
Google CEO Sundar Pichai Brings in Less Egotistical Leadership - adidash
http://recode.net/2015/10/23/the-new-google-all-the-assholes-have-left/
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thetruthseeker1
Being Egotistical shouldn't be conflated with being an Egotistical Asshole.
Ego if used in the right way can be a powerful force for the better. America's
moonshot was a collective ego of an entire nation that led them to achieve it.

I watched an interview by Charlie Rose of Google's operation guy called Lazlo,
I thought it was a great interview. He said having intellectual humility is
important (does not mean less ego), which is the curiosity to learn or accept
if you were wrong. Ego I am not convinced is such a harmful thing, and lets
not say it is harmful just because many software engineers being introverts
have a confirmation bias against it.

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simula67
"Page was known as a tough manager inside the search giant, peppering his team
with pointed questions and cutting (though usually accurate) observations. “He
could come off as very harsh,” said one person who has had many encounters
with Page over the years. “Until you realize it was more that he was
completely lacking in EQ. I mean, zero.”"

How is asking pointed questions and making cutting observations equate to
being unsympathetic ? If you care about succeeding, this type of feedback is
invaluable. If you don't, then you are more likely going to use the 'he is not
very nice' card to get out doing any good work.

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littletimmy
It is possible to be pointed and direct with tact. It is called manners.

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simula67
Agreed, being tactful is a good thing. But what is implied in that statement
is that asking pointed questions and making accurate observations ( which
could be damaging to your beliefs ) equates to being an asshole.

~~~
walshemj
Depends HOW you do it.

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programminggeek
I am sure there are a few left...

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makeitsuckless
I'll believe it when Google start acknowledging human being's desire for
privacy as a real thing instead of a technical and commercial obstacle.

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raldi
What hypothetical actions would indicate to you that such a change were
happening?

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endergen
I'm liking their moves towards the option to pay to get rid of ads. Like with
Youtube Red and I believe there is this option for Google Ads too, though I
doubt in practice this means they track anything less about you. It's a
dangerous dance for them to start supporting new business models that are
alternatives to their cash cows.

I suspect part of it is them hedging against real backlash against concerns
about advertisement as surveillance.

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tonomics
The article does rely on the stereotype of "highly analytical without any
empathy". That's obviously not the case for everyone.

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nathanvanfleet
I think they established that though. The whole article is about how there are
people with both high EQs and IQs being promoted. So they are kind of
admitting to their existence. They also didn't downplay them as less
analytical.

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tianlin-shi
I believe that truly intrinsically motivated people will keep love what they
are doing and power through the criticism.

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chippy
Shouldn't this have the correct title "The New Google: ‘All the Assholes Have
Left’" ?

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tomhoward
No - it's clickbait.

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jsprogrammer
And the new one isn't? At least the original was from the article, instead of
editorialized by the poster/moderator.

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Touche
> And the new one isn't?

No, the new one isn't motivated to get you to click the link, and therefore is
not "clickbait". It is editorialized, but that's a good thing.

~~~
jsprogrammer
How can text be motivated?

It's still clickbait because it makes an unjustified, subjective judgement.

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justthistime_
Hopefully this will also happen at lower levels.

The "I'm the smartest person in the world, because I work at Google" attitude
is a reason I don't interact with/communicate with/contribute to Google-
related projects. Their hugely inflated egos are just off-putting.

~~~
tentosay
Googler for close to a year, so take this with a grain of salt.. I had heard
of this exact reputation before I joined and frankly it was one of the things
that worried me most.

After I joined, I kept waiting for the hammer to fall, to see the competitive
mean streak in people and in my team at least, it was exactly the opposite.
It's frankly the best environment I've worked in because they are genuinely
caring people.

Now, it's not all rainbows and unicorns. I've also run into the aspergers
poster child, into the competitive assholes, but I don't have to deal with any
of these in my daily life. So, yes, there are assholes, but I don't think this
is the norm.

~~~
hueving
But are the people you interact with the ones in the big public positions the
grandparent is referring to? (e.g. Open source projects like Kubernetes)

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wstrange
My experience with the Kubernetes engineers has been _awesome_.

They are incredibly helpful, and very tolerant of newbies like me who
sometimes ask dumb questions...

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yourapostasy
There are never dumb questions, only practical and valuable examples of areas
for improvement in documentation and/or related collateral (tutorials, cheat
sheets, FAQs, etc.).

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NoCulturalFit
No more McKinsey people?

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d_welsman
Ego is essential to breaking through those tough barriers and new
opportunities. Disregard for risk. Is this really what is needed when Google
is being criticized for falling behind its competitors in innovation.

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lumpypua
Vic Gundotra's ego resulted in G+. If G+ is innovation, I don't want
innovation.

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toyg
To be fair, G+-the-product is not bad. It's G+-the-borg, the forceful attitude
towards integrating other Google properties and establishing a source of truth
for real names, that generated backlash and eventually doomed the project.

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saalweachter
The forceful integration _was_ the product. G+ was adding a unified social
network to all of Google; hence, Google+.

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toyg
That might have been the internal _aim_ of the project, but to the user G+ was
just another social network. In that sense, it wasn't a terrible social
network.

IMHO if Google had just kept G+ on its own (working hard on fixing the "ghost
town" byproduct of evolved privacy features, and providing decent APIs),
adoption numbers could have been lower in the short term, but the product
would have survived in the long run. Integration with other Google products
should have come naturally, not forcefully. Then we would have got a modern
social network people actually _wanted_ to join, instead of a tainted product
stinking of corporate malfeasance.

