
Larry and Sergey: A Valediction - smacktoward
http://www.roughtype.com/?p=8661
======
kinkrtyavimoodh
It's funny how much public perception is tied to the media pulse of a company.
If you read comments on online boards today, you'd think Google was one of the
worst companies out there.

And yet, I think it is safe to say that Google basically defined the post-dot-
com-bubble era, in a good way. So many things that comprise 'company culture'
today and that have been emulated (whether willingly or out of pressure to
stay competitive to other companies in the hiring market) by tech and non-tech
companies around the world were pioneered by Google. Anyone who has actually
worked in other industries will attest how much a breath of fresh air Google
brought to corporate life. It's a separate matter how some of it is coming
back to bite them now that they have hired too many people who are more
interested in activism than doing their job.

So many of Larry's and Sergey's ideas were truly about organizing the world's
information. That vision statement wasn't just words. It affected how Google
and Googlers thought of things. My favorite example is Google Books. Is it an
obvious ad-funnel? I doubt it. Or Google Street Maps, for that matter. And yet
it has provided so much value to the world.

It's almost never a good idea to make gods out of people. But it is at the
same time a terrible idea to make absolute demons out of them. And I think we
stray too much into the latter territory just because it has become
fashionable to shit on Google for the tiniest of things.

~~~
dnautics
> it has become fashionable to shit on Google for the tiniest of things

I think that's a reaction against how it's also fashionable to worship
whatever Google does. And just cargo culting google practices can be damaging,
at least from a selfish perspective. I lose developer hours because our entire
13-person company's (with 2.5-ish developers but 7 years worth of code) is
hosted in a monorepo. I've now worked at two out of two companies that have
gotten stuck because they built with an Angular stack and management refuses
to switch to a stack that I can reliably hire or train juniors out of a
bootcamp for, etc.

~~~
crdoconnor
Also:

* The ridiculous nosql fad that led to a tsunami of databases with horribly invalid data because constraints aren't sexy.

* The ridiculous academic fetish that triggered the leetcode phenomenon and led to a tsunami of developers who can code a quicksort in their sleep but still don't have the first clue about structuring code or data properly.

~~~
triceratops
> developers who can code a quicksort in their sleep but still don't have the
> first clue about structuring code or data properly.

I don't understand this belief. Where does it come from? Junior engineers
don't have the first clue about structuring code or data properly, whereas
senior engineers do. Google's belief (probably) is that anyone able to
quicksort in their sleep is either already good at the other stuff too, or is
smart enough to pick it up over time. If they're wrong, companies will outhire
and outcompete them eventually.

~~~
crdoconnor
>Google's belief (probably) is that anyone able to quicksort in their sleep is
either already good at the other stuff too, or is smart enough to pick it up
over time.

Exactly. This belief that the two correlate closely enough that you can
supplant one kind of test (physically writing code, discussing it and
architecting it) with another (leetcode) is massively, horre ndously wrong and
damaging. The two do _not_ correlate well. They correlate very badly.

~~~
triceratops
> The two do not correlate well. They correlate very badly.

Do you have any evidence? It seems to be working rather well for the companies
that follow these practices.

You may speak derisively of "leetcoding" but it does demonstrate persistence,
grit, speed of thought, and/or the ability to learn something difficult
(algorithms, data structures, competition-style programming). It's not crazy
to posit that people who are able to learn one hard thing well will probably
also learn other hard things well. In fact, it should be the other way around.
Why in the world would someone hardworking and intelligent not be able to pick
up new skills?

To me it's absolutely insane that being good at architecture and good at
algorithms and data structures are seen as mutually exclusive skills. They're
not skiing and barbecuing.

Now I'll concede that Leetcode-style interviews are a terrible and stupid way
for smaller companies to hire, because they don't have the candidate pipeline
of a Google or FB or Amazon. But it isn't a wrong approach in and of itself.
If that's true, someone should be making bank by hiring all the scores of
talented devs that the megacorps reject for not being good "Leetcoders".

Plus, surely you're aware that the megacorps also have system-design
interviews for all but entry-level candidates? That's where you're asked about
architecture, tradeoffs, and high-level design decisions.

~~~
crdoconnor
I don't have studies but my experience of those who excel in leetcode is that
they _suck_ at system design and good programming practices - largely because
they focused on leetcode to the exclusion of all else. They "hacked" the
programming interview.

And while hacking the programming interview does demonstrate grit and
persistence, it doesn't demonstrate actual programming skills. The worst part
though is that it generates a mindset that "good programming skills" means
"even _more_ advanced leetcode".

I don't begrudge these people. A set of absurd incentives was put in place and
they reacted to them accordingly.

It isn't good for Google either. The hires that came after this philosophy
have achieved very little of note. The vast majority of post Gmail abject
project failures have been built in house while the successes (maps, android)
were bought.

~~~
triceratops
> I don't have studies but my experience

Cool, so anecdotes, not actual data.

> it doesn't demonstrate actual programming skills.

It demonstrates ability to learn difficult things. You still haven't answered
why junior devs hired this way are somehow incapable of learning good
architectural practices. You also didn't address the fact that most of these
companies also interview senior hires for system design and architecture.

> The hires that came after this philosophy have achieved very little of note

Photos. Chrome. Brain. Tensorflow. Kubernetes. Even Android didn't take off
until 6 years _after_ its acquisition. I don't have the time to research more
but you get the idea.

------
chewxy
Nick misrepresents the original paper.

Nick writes:

> they introduced Google to the world, they warned that if the search engine
> were ever to leave the “academic realm” and become a business, it would
> inevitably be corrupted. It would become “a black art” and “be advertising
> oriented.”

This is verbatim from the original paper:

> Aside from tremendous growth, the Web has also become increasingly
> commercial over time. In 1993, 1.5% of Web servers were on .com domains.
> This number grew to over 60% in 1997. At the same time, search engines have
> migrated from the academic domain to the commercial. Up until now most
> search engine development has gone on at companies with little publication
> of technical details. This causes search engine technology to remain largely
> a black art and to be advertising oriented (see Appendix A in the full
> version). With Google, we have a strong goal to push more development and
> understanding into the academic realm.

The meaning is not even close to what Nick suggests!

~~~
rrss
I don't agree.

When that paper was written, "Google" referred to an academic research
project, not a company. Page and Brin indicate that because other search
engines were developed at corporations, they were "largely a black art" and
advertising oriented.

Since Google has become a company, and is no longer a research project in the
academic realm, it has become a black art and advertising oriented, just as
Page and Brin said happened to search engines developed at corporations.

~~~
extempore
The phrase “black art” in the paper refers to a technical challenge which only
experts can tame, via methods which aren’t widely known. It has zero to do
with ‘black arts” in the sense of witchcraft. The blog post drifts between
these meanings, possibly with poetic intention.

~~~
bsanr2
Perhaps the use of "black art" rather than "technical challenge which only
experts can tame" in the paper implies poetic intention on their own part?

------
lacker
I know this is an almost insane digression, but I found it quite interesting
that the author theorized the net worth of King Lear.

 _Lear must have been worth a billion or two, in today’s dollars._

Far more, I would say! The way I see it, if you converted the wealth of
medieval monarchs, relative to the world they lived in, into modern day terms,
they would be the richest people alive. Lear was the king of Britain in an era
where the king was an absolute ruler, and nominally owned the entire country.
How much is Britain worth? Nowadays the GDP of the UK is over 2 trillion
dollars a year.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=britain+gdp](https://www.google.com/search?q=britain+gdp)

GDP isn't a great match to the wealth of an absolute monarch, but government
spending in the UK is about a trillion dollars a year. How much of that is an
obligation, and how much could be extracted to count as personal wealth? I
estimate about half of it, for an income the modern equivalent of 500 billion
dollars.

In terms of net worth, that income stream would be worth a present value maybe
$5 trillion.

So, obviously this is just a back-of-the-envelope calculation of something
that doesn't make all that much sense, but in _relative terms_ I would argue
those medieval absolute monarchs were far richer than any modern rich person.

In absolute terms, of course, it's a much different story.

~~~
antognini
Medieval monarchs weren't really the absolute rulers they're often perceived
to be. A medieval monarch was heavily constrained by the nobility. It wasn't
really until the late 1600s and 1700s with monarchs like Louis XIV and
Catherine the Great that the monarchy grew sufficiently powerful to start to
exercise some real control over the nobility.

~~~
leoc
Elizabeth I cadged from the English nobility for items of clothing and
jewellery.

------
jedberg
> Page has even managed to keep the names of his two kids secret

That's an impressive feat in this day an age. I mean, birth certificates are
public record. I'm surprised no one has looked it up and leaked it. Good for
him for working hard to keep it a secret, so they can reveal themselves
when/if they choose.

Ps. If you know his kid's names, please don't out them here.

~~~
sdan
Fairly sure he'd change the last names or something to conceal who they are.
Otherwise, they'd eventually be recognized.

~~~
jedberg
Yeah but legally his name would have to be on the birth certificate.

------
patcon
I refuse to love Google, but I do have love in my heart for Sergey and Larry.

imho, the foundations of the corporate ecology that we've built seems to
favour the creation of large companies with quite dehumanizing values at their
core. The fact that Google has grown to such size and existed at all (even as
imperfect form), that is a triumph of these two citizens.

They've built a metropolis out of plutonium, and miraculously we live good
lives in it, largely without illness ;)

~~~
mattkevan
We’re living good lives in their metropolis of plutonium because we’re not yet
fully aware of the consequences.

Rather like how a hundred years ago people happily put radium in toothpaste
and soap. Nothing better than a healthy glow to your morning routine - until
the consequences arrive.

What will be the result of building the sort of global, hyper-targeted
surveillance and propaganda machines spearheaded by google and Facebook, and
will our descendants think we’re as dangerously naive as we do about those who
made radioactive chocolate?

~~~
patcon
I do appreciate what you're saying here, so thank you. Don't get me wrong, I
resist Google with all my might, and have actively organized against Sidewalk
Labs in my city, and other projects from them. But I look at Amazon's Bezos
and count myself relatively lucky to be living on a timeline where the magic
beans that became Google ended up in the hands of someone quite UNLIKE him.

Sinking money into moonshots (though sometimes misguided) and a diversity of
experiments; that is much better than Bezos' unartful "growth above all else"
mentality.

------
h2odragon
> The white-robed wizards of Silicon Valley now ply the black arts of
> algorithmic witchcraft for power and money. They wanted most of all to be
> Gandalf, but they became Saruman.

I don't actually recall anyone proclaiming the messiah-ness of these guys and
the inevitable social justice juggernaut of Google back then. It was a better
search engine. they (justly) got rich off it. If the author had more hope of
what "the Internet will mean to Mankind" back then and is dissapointed in what
he's got now, perhaps he shoulda jumped in then or even now, and fix it.

~~~
corporateslave5
Yeah I think this is romanticizing it. These guys never really were out in the
public bragging about themselves or how they’re helping humanity. Mostly
they’ve been pretty behind the scenes

------
ripvanwinkle
Never thought pictures of business /technology leaders could evoke pure kid
like joy.

------
x__x
Probably a life of guilt for opening doors and handing over all their data to
big brother.

Sooner or later this will all be public knowledge. Will this tarnish their
legacy?

------
zuhayeer
"When, in 1965, an interviewer from Cahiers du Cinema pointed out to Jean-Luc
Godard that “there is a good deal of blood” in his movie Pierrot le Fou,
Godard replied, “Not blood, red.” What the cinema did to blood, the internet
has done to happiness. It turned it into an image that is repeated endlessly
on screens but no longer refers to anything real."

Damn

------
lazyjones
The author has a lot of imagination and a grudge... What if Sergey and Larry
were just engineers at heart and simply never craved for the attention they
got after their success? AFAICT they always kept a low profile. They got
talked into posing for silly PR pictures a few times, so what? As if that was
unusual for tech founders.

------
Invictus0
What does unspiderable mean in this essay?

~~~
gniv
In this context, a spider is a web crawler.

~~~
Invictus0
Ahh, makes sense. Thank you!

------
dibujaron
This is a very well written article, what a fun read! "as bubbly as the water"
haha

------
fhehhdg
> Larry and Sergey may well have been the last truly happy human beings on the
> planet.

I really don't get this kind of writing. The millennial angst that suffuses
all my social circles is just bizarre. Is this guy also a millennial or is he
just trying to emulate one?

~~~
davidajackson
I second this. Why do writers use hyperbole to make points when their
hyperbole is not an exaggeration, but rather just false? It makes me as a
reader not trust anything they say afterward.

~~~
kev009
Writing is a tool. Think of this article like a runway, and you the reader as
an airplane trying to take off. Hyperbole can and did introduce a bit of
turbulence to induce lift in your mind to get you out of follower mode and
thinking critically whether you agree or disagree with the author. To complete
the metaphor achieving lift off and thinking your own thoughts on the topic.

It's not dishonest because anybody can clearly reason the statement is
tautologically false, there are no tricks like numbers or misleading
statistics or anything explicitly duplicitous and dishonest.

You may dislike that the author effectively caused you to do this, thinking
for yourself is dark and scary versus gently pulling you along for the ride
but then would you have even read or commented? All I see is a skilled writer
ruminating on an interesting topic. The comments on this thread already
greatly outweigh the length of the piece, it's a pretty nice piece of writing.

------
Mugwort
Google started out as a tech company and then later became a part of the US
Deep State (Prism program). I think any good the company was doing will be
long overshadowed by this unfortunate relationship. Eric Schmidt bears the
greatest responsibility for moving Google in this direction. The revelations
of Julian Assange basically demolished the myth of "Don't be evil". Google was
revealed as a company that in fact did much evil. Seeing Julian slowly die in
prison on false rape charges while Google profited immensely helping destroy
whatever was left of our digital rights and privacy certainly didn't help the
company's image. I wanted to like Google. I liked Google from the beginning
and then the ugly reality chipped away at their reputation until if found
myself making awkward excuses for Google and doing all sorts of self
deceptions and mental contortions to rationalize what they were doing. Then it
became too much. I realized a good company can go bad and that's exactly what
they did. Why? Who knows but size and unprecedented success have something to
do with it. I don't think you can ignore the Behemoth factor but still, they
are responsible for their conduct. I wouldn't want to be either of these men
and I can't imagine anybody who loves technology and things that hackers care
about like digital freedom and privacy continuing to hold Google if high
esteem. Google has become a force for evil. It's an unpleasant truth.

~~~
MikeKusold
In response to Prism, they immediately started encrypting all internal
traffic. They were not willing participants and were likely furious to
discover they were infiltrated.

------
bsanr2
Sergey Brin attended my high school. I found out through Wikipedia, in
college, in 2009. To my knowledge, he has never mentioned, visited, or donated
to it, personally or through Google/Alphabet. We were not a rich private prep
or anything like that, just a majority-minority community school that
benefited from a school-within-a-school-type magnet program and proximity to
several research institutions (particularly NASA Goddard); outside support
would have been more than welcome. Brin was certainly phenomenally intelligent
from the get-go (as related by the teachers who remembered him), so it's
questionable how great or negligible Roosevelt's influence on him was.

Still, I take a lot away, inasmuch as his character is concerned, from his
regard for us. One would think that singular and eminent success such as his
would consider the role of every community he passed through in the shaping of
his fortunes.

For comparison, Martin Lawrence at least got his teacher a car (RIP Froggie).

~~~
randomsearch
I hated my high school but loved my university. If I ever have cash, I will
happily donate to the uni. Maybe his experience was the same.

~~~
bsanr2
My sense is that this may be the case, but I have trouble understanding it if
the school's culture during his time was anything like it was during mine
(that is, accepting of diversity not only in backgrounds, but also in
aptitudes, with niches for high intellectual and physical achievers, normal
kids, and even, perhaps especially, those who would have been marginalized
elsewhere.)

That said, I think what I'm advocating for approaches a sort of noblesse
oblige, in that Brin has been SO successful that any deviation from his
existing path might have lead to much less success, obliging consideration of
every step along the way; and in that even a marginal actor in his life would
be worth giving back to, from the point of view of the actor, commensurate to
their involvement. ERHS is a school that could benefit hugely from a modest
grant, or periodic appearance (if not personal, perhaps from a Google rep),
which would presumably be a incredibly small sacrifice on his part. But most
who went their didn't even know he had.

It just seems weird.

