
Larry Page Begins Major Google Reorg: Engineers, Not Managers, In Charge - citizenkeys
http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20110405/exlusive-larry-page-mulls-google-reorg/
======
SoftwareMaven
I question the title. It doesn't sound like engineers are in charge, instead,
it sounds like smaller operating units will be in charge. That is a very
different thing from having the inmates running the asylum.

I have yet to see a large company that successfully treats software as a
creative endeavor instead of a production line that still manages to be able
to focus on solving customer problems. I really hope that Larry figures this
out because, if he does, that will (IMO) be his greatest legacy.

What I think will happen, though, is Google will focus even more on technology
and care even less about actual users.

~~~
wh-uws
Whomever figures out how build a company with the technical prowess and
product aptitude of Google

 _and have a comparative level of custom service_

will have created something truly great

~~~
orblivion
They're clever people. You'd think they could come up with a clever way to
solve their customer service problem.

Maybe it would _have_ to be clever for them to want to bother with it.

~~~
mcherm
Here's an approach.

Suppose that Google picked 4-10 different startup-sized groups and anointed
them as "customer support organizations". The companies could provide customer
support for Google applications to the public (and could charge the public as
much or as little as they wished for the service).

For it to work, Google would have to be willing to be more open with these
support companies (hence the anointing of a few). The companies could provide
care and hand-holding for customers, but eventually some percentage would need
to result in actual bug reports and actual technical troubleshooting that
could only be done by Google. Today, no one can offer this service because
there's no way to open a support ticket with Google -- they're too closed. If
they would open up slightly, even for just a hand-picked few, then this might
be a way for Google to offer excellent customer service without doing it
themselves. The customer support organizations would compete with each other
on customer service and would also compete with each other on how easy-to-
work-with they are for Google engineers: perhaps Google should even charge
them varying amounts depending on how well they do this ($10 for a well-
researched bug report; $150 for a poorly researched one).

------
CoffeeDregs
This is a big story. I'm both an engineer and a manager (to which engineers
will say "management!" and managers will say "developer!"), and I haven't seen
this pendulum swing back and forth so much as be ripped in half and pulled in
opposite directions. Google's obviously got very smart folks in both
engineering and management, so it's going to be very interesting to see how
this is handled.

I can't imagine a Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, etc going through this exercise, so
I'm seriously rooting for Google. It'd be lovely for this change to produce
some real knowledge on how to run a modern, big, high-speed tech company
without getting trapped in the argument over engineering-vs-management.

~~~
shin_lao
Actually AFAIK Microsoft is organized in business units (Windows, XBox, etc.)

~~~
redthrowaway
Right, but even the Windows unit itself is probably at least 7 or 8 layers
deep, due to the sheer number of people working on it. With such a massive
product, I'm amazed they release it as often as they do, let alone at all.

------
joebadmo
It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a
fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful. It has
always seemed to me that management is an important but overemphasized skill
(as a fundamental trait of the way large organizations work) and it's really
refreshing to see this happening.

~~~
webwright
"It's awesome to see a fundamentally engineer-driven company like Google and a
fundamentally designer-driven company like Apple become so successful."

Out of curiosity, what do you think Amazon is driven by, fundamentally? I'd
put them right up there with Apple on the product innovation front.

~~~
DavidSJ
Customers.

[Edit: I worked at Amazon Web Services until recently. Now work at Google.
Concern for customers drives everything that happens at Amazon, sometimes to a
ridiculous degree.]

~~~
redthrowaway
I'm interested to hear how that professed dedication to customers squares with
the experiences of sites like reddit:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_d...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/g66f0/why_reddit_was_down_for_6_of_the_last_24_hours/c1l6ykx)

~~~
te_chris
This was addressed well by someone from Netflix but I can't find the link.
Basically he said that Reddit weren't so much the victim of AWS rather than
the victim of not understanding the product enough and not spending enough to
buy the right instances and thus ensure their constant performance. The guy
from Netflix justified this by the way that the different sized instances are
split across their respective hosts and, surprise surprise, if you buy the
bigger instances you get more of each machine host and less threat of someone
taking you out.

~~~
redthrowaway
If that were true, you'd think that would be the first thing they were told
when they started complaining about crashes a year ago. Certainly, you'd think
by the time they had talked to the CIO, _somebody_ would have said, "you guys
need to buy bigger instances". We know money isn't a problem for reddit
anymore, and all current and former employees have said the problems with EBS
just aren't something they can fix by throwing money at.

I would suggest the guy from netflix simply doesn't know enough about reddit's
particulars to offer an informed opinion. Either that, or he knows better than
everyone at reddit, every support person at amazon, and even the _CIO_ of
amazzon how best to solve reddit's problems.

I strongly suspect the former.

------
aridiculous
Can someone who works at Google chime in with what the organizational
temperature is like at Google? Does this whole 'party time's over for the
managers' thing we're hearing about have any real weight to it?

~~~
Laments
I'd like to ditto this; the linked article is very speculative, and without a
G-employee response, it seems rather foolhardy to extend said speculation.

~~~
magicalist
agreed, especially in light of the stories we just heard about technical
skills being valued less in managers there. I think this is someone just
coming up with a nice narrative.

~~~
Laments
To add an unrelated reply to a crowded discussion: I think that what we've
seen from Googler manager skillset article in the Times is that Google has had
to learn basic managerial attributes organically since that's the Google way
-- from this outsider's perspective, it almost sounded like if they didn't
invent it, it's hard-to-impossible to adopt given the startup culture.

I think that this board in particular has given Facebook a lot of praise; by
this, I mean that there's a fascination/silent cheering for their engineering-
driven culture. But I think that we're seeing a transition by Google from a
startup (Facebook) to a real company (Microsoft); as much as a "management"
layer is derided, a lot of Google's projects seem to have little business
value; while they may eventually become valuable, it seems like their strategy
has been to shy away from placing limits and directing units towards hard
business goals (profitability).

But I'd argue that the rise of "business" being more important than passion-
projects (which is what we implicitly view Google as) has been very visible,
just ignored. Android's device manufacturers producing under anti-
fragmentation clauses comes to mind as a sterling example of a unit posing to
follow Google's motto but in reality has them running in the opposite
direction (e.g. away from openness).

So, to round back: sure, anything could happen in regard to managers; but
Google's in the middle of growing pains, and those pains I believe will end in
an increased managerial presence/layer rather than ignored outright.

------
6ren
It's also similar to how Berkshire Hathaway is run; and how Christensen
advocates nurturing disruptive businesses - smaller units can get excited
about smaller sales that are a rounding error to Big Google (new markets start
small); independent units are free to customize their business model and how
they do things to what fits the opportunity (instead of fitting in with the
parent's model and processes - which has compelling economies, but only
early).

e.g. it seems highly unlikely that advertising is the ideal revenue model for
every business Google is in. The appropriate fit might be sales, renting,
monthly charge, pay-per-use, royalty, per-developer, per-other-metric. It's
not necessarily about extracting more money from customers, but revenue that
makes sense for customers - that they prefer, that makes sense in the
competitive set, that motivates the business to improve along the right
dimensions.

------
asknemo
Ever since "management" and the dedicated "manager" were invented, we have
been told, increasingly in recent decades, that they, rather than talents in
other roles, are the key to business success. With the increasing importance
and accelerating pace of innovations in our time, it's time to test if to what
degree such doctrine would still hold true. Good job Larry. That's some risk
worth taking.

~~~
al05
Its a way of making sure the power stays with the powerful.

------
blinkingled
This got me thinking about role of managers in a modern org (to simplify
things let's say it's a Tech company).

It certainly needs a CEO/Visionary, it most likely needs HR and front/back
office folks, it certainly needs PR and marketing people. But in a world where
people communicate rarely in person, have their own management and economics
101 abilities, are smart enough to not work against their own interests (and
look after the org's interests) - what's the role of the future manager?

It sounds inevitable that senior Engineers will double up as managers for
their group as and when required (working with marketing etc.) instead of it
being a dedicated managerial position.

~~~
dman
One of my ex managers said that his role was to attend the meetings,shield the
developers from the politics of getting projects approved and other
institutional overhead so that we could focus on delivering product.

~~~
joebadmo
Sounds familiar. As a USMC fire team leader, my job was mostly to protect my
Marines from all the shit that rolls downhill. It's generally a very difficult
job to do well, because of the way the explicit incentives are set up, but
somewhat easier for me as I was basically apolitical and had no career plans
in the Corps.

~~~
palish
Blog.

Please?

~~~
joebadmo
I keep a blog about miscellaneous stuff at <http://blog.byjoemoon.com> (plug)
but I don't think that's what you mean.

I got out in 2006, and I had already stopped writing by the time I made team
leader, but I did keep a blog for some of the time I was in, and I collected
it (the interesting stuff) at <http://www.servicerecordbook.com>.

------
microcentury
The reality of a large corporation like Google is nowhere near as simple an
engineer-vs-manager dichotomy as many of the comments on this thread would
make it. Products need to be developed, but they need to be supported and sold
too. Which of these functions is most important depends on your world view and
your tolerance for angels-on-a-pinhead debate, but it's undoubted that each of
them are crucial.

An engineering mindset of automation and solution-by-algorithm gives us the
miserable customer service that Google is famous for; a realisation that
people are tricky and messy gives us something more like Zappos. The people
who are good at support and managing support teams are not like engineers, and
the people running sales are an entirely different breed. Rare is it to find
someone who can successfully manage all three. Indeed, I would go out on a
limb and say - as an engineer myself - that it's easier to find a non-
technical person who can make a positive impact in product development than it
is to find an engineering who can significantly improve sales or support.

------
drawkbox
Seems to work pretty well for Honda. They innovate and everyone still copies
their designs and products, but they also have great financial results
magically with innovative products.
<http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0904/112.html> [2006]

I hope this is a trend in America, Google can set a great example (as all
companies early on do) on keeping innovators in charge with a startup
culture/meritocracy.

Before the recent change in CEO, I felt Google was getting too suits focused
and simply competing on a byline/reactionary technique. Bring it back Google.

~~~
6ren
BTW: I understand that Honda used to be very innovative in disruptive ways,
creating entirely new categories of products (e.g. they invented the off-road
recreational motorbike) but, like Sony, have instead only made sustaining
innovations to existing product categories for the last two or three decades.
Are my facts right? (I'm going by Christensen).

[I'm guessing merely sustaining innovations is the very thing Larry Page wants
to avoid (and separate business units helps with that, because then they're
free to fit themselves to the market need - like a startup).]

------
ramanujan
This may finally lead to outright combat between the ChromeOS and Android
groups.

Chrome the browser itself is fairly successful, as are Android phones. But
Chrome OS vs. Android...that is a huge showdown. ChromeOS is a minimalist OS,
whereas Android is a fat client. Philosophies are totally different.

Attitude within Google right now is "let the market decide". Only a company
with the free cash flow of Google could build two _operating systems_ intended
for mobile devices and take that kind of approach.

I'll get my popcorn.

~~~
cbr
This doesn't seem all that different from the way car companies run multiple
makes. Chevy vs Saturn. Philosophies are totally different (or at least they
were) but the market is the same. This way the company does well whichever
approach wins out.

------
abbasmehdi
This is such a good move! It gives Google the nimbleness, hunger, and guerilla
mentality of a start-up in new areas it wants to explore through these small
mostly-autonomous teams, while simultaneously allowing it to defend the
already captured beachheads (search, gmail etc.) - all funded by the deep,
deep, Google pockets.

In any innovation-oriented org, curious engineers and inventors need to be
able to play and push the boundaries, but even large organizations with strong
financial backs are so defensive when it comes to innovation, so afraid to
fail, or waste resources on experimenting. Google has always been okay with
this "waste". If you go back before year 2k and try pitching to a goliath sw
company to let 20% of dev time be spent on employees’ projects of choice you'd
get assaulted by the CFO. Google was okay with this "waste", because they knew
if you let the right players roll the dice, every now and then you’d hit
jackpot. And they did! Many of their most successful products came out of the
20% project.

Organizations today have split the vision and execution aspects of building
something. The vision comes from management and the execution from engineers –
this is straight from the defensive playbook - ‘engineers can execute with
minimum risk, and managers are close to the customer therefore know what will
sell for sure’. This kind of thinking will work when you want to improve
marginally (like Henry Ford said something along the lines of 'If I asked my
customers what they wanted they’d say a faster horse'), or if you are the
market leader, but it will never cause disruption or let you make headway in
uncharted territory. It is very important to know when to play offence and
when to play defense.

------
dennisgorelik
GOOG is 3% down today (while market overall is about the same). I personally
like Larry's change, but average investor seems to be skeptical.

~~~
jacques_chester
The average investor went to the same school as the MBAs whose power may be
diminished if this is true.

Management ideology includes the idea that a good manager can manage anything;
that management is a context-free science that should be left to
professionals. If you believe that then you believe that this article says
Google will be turning over management to amateurs. Naturally you might be
suspicious.

~~~
yuhong
Yea, I know:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118742>

In fact, I know this is only one of the horrible things that MBA courses at
least used to teach.

~~~
jacques_chester
You have a better memory than I do.

------
teyc
No, I don't think this will solve anything.

The problem with Google is that it is sized to deliver big brands, big scale
and big projects.

First. Google today cannot deliver small brands because failure is very
expensive. Every Wave, Buzz, Knol costs Google because future enterprises are
less likely to want to try their products.

Startup culture could no longer exist in Google, because the salary means that
the people will be taking risk with other people's money, and it doesn't work
for early stage projects.

Secondly, Google cannot deliver small projects. I can relate this to my past
history working at a large mining company, there are some mineral deposits
that they may not develop but sell off because it is too small for a company
their concern. The management overhead is simply too big.

Finally, to deliver large projects require specialist departments. The
functional structure is there to deliver this. The alternative would be a
matrix structure where there will be a lot of confusion as to who reports to
whom, or serious duplication.

------
spydertennis
I hope this doesn't create a Microsoft like situation where its very difficult
for departments to work together.

~~~
currywurst
Good point ! Balance is key in everything. There is no one _right_ way, and
this is exactly why those in management should have a mature outlook in
handling the allocated power.

A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to infighting
with Windows 7.

~~~
rbanffy
> A good example is how Kin was supposedly set back seriously due to
> infighting with Windows 7.

Care to elaborate on that?

edit: after 5 seconds of googling:

[http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/02/microsofts.lee...](http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/07/02/microsofts.lees.blamed.for.kins.early.demise/)

[http://www.windows7news.com/2010/06/30/the-life-and-death-
of...](http://www.windows7news.com/2010/06/30/the-life-and-death-of-the-kin/)

------
sunstone
This brings to a head the interesting situation of the modern tech company.
Unlike companies in almost all other industries, the average developer at
Google (and a lot of other companies) needs to be much smarter to do the job
than the manager.

So the skill pyramid is actually inverse compared the "military corporation"
model. It's also true that many, perhaps even a majority, of the deveopers
would be "even better" at management, marketing and strategy etc, than those
normally filling these roles.

This situation really does beg for a solution beyond what the typical
corporation/MBA paradigm has come up with so far. Kudos to Mr. Page for taking
a shot at it.

------
rwmj
So here's a question for potential HN entrepreneurs:

If your company got as big as Microsoft or Google, would you split it up,
spinning off subdivisions as separate companies?

And (in the case of MSFT/Google) why haven't they done that?

~~~
jacques_chester
In the case of Microsoft, no. The Office and Windows division are mutually-
supporting rivers of gold. Everything else is the spaghetti cannon approach
they've pursued since the 90s, with the possible exception of the Xbox.

Most of what Google does is not actually directly profitable and thus not
ideal for spinoffs.

~~~
Elepsis
I'm not sure why people assume that Microsoft only makes money on Windows and
Office. There were 11 separate businesses within Microsoft that brought in a
billion dollars or more in revenue last year:
[http://techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/microsofts_11_billion-d...](http://techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/microsofts_11_billion-
dollar_businesses_and_what_they_say_about_the_company.html)

~~~
jacques_chester
I was talking about profit, not revenue. Here's what I'm talking about:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-
op...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-operating-
income-by-division-2010-2)

~~~
flomo
Actually, I don't think you understand Microsoft's business model. "Server and
Tools" may only generate a modest profit of only a billion dollars per
quarter, but it is the foundation of all those Windows sales. The real core of
the company is not the end-user stuff, it's .net, Visual Studio, IIS, and SQL
Server.

If you're actually trying to arguing that MSN/Live/Bing has been an endless
waste of money, then of course I'd agree.

~~~
jacques_chester
I admit that S&T was an oversight on my part in my OP. But MSN/Bing/Live,
various attempts at tablets, phones and all sorts of other doodads and geegaws
have been money sinks.

------
jay_kyburz
I don't think they should be letting Managers or Engineers run things. I think
they need to have... I'm not sure of the title... lets call them Vision
Carriers. In the video game industry we call these people Creative Directors.

These vision carriers need to understand the product they are building and the
people who will use it.

They don't need to be good a managing people or budgets, they don't need to
write code. They need to understand what is good and what is bad and they need
to be able to clearly communicate it to the team.

~~~
jlees
At Google we call them product managers.

(Aside: I think the original article does not understand that product managers
aren't "managers" in the traditional sense of the word. Much of this
discussion should be predicated on this fact!)

------
endlessvoid94
I'm really interested in seeing how companies grow; I hadn't realized quite
how large of a role non-engineers played in Google's structure.

Glad to see it's moving in the right direction.

~~~
gms
It's yet to be determined whether that is the right direction or not.

------
donnyg107
I love when companies move back to their purer roots. I don't know where this
puts Google's progress as a company over the next few years, but it definitely
means we won't be seeing the innovation slowdown that Microsoft experienced
after their years of explosion. As long as our tech superstars arn't just
turning into company gobbling monsters, but rather are constantly iterating,
innovating, and developing their product line like a company should.

------
pdaviesa
I'm beginning to worry about Google. Companies don't make these types of
changes when everything is going great.

------
akkartik
Seems to fit the playbook at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2369445> a
teensy bit, but not the one at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2405198>.

------
noamsml
I wonder if part of this is the result of growing competition from the
engineer-driven Facebook.

------
pdaviesa
There is a big difference between a manager and a leader. A manager takes the
credit for things that go well and looks for people to blame when they don't.
A leader understands that they are only successful if their team succeeds. A
manager worries about how the team might screw things up. A leader thinks
about how the team can exceed their goals. A manager tries to consolidate
their power and protect their turf at all costs. A leader knows that the team
follows them out of a sense of mutual respect and understands that if they can
no longer effectively lead the team than it may be time to step aside. Leaders
are not just found at the top of an organization.

------
dr_
Like I've stated before, this would be the perfect time for Microsoft to take
Gundotra back and make him CEO. They desperately need the same type of change
at the executive level.

------
swixmix
I mistakenly thought Larry Wall was the new Google CEO. It seemed a little odd
at first, but then I thought it was very cool. Now it doesn't seem quite as
interesting.

------
elvirs
I wonder if this change will result in Google focusing and releasing more hard
core technology products or more social products.

------
sabat
_Certainly, Rosenberg has been crucial to Google’s success, so his exit has
come as a shock to pretty much everyone to whom I’ve spoken.

That said, its timing seems quite convenient, particularly in relationship to
what looks very much like a significant reorg that is currently underway at
Google, said sources familiar with the situation.

Note first that Rosenberg’s replacement wasn’t immediately named and it’s not
clear whether Page even feels one is needed._

Maybe Rosenburg helped Google do great things. Maybe I'm about to over-
simplify. But weren't the things that made Google a true powerhouse created
long before guys like this were hired -- back when the company was more
engineer-driven?

It seems to me that Larry Page's frustration has been growing as he watched
MBAs take credit for the success the engineers had created years before. If
that's the case then I wish him success in changing the company's structure.

------
clistctrl
I think this is a great direction for Google, but it certainly is not a
direction most other companies with equivalent growth can pursue. I think one
of the unique aspects of Google, is the type of engineer they pursue.

------
hobb0001
FTA:

    
    
      That jibes well with Page’s push to whittle down Google’s
      manager bureaucracy, eliminate politicking and rekindle its
      start-up spirit.
    

I first read that as "pot-licking" and thought, WTF is that? A new managerial
term like dogfooding?

~~~
bproper
Google doesn't need more engineering, it needs better product vision.

