Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

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Google has largely stagnated with products that they largely already had before Satya Nadella took over. Facebook was kind of at its peak then and they had bought Whatsapp and added Instagram to their portfolio. But since then, Meta has had a few duds as well and it seems a bit lackluster lately. Messenger launched and imploded. Then VR. And now they are messing up with AI.

The point is, if Google and Meta got the best people, what the hell did they do in the last ten years? I think they mostly got more people and less ability to do anything very well. It hasn't worked out that great for them. Neither of them has much to show for their efforts. Google bootstrapped AI and then had their people walk off to form OpenAI who are (for now) best buddies with MS. Facebook/Meta keeps changing their mind about what they are about. Social media, VR, and now AI. But it seems they end up chasing their tail every time.

MS actually got better over the last ten years. They too had a few nice acquisitions. But more importantly, they revitalized what was a pretty dead development strategy. Github was critical. The attitude towards Linux and the complete 180 on open source in general was critical. MS did quite a few things right under Nadella.

> They don't have any interesting new products.

None of these companies do.

> what the hell did they do in the last ten years?

Having the best people and knowing how to use them effectively are two very, very different things

I think the point here is that there is nothing to back up the dubious claim that MS recruits were inferior; your observation essentially reinforces that point.

I've heard the claim so many times, and pay (that I was good enough to achieve) at MS was lower than salaries for FB and Google posted on Blind, but who knows how real those were. I never bothered to look into it myself. Honestly I was just kind of a Microsoft fanboy at the time, haha.

Knowing how google interviews… I have some doubts that they are in fact hiring the best people.

A lot of these companies self select for obedient, conflict avoiding employees that agree with everything that comes from above. That's great if you are executing a fixed plan. But, you need a certain amount of status quo challenging types to actually innovate when the plan needs to change. Google and Meta are clearly struggling on that front. They've hired the ability to innovate out of their leadership and company.

Just my impression; but kind of backed up by what's (not) happening at Google.

MS somehow found a way back from that to where they were doing different enough things to grow their business quite dramatically under Nadella. Google is in need of a similar change.

Reminds me of Bell Labs. The director was once interviewed asking "how do you manage a bunch of geniuses" and he answered "you don't." (I'm sure this wasn't the exact phrasing but the sentiment is right)

Edit: Appears my memory is better than I thought[0]

[0] https://westviewnews.org/2019/11/01/bell-labs-second-best-ke...

I am .NET dev and made my living on MSFT stack.

I would not say it was 180 turn on open source, more like 160 or 170 ;).

Just enough so they can steer people into using Azure but not so much to still have Visual Studio leads throwing wrenches into open source source wheels to stay relevant.

I'd call it more like a 330. MS is running GitHub - well OK, never liked that one. It's a pretty lame source hosting platform and way too centralized. MS is doing some half open source bullshit like VS Code and open source glue software that only runs on Windows (who are they kidding?). I wouldn't trust open source .net stuff to stay that way forever, especially if it had any success. There is some smaller stuff like cross-platform PowerShell and mimalloc that seems OK.

I trust .net staying open source as long as it brings devs to Azure. So I would say pretty much forever :)

  >  if Google and Meta got the best people, what the hell did they do in the last ten years?

Invented the Transformer, Gemini, TPUs, monetized YT effectively, transitioned to mobile successfully, established GMaps as a foundation of internet etc.,

Google has a dozen services with > 1 billion users a month. Google in 2010 had only one

10 years ago was 2015, not 2010.

So you can have transformers, but the rest all happened much longer ago than 10 years.

Google search became less effective (imo) but probably more profitable.

Google hired the greatest minds to avoid competition that threatened googles monopoly on the search money printer

It became so good I had to finally switch to use something else.

> MS actually got better over the last ten years.

Some someone who (still) uses Windows I have to disagree. The gradual enshittification of Windows over the last ten years is infuriating.

I agree with this, I've been less and less happy with Windows since Windows 7 for the most part. I don't want telemetry, ads, and certainly not react native start menus. I just want an OS that works well.

  >  if Google and Meta got the best people, what the hell did they do in the last ten years?

Honestly, what have any of them done in the last 20 years? Forget AI for a minute[0]. A lot of stuff happened in the early 2000's but what since? I have a hard time thinking of anything post 2007 (iPhone). But what has been done since then other than some grifts? We made VR billionaires. We made bitcoin billionaires. We've now made AI billionaires. We've turned everything into a subscription, made everything a dark pattern, and everyone is just complaining how everything is broken.

Sure, these companies have made lots of money, but what have they done?

I actually do believe these companies have "the best people." I'm pretty sure they're just paid a lot less and having a difficult time advancing to staff engineer. Promoting people who are good at politics and being a yesman rather than a "does-good-work-man". For all our leetcoding, our "just make it work" mentality, and "we're going to do 10 interviews and take 3 months so that we can ensure we get the best people" I'm pretty sure we've done a really terrible job at it all. Maybe they are getting the best people, but then just putting them in handcuffs until they give up. Or maybe it's just all politics and no one actually cares about building a god damn product, and no, the stock does not count as a product and it is embarrassing that I even have to clarify this.

[0] While impressive it is still out if this will be profitable and if it'll be positive. It's unclear yet, unlike the other things. Read the rest of what I wrote...

>> no one actually cares about building a god damn product

From my experience, that's true for over 90% of the headcount. Everyone talks about quality, about care for customers but rarely that is more than marketing bulshit.

As well as how smart they are and how they're the best. But then they can't be bothered to fix little issues because they question what's "the value".

It all reminds me of that scene from Silicon Valley where Barker explains up Richard that when you have the best marketing team you need to give them easier things to sell[0].

  > Everyone talks about quality

I think my favorite is how everyone talks about simplicity and then introduces tons of complexity through over simplification while rejecting simplicity by calling it complexity. Not realizing there's a big difference in scope and that they could do a lot less work later by doing just a little more now

[0] Sorry, I literally cannot find a better quality video or any other version for that matter... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5sTbjO3eI_0

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