.

Is this backwards? A cost center is something that (management believes) doesn't makes money, only spends it. A profit center is something that (management believes) makes money AND spends it. The former is (in this framing) pure cost, to be cut to the bone, while the latter gets more leeway since it is an "investment". In reality, I think the causality works the other way: stuff management wants to cut is defined as a cost center (requiring cost cutting), while stuff management wants to spend money on is defined as a profit center (requiring investment).

No, not backwards. That’s how it is. I’ve observed this in several companies in the industry, starting with Microsoft. At the time the most profitable business unit was Office, and you couldn’t even get a t-shirt or other swag.

Considering this program paid out a total of $265k over a decade, I'm gonna say cost wasn't really the concern.

Doesn't it say they stopped reporting payouts in 2019?

it's not Welchism, Welch at least gave the players a chance to stay in the game based on their own efforts.

Time to break up Google.

Or just make sure that we don't put too much into place that will get in the way of future disruptors, so that as they slowly fall out of favour due to chasing the bottom line and it eventually affecting their offerings to the point where a critical mass of users seriously look for alternatives¹, there are viable alternatives there waiting to be found. Google and the other entrenched big companies spend a lot of lobbying money on trying to make sure the status quo can be maintained, by raising the barrier for entry into their markets.

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[1] this takes time: after _years_ of saying I'm going to I've finally started experimenting with using Kagi for search instead. It also takes _good_ alternatives, a paid option won't be seen as good by many.

And Apple while we're at it. Stuff like adding hardware to their devices to implement their own version of Tile ("Airtag") so that Tile pretty much immediately dies off is just scummy, imo.

At least Google's M.O. has mostly been to make stuff and then just throw it out into the open (with no support). Apple has been the opposite, ingesting the ideas and features of whole other companies without buying them, because they control their own little ecosystem.

Yes, developers can use basic/locked down UWB functionality in their apps, but no they cannot run it in the background constantly like Apple does for their airtags, essentially making it useless.

Can you share some of those examples?

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