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I think you're taking him a bit too literally. In these examples, you're not looking at simplifying anything. You're not getting rid of unneeded code. You're getting rid of debugged and stable code in favor of writing something new from scratch because fuck all knows why.

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In this case, worst case, it's multiple groups of engineers all advocating for their pet projects. They can all be wrong and concerned about personal sunk costs instead of having some perspective and humility and working together to the extent it makes sense.

I gather maybe the Google advancement structure discourages doing nothing and generally being stable when it makes sense, in which case there could be plenty of improvement to be had all around.

Oddly enough, I assume the Google advancement structure values anything but stability. You launch products to get promoted. Maintaining them is for fools and losers.

Granted, I have no inside information. That just fits the externally observable information and the tiny amount of corporate politics that occasionally makes its way public.

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