Steve Yegge - Long Time Googler Leaves Google

With Scathing Blog Post - Google is a Cluster

[Brett_Tabke]

Best stunning quotes from Steve Yegge's blog post [medium.com].

The main reason I left Google is that they can no longer innovate.
...they're conservative: They are so focused on protecting what they've got, that they fear risk-taking and real innovation.

Second, they are mired in politics,

Third, Google is arrogant. ... loss of touch with customers, poor strategic decision-making.

Forth, Google has become 100% competitor-focused rather than customer focused.

[google] Picks unwinnable fights and then trying to force their product on us (e.g. Google+), launching products that are universally panned (e.g. Allo), deprecating and turning down well-loved services (e.g. Reader, Hangouts), launching official APIs with competing and incompatible frameworks (e.g. gRPC vs. REST), launching obviously competing stacks that don't talk to each other (e.g. Android native vs. Dart/Flutter), etc. Their attempts at innovation have been confusing and mostly unsuccessful for close to a decade. Googlers know this is happening and are as frustrated by it as you are, but their leadership is failing them.

[motorhaven]

Lot of doom and gloom talked about these days, but the fact is the overall trend of the world is things are much better than they used to be, and continues to improve.

In 1820, 94% of the world lived in extreme poverty. 72% in 1950. 60% in 1970. 44% in 1981. 16% in 2010. 13% in 2012. Projected 9.6% for 2015. And its falling faster with each passing decade. The poorest countries in the world are experiencing the fastest rise in GDP.

Literacy rates world wide keep climbing.

The chance of dying from civil or military violence is lower than most of recorded history and continues to fall. Battle related deaths per 100,000 people went from 21.8 around 1950 to trending between 1/2 to 1 per 100,000 now.

In 1980, perhaps a couple dozen countries were democracies. The majority are now. There's still a lot of room for improvement there (by population numbers), but it continues to get better. In 1900, 10% of the world's population lived in a democracy, 50% now.

In 1800 not a single country had a life expectancy over 44 years, most had expectancies in the mid-30s. Today most of the world has expectancies in the mid-60s to low-80s. Even Africa, which has the highest average rates of extreme poverty has life expectancy around 60 years old.

Maternal mortality rates have plunged since 1940s. Same with infant mortality rates. And not just minor amounts, by orders of magnitude. 100 years ago a woman was 700% more likely to die giving birth.

Major diseases like smallpox and polio continue to be eradicated around the world. Malaria deaths per year have gone from 840,000 in 2000 to 438,000 in 2015. AIDS deaths over the last decade has gone down.

Undernourished people dropped from 18.6% of the world's population in 1990 to 10.9% in 2014.

So when people talk about "exploitation", job loss, etc. they overlook the data, the bigger picture and global trends. People taking these jobs are coming out of poverty as a result. Their life expectancy, literacy, health and employment increase. And has technology improves, new jobs with better conditions open up, "drudgery" jobs decrease, etc.

AI, sure it kills some jobs. But the overall trend is that it creates more jobs than it destroys.

[forbes.com...]
[cnbc.com...]
[economist.com...]
[sloanreview.mit.edu...]
[techcrunch.com...]
[journalistsresource.org...]

[lucy24]

if a bunch of rich tech workers used to drive to restaurants to pick up food and now jobs are created to deliver food to those people that is a net positive for number of jobs

A bit rough on the people who formerly worked as servers, though.

[ergophobe]

motorhaven wrote:

AI, sure it kills some jobs. But the overall trend is that it creates more jobs than it destroys.

Shaddows wrote:

People have been predicting the end of human ingenuity for ever. Yet we keep inventing, keep creating.

Yes, but I'm not one of them. Again, we agree on far, far more than we disagree on. But again, back to the examples of the Luddites. The Luddites themselves predicted that they would get screwed by mechanization and they did. Others predicted that society as a whole would benefit and it did. Even the great grandchildren of the Luddites benefited tremendously.

I'm just saying that large-scale dislocation caused by automation will be very painful for some people and the faster that happens, the more people will find it painful.

People taking these jobs are coming out of poverty as a result. Their life expectancy, literacy, health and employment increase. And has technology improves, new jobs with better conditions open up, "drudgery" jobs decrease, etc.

Once again, I totally agree with this and with basically everything you say. My only point is that the experience of a species is different than the experience of an individual. From the perspective of someone worried about the future of the planet, I say we need to get off coal ASAP. From the perspective of a coal miner, I say that's going to really hurt my family.

Both of those things are true. Everything you say above is true and to the extent that those provide a bridge to the future that's great and that may be what happens for large numbers of people. Traditionally, the garment industry was the bootstrap industry to pull a society into industrialization. We are on the cusp of automating that and once that happens, that key bridge industry is lost. You may well be right that driving is the next bridge industry, in which case, that's excellent.

I'm only saying that the writing is already on the wall for that bridge industry. For the lucky few who use it as a bridge to something else, it will no doubt improve their lives.

[Shaddows]

I'm genuinely unaware of the nature of the Canadian welfare state. I assume it is somewhat better than the US Social Security system.

Much of Europe has an extremely generous Welfare system. Not so much here in the UK*. But either way, the advent of the Welfare State has significantly lessened the impact of technological disruption on the affected workers.

Of course, a Welfare State tends to be a feature of an Advanced economy. Singapore, for all it's new found wealth (pre-dating Grab, obviously), is not yet an advanced economy. Not to stray too far into the political, but they have an effective caste system, where they import cheap foreign labour in often squalid (though better than "home") conditions, while boosting the living standards of Citizens. This is a feature of much of the emerging economies, loosely defined to include those with Oil wealth. Singapore, Saudi, Qatar. Even China, the Han population is overtly favoured over the non-Han minorities.

Anyway, a Welfare State, especially one that provides adult eduction and training services, goes a long, long way to squaring the circle of Creative Destruction being good for society but bad for individuals.

*Well, in work benefits are quite generous, but plain unemployment benefits are not. And there is not a comprehensive re-training bursary, which seems short-sighted

[Future]

Great decision,
I did completely killed my work. (been months but our Y videos generate proper traffic, even after penalized and working like a heard.., no argues against G).
Being one of best performer.. since started 20 years ago, we sound like (dont have words and dont want to use the same), as G gave us a new life (specially me, spinning out of expectations and thinking what i want to achieve, BUT...

It was my bad decision to hire my competitors
It was my bad decision to overlook penalization penalty on so called SITE-THRESHOLD (without replying anyone of them)
Leave people alone to let them grow, If they follow G terms and conditions, ignore rest..
Else never grow in certain areas..

(I developed myself an Advertising-Agency, but I am not interested, as had been always interested in web-publishing.. ) Google helped best, Google kicked best..

I still have faith, where i laid my first eggs, trying out in weeks.