
Why I left Google to join Grab - kungfudoi
https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc0be84
======
reacweb
I think that Google has a very well thought long term strategy. The sole aim
of Google is AI, strong AI. I would like to say like Terminator, Person of
Interest or transhumanism, but each time I lose many karma points. One of
their main scope was analyzing web pages. By "accident", this has created a
lucrative business (search engine). Google's aim is to keep the money flowing
to pay their AI research. For research, Google needs data. That is the aim of
gmail or android. The main peril for Google may not be the lack of money, but
politicians and reglementations. Google fear to be broken like Microsoft was
broken in two because of their monopolistic behavior. Google spends a lot of
money to avoid being a monopoly. I think they could make hangout or google+
far better, but this involves the risk of killing the concurrence and
disrupting the market. The progress of AI are impressive: in 2016 AlphaGo has
reached the level of the best player, at the end of 2017, with alphagozero
they compute the time needed (in hours) by a computer to surpass millennia of
human knowledge (centuries in chess). Now, computer games are giving handicap
stones to world champions at a game that was thought too hard for computers
(AI drosophilia).

I think Google's strategy is far deeper than short term profit.

~~~
syshum
The problem with your theory is there are a TON of evidence it is not in any
way reality.

For example, if their primary motivations were Preventing Monopoly status, and
feeding their AI Research they would be embracing open standards, Federation
of services, and a whole host of other things they have rejected the last
decade or so.

They would have never Killed Reader, they would have never taken Hangouts off
XMPP, they would have never killed alot of their API's and services web sites
were using, they would have never killed the Search Appliance... I could go on
and on and one

Google does not have a Grand Master plan playing 5D chess to get to the
Singularity.... They are just another Top Heavy Corporation focused on
Quarterly earning statements and marred in Internal and External Politics.

~~~
reacweb
A social network is better when almost everyone are on the same network like
it was with facebook. Google avoids having a too good social network to avoid
becoming dominant.

If Google provided a good stable API, people may never consider going to
concurrence. By pissing off some users, Google stimulates competition and
avoids becoming a "public service". I think this reasoning explains well
Reader, XMPP, their dropped API and explains also why they do not embrace open
standards.

I disagree with you on their focus on earnings, but I fully agree with "marred
in internal and external politics".

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I don't get your reasoning at all. You're saying that Google wants to feed its
AI as much data as possible while at the same time not appearing too dominant.

Launching a bunch of terrible and failing copycat projects and closing down
actually useful "niche" projects sure helps with not appearing too dominant,
but it does nothing to help feed Google's AI.

It also does nothing to prevent Google's competitors from becoming dominant
and getting locked out of important data sources like social interactions
(Facebook) or product search (Amazon).

I agree with syshum. Supporting federated, open protocols would make much more
sense. It would make Google appear benign while at the same time granting them
access to a lot of data and help keep competitors at bay.

------
cageface
Grab is very popular here in Vietnam but I'm not as enthusiastic about it as
Steve is. First of all, taxi service here is great. Taxis are cheap and
plentiful and ripoffs are actually quite rare if you use one of the well known
companies. Grab is burning VC to undercut the taxi companies and doesn't
really deserve a better rep than Uber in that respect.

Grab motorbike service is also very popular but in this case also displacing
an existing local market of independent moto taxi drivers. I'm not sure how
their prices for rides compare but I don't see any obvious improvement in the
quality of life for drivers.

I'm also less excited by the prospect of food delivery replacing restaurants.
Not only does it involve a ton of wasteful packaging, but almost all food
suffers a lot in transport. There is no comparison, for example, between a
pizza fresh out of the oven and one that's been in a steamy pizza box for 15
minutes.

~~~
slouch
put the oven in the car

~~~
alain94040
Like zumepizza? Relevant panel discussion at last year's startup conference:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlW3wau3Lis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlW3wau3Lis)

------
Animats
The view from Shenzhen:

Naomi Wu / @RealSexyCyborg / 10 Dec 2017 / Naomi Wu Retweeted Seruko

 _If food delivery cost $0.40USD with no "tip" lots of Western countries might
be at a similar place. Cheap migrant labor is the backbone of our e-commerce
boom. The way they treat those boys is unforgivable._[1]

The gig economy - more cost-effective than slavery.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg?lang=en](https://twitter.com/realsexycyborg?lang=en)

~~~
masklinn
Actual permalink to the tweet:
[https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/940058014886780928](https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/940058014886780928)

The previous tweets in the thread seem more relevant here:

[https://twitter.com/BeijingPalmer/status/940010649010233344](https://twitter.com/BeijingPalmer/status/940010649010233344)

> I'm generally skeptical of anyone who makes a week-long trip to China and
> comes back awed by 'how advanced they are in X.' In my experience Chinese
> academics and firms lie their ass off to visitors.

[https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/940013406458757120](https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/940013406458757120)

> Unfortunately...yes. It's economics- photos of "foreigners looking impressed
> at X" is pretty much a requirement for any sort of fund raising here.
> Western counterparts have incentive to play along so they can say "the
> Chinese are beating us at X" and get more funding back home.

~~~
magic_beans
Her profile pics are basically NSFW...

~~~
Tsagadai
Which has no bearing on what she is saying at all.

------
drej
Not sure I follow the logic.

"[Google] stuck in me-too mode and have been for years. They simply don’t have
innovation in their DNA any more. And it’s because their eyes are fixed on
their competitors, not their customers."

[...]

"I just witnessed history in the making. (...) I have not seen a land rush
this massive since the early days of the Web, and it just might be even
bigger.

So what is Grab? Well, the simple and unsatisfying answer is: They’re the Uber
of Southeast Asia."

~~~
ian0
They aren't really the Uber of Southeast Asia. They are more like "the
potential Alipay/Wechat" of south east Asia.

And given those apps have managed to re-arrange e-comm, on demand, banking &
payments industries over the course of a few years id say they are pretty
innovative. Take a look at what Kudo (a grab acquisition) does for example.

Also agree with the comment below re countries with high un-employment. At
least here in Indonesia on-demand services seem to have made a net positive
impact on income levels for low income demographics. Hopefully when one
emerges as the victor some regulations are put in place to make sure this
remains the case.

~~~
ian0
Only on HN would you be confused whether the down-vote was for defending On-
Demand services or talking about regulating them :P

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
Probably downvoted because your comment is irrelevant to the point you're
criticizing.

"uber of southeast asia", "alipay of southeast asia", "wechat of southeast
asia" all that doesn't matter in this context. They're all unoriginal. Parent
was saying how OP is claiming to have left Google because they are unoriginal
and frame themselves against competition. That's exactly what "X of Y" is.
Doesn't matter what X, or Y is. That's what that expression is designed to do.

~~~
ian0
Ok, thats kind of fair.

I should have been more specific. What they are on track to becoming (the we-
chat, alipay of SEA), requires a high level of innovation in itself.

As We-chats rise was very different to Alipay's - Grab & co's are to the
chinese companies. Its most definitely not cookie-cutter territory.

~~~
lazerpants
Are Alipay or Wechat even that innovative? I mean, would they exist if Chinese
companies were required to play fair with American competitors?

------
ian0
:( I loved this authors previous blog posts but man this one has a lot of
inaccuracies

\- People don't trust apps more than they do banks. Traditional bank accounts
are expensive (for bank & users) and its this has been the primary limiter of
financial inclusion. Mobile wallets reduce branch costs. Mobile wallets like
Grab, where the "bank" has a few hundred thousand employee / customers and
millions of potential users to sell to have a great head start.

\- People use grab-pay / go-pay instead of cash because you get a big discount
on services when you do. They need to this, because cash-in to mobile wallets
is such a pain. And no, they don't have much trust in apps. Subsidies can be
reduced of course as they cement habit and provide more utility from the app
(hence the rush for merchants & new use cases).

\- Credit card fraud doesn't stop people from applying for credit cards.
Central bank regulations on ownership criteria do. As does financial prudence
(& religious reasons here).

\- The NO TIPPING signs at Jakarta Airport are to let you know its a free
service. Because tipping parking attendants is commonplace. Its not related to
bribary.

\- "Thieves are everywhere". Not gonna comment on that one. But I will on the
"the evil taxi drivers in cahoots with the police" one. If this was
commonplace there would obviously not be much demand for the legions of taxi's
that operated before online apps came around. Once, I was ripped off by a guy
offering a hotel in a train station in Rome. It doesn't mean hotels in Rome
are inherently untrustworthy.

The latter part of the article is pretty accurate - Grab & Gojek are have made
huge improvements in employment and financial inclusion. They have opened up
the door to insanely cool new services and Id struggle to think of tech
companies who have made such a huge impact into daily life here (Including FB
& the like). Its also extremely likely that one of them will become the
Alipay/Wechat of SEA and re-arrange the banking & e-comm landscapes too over
the next few years.

~~~
ponyfleisch
> \- "Thieves are everywhere". Not gonna comment on that one. But I will on
> the "the evil taxi drivers in cahoots with the police" one. If this was
> commonplace there would obviously not be much demand for the legions of
> taxi's that operated before online apps came around.

Taking taxis in most of SEA (and China), at least as a white foreigner, is a
gamble every time. In KL, it takes me about 3 times each time to get a taxi
that doesn't try to charge me a fixed fare, which is usually about 3x the
normal fare. On my last two visits to Shanghai, i had one ride each time where
the driver was "asking" for extra money by yelling and in one case threatening
physical violence. In Bangkok it much depends on the location. Worst case
you'll have to ask about 5 parked taxis before one agrees to use the meter.

Before Grab/Uber, there were not many alternatives to taxis, but that does not
mean that taxis were providing good service.

------
okr
Currently staying in indonesia for vacation, i can verify, a lot of green go-
jek jackets, not so many grab ones.

Personally i use go-jek. Got an sms just like whatsapp, and i was setup. Grab
wants me to create an account, meh, so i stopped there.

I like the live tracking, so i can see, where the driver is. Helped me a lot
to get out and find the driver, as the navigation route is most likely wrong
in all these small streets. Hard to give notes, they ignore them anyways.

The Go-Jek apps, for each purpose one, meh. The update mess on each day,
whenever i get wifi, i hate it.

And i see signs everywhere: only drop-off, no go-jek, no grab, no uber. They
are pretty vocal about it. So yeah, its a war.

Surely it breaks up local schemes of corruption. One can see it, when streets
are closed down by types in army clothes, and a caravan of cars enter the
streets, with dudes in open jeeps, moustache and laughing. There goes the
money.

I do not know. There is a global economy and local businesses. I wish it was
not a few companies driving the disrupting changes, that will destroy most
likely local businesses, that have developed over decades. Sure, people use it
and that is good. Good ideas replace ideas not so good anymore in these times.

Ah, i dont know. I want tools, that allow people to connect directly in an
open market. Without a big company controlling the flow and taking a
percentage here and there. But maybe thats the prize to pay for now. Everyone
can take a camera now and do tv, its not monopolized anymore by a few.

End of rant. I wish that dude good luck. I also have left a well oiled machine
to start something else. I do not share his excitement, though. The food
delivery business will never be mine except for emergency. That beats crusty,
non plastic wrapped 'fresh' together with a few friends. But thats just me. :)

~~~
plinkplonk
From what I understand Go-Jek is kicking Grab's ass in Indonesia. Go-Jek is
presently only in Indonesia, and Grab is probably larger in SEA as a whole ,
but nothing prevents GoJek from expanding to other countries, so yes major war
going on. May the best company win!

I think Steve just wrote a great recruiting piece for Grab _and_ Gojek ;-).
Both are incredible companies, so all for the good. $Diety knows we need some
great companies outside SF.

Due Disclosure: (I have no real interest in the ride sharing space but) Some
of my friends are driving the tech at GoJek, and they are incredibly sharp
people, with great vision _and_ the tech chops to match. If Yegge wanted to be
in a war with formidable opponents, he's got it in spades!

~~~
okr
If you can tell your friends, that customers also like to be tracked/found,
temporarily (if needed) Phoning is not really helpful, i dont understand them,
they dont understand me. SMS the driver also does not work, as i usually do
not buy SMS budget. And the notes are ignored by drivers! Maybe even a little
doodle to show them how to drive best to the location on the last mile, could
be useful. :)

~~~
willempienaar
Good point. I work on the Data Science team, but I will pass along your
comment and suggestion to the relevant product team.

~~~
okr
Do i see results of Data Science in the App? Never been on the driver side.
Like, do you distribute drivers to busy places and things like that? Do you
also block drivers in certain areas? What are driver's common problems? OOh,
so many questions. Dont you want to write a blog post as well? :-)

~~~
willempienaar
Best bet to learn about our ML systems is at (and after) talks we do in
Singapore.

------
dustinmoris
> "Today I just want to tell you about my new gig, because I think you’re
> going to be amazed. In fact I think I can safely predict that no matter who
> you are, something in this post is going to amaze you."

I'm getting super excited!

... a little bit later...

> "So what is Grab? Well, the simple and unsatisfying answer is: They’re the
> Uber of Southeast Asia."

Lost me at this point!

------
bogomipz
So much of this post reeks of venture-capital colonialism:

>"Aside from Singapore, the traffic infrastructure ranges from bad to terrible
to near-nonexistent. (I mean, c’mon, Indonesia alone is 17,000 islands.) The
credit-card industry is near-nonexistent."

>"And it is growing more rapidly in Southeast Asia, because — as any Asian
person will happily tell you — they love their food more than you do."

>"I’m getting myself involved in a land war in Asia."

>"Asians use smartphones possibly more than anyone else in the world."

>"Not so in SEA. Everyone stares happily into their smart phones all the
time."

It's not the 1300s anymore, many of us "Westerners" have spent time in South
East Asia. And one of the great experiences there is going out to dine at
night markets, hawker centers and food stalls. Getting food delivered ... not
so interesting.

I get it that you came back from a company offsite and were eager to show
management your enthusiasm but oh how cringeworthy this piece is.

Also talking crap about your previous employer as a means of getting publicity
for your new one is incredibly tacky. More especially so considering you spent
13 years with them.

------
purplezooey
The only way to stop labor practices that involve abusing workers, not paying
a living wage or for healthcare, is to say (as a customer and voter) that you
will not tolerate this type of business existing.

In other words, if company X can only deliver your low price pizza and Diet
Coke via abuse of its workers, then that business should not exist. It's a
hard leap to make for many people, but a necessary one.

~~~
distances
The burden to track company behaviour shouldn't be on customers. The normal
way to counter this is via unions.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
It sounds like unions are the new Rust on Hacker News.

~~~
18pfsmt
I've got many friends in unions (e.g. pipefitters/welders) and based on the
stories they tell me, unions need a 21st century reboot. They need a simple
platform to organize/communicate digitally. Do you know of anything that
exists like that?

~~~
distances
I feel there's a clear difference how people see unions in the US vs. in
Europe. I don't have much insight in to the differences, but it would be nice
to hear why that is so.

I'm a proponent of strong unions with generally binding collective agreements
(= collective agreements defining legally binding minimum terms for the whole
industry), but I suppose the model won't work everywhere for one reason or
another.

------
reuven
Steve Yegge's writing, whether on technology or business (or both), is always
delightful to read.

If he can start to write more now that he's no longer at Google, then I'm
happy not just for him and his new job, but also for the rest of us, who can
(hopefully) hear his voice much more often.

~~~
mda
Delightful? More like excruciatingly long and boring.

~~~
magic_beans
The man needs an editor. Granted, he's enthusiastic and conversational, but he
writes like a person who simply transcribed a long, spoken rant.

------
ggggtez
So he complained about Google just copying, and then boasts this new company
is going to be "the Uber of South East Asia"? This is in all seriousness the
5th startup I've heard of that is doing this exact thing. And like everyone
else here pointed out: the demand doesn't exist.

The only explanation is that if they really worked at Google for 13 years,
they must have made so much money that they don't care about making good
financial decisions anymore.

~~~
edanm
"The only explanation is that if they really worked at Google for 13 years"

Just FYI, he's a pretty famous blogger. He also accidentally posted a
supposed-to-be-private rant about Google a few years ago, which became pretty
famous too.

So yes, he really did work at Google for 13 years.

~~~
ggggtez
That wasn't intended to be a comment of doubt, it was a logical implication,
if P then Q. So in that case, I double down on saying he must just have no
financial sense to think this idea is going to compete with every other copy
cat.

~~~
edanm
I understand. It read like a statement of doubt, and since you also referred
to him as "they", it sounded like you didn't know of him. Just wanted to point
out that he's a pretty well known blogger, and in my opinion one of the best
software developer bloggers, I highly recommend looking at this past work.

Which is not saying I disagree with you about this particular case, it sounds
a bit overblown to me too.

------
rovek
I relied on Grab in MY and SG, both app and drivers were excellent, but if we
needed a distilled example of how out of touch and tone-deaf tech can be then
we need look no further than this article.

------
jondubois
>> This is not hyperbole. This morning I saw a spy photo of an Indonesian
mafia-run operation: a big seedy-looking room full of guys with stacks of
phones doing fake ride bookings.

WTF? Why would the mafia do fake ride bookings? Who is paying them? Sounds
like a certain company is trying to pump up their numbers artificially.

The whole ride-sharing thing is a massive bubble and OP's blind enthusiasm
only confirms this. When I went to Thailand, taxi was so cheap, I felt
compelled to give the driver a 100% tip.

Halfway through, the article started to sound like satire. I was expecting to
get to the end of the article and see "Just kidding! seriously people; stick
to Google..."

~~~
passiveincomelg
Where in Thailand were you? In Phuket and Bangkok drivers frequently tried to
scam me or negoiate very high fixed prices for rides. Grab was perfect for
avoiding that. Even when I couldn't get a ride through Grab, it told me what
this ride should cost. Basically a cheat code for haggling. :)

------
thisisit
It's a delightful read. I am no fan of Google but people do realize that once
a company becomes big innovation has huge costs involved, more people means
lesser room for growth and hence the politics, as well as some arrogance of
being a large company.

That said I kind of disagree with this: _Restaurants and food trucks are both
about to be obliterated by Peach and Uber Eats._

The biggest cost to a restaurant was their location and hence, the rents. Sure
using food delivery apps helps them a lot. It also lowers the barrier of
running a restaurant. So people might be all in for these apps. But that is
one side of the equation.

The real question is - How is this a viable business for the food delivery
apps? Is the market large enough to make real profits? As an example, most of
the food delivery apps in India are not doing great:

[https://www.vccircle.com/swiggy-lost-rs-1-5-for-every-
re-1-i...](https://www.vccircle.com/swiggy-lost-rs-1-5-for-every-re-1-it-
earned-last-year-revenue-jumped-six-fold/)

Swiggy has been the "Uber" of food delivery apps here in India and they have
revised their prices upwards quite frequently.

~~~
shalmanese
Right now, what we have are the first generation of delivery restaurants which
is basically "restaurants, only it's delivery". We won't start seeing the real
revolution until we start seeing formats built natively around the assumptions
of delivery. The second generation of "delivery, only it happens to be
restaurants" format is going to look radically different from what we have
today.

For example, right now, restaurants are naturally incentivized to disperse
around the city to take advantage of foot traffic. But this turns logistics
into a N x M challenge which is expensive. Delivery restaurants are instead
incentivized to cluster together because 1 x M logistics is so much more
efficient.

Once they cluster, further efficiencies can be unlocked. For example, right
now, if there are 10 Asian restaurants in a block, each of them offers steamed
rice and each of them owns a rice cooker. If you exist in a cluster and all
your orders come from delivery, it no longer makes sense for you to be a "jack
of all trades" restaurant, you can just have one restaurant make the 3 - 4
types of rice required for all Asian cuisines and it gets added on as a side
for your order. Similar with like, mashed potatoes for Western restaurants,
just have one restaurant focus on making the best damn mashed potatoes
possible with all sorts of customized mixins and all the other restaurants
don't have to deal with mashed potatoes. Prior to delivery restaurants, a
"rice and mashed potatoes restaurant" would be totally non-viable. But with
the disaggregating effects of delivery, it's now a possibility.

Probably the closest analogy I can think of is the Singaporean Hawker centers.
Each stall is only responsible for making 2 - 3 things and they make the best
damn version of that thing possible. America, for whatever reason, has never
managed to produce truly decent food courts so it's a totally different
paradigm.

On top of that, clustered delivery allows for the sharing of a lot of common
infrastructure (HVAC, refrigeration, suppliers, dishwashing services, cleaning
services, etc.) in a way that makes the entire enterprise more plug and play.
Think AWS instead of dedicated servers. Rather than each kitchen having to
hire a cleaning crew or worrying about what happens if the walk in is on the
fritz, dedicated teams who specialize in each respective task can deploy it as
a service scalably across the entire set of restaurants. Instead of incurring
$X00,000 in startup costs, you can instead just lease at $X,000 a month and
scale up your spend as you scale up your revenue.

All of this requires delivery as a format to get over certain scale humps so
that efficiencies can start to be unlocked. But once they do (as they're
currently reaching in Asia), we're going to start seeing much more
interesting, innovative business models that take delivery as a premise and
innovate from there.

~~~
thisisit
I completely agree on how it will lead to innovations on the restaurant side.
Sharing infrastructure and bringing down costs.

The question really is on the app side - today they might be in making say $X
from 3-4 places serving steamed rice. But tomorrow as you pointed out this
might reduce down to $x/3 because all 3-4 can band together to pay for the
same delivery. It will affect the food delivery app's bottom line.

So, the question remains is - how do food delivery apps deliver long term
profits from this?

~~~
shalmanese
By turning from a service to a platform. Traditionally, companies that have a
direct relationship with the customer are able to derive revenue by auctioning
off that access to the highest bidder.

What we've seen across a range of creative industries is a transformation of
incentives from those who are able to run the best business into those who are
able to make the best product.

Take Youtube for example. Prior to Youtube, creatives had to figure out how to
create compelling videos, where to market them to attract the most eyeballs
and then how to monetize the ensuing attention. Those are three disparate
skillsets that are rarely found in the same person.

Now with YouTube, while possessing the skills to market and monetize are
beneficial, they're no longer essential. Instead, what you can do is purely
focus on producing the best damn videos possible (where "best" is defined by
whatever Youtube algorithm of the week is optimizing for) and Youtube will put
your videos in front of the right eyeballs, grow your audience for you and
monetize that audience (in exchange for taking a hefty cut and locking you
into the platform).

We're seeing the same thing happen with Medium in blogging, AirBNB in
accommodation, Facebook with news etc.

Right now, most restaurants fail, not because the food is bad, but because
restauranteurs rarely make good businesspeople.

There's a compelling value add to chefs to offering them a platform where all
they need to focus on is making the best possible dish for a given price point
and customers naturally are delivered to them. At the same time, there's a
compelling value to consumers where an app can look at my past purchase
history, use machine learning, and add a free sample sized portion of a dish
it think I will like to any delivery I order in order to expose me to new
restaurants.

Any app that manages to insert itself into the middle of that transaction is
going to redefine the food industry. That's why everyone is so hot for
delivery right now. Even though the short term game has horrible unit
economics, delivery is a natural choke point by which you can own the customer
relationship.

In reality, in the US, this is really Yelp's game to lose. Yelp's stranglehold
on reviews gives it a natural leverage point to pivot into this space. It's
only Yelp's horrible executional ability that has opened up the space to so
many well funded competitors.

~~~
gamblor956
_Any app that manages to insert itself into the middle of that transaction is
going to redefine the food industry. That 's why everyone is so hot for
delivery right now. Even though the short term game has horrible unit
economics, delivery is a natural choke point by which you can own the customer
relationship._

Which is precisely why no restaurant worth its salt limits itself to a single
delivery app...Delivery is an add-on value for restaurants. People who assume
it's just about the food fundamentally misunderstand why people go to
restaurants in the first place.

------
singsinger
This is hilarious to me sitting here in Southeast Asia. I see Grab make a mess
of their technology every single day. Grab drivers almost always have to call
before they make their way over. Software they use to detect fraudulent
accounts is laughable. Several people I know have gotten kicked off the app
because they traveled for holiday and were forced to start a new account. Sure
whatever. Then Grab turns around kicks them off the app for being
"fraudulent".

------
jondubois
>> Grab is the biggest startup in the history of Southeast Asia. Grab is
fighting the most important battle in the world today, on the biggest stage. I
am typing this on a plane coming back from Jakarta, where I just witnessed
history in the making.

Sounds like this is OP's first startup.

------
masonic
"’s not uncommon for people in Southeast Asia to get jobs as drivers and make
3 to 5 times their previous income."

Not unlike how Uber drivers did.

At first.

------
woolvalley
Did he try talking to Uber or Lyft? What he described is fairly similar to the
other ride sharing companies' realities.

As for Didi vs Uber, I think there were some 'government' realities that made
it a bit more skewed compared to the rest of the world, much like many other
non-chinese companies in China.

~~~
brisance
No horse in the race, but in South-East Asia, Grab does seem to be kicking
Uber's ass. In terms of visibility and mindshare. Mainly has to do with the
amount of money Softbank and the various government-linked investment
companies are pouring into it.

------
linkmotif
In the beginning of this piece I couldn’t figure out who the author was
referring to as Google “customers”: Google users or advertisers? If users,
this Google employee didn’t know who the customer was!

Then when the author revealed the innovative business they were most excited
about, it was pretty difficult to process. Really? This is the exciting
innovation you want in life? Take out delivery?

Every day I have to remind myself everyone is different.

------
ftoo
So, working for an Uber clone that underpays its workers and exists to further
enrich its billionaire shareholders is the most exciting thing this guy could
find to do with his life? After already making millions off of his past
career?

This is why people hate tech workers.

~~~
unrequited
I'm sure you must be speaking from a country where everyone is employed. The
ground reality is how businesses like these create tons of indirect employment
feeding their hunger. This is often overseen as we can't imagine in someone
else's shoes.

~~~
Jedi72
I actually think getting a job delivering food can be a local maxima - you
make a few extra bucks, but it ties up all your time and leaves you less open
to opportunities and training.

------
Buge
He mentions that Uber is losing so much money. But how much money is Grab
losing? He says drivers make 3 to 5 times their prior wages. How can grab
afford to pay that?

~~~
ciguy
I was just talking to my UBer driver in Manila. He made $550 per month working
as a registered nurse in one of the largest hospitals here. Driving for Uber
he makes $1700 to $2100 per month. I'm assuming Grab pays similarly.

I don't think he's really done the math to figure out maintenance and fuel
costs, but presumably he's coming out ahead in any case. This is a major issue
in developing countries where institutional wage increases have not kept pace
with the "gig" economy. So a skilled and educated professional can make 3x to
5x the local wage by working as a virtual assistant or an Uber Driver.

This pulls educated professionals out of the labor pool for things like
medical and drags down the quality of care. Medical facilities in the
Philippines can be really nice, but many doctors and nurses are recent grads
and quite frankly completely clueless about anything but the most basic
issues.

~~~
piva00
What I am afraid of is that these people payments are being subsidised by VC
money, when that money runs out and they have to compete truly based on market
self-regulated prices I fear the workers will be getting paid less and less to
make up for the costs, it's good for a while but people are becoming dependent
on something that is still very unstable.

~~~
hdra
Strictly speaking though, the rides aren't what is being subsidised by VC
money, that is, the company aren't losing more money with each additional
booking. The rates are pretty competitive with existing taxi business, and
their entrance to a market hasn't exactly brought down ride prices.

I think most of the VC money are used on the "war" to gain dominance. Tech,
marketing, lobbying, and such.

------
perseusprime11
I felt like his rant was all over the place this time. I would like to
understand his definition of innovation and by that definition, who is
innovating and who is not innovating. Google+ example is an ancient one, and
the current Google is very different from that. Does he have a problem with
Sundar's vision of making Google into a machine learning first company? Does
he see the distinction of Alphabet and Google, and the notion of separating
the big ideas into Google X? Does he think innovation is easy without failing
100 times?

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
It often is. we should just ignore it but given that it's Steve Yegge that's
not gonna happen.

------
cromwellian
Innovation these days happens around the edges, not necessarily in big step-
function creation of new product categories. We remember those, they suck up
all the oxygen and inspire a year of me-too funding of fast followers. You
hardly notice it the daily innovcation, when it's happening in small steps.
Just look at photo/image search, or improvements in low light photography or
portraits, in translation, or voice.

I think Yegge suffers from the same affliction that actually afflicts Google:
a reward structure for new launches, not for perfecting what already exists.
Google's problem is often not innovating, it's trying to hard to do something
innovative, rather than the boring stuff that actually matters to a lot of
customers. I think Google Photos is a perfect example of innovation focused on
solving the boring stuff. You can say it's an iPhoto clone, but photo storage
and backup is a commodity, it's organization and maintenance that's the real
consumer pain in that regard.

And as many noted, the irony of the complaint about copying competitors and
lack of innovation, and then a feverish, almost religious pitch for yet
another O2O gig-economy clone, like the numerous that already exist in China.

------
WisNorCan
Steve makes a good point that the largest technology companies have stopped
(boldly) innovating. Obviously, all the engineers at the companies still go to
work and write code. But with 10x the resources they seem to be outputting
1/10th the innovation.

What are the bold innovations to come out of Facebook, Google, Microsoft over
the past decade or so that haven't been acquisitions? With Facebook, you have
a bunch of work on better targeting ads. Oculus and Instagram are both
acquisitions.

Amazon is the exception. With Amazon, you have AWS, Alexa, Fresh/Prime Now,
while also breaking into new geographies and verticals etc.

------
ocdtrekkie
I actually, because of the app I was reading this on, failed to realize this
was a Yegge post until the end. No wonder it was such a good read.

Welcome back to the real world, man, hoping we see more blogs from you in the
future!

~~~
DonHopkins
My first thought upon reading the title was "who cares why somebody left
Google, unless it's somebody like Steve Yegge."

------
msmith10101
Would like to see the gig economy move off of human labor. Do any of these
companies like Grab or Go-Jek have much of an autonomy story or any real
competitive differentiators?

If not, this whole space is otherwise a race to the bottom and a question of
who can raise the most money. The fact that money from Softbank and Alphabet
is allocated to competitors illustrates that it is very unclear how these
companies differ from one another.

------
sitkack
[https://youtu.be/eaCHH5D74Fs?t=21](https://youtu.be/eaCHH5D74Fs?t=21)

Steve, I can't think of a better way to satirize the gestalt at Google.
Genius! Or maybe sandwich genius, where crowds can critique whether cheese
goes over or under the meat.

------
hardkids
Google landed their ivestment in Go-Jek, and Go-Jek is Google Cloud heavy
user. And this guy made a blogpost why he jump to Grab after Google while
mentioned Grab is AWS heavy user.

Purely advertorial for me :)

------
zeveb
Man, I have missed Steve Yegge's posts and style so much. Can't believe that
it's been 13 years that he's been locked up in Google.

I always kinda assumed that Google were paying him to write his essays for
internal consumption only — not just making him stop blogging completely.
Hopefully this means that we'll be hearing more from him in the future.

I'm still thankful for him getting me (and thousands of others) pumped up for
the Common Lisp renascence of the mid-2000s, and I keep on hoping the world
will cotton to its advantages (or — even better — develop something better
yet). No dice so far, though.

------
kinkrtyavimoodh
Ah the innocence of youth...

Or in this case, someone's first startup job.

------
PretzelFisch
Not related to the story but it's depressing that I can no longer follow Steve
in my rss reader. Unless there is a non obvious way to get Medium posts in
rss.

~~~
motdiem
Your comment prompted me to look for it. Apparently you can by appending
/feed/ before the author's name. so for steve, it would be
[https://medium.com/feed/@steve.yegge/](https://medium.com/feed/@steve.yegge/)

Source: [https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214874118-RSS-
feed...](https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214874118-RSS-feeds)

------
dingleberry
afaik, riders' time wasted on resto's queue are not paid

also, riders don't get compensation for parking fee

so most riders avoid crowded resto and [tall] buildings (have to park and take
elevator -- more unpaid time)

also, money spent on internet and phone calls are not compensated so u get
random whatsapp messages from grab/gojek riders ... and sometimes sms (still
costs little money tho), but rarely a phone call

------
pronik
Just wanted to point out how happy I am that Steve is blogging again. I've
missed that a LOT. Welcome back!

------
sgift
> When this idea inevitably takes off, people are going to be able to order
> take-out from their neighbors, from anyone in the city who wants to cook
> their family recipe. It will change cuisine forever.

I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. As if such things as hygiene
regulations didn't exist and you can just open a restaurant by hanging a sign
out and telling someone to deliver whatever you just produced in your kitchen.

Well, probably in some part of the world you can. In some part of the world
people die of food poisoning all the time, in other parts we learned the hard
way that sometimes you need this thing which bothers startups to no end called
regulation.

~~~
southphillyman
I made a similar argument to a friend while eating at a small street food
vendor in Bangkok a couple of months ago. I was turned off by the flies and
the fact I was a couple of feet from a dirty alley. My friend, who likely grew
up eating in similar shops in Nigeria, pointed out I was looking at it from a
very Western pov.

He argued that these kind of establishments were safe to eat at because their
entire livelihood is dependent on their reputation among locals. Looking
around at all the competition along the street we just walked down, it kind of
made sense.

In my north american city if a shop fails inspection they are closed down for
48 hours, after which they can open back up and operate until next inspection.
In Bangkok if a vendor makes some one sick the news spreads via word of mouth
and their business is DONE.

I was able to enjoy an amazing meal after calming down.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Does the word-of-mouth reputation system still work if you're using a phone
app to order food from someone who isn't necessarily local? Now, everyone's
competing against everyone in a much larger geographical area. Sure, you can
go by reviews, but now you've got a negative-comment war.

~~~
mindcrime
Reputation seemed to largely work for The Silk Road. I mean, there might have
been isolated incidents, but I don't seem to recall a broad trend of people
dying from buying bad drugs.

At the end of the day, I think it always remains the case that "killing your
customers is bad for business".

~~~
DonHopkins
Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #10: "A dead customer can't buy as much as a live
one."

------
baba8
Wow, that's an impressive recruitment material (apart from being an
interesting read, of course)! That works so much better than a bland "We're
hiring" page, having the picture painted that way makes it much easier to
imagine yourself taking a side in that "war". Is that a new trend?

Good luck to Steve!

------
rcdwealth
People leave companies because they get into problems within a company and do
not get along, or are under paid, or otherwise their life is limited.

This guy's report is biased, he is simply apostate from Google.

------
crispinb
How depressing. Our living planet is collapsing at a dizzying and increasing
pace, and not only do our 'best and brightest' (if that's what they are) work
largely on trivia designed to accelerate the collapsing trend, they advertise
their superficiality with this crude purported messianic zeal. Froth and
bubble atop the dank turbid waters.

~~~
iso-8859-1
Which project should he work on instead?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Not everyone is in a position to make the world a better place through their
work, but it would be nice if they didn't actively make it worse.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
I would reframe that as "Not everyone is in a position to make the world a
better place through their work, so it would be nice if didn't pretend they
were"

------
throwaway324235
Does Grab use REST or gRPC?

------
mindcrime
Another note to all the people screaming "muh regulationz. What about t3h food
poisioningz???"

Anybody... and I mean _anybody_ can already cook for other people in their own
kitchen, and serve food to others with absolutely no special legal regulation
whatsoever. It's called "invite a bunch of people over for dinner". Or "take a
dish to the company pot-luck". Or "take a dish to game night at the local
hackerspace". Etc.

This is nothing but an extension to what people can already do. And while
accidents can always happen, the bottom line is that anybody tempted to take
advantage of the

 _" When this idea inevitably takes off, people are going to be able to order
take-out from their neighbors, from anyone in the city who wants to cook their
family recipe. It will change cuisine forever."_

bit is almost certainly not interested in killing their customers.

~~~
lazerpants
I agree with you, mostly, but the profit motive does incentivize riskier
behavior here.

Example: If I am having people over for dinner and accidentally leave out
shellfish for too long, I can toss the expensive ingredient and just order
pizza or anything else. If I depended on that shellfish to make a living, I
would almost certainly risk using it.

~~~
mindcrime
Fair enough, but there's still a limit to how far you're going to push that
line, no? Because a. deep down you're a human being and you don't really want
to kill anybody and b. pragmatically you know if you get a reputation for
killing customers (or making them sick) your customers will go elsewhere.

~~~
zeveb
Well, Typhoid Mary was an actually woman who didn't care.

But yes, most of the time most people care enough.

