Google is the new IBM::Years of being one-upped on AI and cracking down on innovation turned the poster child for Silicon Valley cool into a dinosaur.
Google is the new IBM::Years of being one-upped on AI and cracking down on innovation turned the poster child for Silicon Valley cool into a dinosaur.
If you’ve ever interviewed at Google, you know why this is happening. They hire people who are as much like the people they already employ as possible, to the point that employees don’t know who they’re interviewing or even for what. The person getting hired is pre-screened for all sorts of “desirable traits” before being matched with a team. The people who succeeded there all think the same, and so they all end up having the same ideas, and the number of novel ideas nose dives.
IBM has an internal motto that they really push when you get hired there: “Treasure wild ducks”. Beyond the regular buzz word bingo of 'think different ’ and ‘move fast break things’ it means “when someone else has a crazy idea that might just work, fucking listen to them”, and it’s what’s kept them in business for literally a century. I don’t think Google has that fundamental non-self-centered DNA. Every product they’ve ever put out was a result of their intellectual monoculture and the hyper competitive mire of sameness it breeds.
Just to add, since this seems to have resonated: Google, like all the dinosaurs before it, has to change or die. IBM used to tell meat slicers. The second T in AT&T stands for Telegraph. Edison, the Google+Apple of the mid 1800’s, went bust chasing a bubble and got bought out by GE.
I doubt we’ll see a world where Google gets bought by anyone, but they shrink in size and importance until their culture changes enough to embrace the idea that innovation can happen in non-Google ways. Apple learned this lesson under Jobs, so they’ve probably got a decade or so before that starts to wear off. IBM is essentially a finance company with in-house startups, and to the article’s credit, that’s exactly what Alphabet is all about.
Ex-IBMer here too. I only heard the motto twice - once when Ginni visited our location, and once when local departments were closed.
Coincidentally there was never any money for me to work on interesting ideas…
I’m an ex-IBMer (For 3 years, recent years) and never heard of this motto. Not saying it is a lie, just that it might not be as widespread.
But I agree with the commenter. My opinion is that IBM went from being run by engineers to be run by “used car salesmen” that care little for the tech and much more for the end of year bonus. I’ve seen leadership pushing fron clear multi million undeliverable projects just to get their signing bonus and bail.
Google seems to be in the same direction and this is a consequence of its own size.
I think there is a research opportunity on those big tech companies to generate another excellent theory like “Innovator’s Dilemma “
Never heard that phrase used there either. But uh… can confirm the rest. It’s a bummer to say the least.
Holy shit, TIL IBM has been around since before WWI.
While I agree that this is a risk, I sincerely don’t believe this happens often when interviewing at Google.
For one, employees are continuously reminded to avoid bias in anything that they do, from the way in which interviews are conducted to the design of products.
Googlers are reminded to avoid this on a nonstop basis through annual trainings or even artwork and signage throughout Google offices that target specific bias-awareness programs. In the restrooms, posters with detailed recommendations, often tailored towards engineering, make for an educational read while you’re doing your business. Screens at the cafeteria show prompts challenging you to rethink assumptions. Dedicated teams are involved in performing reviews of proposals and code solely from the perspective of inclusivity.
I’ve never seen anything regarding “desirable traits” as part of a job listing. Hiring managers provide a job description that is reviewed to avoid bias, and pass along specific requirements for education and professional experience to recruitment teams. Recruiters take a first pass at CVs for those, and I’m honestly not sure how some kind of personality trait could even be distilled from a CV. Once a candidate that fulfills the minimum requirements is matched, they are set up to discuss other requirements with the recruiter, like relocation and timelines. I don’t recall from my own experience ever being asked anything aside from these practicalities.
For interviewing specifically, there are multiple steps needed to qualify as an interviewer, each of which puts a heavy emphasis on avoiding bias. The interview question itself needs to be vetted by a dedicated team and interviewers usually select their questions from the pre-vetted ones. Prior to performing your first interview you need to be doubly shadowed with topics like avoiding bias in mind. When asked to perform an interview, the details about the role that the candidate is applying to are provided and the interviewer is required to review the CV themselves ahead of time. As evidence of this, you’ll see that the interviewer will often match items from the CV against the listing to give the candidate the opportunity to expand on it and offer more detailed insights.
Rating the interview is performed within explicit rubrics, each of which with detailed descriptions. There’s not an option to simply reject a candidate—interviewers need to select options from these rubrics and provide evidence. This is in part why you will see interviewers vigorously taking notes during an interview.
The first phone screen has more relaxed requirements as a general confirmation that the candidate exhibits the skill level expected at the listing’s minimum requirements.
There are at least four in person interviews that then follow, performed by different interviewers. These results are reviewed by a hiring committee who makes a final decision solely based on the evidence with no insights into the associated candidate.
I have personally never worked at a company that is so meticulous in avoiding confirmation bias. In one smaller company that I worked at, I was the only interviewer and the sole decision maker for a candidate. Honestly, I cannot envision how Google can do better than they currently are with hiring.
I believe that the frustrating thing about getting hired there is simply the high bar and disparity between the high supply of candidates and the relatively low offering of positions. When you’re prematurely rejected after submitting your CV or you’re rejected after interviewing, remind yourself that you aren’t necessarily unqualified or that the interview was unfair, but that many qualified candidates might have already applied, or the head count may have been removed, or an internal transfer took place or some other reason unrelated to your skillset.
This is a great overview of the problem, I never even really thought about. It kind of really explains why they’ve binned and remade almost the identical apps multiple times. Maybe if they’d made more QOL and supported their apps with new novel ideas they wouldnt have slowly died out.
Or even maybe if they’d make privacy respecting software instead of spreading their legs and whoring out all the data they collected on you they’d be doing much better too. Google has become a bloated beast that needs to be put down. Anti competitive and monopolistic behaviour with no innovation, it’s a wonder anyone uses their shit apps and services anymore
Google targets ads they deliver based on the data they collect. They don’t “whore out” the data. That’s just a lie that’s been repeated so often people take it as gospel. I’ve never seen a shred of evidence to support it, and when I worked there, the employee training everyone took annually was very, very clear on respecting user privacy and getting everything reviewed by privacy experts before it could be released.
I get what you’re saying, but IBM is not a poster child for what Google or anyone else should be doing. IBM has been an also ran for a very long time; huge in size and very profitable with occasional innovations but a fraction of what it was when it was in its heyday.
IBM stayed at the forefront for so long because the barriers of entry into the computer sector were too high. But in terms of innovation Microsoft demolished IBM, and Google demolished Microsoft. Now Google is just another big incumbent, very profitable but unable to innovate like it used to and instead beholden to shareholders short-termism just like Microsoft and IBM.
The bigger problem is these companies could stifle innovation through sheer scale and market clout, perhaps to a detrimental degree in the US in particular going forward. They try and mop up all the talent and then put them to work in dull areas. For example Google is largely just an advertising company that dabbles in other things now.