

Is Google far too much in love with engineering? - kadhinn
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20008253-71.html

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sprout
>However, I wonder whether such slight, but no doubt data-driven,
infelicities, such as the launch of Google Buzz, the riotously misguided home
page designs, or the launch of Nexus One, might have done with one or two
fewer data-driven managers and one or two more people who offered suggestions
about what real people like and how they might react?

It's very easy to look at a company like Google and find examples of
significant failures.

Though actually, I think the 'failures' he brings up are not quite the
failures he thinks they are. They're not actually data-driven decisions.
They're data-collecting experiments. Google is in no way wedded to any given
device or approach. It's pivot, pivot, pivot, often in eight directions at
once. Releasing a polished product with top-notch marketing is a good way to
make a lot of money in the short term, but your customers get very attached to
what you've given them, and it makes it a lot harder to innovate in the long
term.

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kwantam
The author of this article backs up his argument with little substance. No
decision-making process is perfect; pointing out the warts in Google's isn't
much of an indictment. Really, to my mind the whole thing comes across as a
bit whiny.

~~~
eitally
Here's a personal beef describing how Google places too much emphasis on
engineering and too little on the experience paying customers have with its
services: Google Apps. Support is almost nonexistent for nearly anything that
isn't already on their roadmap, the roadmap is set by engineering and not
based on customer feedback, the deployment schedule is completely closed and
updates frequently surprise domain admins & their users, billing for various
services (GSAs, GAPE, Postini) is non consolidated, and various features break
at regular intervals. It doesn't help that a lot of their engineering
showcases in Gmail -- Labs features -- they pitch and great improvements to
Gmail, but offer zero support for. This included Offline when it was in Labs.

Google is a great engineering company, but it still doesn't "get" the
enterprise.

~~~
cglee
I paid for the Premium Google Apps for one of my domains. When it was about to
expire, I got emails almost daily reminding me to renew. The day before it was
to expire, someone from Google Apps actually called my cell about renewing.

For a different domain that I was using regular Google Apps on, I couldn't get
an email response to a support question I sent several months prior.

Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service.

~~~
saturdayplace
> Whatever their focus, it's not on customer service.

No, that's exactly their focus. You got a lot of attention regarding the
product that you were a customer of, the premium paid apps.

In the other instance, you were the product: a pair of eyeballs they could
sell to advertisers. And the advertisers are the customers in that instance.

~~~
cglee
I should add that they were never so helpful when I inquired from my premium
domain in the past. I only received a lot of attention when it was time to
renew.

For example, I couldn't figure out how to cancel the premium account, and I
sent an email asking. No response ever came.

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fliph
Yeah, Google could be pretty successful if only they didn't focus so much on
engineering.

~~~
frossie
Are you arguing that anybody who is successful is by definition doing
everything right?

Maybe they are successful because they do more rights than wrongs. Or they
were in the right place at the right time. Or because they lacked a better
competitor. The history of IT is littered with wildly successful yet sub-
optimal companies.

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shod
> Do complex interview questions really test your educational achievement? ...

When interviewing prospective software engineer employees, a Google
interviewer asks software engineering related questions, to test the
interviewee's knowledge of software engineering. Questions like these:

<http://jpaint.drizzlehosting.com/google.html>

That's a nice illustration of the balance of creativity, lateral thinking,
logical thinking, and technical competence Google expects from the engineers
it interviews. Note that the interview questions aren't in the form of, "Where
did you complete your expected MSc in Computer Science?" Instead, the
interviewee is expected to demonstrate real achievement from their education;
i.e., knowledge and thinking ability.

But Google hires non-engineer craftsmen, too. Catering staff, to steal the
article author's example. Just a hunch: Google conducts more than one type of
interview: catering staff are not expected to design class libraries or
database tables as part of their interview process.

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SkyMarshal
_This is how Dodge explained it: "The engineering background brings a rigorous
thought process that questions assumptions and requires accurate data in the
decision process. That doesn't mean every decision will be perfect, but it
will be based on data...not opinions."_

I think that strategy is unimpeachable. I've worked at plenty of non-
engineering companies, and the inability to question assumptions seems
rampant. If Google manages to avoid that, then whatever it costs will likely
be worth it.

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kiba
What's wrong with the Nexus One launch?

~~~
rbranson
Right. The Nexus One is a working, production, reference implementation of
what an Android phone SHOULD be, not something Google expected to make them
rich.

~~~
Maven911
Well that makes the point of focusing too much on the engineering
side...corporations are for-profit entities and they are not there to make the
"perfect" product but rather a marketable product that will generate them net
positive cash flows...after all, if you are a shareholder of Google, you
expect them to MAXIMIZE their earnings, not just make things for the fun of
it, or cause its interesting (example: the free optical network they want to
give to a select bunch of small to medium-size cities...)

~~~
thefool
Honestly, why is it such a bad thing when a company with absurdly high profit
margins delegates some of the income back into improving the general standard
of living for everyone.

Call it what you like. Write it off as them improving their image with the
public, or as getting more users into the ecosystem, or becoming more
vertically integrated.

But fundamentally, why is doing something that is good for people looked at as
such a bad thing. From what I understand the public don't even have the
majority stake in the company, and don't really have to get a say in how it is
run. If they don't like that they can buy other companies stock.

If ones goal is to maximize happiness (or some other equivalent metric), there
will be times at which the decision to maximize profit will diverge from this
goal, and the ethical decision will be to spend money (which you have from
profits in other sectors) to develop something at a net loss because you think
its right.

(I'm not affiliated with google, this is just a broader point that irritates
me).

~~~
Maven911
Most companies try to show they are ethical by donating or being a corporate
sponsor for a charity or event. I like Google's concept of just giving things
out for free since I am a great benefactor of that.

Google can make some of the money back through increased ads, but its not
always clear how they do it for some products where there isn't any visible
ads at all.

~~~
aaronkaplan
I think you mean beneficiary, not benefactor.

~~~
Maven911
yup you are right, sorry

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dusklight
I think it's funny this article showed up on the front page at the same time
as another article about the Dunning-Krueger effect.

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stcredzero
The question should be: Is cluelessness in "soft skills" worse than technical
cluelessness? Really, both are bad. (Example: Cuil)

~~~
arethuza
Google's success wasn't so much coming up with the best web search technology
but finding a way of converting that to billions of dollars in revenues and
profits.

To me Google have excelled at both the technology _and_ the marketing - which
is why they are so successful.

Having said that, if you can't manage to be good at both technology and
marketing, I suspect that you are better off being weak at technology than
marketing. Plenty companies thrive with average/poor technology but an
excellent understanding of what the market wants. I've known plenty companies
(some from the inside) where the technology was good but the marketing was
weak - things generally don't turn out too well.

~~~
stretchwithme
Agreed. Anyone that tries big things often enough will have both successes and
failures.

And I do seem to recall an overwhelming success like Windows starting off as
somewhat of a failure.

