
Why I left Google. What happened to my book. What I work on at Facebook.  - csmajorfive
http://www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog/2011/07/why-i-left-google-what-happened-to-my-book-what-i-work-on-at-facebook/
======
ChuckMcM
Go Paul! Having experienced the 'its not a great idea until someone with an
Employee # < threshold has endorsed and/or invented it' first hand, I totally
understand how weird that all feels. Glad you did the right thing and got to a
better place.

~~~
nostrademons
I wonder if there's any way to avoid this if you happen to be an employee # <
threshold.

It's an interesting problem - you can't just endorse the idea because the
whole point is to create a culture where good ideas can thrive _regardless_ of
whether they're endorsed by a Big Important Person. Ultimately, it's like the
scene in Life of Brian where Brian's telling everyone to think for themselves,
and they just parrot his words back:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQqq3e03EBQ>

I get the impression that the employees with # < threshold would actually
prefer this, but when it comes to what people actually allocate their time to,
the vast majority of employees are far more willing to devote it to what top
brass thinks is important than what brilliant peer thinks is important. It's a
shame, too - the biggest benefit of working at Google is that your peers are
incredibly smart, and most people recognize that and verbally _say_ that those
ideas should get more air time, and yet when it comes to allocating actual
engineering time, people generally work on what they're supposed to.

There's probably a selection bias at work as well - people who don't like
taking orders from the top generally don't work as an employee of large
companies, which means that the majority of employees _do_ like taking orders
from the top.

~~~
ChuckMcM
"I wonder if there's any way to avoid this if you happen to be an employee # <
threshold."

That is, and continues to be, an excellent question. At Google some of the low
employee number folks were actively trying to break this bias. (for them its a
question of being able to scale their time, if nothing gets done until they
engage in it, they become a limit to scaling. And while there will always be
people who bask in the 'I'm so important the company stops when I do'
limelight, I felt that in general those folks were in the minority.) It was
the overall bias in the otherwise weak senior management (remember Google is
_very_ engineering driven) against ideas from people who weren't already 'well
known.'

Prior to Google I was with a company called Network Appliance and they had an
excellent program where every 6 months or so the senior engineers got together
and talked about various ideas (some evolutionary, some revolutionary, and
some very off beat ones).

It was later that I recognized that for a certain size and larger, you needed
some sort of event like that so that folks could talk face to face, without
the 'distractions' of the day to day fire drills, which created the
constituencies which could champion ideas from any source. It also gave the
folks who had to allocate resources (the managers) some notion that the idea
had been surfaced in a place where, had it been untenable for some reason,
those reasons would have come out and been discussed and weighed.

I knew it worked at NetApp when I participated, and I missed it when I was at
Google, but more importantly I came to understand how important it was to have
a company have a healthy way of having technical conversations internally when
you were bigger than a single office in terms of your engineering staff.
Without it, the ability for a manager to filter 'good' ideas from 'bad' ideas
is limited to their own experience and I can completely understand how they
might unconsciously (or consciously) use tenure of an employee as a crutch. At
Sun we called it 'checkin approval by uid' (which was to say that some folks
just wrote good code and so the gate keeper for a release would be much more
likely to take their change than the same change from an unknown contributor.)

------
gojomo
Given what Adams says about the book's contents (no proprietary information)
and the prior written permission, it's hard to see how Google could block its
publication.

Google could request their name not be used to imply any endorsement, and
perhaps raise a stink about the similarity in title to their now prominent
feature.

But prevent the publishing of its contents? On what basis? (Threats of
disfavoring the publishing house in the future?)

Even if the book _did_ have trade secrets, our legal system isn't big on
placing prior restraint on authors/publishers.

~~~
ma2rten
Isn't it actually the case that this book was written as part of his work at
Google and therefore they OWN the copyright of the book? At least that is what
I make out of this.

~~~
gojomo
Indeed, I'd overlooked Adams' phrasing "I wrote the book in collaboration with
Google". That implies some sort of formal co-authorship or
sponsorship/branding was previously agreed upon, though probably not that the
whole thing is a Google-owned work product.

That definitely makes for a more messy analysis, especially if parts were
written on company time and had contributions/review from Google coworkers.

------
gabaix
Paul Adams' last year presentation on Slideshare had a huge impact on my work
designing social products. He really put it out there the frustations caused
by Facebook. I am really glad he joined Facebook to work on those problems. I
can't wait for his new book to come out.

~~~
edanm
Judging from the post, it doesn't seem like he's working on any of the
problems he was talking about. He specifically mentions he isn't working on
lists or groups, but rather working on advertising.

------
redthrowaway
>Many of you have asked me why my book ‘Social Circles‘ was delayed

>The good news is that I’m channeling this frustrating experience towards a
better place, and am writing a new book. It’s called Grouped

Anyone think that's a coincidence?

~~~
Groxx
I think I'll assume the reverse, and work from there.

Which means they decided to change the book's name to "Grouped" _before_
joining Facebook. Hmmm... either serendipitous in the extreme, or the most
epic book-marketing stunt I've heard of; start writing book about X, get X
implemented, change name to company Y's offering, join Y, get X implemented at
Y.

The scandal of it all will drive book sales through the roof, allowing them to
_leave_ Y and live on royalties, richer than they could've been from
programming.

I like this plan.

------
dusklight
Hey so we know that facebook has hired PR people to try to make google look
bad .. what's up with these recent anti-google posts from ex-googlers? Can
anyone verify that these posts weren't paid for?

------
pratster
interesting timing of this "blog post"...Facebook's PR machine has been known
to go to great extents in the past. Hopefully the author was not influenced by
that.

~~~
padday
I wrote this independently. Just my own thoughts - I think it's pretty
balanced. Wanted to get some facts out there as people were speculating.

~~~
pak
It was an interesting read, and thanks for coming here to talk about it! There
were a few questions that came to mind...

\- In what ways does Facebook prioritize social science over technology? By
all accounts it's just as engineer-driven as Google.

\- Also, you seem to have pivoted away from research upon your arrival. Does
Google not allow researchers to transition into product development? Would
that have been a desirable path for you?

\- Finally, did you leave Google before or after you knew about the Google+
launch, and is there any part of you that wishes that you retained some input
into the product? It is quite evident that it was built centrally around the
results of your research, and I wonder what it must feel like to be working
for a competitor when the product of your vision finally goes live and reaches
10 million users.

------
class_vs_object
nothing says "open" like blocking publication of a book

~~~
marcf
But he also switched from what is generally considered a more open company to
one that doesn't even let me export my contacts.

------
tszming
>> Google is an engineering company, and as a researcher or designer, it’s
very difficult to have your voice heard at a strategic level.

So the answer? <http://www.facebook.com/designjobs/>

------
TY
Quite disappointed that Google has blocked release of Paul's book, even post
G+ release.

I guess "don't be evil" does not apply to this case in the house of Google.
Sad.

~~~
MikeCapone
"I wrote the book in collaboration with Google"

Chances are that he's not the sole author/owner of the copyright of the book.
It's possible that other features of G+ that haven't been released yet are in
the book, and that Google is waiting for a full launch..? That's my best
guess.

------
ananthrk
The earlier book was called "Social Circles" and the new one is called
"Grouped"? :)

------
clobber
Sigh. I feel like a lot of people in this generation are using their talents
thinking up new ways to get users to click ads. Myself included.

~~~
afshin
That's a fair point. But it's still probably preferable to them using their
talents to design increasingly convoluted financial instruments for ripping
off suckers ... which is the other thing the most talented members of this
generation seem to be doing.

~~~
yid
Um, what's the difference? Targeted online advertising involves enough
research talent and money to make it not totally unlike an "increasingly
convoluted financial instrument".

~~~
hyperbovine
Targeted advertising is probably less nefarious, but neither pursuit is going
to cure cancer anytime soon.

~~~
fossuser
Depends on who is generating the money and the type of things they do with it.
Google seems to use its money benevolently, investing in projects and systems
to improve the world.

------
ignifero
He was probably ill fit for a company that "values technology, not social
science" - I love google for that. And i think changing careers is always
rewarding. What's more interesting is his thoughts about how the "web is being
fundamentally rebuilt around people". Personally, i would not like to see that
happen. The value of the web for me comes exactly because it's the information
that matters, not who said it and what others think of it. I also see the
ubiquity of identity information to be a blocker for radically free thinking,
a factor that has given great value to the content of the web till now. It's
good to have social networks for those who want to use the internet as a
communication medium, but i personally dislike the way social networks become
omnipresent.

~~~
ellyagg
"I love google for that"

Actually, I think the point is that Google was ill fit for using and rewarding
his value, because it slavishly fetishizes engineering to the exclusion of
other expertise. If you've been following this story, then you know that
Google did eventually acknowledge the message from his presentation and book,
to the point that people internally were upset his presentation was "leaked"
and Google blocked and continues to block his book.

