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The Google Caste System
managedcode writes "Google doesn't like to do things traditionally. Right from their IPO, when they dumped Goldman Sachs for secretly trying to deal with their big investor, Kleiner Perkins. Business Week covers the Google Caste System, 'in which business types are second-class citizens to Google's valued code jockeys [..] They deem the corporate development team as underpowered in the company, with engineers and product managers tending to carry more clout than salesmen and dealmakers.' At last a company is shouting at the top of it's voice, engineers make the world."
Importance doesn't equal control in much respect. The executives and managers are still in control of the company's future, regardless of what the programmers, DB admins, and the like want to believe. Don't get me wrong, this is great for the company, and is theorhetically the best way to work it. If your workforce is happy, they are more productive and do better quality work. Quality work and productivity really make or break a company. Thus, if you motivate them and reward them to make them happy, the company will do well.
" At last a company is shouting at the top of it's voice, engineers make the world."
this reminds me of when steve balmer made his famous developers speech... "developers developers developers developers..."
will start to realise it's the employees that make their company work, not just the sales people!
http://www.gibby.net.au
Well, Google is still young. I'm fairly sure it will eventually enter middle age and the engineers will be replaced by marketing. Then when it gets old, the marketeers will be replaced by lawyers. It is just a question of time, years, or even decades.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Google is still young. Eventually the business types, who have spent their lives studying how to manipulate people, will slowly take control from the folks who have spent their lives studying how to manipulate computers.
So if the Google "Caste System" is exceptional in that it promotes software developers over others in the corporation, what does that say about the "caste" rankings in most companies? Or do we only start seeing phrases like "caste system" when big media companies feel threatened by successful businesses using disruptive methods?
This rather reminds me of Wall Street's desperate attempts to declare the Google auction IPO a failure, even after Google got more than twice the dollars per share than they would have in an investment bank-priced IPO. If you can't beat them, have your puppet press hang an ugly label on them.
Remain calm! All is well!
I hope this finally changes attitudes of business leaders. I've been working in software business for a decade now and never have I seen a software company where experts were valued above salesmen. When a salesman makes a big contract, it's like he is the king of the world. Whole company has to kneel before him (just a metaphor). When there are lay offs, the salesmen are last to go. But what we all slashdotters know and Google has now implemented, is that a deal with a customer is just a materialization of work done by the whole workforce of a company. It's not the moment when the contract is signed, that customer decides to order. It's the whole run where project managers convince the customer with a well done project, coders produce a product which customer loves, and other project people spend long hours with the customer assuring him that we really care for him. In the end, salesman is just there to present the work done by others.
Many business leaders have began to realize, that people aren't using Google's product because they're running nice commercials on TV, but because they're just good products. It's no wonder why there have been so much polemic about bad quality of software products. Atleast where I've worked, all products have been done with a minimum effort. When a first alpha version start to emerge, business leader have already arranged massive demonstration events to customers. Focus from finishing the product shifts to making a good demonstration. Google makes a difference here. Unlike its competitors (like Micro$oft), its products actually work and what I've said many times to myself, a good product sells itself.
I hope those investors (in the article), that are looking for companies to fill up market gaps left by Google, understand it's not the market gap people are willing to buy. People are looking for good products that also might fill up a market gap in the process.
Engineering driven companies are nothing new, they're just normally not sustainable.
Semiconductor and Passives components manufacturing are normally:
a. small and founded by a geek with a good idea, who either...
1. sells out early OR
2. tries to make a go of it, spends too much time on pet projects and runs the company down.
b. large companies driven by suits who:
1. understand non-R&D business, ie. Sales and Operations, and remain competitive AND
2. acquire small companies run into the ground by geeks.
Why does Google do so well run by geeks? Dunno. It's astonishing they stay so focused. Guessing, maybe it's fear -- seems like they want to win so badly.
But right now every 'free' thing they do, from maps to mail, pumps the very serious ad business with eyeballs and press.
Think of a newspaper. The people who sell ad space and work in Classifieds are secondary to the reporters and editors who manage what stories go into the paper and the general political tone and direction. In fact, those sales people are generally looked down-upon as a necessary evil.
Think about TV. Who runs things, the people selling air time for commercials or the station manager who chooses what shows appear and what the format is when the network isn't forcing its agenda? Or even at network level, what directs them - people who sell ads or creative people who think their program could be a hit?
Radio is the same. Google's business model is: Sell non-obtrusive ads associated with information services. To do this, they need compelling services to make people get ads on the same web page. These services are like shows on TV or juicy news articles - they drive eyeballs, which allows for ad revenue.
Really, there is no other way to run it and make money.
...and she doesn't own a computer, let alone have the faintest idea of how to use one. Google is this millennium's Ford Motor Company. Ford started the assembly line and all the other automakers followed suit. Google values what they consider their most valuable assets and reward them well for their efforts.
Another example; I was explaining Picasa to someone who was looking for a way to easily email photos who wasn't the most computer savvy of all people. She was leery about trying a new piece of software until she found out it's a Google product. She was all for it after that. In a lot of people's minds, Google == Quality. I am not saying it's right, but perception rules the world.
As a programmer, obviously I think its cool that engineers & techies who work on the product are valued at the same level (or above) the corporate company structure. I just don't see how this is so different from what has been going on at other tech companies, for instance Microsoft, where people have always been able to choose between moving up the management ladder or move up the food chain as an Independant Contributor. A lot of the Distinguished Engineers and Technical Fellows at Microsoft and specifically in MSR (and I'm sure the same is true of a lot of other companies) are really just engineers with no direct reports, and they are clearly esteemed and thought of as highly as anyone in the company.
I agree its cool, I'm just not so sold that its a new idea that applies only to Google.
Add to that picture all the horribly programmed engineering tools we have to use (and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for), with GUIs that were created by retarded lemurs on acid, and, well, my opinion of the current state of the science of programming is not very healthy. Nice to see someone out there is taking some initiative.
Seriously, when a Mac head like me favors using your tool via the command line and C shell scripts, you need to *FIRE* whomever it is that designs your GUIs.
Oh, and X Windows programmers? The text that's highlighted? That's what I expect to be replaced by my typing. It's not meant for the random decoration that you all use it for.
Well, he convinced me that it was a two way street. That there is no shortage of good ideas and products out there, and the ONLY reason some succeed over others is becuase people like him and Sales people make it happen. They sell products that they know aren't quite ready yet (vaporware) because the company needs the revenue. They sell products that they know are inferior to the competition because their Scientists and Engineers made a stupid mistake early on in the product development lifecycle that didn't get caught until too late and the company can't afford to start over.
Basically he convinced me (a seasoned Engineer) that we need them as much as they need us.
So, be careful in your thinking about this issue.
joking aside, the phenomenon can be found in nearly every tech/engineering company in the whole wide world where the founders are engineers, still run the place and the company or industry has high growth rates. The suits only ever come in when growth is slowing down and the products don't sell by itself but need the help of the big, bad BS-marketing machine. Oh, by the way, I used to be a suit myself , with hundreds of engineers working for me, despite me mostly not having a clue what they were doing. It worked pretty well, mostly. The reason: Making business decisions and knowing the financials. Or to turn it around: To not get the suits into the door, get used to love making decisions and get a grasp of accounting. Then happy days. It is not that hard, actually it is bloody easy.
I think its also a good idea if engineers get a taste of business and business people get a taste of engineering. I remember when I was the stuck-up student who believed he was the engineer of all things. I thought that users should bloody well learn to use a system correctly not the other way round. I thought that a properly engineered system was the way to go and that just making a product work so it could be sold was some kind of sin. I swore blindly to upholding standards at all costs and I wasted months trying to plan projects before I started doing anything. Back then I would look down on people because perhaps they used Flash, named a variable 'temp', used the wrong colour wires or used lossy compression in any way. Maybe I was worse than most I don't know, but someone like that doesn't work well in any kind of commercial industry, from arts to engineering, in the real world people want things that work or look good and they want them tomorrow. I only learnt that from experience and I think business people could probably learn a thing or two from the other side of the fence. Both sides are always gunning at each other because they don't understand each others issues and aspirations. Managers are always asking engineers to do something seemingly insane, engineers are always stressing that they need more time and that their system must be perfect or else it will be the end of the world.
Just to clear things up:
- Users don't need big colourful buttons to be able to figure out how something works, this does not automatically create an intuitive interface. It does however satisfy specifications and make it look like you care, if that's all that matters to you.
- Every product on the market, from TV's to computers to cars, have numerous hacks and last minute workarounds in them, they won't be a perfect system and they will have bugs or defects. you're product _will_ be the same.
- Every market has 3 products: the best, the cheapest, and the one with most value for money. While technically all other competing products are useless and not even worth assembling, that won't stop you being able to flog them to people if yours doesn't happen to fit into one of those 3 categories.
- There are two types of people: those who work 9-5, satisfy specifications and instructions *technically* and deliver on time, and those who work all the time, ignore specifications and go out of their way to make things actually work properly even if the original plan was flawed (as it usually is).
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Article written by marketoids without understanding of the real value of Google...
Some bloppers:
That's not to say Google could afford to go out and do a big deal just for the sake of it. A mega-takeover potentially could wreak havoc on Google. Even Piper Jaffray Co's. (PJC ) 11/18/05 @ 9:05 PM --] Internet analyst Safa Rashtchy, one of Wall Street's biggest Google bulls, says: "If they were to buy AOL or eBay, it would hurt the stock."
Google buying one of the Evil Giants would certainly hurt the stock, by damaging reputation of Google. People hate AOL and at least mildly dislike eBay. Loss of capital by Google has nothing to do with it. Loss of trust does.
All the same, the lure of a big deal could prove hard to resist, particularly if Google's strategic position is threatened. For the past two months, Google has been battling Microsoft Corp. (MSFT ) at the bargaining table for a stake in Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX ) AOL unit
Whoa, Google lost such a deal to Microsoft, such a big battle, such juicy morsel...? No. Google was acting as a shill, for its own interest. Bloat the price of a mostly worthless piece of junk, make the competition offer way more than they would offer initially, and then let them have the rotten carcass for price of luxury dish.
Losing some battles gives more profit than winning them.
Young Googlers' preoccupation with these perks tend to drive mature VCs to distraction. "If I hear one more [punk] complain about his omelet, or tell me he's bored with the smoothie selection, I'm gonna, I don't know," splutters one.
What would YOU prefer to do? Make the job fun and it will be efficient. Not in terms "lines of code per day" but in terms "satisfied customers per day". Still hard to get for some.
Says the aggrieved VC: "Did it ever occur to them that this was like asking us to do their homework for them? It's the height of arrogance."
It's lots of VCs who hope to make a lot of money on that. Google just does the usual thing, and is only one. So, usual marketing rule, if the sales outweight demand, sellers must look for ways to attract the customer and the customer may afford demanding much more for the same price. I thought these guys are businessmen? You don't want to do the homework for Google? Someone else will, and they will get the candy, not you, mr Very Senior Partner.
The suits inside Google don't fare much better than the outside pros. Several current and former insiders say there's a caste system, in which business types are second-class citizens to Google's valued code jockeys.
As opposed to the caste system where the business types rule the second-class "production crew".
They argue that it could prove to be a big challenge in the future as Google seeks to maintain its growth. They deem the corporate development team as underpowered in the company, with engineers and product managers tending to carry more clout than salesmen and dealmakers.
I think they just misunderstand "corporate development". Google took this term right. Marketoids still think it means themselves.
The candidate, a Wall Street tech M&A specialist who was looking for a change of scenery and a more relaxed lifestyle, calls the experience "chaotic, bureaucratic, and very rigid." Strung out over more than nine months and numerous coast-to-coast flights, the courtship culminated in a jarring "pop quiz."
Drummond rejects the accusations that Google is anti-businesspeople. He says Google has hired many MBAs and bankers and is constantly assessing its dealmaking strategy.
Google is just anti-assholepeople. Jerks who hope to get cash from the suckers. And they get punished pretty cruelly for attempts to pick on Google.
What's more relaxing for the coders crew than to see a super-important suit, a stockmarket shark to jump through loops and sweat heavily just to get a candy they wave in front of his nose? Less bull from your side and deals with Google would become pleas
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I think you are falling prey to the media hype.
America caste system is more based on money than color. True there are always exceptions to these social structures and always will be, but the decision to include or exclude someone is done more on the basis of financial standing and potention to improve my financial standing than color.
This is funny and confirms some of my original suspicions.
Previously my company tried to purchase and use a google search engine box. However if you try and buy the google box for your corporate searching needs you will find it impossible to deal with their sales people. They don't offer support, they won't tell you anything. Funnily enough technically if you want to make it work its a doodle.
Google needs to improve its sales drastically if its honestly going to take over the world, technology just is not enough.
Good point - what many people fail to realize is that the engineers and sales people are a team - without each other a company won't succeed. Engineers need to develop good products and sales peopel need to create cash flow to keep the development pipeline funded. I've done both, and both jobs have their unique challenges.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I am sure you are right, because I have seen it happen. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was founded in 1959 by a couple of engineers. When I became aware of the company in 1963 it still had an engineering culture: the engineers ran the show, and the sales people were secondary. Somewhere around 1968, they renamed the programmers "software engineers" to give them more prestige.
As the company matured the culture changed. Even though I worked for DEC from 1975 to 1992, I cannot point to a specific event that was the watershed. The first symptom that I noticed was that the KS10 was said to be developed in secret to prevent it from being cancelled. Even if that wasn't true, the fact that engineers believed it indicates that the engineers no longer felt that they were making the decisions.
I wonder if paying commissions to the sales people was a symptom or a cause.
I don't blame the demise of Digital entirely on the shift from an engineering focus to a sales focus. There were some bad decisions made by engineering in the last few years. But I can't help wondering if those decisions might have been corrected more quickly by a younger company.
Strangely, IBM appears to be a counter-example. They are by far the oldest computer company, but they seem to have achieved some sort of dynamic equilibrium, where they are able to change direction as technology and markets change quickly enough to survive. I am sure some of that has to do with their size, but as General Motors reminds us, size is no guarantee of survival. I suppose they have internal institutions that keep them nimble.
There are some good books on Digital Equipment Corporation. See The Ultimate Entrepreneur for the story of DEC at its height, and DEC is Dead Long, Live DEC for a look back after its death.
John Sauter (J_Sauter@Empire.Net)
Both extremes are short sighted.
Microsoft has ossified because engineers, creativity, and innovation don't carry enough clout.
On the side, Apple is a second rate power in the I.T. world. They could be dominating the I.T. world like Microsoft now does, if not for the poor business decision they made when they got started of pricing their computers above IBM's crappy PCs. Giving more clout to smart business men at that time could have changed things.
A successful tech company needs to both the businessmen and the engineers sufficently empowered.
It seems Google has learned its lessons from Microsoft. Lets see if they also learn Apple's. More importantly, lets see if they remember both lessons as they expand and get big.
I do and so should everyone else. If the company want you to work 50-60-70 or more hours a week, the company is mismanaged and it's time to get out!. I have never had a job that requires me to work more than 40 hours.
To quote an old movie, Auntie Mame from 1958: "Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!" If you work 50-60-70 hours a week, you are starving to death! Do you really want to look back on your life and say "Geeez.... What happened? I was at work!" Not me, no thank you very much!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Engineers don't need more clout than salespeople, anymore than salespeople shouldn't get more clout than engineers. To have a company that really, really shines, you need the best of both.
The funny thing about mediocre sales people is that they see mediocre engineers, and don't understand what the big deal is. Meanwhile, the mediocre engineer sees the mediocre sales guy, and *also* doesn't understand the big deal.
Meanwhile, the talented engineers and sales people look at the other side and know that they couldn't do that job nearly as well as the person they are looking at.
The companies that are currently ridiculously succesful are the ones that recognize that employees are their greatest asset.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.