>Google Cloud is not the real Google. Culture-wise, you are closer to Oracle.
Incorrect. Google's culture has shifted. Culture-wise, Google is closer to Oracle than what people think is Google.
20% hasn't been a thing in Google for a long time. Exists only on paper.
Source: I worked at Google when we all got the memo that all information access within the company is now on a need-to-know basis, and that accessing information that you don't need to know for your job is a fireable offense.
Default level of sharing technical documentaiton is fully private, so tech docs are not searchable in company search engine (read this again).
Good luck re-using the code without design docs. Also good luck starting a project if your team doesn't own the data.
Hot take: Google doesn't have a strategy, period. Neither copmany, nor product.
To further your point — 20% time was barely a thing in 2010… And they killed all of the OC/Founders awards subsequently so there was really no focus on maverick innovation from then on. Coincided with the end to oysters on Fridays
Google cloud has a strategy / OKR process. It’s called Amazon Re:invent.
The blog had some good points but was totally off of Cloud being bottom up. It couldn’t be as it was so far behind others — you don’t have time to think up something new when the competition has already done something. Decisions came from the top down.
The author was right in that there’s a lot of smart people there. By far the best place I’ve been for that.
This shouldn't be surprising. Perhaps comparing it to Oracle might not be quite right, I leave that to people who know, but Google is pretty obviously not the startup/disrupter of 2000-2004 any more. It is now 20+ years old and huge, and that means it is going to be somewhat like any very large organization: internal politics/empire defending, standardised compensation and management, mission, vision and values, etc. Your experience likely varies greatly depending on where in the org you land and who with - some people will come out writing blog posts and some people will find their happy place and never leave.
The interesting part around Google is that they had a kind of mythical status amongst techies that's lasted quite a lot longer than the early days. But they're just another big company now.
Amazon is also slowly moving to this "private tech document" as a side effect of using Quip instead of putting them in the company wiki searchable for all. I hate this.
It's sad how once a great company decided to shift towards mushroom management and coding sweatshops like Amazon in just a few years... The amazing Google of 2008 is no more.
Exactly, hence no true Scotsman: "Oh, it's not a true Google org!".
No, it is a Google org. Whatever was said in the top comment was applicable to Geo a few years back.
And the infamous "need-to-know" memo, which required everyone to start siloing tech docs and made using the internal search engine potentially a fireable offense (!) was company-wide.
