Former Google CEO blames remote work for company's struggles(sfgate.com)
sfgate.com
Former Google CEO blames remote work for company's struggles
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/eric-schmidt-google-remote-work-19655216.php
88 comments
> will blame everything but their own failures
Given that this guy seems to have left in 2015, it may be be more like the classic "Old Well-Off Guy Complains Youth These Days Don't Work Hard Anymore" phenomenon.
Given that this guy seems to have left in 2015, it may be be more like the classic "Old Well-Off Guy Complains Youth These Days Don't Work Hard Anymore" phenomenon.
> (Nvidia) has a rule that new PhD hires have to work “in the factory, on the basement floor.”
Him picking the most educated means it isn't an age/generational problem.
He could have picked the c suite. But no.
Him picking the most educated means it isn't an age/generational problem.
He could have picked the c suite. But no.
Speaking of Nvidia, here's what Aaron Erickson Sr. Engineering Manager at
@NVIDIA said:
"To be fair, he has no fucking idea what he is talking about.
NVIDIA is a strong WFH culture, and we're doing just fine."
https://x.com/aaronerickson/status/1823774941667541357
"To be fair, he has no fucking idea what he is talking about.
NVIDIA is a strong WFH culture, and we're doing just fine."
https://x.com/aaronerickson/status/1823774941667541357
Like how many girlfriends should a CEO/VC have ? Isn’t that distracting ?
TSMC, not Nvidia. Nvidia doesn't have factories, since they rely on external manufacturers.
He’s still on the board and is instrumental for the companies failures.
OpenAI seems to have backed away from Work from Home: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-ceo-sam-altman-says-22...
Or at least rhetorically; no idea what their actual practice is.
But considering that e.g. Apple lost important senior contributors over the return to a hybrid work model, I would not be surprised if employees with some leverage at ostensibly f2f companies were not given ongoing WfH privileges.
Or at least rhetorically; no idea what their actual practice is.
But considering that e.g. Apple lost important senior contributors over the return to a hybrid work model, I would not be surprised if employees with some leverage at ostensibly f2f companies were not given ongoing WfH privileges.
Both Anthropic and OpenAI extensively used (and continue to use) remote workers for fullstack and frontend development. But their core AI researchers and engineers are in the office.
I know several people who interviewed at OAI recently and they were told explicitly it's office only. None of them were ML devs so it's probably highly team dependent.
I had an initial talk for a non-AI eng role with OpenAI, and they required in-office to SF, which was a no-go for me as someone who lives in the deep south bay.
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He mentioned remote work as a part of the bigger issue of WLB. I’m pretty sure in Meta the expectation is way higher in terms of effort and level of performance
As a customer or various web things I have just learned that google is not to be trusted with anything important: they’ll either kill it in a year or make it shitty enough to make me do work twice (once for adopting and once for moving away).
But hey, let’s blame it on workers that want to work from home.
But hey, let’s blame it on workers that want to work from home.
Google’s track record of killing stuff quickly has got to be demotivating for employees.
You can have unlimited PTO or flexible in-office hours but you can’t have both.
Why not?
And the reason for this is...?
Presumably he is speaking in terms of policy.
Flexible in-office hours is a subset of unlimited PTO. Where there is unlimited PTO there is also flexible in-office hours by virtue, so, yes, technically you can have both. If you have unlimited PTO you can't not have flexible in-office hours.
However, if there is a flexible in-office hours policy in force, that does mean you can't have unlimited PTO. The additional restrictions placed on flexible in-office hours – those which narrow it to being a subset of unlimited PTO – would violate the grander unlimited PTO.
If an organization claims to have both a flexible in-office hours and unlimited PTO policy, there is a contradiction. While you can pretend to have both, you don't really have both. One ultimately has to supersede the other.
Flexible in-office hours is a subset of unlimited PTO. Where there is unlimited PTO there is also flexible in-office hours by virtue, so, yes, technically you can have both. If you have unlimited PTO you can't not have flexible in-office hours.
However, if there is a flexible in-office hours policy in force, that does mean you can't have unlimited PTO. The additional restrictions placed on flexible in-office hours – those which narrow it to being a subset of unlimited PTO – would violate the grander unlimited PTO.
If an organization claims to have both a flexible in-office hours and unlimited PTO policy, there is a contradiction. While you can pretend to have both, you don't really have both. One ultimately has to supersede the other.
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> “I’m sorry to be so blunt [...] But the fact of the matter is, if you all leave the university and go found a company, you’re not gonna let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups.” [0]
Hold up, so stuff like WFH policies are to blame for the company losing its edge and not being head-to-head with "other startups"?
I thought it was because Alphabet Incorporated wasn't directly competing with "startups" was because it was a structurally different kind of company that works in fundamentally different ways because it's publicly traded (GOOG) and employs ~150,000 people! How silly of me!
[0] Bonus video context for quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxDM8io4lUA&t=10m40s
Hold up, so stuff like WFH policies are to blame for the company losing its edge and not being head-to-head with "other startups"?
I thought it was because Alphabet Incorporated wasn't directly competing with "startups" was because it was a structurally different kind of company that works in fundamentally different ways because it's publicly traded (GOOG) and employs ~150,000 people! How silly of me!
[0] Bonus video context for quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxDM8io4lUA&t=10m40s
> Bonus video
Now, only few hours later:
> This is a private video.
Now, only few hours later:
> This is a private video.
I don't care what Schmidt's opinions are but at least stand by your comments. Stanford you're just as bad.
Eric Schmidt is right: WFH has been a moral disaster. The absolute, most important thing in the world is that companies be able to successfully extract maximum value from their workers. Something is seriously wrong if workers end the work day with even a little bit left for their families.
Good people are in-office and 100% engaged at delivering value to the company. Anything less is violence.
Good people are in-office and 100% engaged at delivering value to the company. Anything less is violence.
Well, there are real drawbacks to remote work. It hinders creativity and practically limits exchange between workers. Whether it's still worth it for the company or whether they can mitigate the downsites is another question but there definitely are downsites.
> It hinders creativity and practically limits exchange between workers.
Exactly! Those things are essential to delivering the most value to the company and ultimately to its shareholders, and there's nothing in the world more important than that. Those pompous, selfish, self-important WFH workers need to understand that.
Exactly! Those things are essential to delivering the most value to the company and ultimately to its shareholders, and there's nothing in the world more important than that. Those pompous, selfish, self-important WFH workers need to understand that.
I personally hated working for a remote-first company. I was paralyzed because my coworkers were never online and then they would only pop in to reply briefly to my questions or requests and then disappear again. It was extremely isolating as well never leaving my house, and I was glad to go to a company with actual offices. Separating work life from home life was something I didn't think I needed, but over the long term it really does affect you.
Nice anecdote, but it sounds like you worked for possibly a badly managed company and has nothing to do with remote work first. I’ve worked with plenty of remote teams that do not function this way.
Nice anecdote.
As someone who has been working remotely for a worldwide organization even before the pandemic, I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement.
The only times I’ve ever felt hindered in my communication with teammates online has been when they refused to communicate in anything but ad-hoc rambling video calls.
Absolutely! Where else the backbone of every company would get ideas for their presentations.
I have had maximum value extracted during military service. The corporate world in comparison is a leisure ride of 2 hours work per day with lots of time to day dream, take walks out doors, or nap.
including bathroom breaks
How quickly you forget the unpleasant realities of shared spaces—like the distinctly unpleasant aroma of communal restrooms. It's amazing how some things are easy to overlook, but after a long break, those less-than-pleasant details hit you like a ton of bricks. Definitely one of the 'perks' of office life I didn't miss!"
Friction and velocity is what’s important.
For executive teams, in-person interactions cut down friction, and result in an order of magnitude higher velocity. Every bit of friction adds up, scheduling a Zoom meeting or waiting on 5 people to reply to an email is way slower than a 17 second walk down the hall to get a thumbs up from those same 5 people.
But for developers or anyone doing deep work, their friction is interruptions, and if they’re interrupted every 30 minutes, they never reach a high velocity. Or if you have a headache, taking a nap might actually be the fastest path to building something complex.
Then there’s the majority of workers, who aren’t interested in “working like hell”. There’s a limited supply of ambitious, talented people, and you need this group.
I sometimes wonder if that’s the whole reason some startups get acquired, just because you’re getting employees who are ambitious.
For executive teams, in-person interactions cut down friction, and result in an order of magnitude higher velocity. Every bit of friction adds up, scheduling a Zoom meeting or waiting on 5 people to reply to an email is way slower than a 17 second walk down the hall to get a thumbs up from those same 5 people.
But for developers or anyone doing deep work, their friction is interruptions, and if they’re interrupted every 30 minutes, they never reach a high velocity. Or if you have a headache, taking a nap might actually be the fastest path to building something complex.
Then there’s the majority of workers, who aren’t interested in “working like hell”. There’s a limited supply of ambitious, talented people, and you need this group.
I sometimes wonder if that’s the whole reason some startups get acquired, just because you’re getting employees who are ambitious.
If you're bottleneck involves waiting on five people to approve something all at once, then that sounds like a project management problem.
That also assumes that your 17 second hallway traversal results in all five employees being in the same ares and not off doing other projects or in meetings.
> There’s a limited supply of ambitious, talented people, and you need this group.
Yikes.
Well, if that's the case and those people are so in-demand, guess where they'll want to work? (Hint: Wherever they wsnt.)
The people bending over and coming into an office? They have no other option.
That also assumes that your 17 second hallway traversal results in all five employees being in the same ares and not off doing other projects or in meetings.
> There’s a limited supply of ambitious, talented people, and you need this group.
Yikes.
Well, if that's the case and those people are so in-demand, guess where they'll want to work? (Hint: Wherever they wsnt.)
The people bending over and coming into an office? They have no other option.
>That also assumes that your 17 second hallway traversal results in all five employees being in the same ares and not off doing other projects or in meetings.
Or at the coffee machine at the other side of the building, or in the bathroom, or wandering around the building looking for an open bathroom because the one near their desk is overcrowded...
Or at the coffee machine at the other side of the building, or in the bathroom, or wandering around the building looking for an open bathroom because the one near their desk is overcrowded...
I am just baffled by people that claim they do better work in the office and also think every else does too. It was such a constant stressor for me to be interrupted every five minutes by coworkers when the deadlines don’t shift to make room for social hour. Remote has accelerated my productivity 10-fold. In the end it really comes down to management and remote work seems to help expose management incompetence which management of course hates.
But after the acquhire gets a bazillion dollars, suddenly their ambitions are directed differently than working for the man...
Meanwhile, Anthropic is hiring engineers with a WfH policy and a "4 day workweek": https://remoteok.com/remote-jobs/remote-software-engineer-cl...
And Tesla's record of innovation has not been particularly stellar in recent years.
And Tesla's record of innovation has not been particularly stellar in recent years.
For companies like Anthropic and OpenAI the "software engineer" role is of secondary importance and they extensively use remote engineers for full stack and frontend development. However their strategically important AI researchers and engineers are in the office.
>And Tesla's record of innovation has not been particularly stellar in recent years.
What makes you say that? The teardown of the CyberTruck is showing an unbelievable amount of innovation and risk taking. The final product might suck but thats not the employees fault, its the guy at the top. That organization continues to perform excellent R&D.
What makes you say that? The teardown of the CyberTruck is showing an unbelievable amount of innovation and risk taking. The final product might suck but thats not the employees fault, its the guy at the top. That organization continues to perform excellent R&D.
As you seem to agree, the final product seems rather questionable, with incredibly poor reliability and build quality for a $100+K car. The innovation and risk taking mainly seems to consist of cutting corners at the expense of the customer experience. Meanwhile, the other models are fairly stagnant. At least the "D" part of their R&D seems to be wanting.
And for all the hyperbole from the leadership, the "R" is not all that great either. The supposedly "self driving" car cannot even reliably get its windshield wipers to work automatically, it's not particularly good at parking itself, and it seems to be not much closer to autonomous driving (which was supposed to have been achieved in 2017) than 8 years ago. Meanwhile, competitors have released products with actual, if severely geofenced, autonomy. And the robot seems to be pure demoware.
And for all the hyperbole from the leadership, the "R" is not all that great either. The supposedly "self driving" car cannot even reliably get its windshield wipers to work automatically, it's not particularly good at parking itself, and it seems to be not much closer to autonomous driving (which was supposed to have been achieved in 2017) than 8 years ago. Meanwhile, competitors have released products with actual, if severely geofenced, autonomy. And the robot seems to be pure demoware.
>As you seem to agree, the final product seems rather questionable, with incredibly poor reliability and build quality for a $100+K car.
I said "The final product might suck". I said suck from the point of view that it is a product design that the customers might not want. You read too much into it.
>The innovation and risk taking mainly seems to consist of cutting corners at the expense of the customer experience.
Absolute hogwash. Where do I even start?
The 48V architecture is going to lead to a much more reliable and efficient wiring loom by way of not having as much wire in the first place which is a constant frustration on some makes (looking at you GM). Not to mention that cost goes back to the customer in the form of savings or that money can be spent elsewhere such as a better interior.
Same goes for Gigacasting. Yes I seen the Whistlingdiesel video of the back breaking but all things considered, the castings will lead to more reliable, cheaper and "solid" driving cars.
Finally the drive by wire is an interesting risky move but again you are introducing a better driving experience(a big truck can have a turning radius both like a big truck and a tiny city car depending on the context) AND still have cost savings.
Theres more but really you can just google the endless amount of articles posted about this.
>Meanwhile, the other models are fairly stagnant.
Every new model that does come out seems to be a big step change. All they can really do right now is refresh the old models with a facelift. Yes they are hindered by their circumstances. The Model S and X are made in a legacy mess of a factory that should be scrapped. Its been dragging along with really antiquated tech and design. If you read the tealeaves its possible they will abandon California and shift production to Texas after the Model 2. That makes the most sense. Start with a fresh platform.
>The supposedly "self driving" car cannot even reliably get its windshield wipers to work automatically, it's not particularly good at parking itself, and it seems to be not much closer to autonomous driving (which was supposed to have been achieved in 2017) than 8 years ago. Meanwhile, competitors have released products with actual, if severely geofenced, autonomy. And the robot seems to be pure demoware.
Have you tried these systems?
You know its funny, I've been paying good money to rent every single EV for a day or so to do a long road trip with the hopes that I find my next 15+ year car to replace my aging one (Mazda 3). So far every car has disappointed me in various ways but let me tell you, in regards to auto driving, the autopilot on the Tesla is miles ahead of the competition. I wish it was a feature on other cars. My standards are REALLY low. Just be able to drive on the highway and I will take care of the rest.
Bluecruise and Supercruise both act like a super nervous driver "ping ponging" back and forth on the highway road. The Tesla is super solid and assertive. The first time it did an automatic lane change, I freaked because after the mess that was bluecruise I didn't trust these systems.
Instead it blew me away with how clean and solid the driving was. I was super non trusting but it really impressed me. I really think the Tesla is amazing for highway driving (again only tested highway as I am only looking at bare minimums). The windshield wipers auto starting dont matter to me when the rest of the system works so well. It does not work great other cars I tested anyway (ford and chevy). I mean they are passable and on the Tesla the rest of the car dazzled me so much that I overlooked the wipers.
Tesla's crime is that sometimes they try too hard. The other companies don't try hard enough. In my testing the Tesla had an extremely competitive product and at least on the metrics you mentioned they are top tier and the others are not even in the same realm. The tesla fails on other ways in my testing such that it isn't the perfect car for me but it was close to the top.
I said "The final product might suck". I said suck from the point of view that it is a product design that the customers might not want. You read too much into it.
>The innovation and risk taking mainly seems to consist of cutting corners at the expense of the customer experience.
Absolute hogwash. Where do I even start?
The 48V architecture is going to lead to a much more reliable and efficient wiring loom by way of not having as much wire in the first place which is a constant frustration on some makes (looking at you GM). Not to mention that cost goes back to the customer in the form of savings or that money can be spent elsewhere such as a better interior.
Same goes for Gigacasting. Yes I seen the Whistlingdiesel video of the back breaking but all things considered, the castings will lead to more reliable, cheaper and "solid" driving cars.
Finally the drive by wire is an interesting risky move but again you are introducing a better driving experience(a big truck can have a turning radius both like a big truck and a tiny city car depending on the context) AND still have cost savings.
Theres more but really you can just google the endless amount of articles posted about this.
>Meanwhile, the other models are fairly stagnant.
Every new model that does come out seems to be a big step change. All they can really do right now is refresh the old models with a facelift. Yes they are hindered by their circumstances. The Model S and X are made in a legacy mess of a factory that should be scrapped. Its been dragging along with really antiquated tech and design. If you read the tealeaves its possible they will abandon California and shift production to Texas after the Model 2. That makes the most sense. Start with a fresh platform.
>The supposedly "self driving" car cannot even reliably get its windshield wipers to work automatically, it's not particularly good at parking itself, and it seems to be not much closer to autonomous driving (which was supposed to have been achieved in 2017) than 8 years ago. Meanwhile, competitors have released products with actual, if severely geofenced, autonomy. And the robot seems to be pure demoware.
Have you tried these systems?
You know its funny, I've been paying good money to rent every single EV for a day or so to do a long road trip with the hopes that I find my next 15+ year car to replace my aging one (Mazda 3). So far every car has disappointed me in various ways but let me tell you, in regards to auto driving, the autopilot on the Tesla is miles ahead of the competition. I wish it was a feature on other cars. My standards are REALLY low. Just be able to drive on the highway and I will take care of the rest.
Bluecruise and Supercruise both act like a super nervous driver "ping ponging" back and forth on the highway road. The Tesla is super solid and assertive. The first time it did an automatic lane change, I freaked because after the mess that was bluecruise I didn't trust these systems.
Instead it blew me away with how clean and solid the driving was. I was super non trusting but it really impressed me. I really think the Tesla is amazing for highway driving (again only tested highway as I am only looking at bare minimums). The windshield wipers auto starting dont matter to me when the rest of the system works so well. It does not work great other cars I tested anyway (ford and chevy). I mean they are passable and on the Tesla the rest of the car dazzled me so much that I overlooked the wipers.
Tesla's crime is that sometimes they try too hard. The other companies don't try hard enough. In my testing the Tesla had an extremely competitive product and at least on the metrics you mentioned they are top tier and the others are not even in the same realm. The tesla fails on other ways in my testing such that it isn't the perfect car for me but it was close to the top.
>The innovation and risk taking mainly seems to consist of cutting corners at the expense of the customer experience.
To give a few examples of this:
* Wheel stalks are steadily being replaced by touch screen controls, which is less usable and safe.
* For gear changes, the choice seems to be between touch screen buttons and manual buttons located on the ceiling, in an unit that appears to be attached literally by duct tape.
> The 48V architecture is going to lead to a much more reliable and efficient wiring loom
Whatever it may be "going to lead" to, right now, the electrical system in Cybertrucks is massively LESS reliable than the competition, with countless anecdotes of red screens popping up practically before the truck is off the dealer lot.
> that cost goes back to the customer in the form of savings or that money can be spent elsewhere such as a better interior.
Or, as seems to be the case with Tesla, it stays with the manufacturer, as Cybertrucks are both massively more expensive than initially announced, and equipped with a rather spartan, not to say shabby, interior.
> Have you tried these systems?
I have a fairly new car, equipped with adaptive cruise control and blind spot warnings. With these, I can easily and confidently do my own lane changes, especially on highways.
> in regards to auto driving, the autopilot on the Tesla is miles ahead of the competition
That's not what other testers have found:
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/28/how-tesla-bmw-ford-gm-and-...
> Tesla's crime is that sometimes they try too hard.
I would argue that they oversell the abilities of their system (they used to claim that “The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”), to entice users into using it outside the conditions at which it is reliable. And they assume absolutely no liability for use under any conditions.
To give a few examples of this:
* Wheel stalks are steadily being replaced by touch screen controls, which is less usable and safe.
* For gear changes, the choice seems to be between touch screen buttons and manual buttons located on the ceiling, in an unit that appears to be attached literally by duct tape.
> The 48V architecture is going to lead to a much more reliable and efficient wiring loom
Whatever it may be "going to lead" to, right now, the electrical system in Cybertrucks is massively LESS reliable than the competition, with countless anecdotes of red screens popping up practically before the truck is off the dealer lot.
> that cost goes back to the customer in the form of savings or that money can be spent elsewhere such as a better interior.
Or, as seems to be the case with Tesla, it stays with the manufacturer, as Cybertrucks are both massively more expensive than initially announced, and equipped with a rather spartan, not to say shabby, interior.
> Have you tried these systems?
I have a fairly new car, equipped with adaptive cruise control and blind spot warnings. With these, I can easily and confidently do my own lane changes, especially on highways.
> in regards to auto driving, the autopilot on the Tesla is miles ahead of the competition
That's not what other testers have found:
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/28/how-tesla-bmw-ford-gm-and-...
> Tesla's crime is that sometimes they try too hard.
I would argue that they oversell the abilities of their system (they used to claim that “The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”), to entice users into using it outside the conditions at which it is reliable. And they assume absolutely no liability for use under any conditions.
Tell me you're heavily invested in Tesla without telling me.
I can tell you I have 0 investment in Tesla. In fact I am one of the first subscribers to /r/RealTesla. If you want to be a dumbass and not actually try the car out, then be my guest. I have driven all the competitors cars. Its a pretty decent car all things considered.
Thoughts on the BMW i4?
Quite pricey for what you get but its a BMW, its better put together than most. To be fair, with the number of models coming out I am seeing a lot of familiarity but nothing that truly stands out(I even hinted above that the Tesla is a decent car, not a perfect car: there are problems with it).
I am a Mazda fan so I lean towards their design philosophy. Once they release a true competitive EV, I will likely be happy enough to just buy it and be done. But until then it is looking like I am deciding between staying with another gas Mazda for a few years until they release a proper EV or picking something less than ideal and learning to live with it. My comment a few level up talks about buying my next 15+ year car so I am taking this very seriously. No perfect options for me in this transition period where the industry is still moving from mainly Gas to EV.
I am a Mazda fan so I lean towards their design philosophy. Once they release a true competitive EV, I will likely be happy enough to just buy it and be done. But until then it is looking like I am deciding between staying with another gas Mazda for a few years until they release a proper EV or picking something less than ideal and learning to live with it. My comment a few level up talks about buying my next 15+ year car so I am taking this very seriously. No perfect options for me in this transition period where the industry is still moving from mainly Gas to EV.
I am, once again [0], asking for evidence.
Speaking of worker issues, while he was CEO of Google Schmidt oversaw the illegal collusion between other large tech companies, including Apple, to not poach their employees [1] while also sitting on the Board for Apple [2]
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36434455
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
[2]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2009/08/03Dr-Eric-Schmidt-Res...
Speaking of worker issues, while he was CEO of Google Schmidt oversaw the illegal collusion between other large tech companies, including Apple, to not poach their employees [1] while also sitting on the Board for Apple [2]
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36434455
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
[2]: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2009/08/03Dr-Eric-Schmidt-Res...
The most brilliant thing about remote work is that you can remain constantly productive without deviating from the subject matter of employment.
I was never able to do that working in an office without serious ethical violations. Never have I, in my development career, been so overloaded with assignments as to be continuously engaged with actual work. So, what about the rest of that time? I suppose I could read research papers while at the office, but to be a better developer I actually use that time to write original software to solve real problems from real life.
What makes working from home different? Personal equipment by personal learning not restricted by employer policies.
I was never able to do that working in an office without serious ethical violations. Never have I, in my development career, been so overloaded with assignments as to be continuously engaged with actual work. So, what about the rest of that time? I suppose I could read research papers while at the office, but to be a better developer I actually use that time to write original software to solve real problems from real life.
What makes working from home different? Personal equipment by personal learning not restricted by employer policies.
> Never have I, in my development career, been so overloaded with assignments as to be continuously engaged with actual work.
You must not have been working for Amazon then.
You must not have been working for Amazon then.
> Never have I, in my development career, been so overloaded with assignments as to be continuously engaged with actual work.
This blows my mind. I don't know if I've ever been so surprised at an HN comment. The last time this happened to me was during a college internship where my role was fairly well boxed, and that was 30 years ago. There's always something to do to make the product better. I've never been in a situation where the backlog doesn't grow faster than it is dispatched. I've never been in a situation where assigning "P3" to an issue didn't essentially mean saying "never", because P0, P1 & P2 consume all available resources. (Not quite true because you always opportunistically deal with P3's when they overlap with higher priority issues).
Is this a big company thing? I've only spent a few months working at one of those.
This blows my mind. I don't know if I've ever been so surprised at an HN comment. The last time this happened to me was during a college internship where my role was fairly well boxed, and that was 30 years ago. There's always something to do to make the product better. I've never been in a situation where the backlog doesn't grow faster than it is dispatched. I've never been in a situation where assigning "P3" to an issue didn't essentially mean saying "never", because P0, P1 & P2 consume all available resources. (Not quite true because you always opportunistically deal with P3's when they overlap with higher priority issues).
Is this a big company thing? I've only spent a few months working at one of those.
> Is this a big company thing?
Yes, kind of.
There seems to be one universal quality that defines both developer productivity and quality of output: ownership. When developers have no ownership, no liabilities, and no penalties they are free to largely turn their brains off. Yes, they have to do some work but there is no pressure to do more than just survive and no motivation. Large employers prefer this for reasons of candidate identification, zero cost retention, and employee predictability.
From a psychological perspective the target is low openness but moderately high intelligence. The output is people who are really fucking boring and cowardly. Yes, the openness metric of OCEAN accounts for about 80% of cowardice and bravery which is the flip side of creativity.
In my experience startups aren’t much different. Management moves faster and pivots more frequently which results in churn that keeps developers more busy, which is not the same thing as high productivity.
Yes, kind of.
There seems to be one universal quality that defines both developer productivity and quality of output: ownership. When developers have no ownership, no liabilities, and no penalties they are free to largely turn their brains off. Yes, they have to do some work but there is no pressure to do more than just survive and no motivation. Large employers prefer this for reasons of candidate identification, zero cost retention, and employee predictability.
From a psychological perspective the target is low openness but moderately high intelligence. The output is people who are really fucking boring and cowardly. Yes, the openness metric of OCEAN accounts for about 80% of cowardice and bravery which is the flip side of creativity.
In my experience startups aren’t much different. Management moves faster and pivots more frequently which results in churn that keeps developers more busy, which is not the same thing as high productivity.
So, I was thinking about my previous comment. Busy is not productive. So, how do you define productive and increase productivity?
This is going to sound really counter-intuitive, but productive people are the ones not doing work. In theory if you spend 10% of the time actually doing work compared to the next guy then you have 90% availability to do additional work. That part is obvious, but its not about work. Its about what you deliver. If the output is superior quality it will require less effort to maintain and feature dramatically less risk of regression, and these factors mean less work.
So, if person A performs 10% of the work compared to person B then person A is 10x more productive than person B if they deliver the same quantity/quality of output. If person B delivers lower quality output then person A is even more productive. That is how you get 10x developers, and you don't even have to be a good programmer to be a 10x developer. I have been a 10x, or much greater, developer multiple times and I am almost never the smartest programmer in the room.
That is why creative people are important, but they are more important mathematically than it sounds. Creative people tend to get bored quickly and tend to not want to do work just for the sack of qualifying their existence, but creative people tend to really loathe being bored. That means they aren't going to waste time on repetitive tasks and will instead look for something else to fill that time. If they know more repetitive tasks are coming then they will work harder up front to prevent the occurrence of repetitive tasks in the future. In the world of software that can mean writing a new tool or creating a new process.
But, its more than that, because creativity is marginally contagious. Non-creative people are scared shitless of new things, those fucking cowards. However, they really enjoy having more time available for enjoyable things like everyone else. That means non-creative people will not become more productive of their own initiative and will actually sacrifice productivity in proximity to creative people until those creative people demonstrate a superior solution. In the presence of a superior solution the non-creative people will increase their productivity as a result of using that new solution. This is actually a repetitive cycle.
To add to that non-creative people are repulsed and emotionally aggressive when confronted with original things. That is more reason why creative people will work less hard in the office and instead keep their solutions to themselves until it means not losing their jobs or directly eliminating more effort.
Even more counter-intuitive is that to some degree higher intelligence, on its own, is actually harmful to productivity. Organization and industriousness are products of conscientiousness, which is negatively correlated to intelligence at about -0.27. You can't even survive in upper management if you are in the bottom of the population with regards to conscientiousness, much less do anything original. Openness and creativity are highly correlated to intelligence at about +0.4, but you also need persistence and diligence, which is where conscientiousness comes in.
This is going to sound really counter-intuitive, but productive people are the ones not doing work. In theory if you spend 10% of the time actually doing work compared to the next guy then you have 90% availability to do additional work. That part is obvious, but its not about work. Its about what you deliver. If the output is superior quality it will require less effort to maintain and feature dramatically less risk of regression, and these factors mean less work.
So, if person A performs 10% of the work compared to person B then person A is 10x more productive than person B if they deliver the same quantity/quality of output. If person B delivers lower quality output then person A is even more productive. That is how you get 10x developers, and you don't even have to be a good programmer to be a 10x developer. I have been a 10x, or much greater, developer multiple times and I am almost never the smartest programmer in the room.
That is why creative people are important, but they are more important mathematically than it sounds. Creative people tend to get bored quickly and tend to not want to do work just for the sack of qualifying their existence, but creative people tend to really loathe being bored. That means they aren't going to waste time on repetitive tasks and will instead look for something else to fill that time. If they know more repetitive tasks are coming then they will work harder up front to prevent the occurrence of repetitive tasks in the future. In the world of software that can mean writing a new tool or creating a new process.
But, its more than that, because creativity is marginally contagious. Non-creative people are scared shitless of new things, those fucking cowards. However, they really enjoy having more time available for enjoyable things like everyone else. That means non-creative people will not become more productive of their own initiative and will actually sacrifice productivity in proximity to creative people until those creative people demonstrate a superior solution. In the presence of a superior solution the non-creative people will increase their productivity as a result of using that new solution. This is actually a repetitive cycle.
To add to that non-creative people are repulsed and emotionally aggressive when confronted with original things. That is more reason why creative people will work less hard in the office and instead keep their solutions to themselves until it means not losing their jobs or directly eliminating more effort.
Even more counter-intuitive is that to some degree higher intelligence, on its own, is actually harmful to productivity. Organization and industriousness are products of conscientiousness, which is negatively correlated to intelligence at about -0.27. You can't even survive in upper management if you are in the bottom of the population with regards to conscientiousness, much less do anything original. Openness and creativity are highly correlated to intelligence at about +0.4, but you also need persistence and diligence, which is where conscientiousness comes in.
I think cutting out all but "business-critical" travel has done far more damage to innovation than any WFH disconnect.
I can think about several situations that could have been solved 6-12 months earlier (IMHO) if L4+ were allowed to travel as it was before 2020, and I work on ML low-level infrastructure. The savings would have been significant enough to show up on finance/CFO radar, but it was impossible to quantify and thus seek approval for those travels as it was not a well-defined deal / project.
I can think about several situations that could have been solved 6-12 months earlier (IMHO) if L4+ were allowed to travel as it was before 2020, and I work on ML low-level infrastructure. The savings would have been significant enough to show up on finance/CFO radar, but it was impossible to quantify and thus seek approval for those travels as it was not a well-defined deal / project.
It's the McNamara fallacy all over again.
There are some practices workers know will help to deliver better/faster, those are really hard to quantify and get approval from the management chain, so they are disregarded because are hard to quantify, if it can be quantified it's deemed unnecessary.
There are some practices workers know will help to deliver better/faster, those are really hard to quantify and get approval from the management chain, so they are disregarded because are hard to quantify, if it can be quantified it's deemed unnecessary.
Video interview the article is based on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxDM8io4lUA
Key quotes:
> Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning.
> The reason startups work is because the people work like hell. And I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the fact of the matter is if you all leave the university and go found a company, you're not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups.
Timestamp of quotes (10m 24s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxDM8io4lUA&t=10m24s
Key quotes:
> Google decided that work life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning.
> The reason startups work is because the people work like hell. And I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the fact of the matter is if you all leave the university and go found a company, you're not going to let people work from home and only come in one day a week if you want to compete against the other startups.
Timestamp of quotes (10m 24s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxDM8io4lUA&t=10m24s
Lucky old retired executive shares opinion and makes excuses for poor management without evidence in the pursuit of relevance.
https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/billionaires-and-the-evolution...
https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/billionaires-and-the-evolution...
Everything just not to blame management and bad company pratice around product development.
Schmidt can go kick a rock
> Google decided that work-life balance and going home early, and working from home, was more important than winning
I mean... yeah? If you don't do those things, guess what's going to happen to your best people; they're going to leave because someone else is going to treat them like people rather than "resources".
I mean... yeah? If you don't do those things, guess what's going to happen to your best people; they're going to leave because someone else is going to treat them like people rather than "resources".
"And the startups, the reason startups work is the people work like hell.”
And who wants to live in hell?
And who wants to live in hell?
The overlords want their minions to.
Eric's views, Jack Ma's (in)famous "996" exhortation, are all part of the same pattern.
Eric's views, Jack Ma's (in)famous "996" exhortation, are all part of the same pattern.
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I want to know how much time does he spend in an office, let alone a cubicle or in an open space.
So anyways, in reality.... us remote workers blame billionaire CEOs for the economy's struggles..
How tiny a violin does it take to play a sad enough song to accompany such an oversized "struggle", as Google toils to just barely make a dollar or two?
Who knows, if they can't come up with anything brilliant that sticks to go along with search, they could always try turning it from a search company that has a few ads, into an ad company that's not so big in search. lol. Just to see how it goes, with that much money and no acumen at all a regular company would have no trouble affording things that no other could dream of, without having to lay off anybody.
Sometimes a scapegoat is pointed at and blamed for an untoward chain of events, other times blamed for a lack of miracles occurring.
Who knows, if they can't come up with anything brilliant that sticks to go along with search, they could always try turning it from a search company that has a few ads, into an ad company that's not so big in search. lol. Just to see how it goes, with that much money and no acumen at all a regular company would have no trouble affording things that no other could dream of, without having to lay off anybody.
Sometimes a scapegoat is pointed at and blamed for an untoward chain of events, other times blamed for a lack of miracles occurring.
Interesting that all other companies also had remote work, but are doing better than google. I wonder where the problem could be?
He’s not attributing it only to remote work, but to the way G handles work life balance in general
That must be it. Not their spectacular failures to build reliable AI. Distain for their users, selling out of search quality or their other myriad bullshit.
Google search is getting disrupted by ChatGPT. High school kids don’t even bother using Google to look things up. They just ask the LLM. To them, it’s a personal tutor that can explain any topic. They love it!
Google on the other hand is just more work for them: a chore they need to go through to get links and citations to make their teachers happy.
Google never built ChatGPT because they knew it would cannibalize search. So they let OpenAI build it instead. It’s the classic innovator’s dilemma.
Google on the other hand is just more work for them: a chore they need to go through to get links and citations to make their teachers happy.
Google never built ChatGPT because they knew it would cannibalize search. So they let OpenAI build it instead. It’s the classic innovator’s dilemma.
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Bullshit.
I'm disappointed he didn't blame the hardware architecture, undocumented migration (of people), or helicopter parents.
/s
/s
kentich(1)
Nothing can be said publicly.
> Important frontier and game changing work like AI can be done only in person
Doesn't seem to have stopped university researchers, who often collaborate across continents and time zones to do groundbreaking work.
Also doesn't seem to be stopping the FOSS community in a lot of different fields, including Gen AI.
Doesn't seem to have stopped university researchers, who often collaborate across continents and time zones to do groundbreaking work.
Also doesn't seem to be stopping the FOSS community in a lot of different fields, including Gen AI.
... said nobody, who actually does this work, ever.
Look, it's an opinion, ok? You think this. There's zero evidence either way, that only f2f constant labour will solve ai problems, or any other kind of problems.
It's hard to weld a ship from home. All intellectual labour can be conducted anywhere a mind is. Better or worse is subjective.
Look, it's an opinion, ok? You think this. There's zero evidence either way, that only f2f constant labour will solve ai problems, or any other kind of problems.
It's hard to weld a ship from home. All intellectual labour can be conducted anywhere a mind is. Better or worse is subjective.
Poor leaders will blame everything but their own failures. When was the last time Google had a coherent product vision?