[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by AltoLXI

I am reading Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" where he writes...

Reminds me of a dialogue from a popular sitcom:

'In a sea of iPods, I bought a Zune.'

'What's a Zune?'

'Exactly!'

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by AltoLXI

I am reading Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" where he writes:

Does he also mention that the pragmatist customers must have deep pockets? One of the ways... actually the primary reason customers give to break the shackles of market leader vendors is budget. If they tell their management that they want to switch because of bad service, they rarely get the permission to use the new entrant. However, if the say market leader vendor is way more expensive than the new entrant, they often get the nod. Can't beat that.

[R2D2]

Originally Posted by Samurai

A startup founder whose company was acquired by Google, recently quit Google and posted his reasons in a blog. As a startup founder, he thinks exactly like me. Again, many of you won't agree with him. Still, I think it is worth reading his opinion about the internal workings of Google.

https://medium.com/@pravse/the-maze-...e-980c57cfd61a

I relate to this article so very well. Deja vu actually. In fact it is a part and parcel of working at medium and big organisations. The exterior talk doesn't match the interior walk. A former boss even threatened to sack me if I tried to inculcate best practices from a former employer into the current one. Companies don't change unless they are forced to. And a change that is forced is generally painful.

[sunilch]

Originally Posted by R2D2

I relate to this article so very well. Deja vu actually. In fact it is a part and parcel of working at medium and big organisations. The exterior talk doesn't match the interior walk. A former boss even threatened to sack me if I tried to inculcate best practices from a former employer into the current one. Companies don't change unless they are forced to. And a change that is forced is generally painful.

Originally Posted by Samurai

This statement by me last month was not appreciated much in this thread. After working in very small companies for decades, I have an extremely customer focused viewpoint, because I can see the direct impact on the revenues and prospect of the company, when customers are ignored. So I am never impressed with processes designed to ignore/harass the customers. I never buy any justifications for it.

A startup founder whose company was acquired by Google, recently quit Google and posted his reasons in a blog. As a startup founder, he thinks exactly like me. Again, many of you won't agree with him. Still, I think it is worth reading his opinion about the internal workings of Google.

https://medium.com/@pravse/the-maze-...e-980c57cfd61a

Doesn't this mean that many who have had spent years at Google would simply be too 'un-fit' at other relatively smaller organizations where the risk tolerance is not this low? Perhaps many of those who got laid off recently may just not fit well with other companies who wish to grow faster than the competition. But I suppose there are many other such organizations where similar situation exists.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by sunilch

Doesn't this mean that many who have had spent years at Google would simply be too 'un-fit' at other relatively smaller organizations where the risk tolerance is not this low?

This is not specific to Google, most people who spent years in large companies will find it hard to work for smaller companies due reasons I mentioned earlier in this thread.

In that earlier list, I had not mentioned the risk averseness of an individual, since it was not relevant to that discussion. Risk aversion is an individual trait, not a skill. Just because someone worked in large companies, it doesn't mean individual traits are changed. Those traits would be suppressed by the processes. I spent 6 years in TCS, that couldn't change me. But I was liberated when I switched over to smaller companies, where I became lot more productive.

One should always try to do impedance matching when it comes to career. Join an organization that finds your individual traits valuable, then your career graph will shoot up. For example, a startup founder would find it miserable to work in a large company, no matter how much perks they throw at him/her.

[EV NXT]

Processes have morphed from facilitating scale - of operations, revenue and profits to facilitating high valuations in loss making companies. They have lost their original intent - from that of removing people dependency into facilitating abuse in almost every sphere.

Removing people dependency have made employees the most disposable asset (or is it liability) in any company. The current wave of terminations (the nth one since the beginning of the IT boom) should prove to everyone that every employee is highly disposable and will always remain so.

The game has moved on from building companies with quality people, products and services to building loss making companies with high growth signaling (not actually high growth) leading to high valuations.

Investors aren’t interested in profit making companies anymore, their focus is their exit valuation. The current crop of aggregators are all part of what would eventually turn out to be the worlds largest scam and the next big bubble waiting to burst.

Take a look at Swiggy - a loss of Rs.3629 crores gets a valuation of $10.7 billion - thats the size of the bubble and should tell you that the folks at Zoho are wasting their time. And that Adani hasn’t yet learnt to play the game.

The fact that profits do not matter anymore makes a sham of most current corporate activity and practices - be it strategy, processes or people. It also makes serious discussions on jobs and attrition almost appear frivolous.

Its time to think differently - think what your role would be in a Rs. 4000 crore loss making company get a $12 billion valuation.

If you can’t, you’re wasting your time.

[R2D2]

Originally Posted by sunilch

Doesn't this mean that many who have had spent years at Google would simply be too 'un-fit' at other relatively smaller organizations where the risk tolerance is not this low? Perhaps many of those who got laid off recently may just not fit well with other companies who wish to grow faster than the competition. But I suppose there are many other such organizations where similar situation exists.

I have seen this happening with some of my ex-colleagues. Spent too much time in the employ of one company (decades) and every pore of their being was saturated with that work culture. Once you work your way up into mid-senior Mgmt as an 'old timer' it's difficult to adjust to the new way of doing things at other employers. I am not saying it cannot be done but it's tough.

What happens is quite predictable - people jump companies because they can't adjust to their new employers or vice versa till the employee realises that any adjustments can only be done by an employee. The Organisation doesn't budge - their policies are clear, "it's my way or the highway".

Then the harsh reality of fewer jobs at managerial levels (even technical) plus the negative of advancing age (younger people are preferred for multiple reasons) are a huge factor in clearing the most pompous and unbending individual's brains. He/she either chooses to adapt or be self-employed. One of my ex colleagues, an IITB alumni, chose to be a yoga teacher. No kidding.

If you are 45 or over you may have seen some colleagues or ex colleagues go through this.

[AltoLXI]

Originally Posted by R2D2

Then the harsh reality of fewer jobs at managerial levels (even technical) plus the negative of advancing age (younger people are preferred for multiple reasons) are a huge factor in clearing the most pompous and unbending individual's brains. He/she either chooses to adapt or be self-employed.

Why should advancing age be considered as negative? Why not be a guide/mentor to the next generation of employees? Why not think the youngsters joining the organization as ones kids and guide them? As it happens in the families, things may fail to work and then it is time to move on.

Attributed to Shakespeare,

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely Players;
They have their exits and their entrances,

Originally Posted by R2D2

One of my ex colleagues, an IITB alumni, chose to be a yoga teacher. No kidding.
If you are 45 or over you may have seen some colleagues or ex colleagues go through this.

Personally I feel nothing wrong with that. The person must have found inner peace and may have disassociated himself/herself from the maddening rat race.

[Samurai]

Actually, I don't know how many people remember this. Google's institutionalized dysfunction was revealed in a famous internal blog post written by Steve Yegge back in 2011.

https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611

Twelve years later, nothing really has changed. If ChatGPT enabled Bing finally beats Google Search, Google will be toast. They have been a one-trick pony for 20+ years now.

[PreludeSH]

Google's problem was that they had 20 years to have their moon shot projects mature into successful ones. That didn't happen.
They were into multiple things and legacy companies would have had a little bit of fear given the huge capital Google could invest given the profitability of their search products.

They did corner lot of PhDs, researchers and successful people from other companies. Offered them high salary. All that has not worked. So it could be something with their culture or management.

Regarding other aspects, was watching the netflix series "Shooter". The guy says its not loyalty but value that counts. So true and add ROI.

[R2D2]

Originally Posted by AltoLXI

Why should advancing age be considered as negative? Why not be a guide/mentor to the next generation of employees? Why not think the youngsters joining the organization as ones kids and guide them? As it happens in the families, things may fail to work and then it is time to move on.

Ageism is a thing, however subtle it may be, especially in a domain that's seen as a "young people's industry" where the average age is normally around 30. Of course that's because a bulk of people hired are in the 20-30 age group. There's an entire thread discussing this aspect of the IT industry on TBHP for those approaching or already in their 40s.

Also, I believe mentoring or even training the next gen or even batches of new employees is a great thing. It may or may not be in industry though. For e.g - I am occasionally invited to do guest lectures at a couple of MBA colleges or as a part of a board that comprises of experienced folks from different domain that advise students on what is expected in industry both IT and non IT once they are in the work stream.

Of course students with work experience are also amongst the fresher group but the mentoring is mostly for students with no to little work experience. Another ex-colleague, yet another IITB grad, chose to join coaching classes that prep high school kids for IIT-JEE entrance exam. His taught subject was physics and maths. Worked this way for a few years till one day he moved on to other things.

Personally I feel nothing wrong with that. The person must have found inner peace and may have disassociated himself/herself from the maddening rat race.

Don't get me wrong. There's absolutely nothing wrong in jumpin off the non-stop treadmill that is corporate life in IT. I have done that too. And I know people in Banking who followed suit and started their own financial consulting company another opened a shared workspace business. One has to reckon with what he/she will do for the rest of his productive life including the $$ aspect. If you have that sorted out then its good. More power to you. There are plenty of choices. AFAIK there's a TBHPian who chose to be a farmer. And why not?!

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by Samurai

...If ChatGPT enabled Bing finally beats Google Search, Google will be toast. They have been a one-trick pony for 20+ years now.

Originally Posted by PreludeSH

Google's problem was that they had 20 years to have their moon shot projects mature into successful ones. That didn't happen...

They either didn't back promising projects, or didn't have enough patience once they did. In many ways, they're a living embodiment of that meme with the man digging and giving up just before striking gold. Rinse and repeat.

Just two examples are Google+ and Google Talk, a social media platform and an instant messenger. Two services the modern world practically lives on, and they just upped and left those spaces to others.

If they do get displaced from search, what exactly do they offer that someone else doesn't do as well or better, which can be monetised to anywhere near the same scale?

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

If they do get displaced from search, what exactly do they offer that someone else doesn't do as well or better, which can be monetised to anywhere near the same scale?

They have Youtube, the only other market leader. They have Google workspace, which I prefer over Microsoft 365. Their GCP is trailing well behind AWS and Azure.

[warrioraks]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Twelve years later, nothing really has changed. If ChatGPT enabled Bing finally beats Google Search, Google will be toast. They have been a one-trick pony for 20+ years now.

Although I agree with the sentiment about Google on last few pages, let me play devil's advocate here.

Also calling them a one trick pony is an exaggeration. Let's see what else do they have:

- Gmail: The dominant provider when it comes to email service. Switching a search engine is easier vs changing your email address. So there is going to be lot of inertia and operational challenges for anyone trying to de-throne the king.
- Google maps: The defacto navigation tool for millions (if not billions) worldwide
- Android: Controls 70% of the real estate when it comes to smartphone market
- YouTube: I am not even sure what reasonable alternates are available in the market.

These are just a few which came to my mind and have no direct relation to google search. They can independently show ads and keep the cash registers ringing at Google.

In the short term, Google as a company might see hiccups but they are going nowhere for the next 5 to 10 years irrespective of what ChatGPT does. Especially when they are about to launch a competitor soon.

Google is a verb when it comes to internet search, but let's not forget it is an eco system as well. And it takes a lot to bring down an eco-system.

[prajwalmr62]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Just two examples are Google+ and Google Talk, a social media platform and an instant messenger. Two services the modern world practically lives on, and they just upped and left those spaces to others.

If they do get displaced from search, what exactly do they offer that someone else doesn't do as well or better, which can be monetised to anywhere near the same scale?

They didn't give up on Orkut/Google+ and Google Talk, but Facebook ensured their death. It just became unsustainable to compete with Facebook at that point. Google fought long and hard against Whatsapp/FB messenger. They are still doing it via stock Messages app on Android with RCS. They took the working parts and made Google Meet, which makes money now.

Google's main money maker is their advertising business and Search is their main platform to provide advertise. But these are not the only thing that makes them money.

They still have YouTube, Google Maps, Android (ie Play Store & services), Google Cloud Platform, Gmail (and workspace suites), Google Analytics (& suite).