My recent visits to its campuses have left me unimpressed. There are plenty of geniuses. But there are also many morons, and the mix is maybe a degree or two away from median corporate America.
The Google of 10, or 15 years ago did not build quagmires. Google's interview process is so rigorous that I do not doubt the caliber of talent that even currently works there. I think people don't have enough perspective when they criticize something like the Pixel Phone or Gemini. I don't think those are products that could be built by "morons".
There is a lack of risk or commitment to whenever Google launches anything new, and they refuse to be anything other than a fast follower. Stadia was an great product - afaik it worked with acceptable latency and the hardware was good. Morons could not have executed it that well. The quagmire came from the fact the messaging was confusing and there was no leadership that had any vision or conviction for the product. When I look at something like Stadia, as a microsm of new Google projects, the last lesson I take away is "Stadia was a shoddy product because people didn't spend enough time in the office." More engineers sleeping overnight at Google wouldn't have saved Stadia. Replace Stadia with any half baked release out of Google.
I worry the same for Waymo - an amazing product, damn near futuristic at this point, that will fall on the sword because no one at Google will be willing to risk their career on it.
> Google's interview process is so rigorous that I do not doubt the caliber of talent that even currently works there
I do! The process is rigorous. But in my opinion, rigorously wrong. It tests for problem-solving skills. But not something else. (I openly admit I don’t know.) It’s the freshman dorm commons at an Ivy League with a lot of money.
This nonsense clears out above the 8th tier of whatever ranking system they employ (principal?), for the most part. But it’s a lot of making increasingly-elaborate artisan firing mechanisms for guns that shoot a Petri dish of cancer, in the name of curing cancer. It’s technologically marvellous. But it’s so stupidly useless. (Bloom! Self-piloting boat that could mostly keep pace with the winds. Why? The balloon tore itself apart if inflating with even a bit of wind on launch.)
I think Google's average employee is still almost certainly above the average for the industry as a whole, but they're definitely now only "above average".
Google's big problem is that they've always been dysfunctional. The AdSense money printer let them grow the company 100x over the last 15 years without the company actually figuring out how to scale up or solve any of their structural problems.
You’re describing Google 10 years ago.
My recent visits to its campuses have left me unimpressed. There are plenty of geniuses. But there are also many morons, and the mix is maybe a degree or two away from median corporate America.