Slashdot Mirror
Cuil Proves the Bubble Is Back
MattSparkes writes "Cuil may only have launched this week, but it seems that they're already enjoying late-'90s boom-style comforts. 'Lunch is ordered in every single day. Huge fridges burst with snacks and drinks. Bowls of strawberries and muffins lie around the rest area. The company pays for a personal trainer and gym membership for everyone. A doctor calls round each Friday, after the weekly barbeque, to see if everyone's in good health. Employees drift in an out at times that suit themselves.' Seems like an awesome place to work, but how long will their $25 million VC funding last at this rate?"
Cuil Proves the Bubble Is Back
First of all, a single anecdote does not prove anything. If you included eBay's Skype deal or Google's YouTube deal ... wait, scratch that last one. See, there's constantly non-prudent business deals and every now and then you see a real whopper.
Lunch is ordered in every single day. Huge fridges burst with snacks and drinks. Bowls of strawberries and muffins lie around the rest area. The company pays for a personal trainer and gym membership for everyone. A doctor calls round each Friday, after the weekly barbecue, to see if everyone's in good health. Employees drift in an out at times that suit themselves.
Do you think that this is what caused the dot com bubble? Do you think the vast majority of people were living like this when it burst? I'm no economist but I thought that the problem wasn't with how the IT and Web Site companies were spending their money but rather what the customers they found were giving them money for--basically nothing. A few HTML pages? Not even worth my time to read?
$25 million in venture capital is nothing these days. Let them burn it. Yeah, we'll all be laughing a couple months from now when they're busting their asses to find some income--or maybe they are correct in thinking they are the next Google. Hell, Slashdot ran a story reporting them to index more than Google. With the kind of press they achieved, maybe they're right to live like royalty for a bit?
Does anyone look back on Google and say "They hired a massage artist? Proof the bubble is back!" No, because they thought they were going to be big and they were.
You want to prevent another bubble? Don't take a job where you're not sure how you or any of your coworkers draw revenue from real customers who in turn receive some service or product that makes complete sense. That's how you prevent a bubble. And unless you're part of the 1% calling the shots on how to spend money, you needn't worry about how other companies spend their money. This frivolous spending should just make it easier for Google to beat their bottom line and steal customers back. And if they can't, well then let Cuil rake large piles of capital together and set them afire to their heart's content.
My work here is dung.
I know that many people will say that perks like these are only positives because they can only make people happier about their job, which is good for the employee and good for the employer as well.
I would like to suggest that it's not all roses in reality. I have worked at places where the employer provided lots of cushy perks and I found that it tends to attract a certain type of employee: the type who wants the job not because they like the work, but because they like the perks. In my experience this type of employee is not the best for the company; and what's worse, the general working environment tends to become antiproductive even for employees who otherwise would be more productive.
I have found that in Silicon Valley companies, there is almost a sense of pride taken in how unstructured the working environment is. The "cool, hip" companies are the ones that encourage their employees to engage in nerf gun fights, have parties every Friday, and generally play around on company time. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that these companies can be globally competitive, but maybe companies all over the world are all doing the same things.
I personally believe that there is a fine balance between too much carrot, and too much stick, but that the answer certainly does not come from throwing the stick out completely. I am most motivated when there are expectations of me, and I have worked at companies where expectations are disturbingly low. I honestly believe that most people, even if they won't admit it, need a bit of structure in their working environment to be most productive.
There is definitely a desire for people to believe that the best working environment is the one where the employer puts the least demands on its employees and gives all of the best perks possible, and that such an environment would make everyone more productive if only employers weren't so pig-headed and could just realize that ... but I think this is really wishful thinking. It actually worries me that software companies in the USA are often like this because somewhere there must be companies that Just Get Shit Done (India maybe?) without all of the frivolities and eventually, they're going to dominate. And I want the software industry in the USA to stay healthy because that's how I earn my living.
By the way, I think that it would be hard to out-cushy Google. Their campus is like Club Med and I have a hard time believing that they get anything close to maximum productivity out of their workforce because of it.
Posting AC because obviously I don't want my current or past employers or coworkers to somehow get word of this and get pissed off at me.
From what I heard, they had $33 million in capital, strawberries, checkups and BBQs don't use that kind of cash. Over staffing will however. Nothing in this article makes me think they're doing anything over the top like private jet rides to Las Vegas.
MABASPLOOM!
From my experience with using Cuil for a few days, it is utterly and completely useless in its present form. Yes it's nice visually, but it's a search engine got heaven's sake - visually pleasant is nothing if the searches don't return anything useful.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
I think there will be a pop.
Have you tried it? Part of the draw may be the speed and the images next to the search results, but realistically, not really the best results, and the pictures that come up on the results are stock photos - not any relation to the site content at all. (if you have your own domain, search for it and see what I am talking about)
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
If it were former HotBot engineers that were doing this would this be such a big deal? Probably not.. It's the Google association that is generating all the media. IMHO, Cuil is having it's 15 minutes.
It does make you wonder though if the Google lovefest is over. Now that they are a publicly traded company their only obligation is to their shareholders and as a publicly traded company they should probably change their motto to "We do less evil than everyone else".
Makes you wonder if all the attention to Cuil just brings up the fact that maybe people are starting to turn on Google and why not? Maybe they're getting TOO much power. With that being said, more power to Cuil.
There are a ton of companies out there that offer free snackies, gyms, on-site doctors, etc. For the most part they are prudent financial decisions. free snacks: the cost is VERY minimal compared to the good will generated and assuming it's stocked internally, you don't have to allow an outside vendor in to stock machines improving your security. gyms: healthy employees cost less to insure. healthy employees miss less work. healthy employees are more attractive and will lead to improved workplace chemistry. healthy employees impress customers. on-site doc: employees only need to take 30m off work to see the doc instead of having to get in a car, drive to their doc, wait, wait, wait, see doc, drive back to work which is 2 hrs minimum. so, while a lot of these really seem excessive, they aren't.
The only carrot I have ever seen is a paycheck, everything else is a stick.
They are enjoying their perks.. sure... but meanwhile their resumes are probably already submitted to other companies. These guys are either the most optimistic crew in the world (to be confidently contesting Google with a subpar engine) or they are just enjoying their time while it lasts.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
I've tried their "search" engine. I can get better and faster results from a printed telephone book. They may be made up of intelligent, educated people, but they need to get someone with brains on board to perform a complete rewrite of their search algorithms ASAP. I don't see their VC investors being too happy right now and in the near future they're going to be pissed.
I'd like to see some stats to see if they are even getting any traffic now that people have seen how worthless their search results are.
Of course it means something. It's attitude. The company is badly run because the management sees fit to waste tons of money before a single nickel is generated. It's bad management, plain and simple. The VC's, if they were smart, should be outraged.
I don't respond to AC's.
These startups are notorious for their vague business plans. They don't take the time to do the math. They just kind of give their impressions of how they think their revenue will add up. Sheesh!
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
I dunno if it's really at that great at club fed... i mean, that spammer went *wacko* there...
What the hell is selling short, anyway?
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
...the proof is that they launched the site without anyone noticing that it basically doesn't work.
Just one example, from a half-an-hour spent playing with it trying to find something, anything it did better than Google. There is a humongous auto dealership in the Pacific Northwest named Lithia Motors, so big it's listed on the NYSE, stock symbol LAD. If you do a Cuil search on Lithia Motors, the hits that come up on the first page include a Wikipedia article about Lithia Motors, a Reuters report, a news item about its expansion in Iowa, its rank among America's Most Admired companies... every darned thing.
Every darn thing except: the website for Lithia Motors.
Just guessing at the URL and typing "lithia" into the browser's address field works better than using Cuil.
Shades of the bad old days when MBAs called the shots and didn't bother their pretty little heads over product details. Who cared about the product itself, when all that mattered was the pitch?
I can just imagine the pitch for Cuil. Imagine a search engine that indexes more than Google, works better than Google, and is staffed by top-notch Google expatriates.
What I can't imagine is why they unveiled it before it was working. "You only have one chance to make a first impression." They've managed to garner so much publicity that almost anyone potentially interested in it has given it a try... and the first impressions and word-of-mouth are so bad that IMHO if they ever do get it working, their only chance will be to relaunch under a different name.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I worked for a startup company that burned through $40M in six months. It's actually pretty easy to figure out when to jump ship based on the number and quality of perks. When they get rid of the bottled water and put in one of those big coolers with the 20-gallon bottle, it's time to leave. Prior to that, just enjoy the dot-com salary and catered lunches while they last and watch the slow slide into insolvency with quiet amusement.
So you are implying the regulars on slashdot would need conjugal visits?
you must be new here.
Ok, I just don't get why Cuil is getting all this attention. It doesn't do anything revolutionary enough to get people (this includes non-geeks that make up the VAST majority of the search market) to use anything but what they were using yesterday for search.
Yes, it looks nice. Yes, it's got a hip image. But it has nothing that will put a dent in any of the major search engines usage.
I'd call it a flash in the pan if it was bright enough for anybody to see.
Steal my band's record! Seriously,
and creating "virtual" stocks that you then sell short
Worse than that, you never deliver any of the shares to the buyers, and return the stock you borrowed back to the original owner. No money changes hands (so it's "not fraud" lol), you're out nothing, but the stock's value has been reduced, all because it appears to "the market" that someone is trying to dump a whole lot of the stock for cheap, often triggering a lot of automatic bail-out trades driving the stock down.
Absolutely destructive and devaluing of stocks.
Funny, The Economist covered short-selling this week and discussed why selling, even naked short-selling, is good for the markets. Hmmm, who would I trust - the 150-year-old Economist, the best newsmagazine in the world, which is staffed by people who've forgotten more about economics and finance than the best MBAs ever learn, or...NPR, staffed by Vasser socialites whose dads contributed to political parties. Hmmm.
Advice: on VPS providers
Either that, or it's time to be grateful that your company decided not to contribute to one of the most absurdly wasteful excesses of modern society. My workplace is great, but we ditched those water bottles a while ago. I only wish every company would.