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Google engineer quits; claims Google "can no longer innovate"

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https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc0be84

The main reason I left Google is that they can no longer innovate. They've pretty much lost that ability.
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Google incentivizes successful feature and product launches, and by far the easiest, safest way to produce those is by copying competitors.
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Won't post large chunks of article as that is against Terms of Service.

nynt9 said:
He has a follow-up, btw:

https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/google-doesnt-necessarily-need-innovation-95cea96d0eeb
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Last edited by a moderator:
FireSafetyBear

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I mean, there's not much left to innovate besides refining everything.

I can see why he wouldn't like that but I hope he's happy.
 
Zoe

Zoe

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Oct 25, 2017
14,236
Complains about Google just copying other companies.

Joins a company that's copying other companies (but it's gonna win!).
 
KHarvey16

KHarvey16

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I think that based on the "what does a former employee who just left to find another job think" metric of evaluating companies, precisely 0 employers are worth working for.
 
VincentMatts

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I agree that they seem to be focusing on their competitors and not their customers.

Its exactly what i feel xbox is doing right these days. Focus on customers.
 
Kthulhu

Kthulhu

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Oct 25, 2017
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Saw this the other day. I feel like basically every major tech company is this way. All the innovation is stuff consumers either won't see or don't care about.
 
Divvy

Divvy

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Oct 25, 2017
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I don't know if he's right or not about Google, but lately I've noticed consumer tech companies including Google have been preferring to social engineer their customers to like their new dumb product ideas instead of making stuff their customers actually want
 
evrythngwastakn

evrythngwastakn

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Invisible Cities said:
It's just a massive advertising company, what did you expect.
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Totally. I feel like, aside from the massive pay cheque and free shit they toss at you to entice you to never leave the campus, it would be shitty to know that everything you do is in the service of getting users to give more information to sell to advertisers.

I mean, I guess all companies just exist to sell shit to someone but Google and Facebook both feel super slimy.
 
BronzeWolf

BronzeWolf

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Nov 3, 2017
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Why are we focusing on one employee? With 73k employees, even a 1% rotation rate means 60 are leaving the firm every month.
 
Irnbru

Irnbru

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Oct 25, 2017
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"I've joined a literal revolutionary war, surrounded by and fighting alongside guerilla troops, and it's win or die."

Surejan

Also above me, exactly, you're not a special person, you're one in the vast ocean of a company

Bruh needs to get on better projects
 
Alucrid

Alucrid

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Oct 25, 2017
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can't innovate, only copies

"So what is Grab? Well, the simple and unsatisfying answer is: They're the Uber of Southeast Asia."
 
Rodney McKay

Rodney McKay

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Oct 26, 2017
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Zoe said:
Complains about Google just copying other companies.

Joins a company that's copying other companies (but it's gonna win!).
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Haha, was literally going to post that.

Any company will lose its innovative edge over time (if it even really had one to begin with), especially if they become a billion dollar company beholden to stakeholders.

A startup will always have a million times the creative freedom and "innovation" you can get at a mega-company, but you also have a million times more risk of losing your job at any time. It's basically the whole risk reward thing of startups.

Honestly, if this startup really does stumble on something, in the next few years they'll probably end up getting bought by a bigger company anyways. Unless this guy got a position in upper management and can influence those decisions, hell probably be working for a big company before he knows it (either them getting bought, or the company itself will get so big it will also stop innovating.
 
gcubed

gcubed

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Oct 25, 2017
5,785
i can see some portions of that with the products he's talking about, but then he went and listed like 4 things and was like "yeah but except these"

And Google has been at the forefront of AI and voice recognition, along with an assistant that was before Alexa just included only on phones. So while jumping to a speaker is a shot over Alexa's bow, everything about it besides putting it on an external speaker was done way before.
 
Gonzalez

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2th said:
More pictures

https://imgur.com/a/owyHp

Uy4rg8u.jpg

owyHp
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She looks like she's wearing a leather diaper.
 
Dan

Dan

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Oct 25, 2017
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I don't know what he was expecting to be honest. When you become a company as large and rich as Google, it makes more financial sense just to become an acquisition company to expand their portfolio. You then do yourself a favour by reducing your competition. The guy in the OP's story will only find out that the next company he joins will probably do the same, if it's lucky enough.
 
Deepwater

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2th said:
More pictures

https://imgur.com/a/owyHp

Uy4rg8u.jpg

owyHp
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If Google was truly innovative they would have included her Leotard

Dan said:
I don't know what he was expecting to be honest. When you become a company as large and rich as Google, it makes more financial sense just to become an acquisition company to expand their portfolio. You then do yourself a favour by reducing your competition. The guy in the OP's story will only find out that the next company he joins will probably do the same, if it's lucky enough.
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He said he spent 13 years at Google, which puts him joining around 2005, which would have made them 7 years old at the time. Easy to see how how he could have been primed with a different culture.
 

Deleted member 3345

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Note: This is my first time using Medium. Please forgive any faux pas. Also, it's pretty long even for me, so you might want to go grab a coffee. I'll wait.
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I already hate this guy.


e: "Google doesn't innovate, let me joing a metoo ride sharing company"

ok guy
 
Axe

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Oct 27, 2017
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Pretty sure Google have been copying Google, let alone other companies. Would explain why they have so much duplication across their apps and services.
 
uncelestial

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As an ex-Googler, I would just say, Steve is known as a pretty level-headed (if a bit outspoken) dude, and even if you don't agree with his conclusions, there is a lot of truth in his observations.
 
mentallyinept

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I'm OK with Google saying copying competitors if they do it better than the competition.

Which... they have about 50% of the time.
 

TitanicFall

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Nov 12, 2017
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His argument is lame. He complains that Google doesn't innovate and only offers competing products, but hello, they made this alternative search engine called Google that almost everyone uses. They weren't the first search engine ever. There's nothing wrong with getting into a space if you think you can do it differently or better.
 
Window

Window

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Isn't Google at the forefront of AI? Doesn't that have tons of potential applications and uses cases (outside the voice recognition and ads space where they already use it). What about Waymo which is positioned in the same industry as Grab?
 
thepenguin55

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Oct 28, 2017
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Remember Google Fiber and that seemingly 5 second period of time where it seemed like they were really going to shake things up? I would murder a man if it meant that I could get a ISP that wasn't Spectrum, AT&T, Comcast, etc.
 
Fuhgeddit

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"bashing".

How is that bashing? Seems more like criticizing and that's OK. Maybe Google will learn from this.
 
just_myles

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Well that is usually the case when you are used to working in companies that remain in start up mode. At some point google has to be a company and compete with it's competitors. However, I do understand what this guy is trying to say and you know for engineers like this guy, they need to be on the cutting edge of new ideas and products. Hope what I said makes sense.
 

idlewild_

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Oct 29, 2017
355
He made some salient points but I think it's going to get glossed over since it sounds somewhat hypocritical coming from someone joining, in his words, the Uber of Southeast Asia.
 
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