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Google Tries Not To Be a Black Hole of Brilliance
theodp writes "Google says it's declined to pursue awesome job prospects to avoid an over-concentration of brilliance at the search giant. Speaking at the Supernova conference, Google VP Bradley Horowitz said the company intentionally leaves some brainpower outside its walls: 'I recently had a discussion with an engineer at Google and I pointed out a handful of people that I thought were fruitful in the industry and I proposed that we should hire these people,' said Horowitz. 'But [the engineer] stopped me and said: "These people are actually important to have outside of Google. They're very Google people that have the right philosophies around these things, and it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google."'"
Google won't even talk to me. Have an ordinary day you undermensch!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Obligatory Google is awesome thread of the week....
Sooooo arrogant, this will be their fall. Google philosophy? What does that mean, rip off merchants with adword costs?
Like that VP.
If he worked for my company, I would fire him. A VP should know when to keep his or her mouth shut.
That's the same reason Walmart gave me for turning me away.
an engineer told the VP that? #googleisbackwards
Googlego
Lets not be another Monopolysoft
Sounds like someone's upset that they didn't get hired by Google... made up a story about being "too Google for Google". Now they can feel like a secret agent for Google while they work tech support for Dell.
It sounds like by "not pursuing" top talent, Google is actively letting the top talent go wherever they want. I think if these guys applied for jobs at Google, they'd get hired.
It comes down to economics. If you say "We've got to hire John Doe" then the price you're willing to pay for John Doe to join your staff goes way up. Whereas if John Doe applies and gets hired to traditional way... he's more inclined to expect a normal market driven salary.
But I would have been even happier to have gotten the stock options and work elsewhere. If it made things better for Google, a few stock options would seem like a reasonable form of recognition.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Well, so long as they continue producing and improving upon products that are available for my use, I'd consider that as light escaping/NOT black hole behaviour.
What a self-congratulatory, onanistic piece of gloat that is!
What the engineer was really saying was "please don't hire someone to be my boss".
The smart guys in the parking lot get killed off by all the super-intelligent hawking radiation and your black hole evaporates.
Programmers rejected by Google can now tell their friends: "I didn't get the job. I must be too good for them."
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
"But [the engineer] stopped me and said: 'These people are actually important to have outside of Google..."
It sounds to me like this guy is trying to protect his job. "Uh.. don't hire him, we need him outside of Google..yeah that's the ticket". I read between the lines that this guy doesn't want anyone smarter than he is too close to his job.
Consider that much of that talent is in academia where it is doing the most for Google -> Training the next generation.
..but he's got a point. It really is better if a lot of these brilliant people go to work for other companies or, better yet, form their own.
Think of it this way: Would you want EA/Microsoft/Nintendo/whatever to have all of the best gaming talent?
Obligatory Google is awesome thread of the week....
Google has become so awesome that even the best and brightest aren't good enough to work there. The Google campus is vacant and empty, everyone gone home after being let go for failing to be awesome enough. And yet, money magically keeps rolling in ... to whom though? Nobody.
... burning in binary these words, "I scanned everyone's DNA in this room and decided it was not worth my time as only 0.1483 of you are worthy of working for Google."
This was apparent in the latest recruitment meeting at my alma mater where a Google server was given 30 minutes to recruit an auditorium full of computer science majors. Well, the Microsoft, HP, Oracle, etc reps gave long speeches and only gave the Google server five minutes to give its speech. It rolled down one end of the stage and leaned over the crowd, silent. It rolled down the other end of the stage and leaned over the crowd, silent. It spent the next few minutes in a monolithic standstill while the whole room waited on bated breath, edge of their seats, dying to know what awesome numbers were being computed and crunched inside the career giver.
The server turned around and shot a laser out at the curtain behind it
Let me tell you, I have never seen a recruitment booth so full of applicants.
My work here is dung.
The Internet just got a little dumber. I want my 15 seconds back.
Pure arrogance. Like they could ever get even a majority of talent in their field. Google does almost nothing in a wide spectrum of cutting edge computer engineering. And plenty of people would rather have the prestige (and lighter schedule) you get in academia.
Maybe the uber-geek just didn't want the competition within his own group. Even geeks can be territorial.
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
I am so impressed with Google's approach on this that I am immediately adopting it. From now on, anything personally advantageous that I don't do, well obviously, that was for the good of the geecosystem.
Pardon me now, I have to go read some Ayn Rand.
Good post.
Is this a parody of some text that I don't recognize?
-kgj
Is Google now in the business of trying to save the world ? "We're not hiring this guy for the good of the ecosystem", oh come on, this is ridiculous ! Who do they think they are ?
People have accused Microsoft of stifling innovation by snapping up so many freshly minted PhD's for Microsoft Research. They get a lot of hate, some of which can be found on this Slashdot article.
Google is wary of the these issues, as they are in the same position.
So we have evidence of them recognizing this, and choosing to do the "not evil" thing, and yet, for all their consideration for the health of the industry, a bunch of envious whiners use it to accuse them of arrogance.
Rather, an over-concentration of "brilliant" types does not necessarily lead to better performance for the company. Enron, for example, was very focused on hiring the "best and brightest" but it stunted their company's culture and ultimately... well, we all know how that ended. Projects and companies really need a diverse set of individuals to work best: innovators, idea people, implementers, perfectionists, leaders, communicators, idealists, pragmatists, etc, etc. Too much of a concentration of any type tends to lead to problems. If Google simply filled itself with "brilliant" people they would probably all probably be self-absorbed in their own ideas and ego. There would be none of the support personalities necessary to really bring ideas to fruition.
Can only imagine the job interview you hoped for so long at Google:
... we won't. You are simply too brilliant, and hiring you would mean hundreds of small companies could not reap the benefits of having you as an employee ! That's why we want you to go out there and help those other companies with your genius ! Yes, this is the best decision we ever made at Google: not hiring brilliant people because they would do so much better at other companies!
So erm, what do you think of me. I scored all the tests perfectly, I really would like to know if I am hired (so I can end my 2 year period of unemployment)
(Google interviewer)Well, erm.., see we think Google needs the best of the best. And you are certainly just that. We want to hire you, because of your pure brilliance. We think you really fit the company and would offer you a contract right away. Except,
So erm... this is a good thing - you not hiring me ? Wow thanks !...goes home...
Hi honey, how did the job interview go ? Hope you were finally hired, we are shit out of cash !
Oh, I got some really good news!
(Yes ! He got the job, finally I can buy shit again !)
I wasn't hired ! Isn't that great ? I can go on and be unemployed so other companies can hire my brilliant mind ! That's what the Google interviewers said to me, isn't that great ?
Err... honey... why are you packing your suitcase and leaving me ? Don't you love this great news ? Honey.... ?
Suffice to say, brilliant minds can also flourish at the basements of their parents...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Seriously, Google SHOULD consider the idea of funding a number of these folks in small start-ups to force competition. Basically, HONEST competition is GREAT for the industry and for Google. The problem comes in when you have a monopoly that uses their weight and money to buy out established competitors and try hard to create a small oligolopoly, or an illegal monopoly (typically tied to a set of closed products like an OS and a office suite).
In fact, if GM REALLY wanted to excel, they would break themselves up, and have the divisions compete. The problem with the situation for GM, Chrysler and Ford was that it was too few CEO's and worse, they were incestuous (had to come up through the industry). Heck, rather than sell volvo, saturn, and hummer to China, they would be better off rolling them into one company, giving them a CEO from outside of the industry, and then allowing them to compete against others, esp GM itself. It will mean that the company would have to shrink, but, within 4 years they would be ready for IPO, or would be bankrupt.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Google doesn't need that many more smart technical people. What they could use some people who could figure out something other than ads that people would actually pay for. Their track record in actual products is awful. The overpriced "Google Search Appliance" isn't doing well. They do corporate hosted mailboxes, but that's Postini, which they bought.
Google is really an ad agency. That's where the money comes from.
A remix of this video could include the line in the chorus "I'm too sexy for google"?
The original was released in 1991, well before Google became so pervassive.
It is time.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
This vaguely reminded me of the Foundation series... all of the knowledge and brainpower ends up concentrated in one small movement while the rest of humanity is left to their superstition and pseudo-science.
Okay, maybe it’s a stretch, but it’s still an interesting comparison.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Reminds of the experiement in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World where they put a whole bunch of Alphas together and it was a disaster. I guess every organization needs some betas and epsilons.
At first I thought this sounded like the very definition of hubris on Google's part, but then I read TFA. Nobody really said anything about leaving the rest of the industry starved for talent. All they said is that a particular group of engineers were more useful to Google where they were than they would be if brought in. It's actually not an uncommon situation, as having talented and like-minded people at other companies can be great for forming partnerships and communities. If everybody working on XYZ was at Google, two problems could occur: groupthink inside, and antipathy outside. A more Machiavellian engineer might even have suggested sending current Google employees to evangelize and facilitate partnerships elsewhere. Recognizing that a like-minded person elsewhere can be more valuable than a hire seems rather insightful to me.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
Awesome! I'm completely mediocre and therefore perfect for Google to hire. I mean, you can't let the rest of the world have all the average people can you? It wouldn't be balanced. Google needs me!
I pointed out a handful of people that.. we should hire,' said Horowitz. 'The engineer stopped me and said: "These people are important to have outside of Google. They're very Google people that have the right philosophies around these things, and it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google."'"
The last time I read dialog this moralistic and improbable was in a Watchtower tract from the Seventh Day Adventists.
That's PHB-speak for "if we hire too many smarties, then nobody wants to do the real grunt work."
Table-ized A.I.
Rejected by Google.
.... ... }
int main (void) {
There are lots of smart people who aren't interested in what Google is currently doing. The pay, benefits etc might be great, but for most people it's not necessarily how they want to spend their days. It can be a lot more fun being on the ground floor of a dynamic startup doing stuff you believe in with a small group of smart people than being a cog in a giant wheel. Even if it is a pretty special wheel with a much larger degree of autonomy.
I do believe overall google to date has been a driving force for useful, usually practical innovation - especially in the datacenter sphere. So while I'm not a fan boy, I think it's the best search engine to date, and google maps is quite useful. Their real struggle is to stay ahead of said startup (or hope they can buy them, which has its own difficulties).
Being rejected by google is better than nothing
These people are actually important to have outside of Google. They're very Google people that have the right philosophies around these things, and it's important that we not hire these guys. It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google.
"We are finding them too difficult to control" is how I read this. I suspect they are basically saying Google doesn't want too many ultra smart individuals that care way too much about Google, because they reach a critical mass that becomes difficult for upper managment (with it's lesser prerequisite of brilliance) to control. Lets face it, stupid staff are obedient, and if not easy to fire. Simple but in this case having far more brains-on-a-stick at far too higher density is a liability. I've often said managers are uncomfortable hiring people significantly smarter than they are, but a whole seething hive of the industries top brains probably makes them wake up in the night and scream.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Translation: "They already work for us. *wink wink*"
Hey! Who gave the English major a Slashdot account? We already have grammar nazis. We already have people making car analogies. We already have legions of frist psots, in soviet russias, and overlord welcoming posters willing to fix that for ya. We don't need literati here, filling the threads with... entertaining prose.
Hmmm...
Welcome to Slashdot, Friend!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Made me chuckle. Damn the "Offtopic" naysayers -- keep the humor coming!
-kgj
... who says it's a woman ? Could just as well have been a gay couple.
so THAT'S why all my applications go unanswered!! I feel better now.
We have a VP putting this statement and we're supposed to take at face value? It sounds like propaganda to me.
This is corporate America, a corporation listed on the stock market who has a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders. Profit comes first. Google is on top of their game right now, well sort of, there's all the Chinese stuff going on, and they can afford to be oh so generous; if in fact, they are actually doing what they say. Speaking of the Chinese and Google isn't it funny that when their revenues are threatened, they bend over in a heartbeat?
This whole thing stinks of BS to me.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
In their place Google can hire the less gifted under affirmative action.
This statement is just silly to make people who like feeling good, feel good. However, it has nothing to do with reality. People are hired to do a job. If there is work to be done, a person is hired, no work means no need to hire. It is as simple as that. Granted that it is possible to hire someone so that a specific person is not available to the competition, but this is limiting as a person with no work to do will start hating their job. So what google is saying is that it is purposely leaving things undone because of their ideal of what? Not hiring unemployed people? Keeping people out? I bet they have all the people they need so they decided to say something so off the wall the bs meter is off the charts.
Ha Ha Ha, Yeah, Right! Let me translate this for you. It can mean one of two things:
1) They don't hire overqualified people when they can hire cheaper people just good enough to get the job done. Just like every other company out there.
2) Please, for the love of god, make the horde of unqualified geeks that bury us repeatedly under endless copies of their resumes even though we have rejected them countless times already stop. Let's try psychology... here.. we don't hire you b/c you are too qualified. Now go brag about that and stop trying! There... now how to get the stench of a million mothers' basements out of our mailroom....
I read this differently than /. ... I don't think they are arrogant. Nor are they being generous to the IT world. The second one is closer but... I picture it more like this.
"Excellent~~ peons work WORK! All you are doing is further building my Empire. When you ripen we shall pluck you harvest you and enjoy your labour fully. MUAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!"
Seriously, anything beneficial to the tech world is good for google. More computers, more screens, more eyes on them, more integration. All good for Google. And if you think of it that way you can still be negative towards Google for doing something that is probably good for the IT sector generally.
Note: I imagine it would look like this
...for the names the people they had decided not to hire, Horowitz replied, "I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am."
I think you guys are looking at this the wrong way..I think what they are saying is that, while it would be quite nice to have all of the top notch people working for them, it would be selfish. It would be selfish for them to hoard everyone and have them developing for google instead of working on other equally or even more important things. I could be wrong, but thats how I read it
World keeps advancing. Now there is another diplomatic way to say "you are not good enough for us". They deserve a Nobel Peace prize for this, who knows how many wars will be avoided if politics start using it.
>It's better for the ecosystem to have an honest industry, as opposed to aggregating all this talent at Google.
Get over yourself. This kind of thinking will kill the company, although who cares?
If Google close tomorrow, I'll move to another search provider. Ebay or Amazon? Now, then I'd be in trouble.
astroturf too much.
"See how we act? There's no need to investigate us for market dominance!"
What's next, Google Breeder? Google computers decide who you're allowed to reproduce with, in order to best enrich the ecosystem of minds?
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
You have to ask, just how many bloated egos can one organization sustain? There's probably enough there already subject to easy bruising. And those egos need some drones to actually do the work...
There's another company that has consistently been "nice" to the industry, refusing to do evil and in general being a stand-up, wonderful bunch of guys: Red Hat. I honestly think that there isn't a more decent company around than Red Hat. They fund a significant percentage of the kernel, driver, and UI development for the entire Linux world. Some of the very best and most productive developers behind the Linux kernel, GCC, and too many other projects to mention are employed at Red Hat!
And to this day, they have yet to throw a single shenanigan around releasing source RPMs. Google's shine is bright, but has a few smudges. Red Hat, on the other hand, is squeaky clean.
PS: No, I don't work for them, I'm just a very satisfied customer!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
So, by way of implication, they are hiring less than brilliant people now? Awesome! Where do I send a resume?
Google is giving in to the bean counter culture. Rather than risk captial on internal R&D, let the people working in garages fund it. We'll buy it once its proven and the bugs are hammered out. This sort of thing makes sense in mature industries, where the market and product suite is pretty well defined. Here, it's an issue of maintaining market share, profit and efficiency with little room to move in terms of innovation. But it also signals a transition to lower profit margins as growth potential tapers off. Its the top of the S curve, in biz speak.
The market will always reward higher risk with greater rewards. And a company the size of Google is well placed to take on that risk in the form of lots of smaller projects. Many will fail, but those that succeed will pay off handsomely. With Google underwriting this risk across a diversified portfolio of R&D projects, the impact to key personnel is minimal. If their project fails, Google can move them to the next one. So they can undertake riskier (but potentially more profitable) projects. The garage developer risks an all or nothing reward on a single project. As people are risk adverse, the really far out projects are less likely to be undertaken.
In reality, there is plenty of unexplored territory out there. Garage developers, backed by venture capital with the proper motivation will continue to take risks. But it appears that Google no longer shares this viewpoint.
Have gnu, will travel.
(That's a Mad Magazine reference.) I never fully understood it, but the magazine reliably used it in situations like this.
Their they're doing there hair.
Sounds like something out of a Dilbert cartoon. I suspect the engineer was having a bit of fun with Bradley.
... you end up poor and alone. That was a wise move. Furthermore those guys probably contribute to Google's ecosystem even if they're paid by someone else.
Is this Google's way of saying "We're in a slump and forced to cut back on manpower"?
VP: Hey, Bob. I've got this applicant to fill the open Engineer position above you. He looks stellar. Take a look and tell me what you think.
Jr Engineer looks over application, who has none of the required skillsets, but--engineer notes--goes to went to same college as VP.
Jr Engineer: Weeell, yes, he is a stellar candidate. Good eye on that one. And he thinks just like us. He's a Googlite alright. So... I think you can see what would be even more brilliant than hiring him.
Jr Engineer pauses, expectantly.
VP: If we...
Jr Engineer: Yes, exACTly. If we let him stay at our competitor...
VP: Then...
Jr Engineer: Yes, then he can help change our competitor to think like us, making it easier to finally...
VP: Assimilate them.
Jr Engineer: That's a brilliant idea you have there, Mr VP.
VP: Why, thank you, Bob. But what are we going to do about the Sr Engineer position?
Jr Engineer smiles to himself: Well, I happen to have an idea about that.
Later that month...
VP: I recently had a discussion with an engineer at Google...
... I mean, just look at these comments! Genius! Many of them (like this one) are far too brilliant to be sullied with naughty karma points!
[signature]
...who have actually turned down Google's offer for a second interview. After they offered to fly me to Mountain View, I sat down and took a deep look at who I was, what I stood for, and whether my personal philosophies were compatible with Google's worldview. I decided that I could offer more to society through education than I could working for Google.
I don't regret the decision I made. As the years go by (this was about 2000 or so), I grow stronger in my conviction that it was the right choice as I watch Google's tendrils sneak into every aspect of society.
If you wish to be both grammatically and historically accurate, it's Untermensch, with a capital-U. Nouns are capitalized in German.
Regards;
I remember RedHat kind of slipping from their "glory days" as the highest profile Linux distributor out there. Many people were woo'ed away by the "latest and greatest" or "more user-friendly" features in distros like Mandrake or Ubuntu, and certainly, there was a philosophical difference where some people simply supported the Debian package manager format and were anti-RPM, too.
But that doesn't change the fact that RedHat kept plugging right along, employing deserving software developers and turning out a solid, respectable product.
You don't have to amaze people with "incredible new ideas!" all the time to be a "good company". You just need to treat your employees fairly, offer products that do what they advertise, price your products reasonably, and keep up a tradition of supporting them well.
But only in those fields of IT.
The only Google employee I'll consider hiring is a CAD specialist, but then again I don't have a use for anything else, at this moment, as I can do the rest myself.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Leaving qualified experts outside the company is an excellent strategy for fighting off anti-trust concerns. I guarantee one of the fundamental arguments Google will raise in response to any future anti-trust lawsuit will be that it does not have a monopoly on smart people. A little silly when written down, but something that I guarantee Google's attorneys have thought about.
I really love this kind of binary thinking (those logic-gates corrupt your non-binary brain?)...
back in reality, it's all shades of gray. Everyone does "evil" (ie, self-interest), the question is how evil are you (or Google, or random politician)?
Compare these minor incidents with say, coercive monopolistic behavior (Microsoft vs. Netscape) or poisoning entire cities (Union Carbide, Bhopal) in the name of profits... Google in such terms is NOT EVIL, and neither are most companies (in fact, I'd say Microsoft is far less EVIL than Union Carbide, Exxon/Mobil, or Haliburton)
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
My whole job is cleaning up the disasters of guys who had a whole 24 months of experience and thought that meant they knew what they were doing. Vista was coded by guys who had 24 months of experience.
Paying for experience is cheap when you compare it to paying for a disaster.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Gee, I'm glad they don't let modesty stand in the way of truth.
What got me was "They're very Google people". No, they're not Google people. They have never worked at Google. They have nothing to do with Google. That is bordering on Google taking credit for their hard work because after all "they are Google people" which is why they do well.
Reality check - they are good engineers who are great at what they do. Yes - THEY are great engineers. Not because of Google. If this is their attitude Google really need to pull their heads out, if someone is a great engineer / developer it is not because Google has blessed them and is therefore responsible for anything great said developer creates.
What total arrogance
Gears is being phased out since most of its ideas is being put into the HTML5 spec. So this way of phasing out means its actually a success. Gears was never meant to stay for good. For a large company to contribute to a specification like this is almost unprecedented and a good sign of more work going into good specs than feeding the proprietary trolls.
Adsense/adwords is brilliant. Good on the eyes for the surfers, and good for advertisers and websites, which are given optimal self-control in the back-end. If you have ever used them, you would know what I'm talking about.
For website owners there is also Google Analytics, which I do admit I have not used too much, but is also given lots of cred.
Also their backend to their web-spider / indexing service for webmasters is cool. Unprecedented at the time it came. It gives alot of control for SEO and fixing errors on your pages.
GMail I will prefer over Yahoo mail and especially Hotmail after they got taken over, but point taken. Although you have to give credit to their labels (tags) over folders, strong search capability, free IMAP/POP access, themeing and probably a bunch of other things forgotten. The G in Gmail changed the online email industry forever. Overall Gmail is not too intuitive for new users, but much more usable than anything else once you get used to it.
Distributed storage works for most of their line. It's different than doing "a search engine", and required a completely different set of skills and resources to accomplish, although it made making a world-class search engine possible with less energy consumption.
I would say Google is impressive in innovation, with GMap, Google Earth and all the other things we quickly take for granted or have forgotten about (G in GMail). Even marketing is brilliant over there with the do no evil-thing and getting trust - which I'm fine with, because honesty is important today.
I just can't see where the money is coming from though. Think MS still have the upper hand in revenue-generation, despite all their technical incompetence and failures. However, in coolness and innovation, Google wins hands-down. If you actually take a look at all their projects, you quickly realize they have defined much of what we take for granted in the IT industry today.
This is a good philosophy to have. We ought to apply it to the way we distribute money and other resources as well. We tend to enjoy consolidating things, but in truth that is a very inefficient way to run things.
If you put a bunch of brilliant engineers on one project they will just spend all their time second-guessing each other. Better to let them work on separate projects or competitive projects so that you can come out with what works best in the end, rather than waste all your time making one solution that you think may be the best. If you don't believe me, look at Microsoft, they've been hiring all the best programmers for years, and it's all come to (almost) nothing.
Likewise look at the federal government. They can spend nearly 4 trillion dollars in a single year and not have a whole lot to show for it. It just doesn't make sense to consolidate resources like that.
Google is riding high right now, and has its pick of talent. Right now they can say no to even very capable people, since there's plenty more beating on the doors.
But no company stays on top forever, and I expect Google has pissed off some very capable people by telling them no. That could be a bit of a liability when Google declines a step or too, and has to go looking for staff.
This is just an obfuscated way of saying "We don't want to pay them as much as they're making now, let alone enough to entice them to switch."
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
It could have something to do with the allegations that Google and Apple had an informal, probably illegal agreement not to recruit from each other.
"See, we avoided recruiting from Apple for vague altruistic reasons, not some secret anti-competitive deal."
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You're happy with Google's search results? No problems with their products whatsoever? Really?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I note that this is essentially the opposite strategy that Microsoft has pursued. Microsoft Research division has a reputation for taking in extremely good and promising talent and then seeing essentially zero outcome from it. Microsoft basically use MS Research as a place to coral people that they don't want anyone else to hire, for fear that they will do something disruptive to Microsoft. Microsoft don't know what to do with them, but as long as they are not working for a competitor, they are no threat. So they basically bury them.
Makes sense to me. If you hire all the smart people, the only people left to do business with are idiots.
Why would anyone want to live on one of those rocks?
Because they are there. Duh.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
When AT&T broke up, the head of the Viewtron project, Dennis Hall, was in almost daily contact with the Labs since they were providing the "videotex terminal" (a personal computer ISDN modem combo that used a TV to display the "electronic newspaper" we were working on with Knight Ridder). His comment seemed right on:
Rather than gobble up talent, Bell Labs should have, long ago, become a venture capital company and simply spun off its parts as enterprises in which AT&T would retain shares.
This "20%" con game Google is playing will never pan out.
Seastead this.
So who was the overqualified engineer?
Microsoft does not do this! Microsoft hires up all the top talent then can lay their greedy hands on, if for no other reason than to put top people into a well paid, dungeon, where you pay a certain amount to keep the competition from having them, and even if there is no other good reason for having them, the competition is deprived of them. A waste of talent? Microsoft doesn't mind.
My assumption is that Google has finally realized that it cannot achieve much by just hiring good engineers. They need to start hiring visionaries and good managers to make "things happen".
Given that they have failed to diversify their earnings from anything other than search. Most of their other properties have been mediocre.
They do need to change their hiring practice by shifting their focus from academics to expertise and proof of delivery.
I think this is Google's way of addressing economic recession
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
They're very Google people
The aim of this thread is actually to promote Google as synonym of good. You know like band-aid or in use xerox-ing stuff.
You'll see, in a few years people will be saying
gentleman 1:very google morning to you, sir
gentleman 2:Google morning, status update?
gentleman 1:I had a fail of a day
... some need a very specific context to be able to express their brilliance... it is not enough to just let them "outside". They should check if the context those people are in is proper to maximize their brilliance output. For instance, rights on the code they write is *very* important for ope source software. The Linux community is very strong because coders keep and don't share ligthtly their rigths on the code. It has drawbacks (unable to go to (A)GPLv3 limited by userspace), but it is a very strong protection. If a company could distribute a closed and proprietary version of Linux, they would do it for sure (cf opensolaris/solaris case and darwin/macos case).
Red Hat is not only honest and open, but they are willing to take risks. They took alot of flak when forcing the non-yet-done glibc and the not-really-working threading library on us, but in retrospect, I recognize it was an honest bet to make the community get those vitally important and neglected technologies finally working in Linux.
Kriston
If only the GM, Chrysler and Ford had allowed the Tuckers to survive, Detroit might still be in business. We dont really need another "clever" management approach, what we needed was a congress with a spine and a healthy respect for antitrust legislation in the 1950s. sigh.
No, really guys... mod me down... I'm totally karma-whoring. (and I don't need more karma)
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Hmmmm...that sounds somewhat, dare I say it, enlightened...
I am the OP, and I love the spin off discussion here ;=)
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
I'm actually on the networking side of things, and the decline in competence around some pretty serious parts of our infrastructure has become terrifying. The NDAs have me bound, gagged and duct-taped, but its become commonplace for me to wade into situations where Big Serious Systems are down and a peach-faced kid is jibbering "I was following the doc! They made me do it! It's not my fault!"
Five years ago, me and my coworkers used to gripe "How the Hell did they get hired?" We don't bother to ask that anymore. Meanwhile, we're all just flooded and completely managing by crisis. We don't do anything BUT put out fires any more. Testing was the first to go, but now even Design is gone.
You wanna hear the Really Scary Thing? The phenomena that's hit you and me both isn't limited to our industry. I think it's universal. I met a car mechanic/brake technician last month who didn't know there was such a thing as rotors too thin to turn. I swear, I think someone just told this guy "Undo these bolts, pull that big vise thing, pull off the big iron wheel, have Chuck grind it, and then bang it all back together." I never thought I'd see the day, but I've got fifty bucks that says this guy could not have explained "brake pedal/ master cylinder/ lines/ caliper/ pads/ rotor." You can forget about the complications of anti-lock brakes and I doubt the word "hydraulics" was even in his vocabulary.
I mean, we call ourselves "grease monkeys," but it was supposed to be a joke, dammit.
I keep thinking about the fools on Easter Island and Asimov's "Foundation," and worry that we're on our way. Then I think about Katrina and I know we're already there.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I knew many brilliant young guys who left google.
A problem of google is that it can attract young brilliant programmers but it can not give them good interesting projects and it can offer them good career opportunuties.
There is a glass-wall which does not allow young brilliant guys to advance their career because all good places are taken by people who cam to google around 2000-2003.
For example, check the list of founders of the startup google bought today. Almost all of them are young guys who left Google recently
google is successful because of their search technology, the ads pay for it but that because its the only model for micropayments that has been made to work. if there is an alternative method to pay google for their search results, with small amounts of electronic currency then google might accept that too, and not apply ads to those customers.