
Google's top quantum scientist explains why he resigned - jonbaer
https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2020/04/30/googles-top-quantum-scientist-explains-in-detail-why-he-resigned/
======
ckemere
I think that this article points to a general challenge with our education
system. By and large, the people who stick with training all the way through a
PhD and postdoc in a complex field are not hoping about being a cog in someone
else's machine. In academia, I've observed that the sign that that a trainee
is ready to move on to independence is that they begin to have disagreements
with their mentor that don't reflect misunderstandings of fact, but rather
proper, interesting diverging hypotheses. In this story, the wiring incident
reminding me of this.

The problem is that solving these sorts of hard problems require both leaders
and workers. In this case, and many others, there is not an educational path
for training people to be technicians with equivalent knowledge as a PhD
(which is why they poached an academic lab to do this). Moreover, if there was
a path, history has shown that the people that accept the follower role
(rather than wanting intellectual leadership) are highly dispensable. (See,
e.g., the optics industry moving laser fab to Malaysia.)

It's also a problem in medicine - physicians resist loss of diagnostic or
treatment control. Though in medicine, there are NPs and PAs, but they're
generally treated with much less respect.

I think it's interesting that he talks about how "he" Martinis was doing the
wiring. Was he? I suspect he had a team working very hard with substantial
responsibility, but...

~~~
Matthias247
> I think that this article points to a general challenge with our education
> system. By and large, the people who stick with training all the way through
> a PhD and postdoc in a complex field are not hoping about being a cog in
> someone else's machine.

That's not limited to academia. In the industry (and even outside of tech)
people who will have a sufficient understanding of how something works will at
some point in time no longer purely want to follow orders, but want to drive
things and innovate on their own.

In this situations both sides - the current leaders and someone who wants more
responsibility - need make some compromises in order to try to accomodate this
interests.

------
olau
The pattern seems familiar, take a succesful, self-propelled creative
inventor, typically an engineer kind of person, put that person in a group
where they need to submit to ideas of others, and things eventually go wrong.

It's not that unusual to see a founder get excluded even if that person was
arguably the primary driver, the deteriorating relations don't allow the
situation to continue and the alternative is blowing up the organization.

~~~
koheripbal
This is one reason you should always just execute - never ask for permission.
Have conviction - think your objective through - plan - cross your t's and dot
your i's - and then just execute and show your results to everyone in your
mgmt chain.

...to the degree that you can do that without getting fired.

It's always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Trying to convince
a bureaucracy of anything is futile.

~~~
op03
It's personality dependent. As in your actions have to align with your
personality -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Invent...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Inventory#Personality_dimensions)

Some people can. Some people cant. There are no general rules that work for
everyone.

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mturmon
What an interesting and apparently frank interview. Martinis was the UCSB
professor whose lab setup was basically purchased by Google. Apparently he and
Hartmut Neven, another somewhat legendary figure, had “creative differences”
and Martinis has left Google. But they also talk about Google’s big plans for
quantum. Thanks for posting this!

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_236436532
I almost joined his lab around 2014 as a PostDoc (without knowing about the
Google deal, which was not yet official I think) but eventually I stopped the
application process because I wanted to pursue my own startup instead. Today I
kind of regret not having stayed in quantum computing as my startup was only
modestly successful and as I would probably have been much better off working
for Google, in retrospect. I'm working on my next startup now but I keep
wondering if I should go back to quantum computing eventually, I'm not sure
though if I'm still relevant as my PhD dates back to 2013 already (I had good
results though and did it in a renowed QC group on superconducting qubits).

~~~
_8091149529
As someone who started off in "quantum" in similar conditions around the same
time, but decided to stay on the academic researcher track:

A great deal of the recent progress has been on honing, parallelizing, and
automating the same processes one used to do by hand/at small scale in 2013.
You'll probably instantly recognize most of the things going on in the lab,
and could become productive on a short schedule.

However, I'd be wary of the medium-term prospects of the field: The discord
between the perceived and actual capabilities of the hardware remains as big
as ever. You could consider re-entering the field if you're happy contributing
to incremental technological advances relevant to other researchers. Progress
with meaningful societal or economic impact is probably much further off.

~~~
_236436532
Thanks for sharing your view, I appreciate it! The point you mention was a
large factor in my decision. Most of my former colleagues and advisors also
"abandoned" superconducting quantum computing later to work on more
fundamental research again (e.g. inventing new types of qubits) as they
weren't interested at all in the engineering aspects of building a quantum
computer. Personally I always enjoyed applied research so I think I would have
had fun working on "engineering" problems as well, on the other hand I get to
work on challenging computer science problems now too and in addition I can
mostly decide myself what to work on (as long as I turn a profit, though).
Maybe I'll return to QC after my current startup, which I think will turn out
better than the last one!

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leff_f
I'm studying psychology and team dynamics and this is such a great example of
conflict destroying the relationship. Want to share couple of thoughts on how
we can avoid sacrificing the relationship.

-I'm 'The responsible'. Yes, as leaders, we are responsible for the results, at the same time there are people above us who is responsible for the results more than us. The responsibility is never on the shoulders of a single person in the company. When higher-ups support anti-leaders (as in this case), they take on some of our responsibility, and the honest discussion about their expectations is required. There could be lots of reasons for them being not confident in me driving the team, and it would be very beneficial to get their feedback before proceeding. Our assumptions and using formal understanding of the roles is only helping to fuel the conflict.

-The 'I know' trap. We really believe in our understanding of the future, it is always linear and always clear. At the same time, future we understand consists of 2 things: all the bad stuff happened to me before and all the good stuff happened to me before and depending on our feelings right now, we are projecting the mix of those 2 into the future. The question here is where is that 3rd category of all the thing that never happened to me? Where are the things I've never experienced? What if I don't know how this will play out? To me, creativity is something not known and something haven't been done before. Allowing ourselves to not know exactly how it will play out, helps us to keep an open mind and learn from the new experiences.

In other words we are never 100% responsible for controlling everything around
us and the world is a bit more complicated than we want to believe. Hoping
this was useful! Happy Friday!

~~~
ripsawridge
It was useful, thanks! I've definitely seen this in tech, esp. the latter
case, which I've seen make smart people who deserve better miserable.

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voxl
Reading the transcript, he comes off as a shitty boss that refuses to give
people independence in this group to try new things. It's his way or the
highway. He hides this behind him being a "rare" kind of optimist when really
he seems to just ignore the important social factors in being a leader.

~~~
high_derivative
This is not my reading at all.

If you have ever spent time in a FAANG research org - it can be incredibly
frustrating to see so much lack of focus. Everybody does what they want. This
is not an issue for most e.g. ML research (my org) because there is so much
money to go around, and researchers will leave if they are too constrained.

For hardware/critical projects or customer retention, this is very much an
issue. Just look at how the TF ecosystem developed API wise.

There can literally be a project with enormous importance for an ecosystem
where multiple teams under one VP do the same thing slightly differently. VPs
do nothing and have no opinion on the details. Internal and external users get
frustrated because there is no clarity.

If you do a project where you have resources for just one shot in a given
timespan, this simply won't cut it.

~~~
pricechild
TF?

~~~
DSingularity
TensorFlow. The API is outrageous.

~~~
cossray
I'm not quite a dev, but I have always felt there's something awful with the
TF ecosystem. I thought I was the only one 'struggling' with it and that
probably there was some fundamental insight I was missing.

~~~
Yajirobe
What is awful with it?

~~~
kevinskii
This summed up my experience with it pretty well:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21216200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21216200)

------
ohazi
> But Hartmut didn’t back me up and wanted to go ahead and try both.

This seems very Google, and not in a good way. I'm reminded of when they tried
to launch Allo and Duo on the same day, causing both to flop.

Google is the poster-child of the company that has the resources to try
everything, but that lacks the conviction or the leadership to actually make a
decision.

~~~
B-Con
Allo and Duo were complimentary apps, their simultaneous release was necessary
and had nothing to do with their adaption rate.

~~~
ohazi
Sure, that's the official Google line.

Meanwhile, everybody who actually tried to follow the launch was confused
about why there were two, which ones did what, why there was no
interoperability, why wasn't hangouts being replaced, "Mobile-first? More like
mobile-only," and "Should we even bother? They're going to kill them both off
in three years anyway."

It absolutely did hurt the adoption rate -- It would have gone much better if
Google management had announced one communication platform and committed to
making it their bet going forward.

They were hedging, and it was obvious. Nobody wants to pay switching costs to
use a new thing if the creator isn't even confident in their new thing.

~~~
netsharc
As far as I understood, they had 2 teams making the 2 communication apps. The
simultaneous release date would explain that they were competing with each
other, and they didn't want the other team to get the head start on the
market. It was probably left to the PR department to sort the problem out and
make a press release that made the company look sane.

Imagine if Microsoft had an Excel team and a "Spreadsheetr" team...

~~~
JorgeGT
I for one can imagine a Microsoft that has Skype, Skype for Business, Teams
chat, Yammer, Kaizala...

~~~
bathtub365
Live Meeting, MSN Messenger, Lync, Office Communicator

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909832
Can anyone describe what the research scientist interviews are like in a FAANG
company? How are they similar or different than the SWE interviews?

~~~
high_derivative
(FAANG researcher):

The first few tech rounds tend to be the same.

Then there is a set of research interviews and usually a research job talk.

The main observation is that hiring researchers, after passing basic tech
rounds, is much more about taste and how people subjectively rate someone's
research. It's insanely competitive, but in a sense it is also easier than
pure SWE because there are not as many whiteboard hurdles to pass. You just
can't really leetcode your way into the role, without a good track record with
really interesting research most teams will not be interested.

~~~
909832
Do interviews tend to include system design, if the applicant doesn't have
industry experience?

Been curious about this too: do FAANG companies hire, say, professors with
strong research records, but poor coding skills? I always wondered if everyone
on these sort of team were all solid coders, or if there were people there
that are exceptions.

Based on your experience do FAANG companies tend to be invested in basic
research, or more product focused research?

~~~
high_derivative
System design is not a typical part of a research interview.

Yes, they do. The rule of thumb is: The higher the level you are hired, the
more wiggle room is there. A random PhD grad will need to pass the normal
coding screens which are carried out by SWEs who do not know anything about
the candidate.

Last q depends on the FAANG org, everything exists. MS research is very pure,
Amazon/Apple very applied, everything in between.

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s9w
Nice that they actually published the transcript.

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mleonhard
> The Google plan is roughly to build a million-qubit system in about ten
> years, with sufficiently low errors to do error correction. Then at that
> point you will have enough error-corrected logical qubits that you can run
> useful, powerful algorithms that you now can't solve on a classical
> supercomputer. And maybe even at a few hundred qubits, with lower errors, it
> may be possible to do something special purpose.

Can an expert please explain the applications of this? Specifically, are they
expecting to break Bitcoin, forge signatures (break SHA), and decrypt old TLS
traffic (break Diffie-Hellman) in 5-10 years?

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seemslegit
> Yes, that's right. I was a professor at the University of California, Santa
> Barbara, and we had government funding and were doing quite well. Google got
> interested and my group and I came over to work at Google, basically because
> we both wanted to build a useful quantum computer.

So basically US taxpayers were involuntary seed investors who funded the
highest initial risk to achieve validation and proceeded to be wiped out at
Round A by Google.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
No, this is exactly why Universities exist. As idea machines that occasionally
turn out something that changes the world. As well as educating our (elite)
children.

~~~
seemslegit
And that's great, but nowhere does it say that this something should end up as
the property of a corporation who will then charge the public for its use.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Can't enslave professors, so its part of the deal. Been happening about 1000
years. And I'm not sure I care to make Universities into profit centers (any
more than they are).

~~~
seemslegit
Neither is what being proposed nor is a reasonable reading of the above, if
Google hires out an entire group and its associated work then the university
and federal research funding agencies should maintain equity in its results,
many universities have programs for exactly this kind of thing.

Also afaik John Martinis maintained a paid and tenured position at UCSB during
his work at Google.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Not sure how that's different at all. Hiring out === freedom of the
individual. Not going to support any rule to keep University employees from
going to work wherever they please.

Its the idea that the University would 'own' part of a commercial enterprise
that's chilling. Means even more commercialization of Universities than at
present.

~~~
auntienomen
It's not unusual for universities to own part of a commercial enterprise.
Stanford owned a chunk of Google, IIRC. More commonly they derive revenue from
licensing intellectual property.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Um hm. And its not unusual for Universities to have become commercial
juggernauts run by for-profit administrators with 7-figure salaries, at the
expense of faculty and students.

~~~
seemslegit
And yet the private sector is not impeded by "freedom of the individual" when
it comes to protecting investments with NDAs, non-competes all the way to
Levandowski-style criminal prosecution.

Obviously noone should be forced to stay where they don't want to be or
prevented to work where they want but in this case it's about what they take
and bring with them beyond their innate skills.

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ncmncm
Great, but it didn't actually tell us much of anything. What would have been
so bad about trying his way and also somebody else's way? How does no longer
being equipped to try his way make anything better? If the other way won't
work, how can Google's project make any progress?

------
DeathArrow
What I find weird is that a technology advances because public money are
funding much of the research and innovation.

And there comes a private company and gets whole teams and even patents and
projects.

Wouldn't it be fair that tax payers also get something in return of their
funding?

~~~
testaccount22
we get the technology

~~~
emsy
Oh yeah behind patents and embedded in corporate secrecy that is almost
guaranteed to be irrecoverable once the people that created the technology
leave or die. I don’t think cooperations are bad and they should be reimbursed
for their expenses, but our current way of handling these things leaves a lot
of room for improvement if our goal is to advance the cooperative future of
humanity (which it should be).

~~~
627467
The point of patents is to incentivize disclosure of knowledge in exchange for
limited protection. I personally think that public institutions funding
research that leads to patents should share benefits of said patents. I
believe most operators of those public funds (ie. Universities) actually
benefit from this most of the time. At least in major public European
universities

~~~
atq2119
Unfortunately, patents don't really do that in practice. For example, it is
typical for engineers to be advised _not_ to read any patents at all. Plus,
most patents are written in a style that's pretty much opposite to how you'd
write if the goal was dissemination of knowledge.

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tibyat
So he read a Thiel book recently and it now pervades his every answer to this
interview? And his team had problems with his hyper-focusing? Funny
coincidence.

Honestly there's pretty much nothing being said in this interview. People
don't get along sometimes.

~~~
dawg-
>So he read a Thiel book recently and it now pervades his every answer to this
interview?

Yeah that was kind of annoying. Amazing how even a certifiable genius can fall
so completely for such meaningless self-help bullshit

------
McTossOut
John Martinis speaking at a conference on "Google AI Quantum" last quarter.

[https://youtu.be/K_H_mbSH45s](https://youtu.be/K_H_mbSH45s)

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stevespang
Non paywalled access:

[https://outline.com/CnEsTN](https://outline.com/CnEsTN)

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ykevinator
I still don't know why he resigned

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cletus
Let me guess: before anyone asked about his employment status he was both
working and not working at Google?

