Valleywag
"Google is different, even on a list of distinctive companies," an article from the March issue of Fast Company begins. It goes on:
Here, more than a dozen describe what life is like at a place where no goal is too audacious, agility means more than power, and even cafeteria food —OK. We'll stop there because we're starting to gag. Google's PR team landed itself yet another wet kiss in black ink about the cafeterias, the freedom to pursue side projects, and everything else you already know about Google. Here's the good news: Ex-Googlers are as sick of it as the rest of us. And one of them, AdMob's Kevin Scott, says enough is enough. Here's his whole rant.
Google is undoubtedly an awesome company and was certainly a great place to work the entire time I was there. But. These unreservedly positive fluff pieces really aren't doing the company a service. They irritated me when I was an employee given the too-perfect pictures they painted and what they missed. For instance, ideas at Google do not burst forth from the heads of geniuses and then find their way unimpeded to huge audiences of receptive users. Rather ideas emerge, are torn to shreds, reformulated, torn to shreds, prototyped, torn to shreds, launched to internal users, torn to shreds, rebuilt and relaunched, torn to shreds, refined some more, torn to shreds, put back together one last time, torn to shreds by [site reliability engineers], tweaked again in a seemingly-endless frenzy of last minute work, and launched ... whereupon they are torn to shreds by bloggers, journalists, and competitors. The magic of Google is that tearing to shreds, even when founders are shredding, doesn't often mean outright project cancellation.
Comments
Google is "magical" because they analyze their products before they launch? Whoa! Someone call Haas and get a case study started.
because they have the money to develop, refine, and launch products that may never directly produce revenue or earnings. How many of these things are primarily marketing devices to help recruit developers?
MS did pretty well recruiting developers - a lot of those developers never worked directly for MS - they were able to develop a profitable ecosystem that built the monopoly they now enjoy. Too bad Google can't do the same - the only money they make is in search ads and they're not sharing. Could argue that publishers are the ecosystem, but switching costs are so low...
SREs are the only ones worthy of praise in the whole Google enterprise.
Search and Maps. Name another successful Google product. The rip to shreds product cycle doesn't guarantee success.
Oh if only you went just a bit further in the article: when Marissa Meyer started she could have put her name and address on a piece of paper in the men's room and everyone else in the (tiny, all male) company would have seen it.
I didn't realize that Google had its own all-girls Catholic School! What *don't* they have?
@WagCurious: You must not have read his last sentence. (It was a long paragraph, after all!) His point was that Google just doesn't tear an idea to shreds and then discard it - which is what most companies do. Rather, they tear ideas to shreds to make the ideas better. If this distinction is lost on you, then I suspect you're a middle manager at a company that is currently subject to hostile takeover efforts. Keep tearing down good ideas and driving top talent away!
@MarkTheMarketWatcher: Oooh... it makes the ideas better. How very special. And how man of these "better" ideas have turned into marketable, profitable products?
Uhhhhh, and after all that tearing & rebuilding, we get Google Web Page Creator, Google Base, Google Docs, Google ${otherSuckyService}?
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