[Hnaomyiph]

Promotions being highly dependent on shipping new products rather than long term support of existing products. You don’t climb that type-a ladder by improving the code of the 30th chat app.

Their desperate desire to find another money printing machine to replace their soon to be regulated to death ads monopoly. If it’s not instantly printing money, they don’t want to continue to support it.

Ruth and Sundar need to be fired or else Google/Alphabet will suffer the same exact fate as every other company that focuses on cost cutting over innovation and supporting future innovations.

[Dwolb]

I remember my friend's story about interviewing as a PM at Google back in the day.

During some exploratory exercises on the future of entertainment, they kept pushing him to come up with "planet-scale solutions".

After some hesitation, he started pitching them on "Space Basketball" and the opportunities for a league on Mars.

He got the on-site interview after that.

[LatteLazy]

How many actual companies manage to find a SECOND money printing opportunity that is not basically just their first one expanded a little?

Amazon maybe because AWS is not retail/logistics etc. Maybe Sony because they have (had) a decent sized film studio? Pretty much no one else.

No one wants to admit it, but economically a company with a decent position (like google) SHOULD ruthlessly cost cut, pump out dividends and leave research/innovation to nimble start ups. From a purely Dollar point of view, that is the correct approach...

[ajmurmann]

Apple had multiple money printers. Disney with parks in addition to movies. Netflix switched from dominating with envelopes to pioneering streaming. Intel famously switched from memory to CPUs.

I agree though that returning cash to shareholders should be more common when there are no good investment opportunities for the company. The book The Outsiders goes into several super successful CEOs who have the common thread of treating their business like an investment portfolio. I'd strongly suggest stock buybacks over dividends though because that gives control to the shareholders about when the taxable event occurs and will typically lead to lower taxes. It's somehow frowned upon by the general public, but it's very similar in what it does to dividends but more efficient at it.

[Hnaomyiph]

I don’t agree with their, or any company’s search for a second money printing machine. I don’t think companies should strive for parabolic growth, it is inherently unsustainable in almost ever imaginable facet, but that is what the market seems to want/expect, which then drives companies to their own downfall and they desperately try to cling onto the same growth they’ve seen in previous years.

Greed is the ultimate killer of innovation and sustainable business practices. But the board/c-suite doesn’t care unless it’s the one holding the bag at the end.

[rcme]

Microsoft has office, Windows, games, and maybe OpenAI.

[asdajksah2123]

Similar actions preceded either Sundar Pichai or Ruth Porat. It doesn't seem like they're the primary drivers, even if they are the executors of this vision because they happen to be in the C positions that would execute this.

[gautamdivgi]

For any large company I think you overestimate the amount of control that CEO’s and HR heads have. I mean they make broad policy decisions based on some cost & growth numbers.

I think the whole project killing long precedes Sundar or Ruth. In fact chrome (which Sundar handled product for I believe) is something that has endured.

[vineyardmike]

> I think you overestimate the amount of control that CEO’s and HR heads have.

As an example, if I was CEO…

Killing any public facing product requires CEO approval. Boom instant oversight and change in behavior. Quickly raises the cost of killing something and the CEO can decide the brand damage and financials.

If I was Ruth…

All promotions should show the employee has an understanding of long term value, and understands how to help maintain a big system.

At places I’ve worked in the past promos expect to see on-call success wins and bug fixes and similar as part of a well rounded packet. Seems like an easy add.

[toast0]

Top down management is limited, but they set the criteria for promotions and bonuses, and the layers underneath at least pay lip service to the criteria, and employees respond to incentives for the most part.

If you reward new products and don't reward continuing support on products without enough revenue/growth, that looks a lot like Google.

[hinkley]

If you’ve never worked at a company that referred to R&D as a “cost center” then you have lived a blessed life.

Yes, making things people want to buy costs money. Most successful companies spend a certain fraction of their money on making what they sell. Making it cheaper just makes it cheaper. Which is definitely a choice one can make but few people respect the bargain brand.

Oddly the people who understand this the least also seem to care a lot about prestige, so I don’t understand how their brains work.

[ravenstine]

It's an even worse form of the "we need new features" culture at most mature companies. Adding new features all the time is one thing, but always building new products is overly ambitious.

> Ruth and Sundar need to be fired or else Google/Alphabet will suffer the same exact fate as every other company that focuses on cost cutting over innovation and supporting future innovations.

Although I wouldn't be sad to see them go, I'm not sure it will make a difference anyway. The vast majority of companies, especially those that built themselves on the foundation of being "innovative", will see an inevitable decline. The greater the rise, the sooner the fall. The reason is that successful businesses reach what I call the "cash cow" phase where enough individuals depend on the business's cash flow that risk-tolerance goes out the window. It's nearly impossible to do a rewind from the cash cow phase without firing almost everybody, and especially those at the C-level; even then, the chances of replicating former glory are not good if all the original founders are long gone and not coming back. The Google will of course always be in business, but it is on the fast track of being the IBM of the Zoomer generation.

[ajmurmann]

I wonder if building new products is preferably over always building new features. Some products are done from a user perspective, but keep getting tinkered with because it's growth or death and eventually the beloved product is unrecognizable. Maybe the ideal scenario is to put those products into maintenance mode instead and move investment to new products. Google's problem is that they are so extreme on only investing in new products and don't make incremental improvements.

Is bizarre that this and how it's tight to the way they do promotions has even evident to people outside Google for years and nothing changes.

[ravenstine]

That philosophy may have emerged in The Google initially because new products are far less entangled with existing tech debt than new features. There's certainly a logic to it when you're a startup or even mid-size company. On the other hand, I struggle to imagine how it can be sustainable alongside the growth mindset at a very large firm.

[themerone]

In the 15 years between the iPhone and Vision, all major Apple innovation has been limited to scaling their cash cow iPhone to tablet and desktop form factors.

The Apple business model is near impossible to replicate, but it is proof that it is possible to ride a cash cow indefinitely.

[ravenstine]

Yeah, it's certainly possible. In Apple's case, I think their advantage is they are ultimately a hardware company. When I was doing work for them, there was definitely an understanding that hardware along with macOS and iOS came first, and everything else was side dressing, more or less. They also focused on interoperability and long-term viability of their features and products. In contrast, while The Google does have hardware products, they are in no way as prolific as Apple's. Rather, they've focused on software products that not only were built with the explicit mindset of competing with other companies, but competed with their very own products. Apple isn't a perfect company, but their modus operandi is evidently far more stable long term as a cash cow corporation than The Google. Outside a narrow window of products, it's completely unclear whether The Google's services as a whole provide enough value that they can continue to eat themselves by their own tail.

> indefinitely

Right. Indefinitely, just not infinitely. We've yet to see a company like Apple remain on top for hundreds of years.

[pintxo]

15a != Infinity

[bushbaba]

Investors would also prefer cash be returned so the investor can decide which bets in highly under valued areas to make.

[hinkley]

I hate feature factories so… much. It it the… flame. Flames. Flames, on the sides of my face.

[loudmax]

As someone who admired the old Google, I totally agree. It's terribly disappointing to see so much potential go to waste under the current leadership.

OpenAI was supposed to be a hedge against Google's monopoly of artificial intelligence. It's clear now that even if Google is sitting on the most powerful AI model on the planet, they have no idea what to do with it. They call it caution, but in fact it's indolence.

[flashgordon]

Ah yes how many times have I heard the launching vs landing discussion in perf and promo discussions.

So fun fact - at FAANGs (at least) introduction of new vernacular is very important to show that you are the objective (tm). Eg we will now reward landing instead of just launching. All well and good.

How did that translate to in practice? Well X had impact by helping, supporting across many broad projects that needed legacy support. And X was a junior eng who went above and beyond in doing so - some times showing ownership and accountability at level + 1. So X should be ready for a promo yes? Yes but - "Focussing broadly meant low - more objective sound verbiage - focussed technical complexity is not enough". Translation - "you didn't build a complex shiny thing".

[bushbaba]

The issue isn’t Ruth. The issue is sundar and urs. Both need replacing.

Urs leads the SWE charter and pushes down technical complexity for promos. Sundar for the lackluster vision and continual not delivering

[juujian]

Hmmmm, did they ever expect domain service to become a money printing machine? I thought that was just a spiel to gain more customers for google workspace?

[shapefrog]

It just printed a cheque for 180mil. I am sure there are a few small time domain registrars who have have seen their theoretical paper net worth go from $2.50 to 20mil.

[hospitalJail]

>as every other company that focuses on cost cutting over innovation and supporting future innovations.

Not every company needs to innovate. Some companies do the opposite, they are late movers with outstanding marketing.

We grew up with Google being the cutting edge, but that is far more expensive and risky than hiring a bunch of psychologists and marketers to figure out how to monetize old product at bigger profits.

They are doing this with their Pixel series as a prime example. They originally made the best budget smart phone with ~0 marketing, word of mouth made the Nexus great. Today, they have removed some hardware, charged literally 7x, and have ads running.

There is a happy fantasy of capitalism where each company innovates and competes for the best product. The reality is that plenty of companies are fine with producing a low quality product, selling it at a high price, and having the marketers find some niche that makes the product appear high quality so customers can rationalize their decision.

I genuinely hope that Marketing/Psychology is 'canceled' before I die. Its a horrible thing for humans.