Here's some insight into what Google's problems are like lately, direct from an ex-employee. Praveen Seshadri, a founder whose company was acquired by Google, recently quit and dropped a scathing Medium post on his way out the door, detailing the problems he saw in his time at the company. Seshadri says Google is "trapped in a maze of approvals, launch processes, legal reviews, performance reviews, exec reviews," and other bureaucratic processes, and while the employees are capable, they "get very little done quarter over quarter, year over year."
Seshadri is the founder of AppSheet, a "no-code development platform" that he started in 2014. After several years of development, Seshadri's company was acquired by Google Cloud in 2020, and Seshadri spent the next three years turning the app into Google AppSheet. Seshadri left Google the second his "three year mandatory retention period" was up, saying, "I have left Google understanding how a once-great company has slowly ceased to function."
Seshadri outlines his big problems with the company:
The way I see it, Google has four core cultural problems. They are all the natural consequences of having a money-printing machine called "Ads" that has kept growing relentlessly every year, hiding all other sins.
(1) no mission, (2) no urgency, (3) delusions of exceptionalism, (4) mismanagement.
[...] The post says that "risk mitigation trumps everything else" at Google, echoing a 2021 New York Times article saying CEO Sundar Pichai built "a paralyzing bureaucracy" while running the company.
(Score: -1, Troll) by crafoo on Saturday February 18, @07:48PM (8 children)
Neither the CEO or this guy should be here. They aren't Americans. They don't want to be Americans. When they come and live in our culture they shit it all up. Honestly, Indians are better people when they are ruled. The British did their entire population a huge, thankless favor.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Saturday February 18, @08:11PM
Weird choice of company to waive your white pride flag over considering the Jewish, Israeli and/or Soviet background of both founders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin [wikipedia.org] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page [wikipedia.org]
compiling...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mcgrew on Saturday February 18, @09:34PM (4 children)
Why have I been seeing so many racist and antisemitic comments here lately? I suspect a Proud Boy with sock puppets.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @09:47PM (2 children)
It's one guy.
(Score: 2, Troll) by khallow on Sunday February 19, @03:03AM (1 child)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday February 19, @04:34AM
Well, it is racist. The only posters here are representatives of the human race. When we see octopi, marsupials, insectoid, and bacterial posters, then we can claim to be diverse. I'm really waiting for the dolphins. "So long, and thanks for all the fish!"
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by timbim on Monday February 20, @04:11AM
Right wing fascist are here and on slashdot. Pushing their techno libertarian feudalist dream world. Turns out nerds can be pretty delusional racist and bad actors.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19, @12:21AM
Man will you be conflicted when Nikki Haley becomes the nominee!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19, @01:04AM
Pakistan makes cooler trucks and tools. Pajeets can't even find the bathroom. If you wonder why google is shitty, wonder no more.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @07:56PM (7 children)
That phrase... is there any other kind?
You've heard it all before here, but seriously this is a fact of life. A law of nature, like the way termites build termite mounds. Humans create paralyzing bureaucracies. People who "couldn't", and couldn't teach, develop what they tell themselves are "soft skills" which are nothing more than a loud domineering personality. These people - who couldn't - end up in charge of people who can imposing their method of working (that does not work) - discipline, punishment, revenge, sucking up, cheating, covering up - onto their inferiors. We create these perfect gaslighting institutions, we just do. No denying it. But why?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MostCynical on Saturday February 18, @08:15PM
We developed religion as a way of explaining the world and bureaucracy grew into it - so we ended up with churches ("organised religions")
We developed trade beyond direct barter, and secular bureaucracy came with it - government, taxation..corporations.
Everything develops a slow paralysis, as a natural prevention of harm to organised groups.
It is inevitable.. there are too many humans, and we need bureaucracy to keep us safe - yes, it stifles and smothers and limits.. but that is the point.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Saturday February 18, @09:44PM
With size comes bureaucracy. Once an institution becomes big enough, whether a company or government, bureaucracy becomes necessary. The bigger an organization is, the more bureaucratic it must become.
Look at Google. I'm sure when they made the motto "Don't Be Evil" they believed in it, but those guys took the money and ran long ago.
The self-serving lie that pisses me off is that sans serif typefaces are easier to read. "Tom was torn." San serif is easier to RENDER and only easier to read in very large print from a distance, as a street sign. Since that damned Google said that, not only are all the manuals in six point type (when there even is one), now they're sans serif, making them even harder to read. Don't get me started with gray on gray, stupid kids...
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Saturday February 18, @11:51PM (2 children)
Why? I have never seen it better explained than in this essay.
https://bobshea.net/empire_of_the_rising_scum.html [bobshea.net]
Summary: some people just have unbeatable talents, some of them outclass you at getting promoted, and once an organization has been around long enough that they are in charge, it changes to serve them and not the customers or stockholders or parishioners or members.
One useful feature of capitalism is that bankruptcy courts can recycle the wreckage when the parasites destroy their host.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gznork26 on Sunday February 19, @04:28PM (1 child)
I have never seen it better explained than in this essay.
https://bobshea.net/empire_of_the_rising_scum.html [bobshea.net] [bobshea.net]
++++
Thanks. It's been a while since I pulled out anything by Shea (and Wilson) from my library to read. They were so good at hiding subversive and cogent thoughts in their fiction that we shelve the Illuminatus! trilogy with our library of important books.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday February 19, @08:16PM
Illuminatus! was good, but Schrödinger's Cat was better.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday February 19, @12:11AM (1 child)
YES. Bureaucracy is necessary to manage large projects. Necessary. The problem is that it has a tendency to grow. Because people who manage more people have higher status, there are misaligned incentives. There may be other reasons, but if not, that suffices. Projects can grow to perhaps 5 people before some bureaucracy is necessary. Even then, the 5 people had better all agree on what needs to be done next.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Sunday February 19, @02:31PM
Indeed. For example even a very simple multi-dev project has bureaucracy. When someone starts a project, they have to decide (i) to use some vcs (ii) how to handle code releases, feature development, etc. You probably get together and decide what features to develop and what bugs are high priority. It's all bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy grows at least linearly with the number of people in the line management chain. You probably want all of your devs to have a hand in discussing what features are important and which team/division/etc is going to do what. I would want that discussion to include me as well as the senior people.
In Europe at least, such bureaucracy is legally necessary because the senior management can be responsible (go to jail etc) if something goes wrong, even if it is someone relatively junior who made a mistake.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GloomMower on Saturday February 18, @10:57PM
I think these are typical thoughts of any startup to a big company.
Releases every 2 weeks... to releases every year because it might break something.
Paper work more important than actually doing something so that managers can compile stats.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 19, @03:44AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday February 19, @10:10AM
No, the phrase is correct. Google's users are data brokers, marketing firms and advertisers. People using Google products are the data providers - aka the milked cows.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Sunday February 19, @06:28AM (4 children)
A family member set this up about 15 years ago, and neither of us knew the account name or password. There was no way to deal with this, as robots did not understand the issue. I used the constant requests for feedback to repeatedly point out the problem, but I assume that bad news goes in the bin, like with Putin.
More days went by.
Then there was an error message saying the card was out of date - but it wasn't - expiry date 2026, There was no way to deal with this, as robots did not understand the issue.
More days went by.
Then I found that the problem was that the card data was missing a CVV. I fixed that.
I was still unable to upgrade because of the administrator requirement.
More days went by.
Eventually, a new button was introduced to handle "make my account the administrative account" - which I did.
But now I needed to be a "super -administrator".
More days with no email went by.
Then a button appeared to grant me "super administrator" status. I clicked it - but I needed to change the entries in my DNS records - which I did.
A message appeared telling me to logout and login again.
I did that and clicked again. Clicking the upgrade button still lead me round in a loop, back to where I started. But now my "super administrator" status was gone, and so was the button to retrieve it.
I now have had no access to my account for almost two weeks. I would pay the ransom to get my my email, BUT I CAN'T.
There is no way to contact a human unless you upgrade first, and the robots and AI chat send me back to the fruit loop.
The system is broken. This stupidity probably affects tens of thousands of helpless (ex-)users.
Realistically, the average ransomware company relying on teenage hackers can do better than Google.
Google deserves to rot in hell - and very soon!
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 1) by BeaverCleaver on Sunday February 19, @09:47AM (3 children)
I had a similar issue with my personal blog almost 10 years ago. I thought I might as well put adwords on there, just to see what happened. I'll tell you what happened, within a day or two I got a message to tell me that adwords had been disabled due to potential misuse. There was a form to fill in to dispute the claim (seriously, how can a personal blog with a handful of views per week violate anything?) After that I waited, no response. Filled in the form again, waited, no response. Rinse and repeat - there was no way to get in touch with a human, or even a better bot and fix the problem. My crappy little blog was never gong to set the world on fire, but that's the point of a loss-leader. If their service was awesome I'd have thought about using Google for something bigger, better and more lucrative (to me AND Google) but based on my experience I wouldn't trust them with anything remotely important, ever. I've stopped using Android too, because I don't want some google script to decide that it doesn't like how I use my phone then decide to shut me down with no means of appeal. Fuck Google.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday February 20, @05:00AM (2 children)
My phone is old enough that I cannot upgrade Android to a more recent version.
A few months ago when I tried to use the YouTube app on it I got a banner across the middle of the screen telling me that YouTube could not run without Google Play Services, and that my phone was too old to install Google Play Services.
A blatant lie, because I could see parts of the YouTube panel playing the video, somewhat greyed out.
Some google script decided that it didn't like how I use my phone.
A few weeks later they fixed the bug that let YouTube play behind the banner.
-- hendrik
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday February 20, @09:19AM (1 child)
Have you considered NewPipe? It's the yt-dlp for Android from fdroid.org.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Monday February 20, @06:30PM
Not until now. I did not know it existed.