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Google's Robotics Group Lacks Leadership (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Google has been snapping up promising robotics companies for the past several years, placing them in a division internally called "Replicant." But the division itself is struggling to come together, not having consistent leadership since Andy Rubin left in 2014. One robotics employee said, "The technology pieces we have are incredible. We just have to commit to a particular direction to go in and focus." While Google has accumulated bleeding-edge hardware and software systems, it hasn't been able to bring them together yet in any meaningful way. "Sources say that after Rubin left, there was no one who knew how to tie all the disparate acquisitions together. Rubin had provided a destination, but the team no longer had a road map or a guide to get there."
Who cares? This happens all the time in just about every company to some degree. People leave, things are in flux, new people come in, it usually resolves itself...
Google's Robotics Group Lacks Leadership
Anyone who's seen Ex Machina knows this can't be a bad thing. ;)
Roasted duck and mac-n-cheese on Fridays.
Why would anyone with the characteristics of leadership (at least, a US citizen) work for Google in the first place?
They opportunity to work on some really cool things with a bunch of really smart people, with a huge amount of funding available, and a place with really nice fringe benefits? Oh yeah, and also get paid a lot to do so.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Google doesn't lack leadership, it outgrew it. There's a leadership deficit.
at least someone had the balls to say it
So it's nice to be a worker drone... GP is talking about leadership.
One robotics employee said, "The technology pieces we have are incredible. We just have to commit to a particular direction to go in and focus."
Sounds like M$ around '99-'01, before the brain drain started. Like M$, Google has gotten bloated from the torrent of money rolling in and is losing the ability to execute.
I give them a few more years before they start doing layoffs too.
What else has Google done well besides create a decent web browser and makes lot's of money from ads?? Seriously, everything else is dabbling and fiddling in stuff and even their self driving car is really a egg on wheels, who would actually buy one? Android is riddled with malware and security holes. Chrome OS is only selling in education and mostly because its cheap not that its really useful. Then is spends ridiculous amounts of money reinventing its logo which you know costs a lot to change in a big corporation. Its unfortunate but there is no clarity or substance to what Google does, they just do things because they have loads of cash to spend and never bother to create a viable path for their endeavors.
Google has always been driven by mission and "robotics" isn't a mission it is like saying we want to make software and hardware without a clear customer and purpose. Robots need a clear purpose.
Off hand I would realign Google Robotics (Need a better name than Replicant... don't want "cant" in the name) along mission areas for intance:
1) Sensing (Streetview and aerial sensing drones)
2) Transportation (autonomous cars and such)
3) Productive automation (Consumer/light industrial/healthcare/military - non-lethal to go along with the do-no-evil mantra)
4) Robotics R&D (the core area that will bridge research with application in order to validate novel robotics technology and place it into the pipeline of development for the other mission areas).
Google needs to write software that cannot only understand itself but the organization as a whole.
So it's nice to be a worker drone... GP is talking about leadership.
So am I. This might sound crazy, but it can actually be a lot of fun to lead people that know what they are doing, are good at what they are doing, and most importantly enjoy what they are doing. That's the draw to being in leadership in places like Google. That and, like I said, you make a lot of money.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Dear Sir or Madam
We would like to extend a warm thank you for your responsive resume. A representative will contact you with follow up procedures.
Regards
A. Replicant
Alphabet Team Member #1337 // actually a well thought out post// //mod up +1//
I agree that they are pretty aimless. But I'll disagree that it's because of anything inimical, so I'm not going to attach this post as a reply to the other person's.
Google has a problem with productization. Rubin is historically OK with it; he was better at it before Android, but that may have been in part a problem of Android having been acquired, rather than a change in his personal character/charter.
The problem is that you can't make a Google employee work on stuff they don't find interesting, and the last 20%-10% of turning any project into a real product is really a bunch of mundane t-crossing and i-dotting that's not a lot of fun to do, for most people.
Personally, I enjoy owning the "it works" bit, and setting that bit on a product, and I find the milestones "release to manufacturing" and "first ship" and "reorder to stores", really rewarding. I like seeing a product come together. But ... in many ways, the journey to get there requires a lot of "not fun".
The only way to get people to work on things that aren't fun, instead of going to work on the next, new thing -- which is always fun, until you get bored with the new toy, it becomes an old toy, and you want the next new toy -- is to be awesomely inspiring about what you are trying to achieve. It also doesn't hurt, if you happen to be working on something with high visibility that other people have not done before. The self driving car is such a project. So are the "Google vans" for StreetView, if you are into cameras and image stabilization, and space mapping giving limited lanes, and stitching images, and so on.
Without an inspiring leader, they're just working on "hey, we have these neat technologies, and the groups we bought who developed them think that all othe other groups works can be trivially reproduced, and no one is interested on integrating systems (because, hey, let face it, that would be the un fun stuff).
I don't see this problem getting resolved any time soon; they certainly haven't been able to do it with Android (and the recent "let's out Samsung Android bugs to blackmail Samsung and the carriers into rolling out software updates to devices that were supposed to be one trick ponies" is a perfect example of fixing the product at the wrong patch point). There's nothing organizationally that would lead one to believe that they could suddenly "get religion" on this issue.
I'm probably not the person to fix this for them; I'm definitely not an executive type. In the context of Google as it is, it's going to take a project with an extraordinary vision to inspire people to stick out the un fun parts, and then work forward, without people "voting with their feet" to work elsewhere (as happened with Google Reader; once it was a solved problem, it was no longer interesting enough to port onto the new back end infrastructure, and all the principals were off on other more fun stuff).
Personally? If I were Google, I'd start a "Google Products Unit", and make it an elite place to be, and pre-populate it with people who get their rocks of shipping product to millions or billions of people, and touching people's lives in a positive way on a daily basis, rather than living in the worlds largest toy box. And then give them free reign over integrating Google technologies, like all the robotics companies they've bought, or various other things.
It'd be a hard row to hoe, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of people in Google who are just as unhappy with not shipping stuff to large numbers of people as I was during my tenure there, who would jump at the opportunity, even if they were a small percentage of all Googlers.
"We cannot think without a Jew to tell us what to do!!!!1111"
All these smart people, and they're content to say "Hey. This ONE guy is the reason we cannot get anything done...."
Is that gluten- and dairy-free mac-n-cheese, you insensitive clod?
That being said, can you put a saddle on Big Dog and ride it home?
This sounds like a dream job. For years I followed Boston Dynamics to see what their first commercial product would be but when Google bought them I was pretty sure they would follow most (not all) other Google products which stop growing once a certain level of integration complexity is achieved.
Just putting it out there but I've heard that experience is not a huge factor in the hiring process for them. Is there a link?
Have gnu, will travel.
What is Google's 'kill rate' on even once-loudly touted services and products? Crazy-high. I suppose a 'no sacred cows' management approach prevents complacency, but it also leads everyone being more concerned about that sudden chop on the back of the neck instead of focusing on any 'vision thing'.
Places like Google?
Name ONE and I will withdraw my criticism.
Then their first goal is quite obvious: build a robotic overlord.
Fight for your bitcoins!
Good grief, you don't want to do that!
Fight for your bitcoins!
I can do it.. However, having been in a business that Google acquired, and not liking the "Corporate Attorney" overlord they saddled us with, I'd have to have some pretty ironclad assurances (employment contract) before I'd dig in.
but you must also admit that Google is a dysfunctional organization that loves to explore cool ideas and take on innovative projects, but ultimately fails to execute in any meaningful way. It has truly changed the world with internet search, its browser is very popular, and its email service is used by many. The android OS is a big hit. And its advancements have provided motivations for other companies by showing what is possible. It's unlikely that the auto industry would be pursuing automation if Google hadn't pioneered it. But think of all of its dozens of really cool, innovative projects that have never really gone anywhere meaningful. More than anything it reminds me of the coolest academic department or R&D lab ever.
If you're a robotics visionary would you go work at google to lead their robotics efforts? It's likely that you'll get to work on cool stuff. but it's also likely that none of your cool stuff will go anywhere. This seems to be the pickle that they are in.
...Nelson "Bighead" "Baghead" Bighetti
what the monkey chooses to do with the technology is not necessarily an indictment of the technology itself.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Seriously though, Google must already be broken if it doesn't have a software system providing goals integration. I myself have a system with a huge set of AI primitives and the last major bug is so elusive that in desperation, because of parallel processing debugging hassles, I want to consider getting it to start looking at its own code to narrow down the fault.
Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
You don't think the automotive industry would be pursuing automated cars without google?
Hell - this article sources as early as 1977 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge
I don't understand how fanboi's of google / apple get so disconnected from reality. Do you all grow up to be patent lawyers ?