[bobmarleybiceps]

I think Jensen Huang said this recently, and I've had a similar opinion for a while, but a lot of companies seem uncreative with how they use their employees. like google probably has >10k people working on stuff like "ensure gmail refresh button is the correct size", but why not fund teams to take on new and more risky projects... maybe part of it is that the type of people who work at big tech companies are not interested in risky projects :shrug:

[hn_throwaway_99]

> like google probably has >10k people working on stuff like "ensure gmail refresh button is the correct size", but why not fund teams to take on new and more risky projects... maybe part of it is that the type of people who work at big tech companies are not interested in risky projects

Wow, I really hope that you're just too young to remember when Google famously invested in tons of "let's see what happens" projects. Google X projects is still a thing: https://x.company/projects/. And important things like Waymo came out of these Google moonshot projects.

Still, I think your comment also just shows how much Google has changed in the past 15 years. A lot of those projects on that x.company website are dead, and of course Google is also famous for killing projects that don't become huge, even if they're useful to lots of people.

[bobmarleybiceps]

yeah I was being very hyperbolic (and am on the younger side, so tbh wasn't very aware of a lot the x projects... I think those are even riskier than I meant.)

google was probably the worst example for me to use tbh, especially since it still has such a good culture of funding researchers. There was a "meme" a few years ago saying gmail's UI has dozens teams working on each of the different buttons, so that was why I said google/gmail.

huang's original comment was referencing layoffs due to AI, and I think a lot of the "maintaining/replacing existing stuff" engineers are at the most risk atm. But why lay people off why they could be pushed to work on new risky projects :-/

I do sort of think the stereotype of killing projects is kind in the vein of what I meant. like idk, google has so much money I feel like they don't need ~everything to clearly and immediately fit into their ai / data / advertising / search stuff. earnings - expenses is so huge, I think it should be fine to just allow some things to stay "small" without being a more "distinguished" moonshot-style project.

[overfeed]

I bet Jensens thinks everyone working at Nvidia is crucial, and his reports hit the perfect balance of efficiency, continuity and growth. Classic Fundamental attribution error.