When G.M. Was Google: The art of the corporate devotional | Hacker News Reader

When G.M. Was Google: The art of the corporate devotional

newyorker.com

58 pointsdigisth16 comments

Very interesting article, if you ignore the unnecessary jabs at Google, youngsters and the uncorroborated praise for GM.

But there is an interesting point to note here : GM is not fundamentally the same as Google or other software companies of today. Companies which make physical goods, make more money through making more and more of the same thing. If they have done it many times, the process is well-understood and can be managed by a specialized person ( who specialises in management ) in a central way and that is probably more efficient.

Software companies make money from making new and different things. To make a new copy of a software once it is written, all it takes is Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V, or make a new web request. These type of companies are probably more efficient if you simplify the communication structures enabling more collaboration. The well-understood parts ( such as Amazon warehouses, Apple's supply chain etc ) can still be managed using the old management style. The creative organizations can still use the new management style.

You can see this style variation when the founders are ousted from the company and management is handed off to MBA folks ( Apple with John Sculley etc. ). Maybe by the time the founders from the new age tech companies have to pass the baton, the management schools of thought will catch up to this ( they already seems to be doing so ) and things won't be so bad as the author predicts.

Google's output isn't code. Its monetized services -- search + tiny classified ads.

The management people direct the output and make the deals. Engineers and programmers write the code that makes the machine work. At GM, engineers design the car and assembly people build the machines.

There are more similarities than differences. GM (or any car company) uses robots to automate repetitive and error-prone human processes, just like a tech company does.

Your analysis is too simplistic. Do you mean software companies have higher margins? Top 20 profitable companies in the US only include 3 'software' companies: http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/most-pro...

Scale-up is non-trivial in both software and non-software companies. Even among non-software companies, there is a ginormous amount of variability in terms of profitability and easy of scale up.

Things change when an organization becomes big and established. When it get big, the people in charge can't run things directly, and have to rely on delegation and established procedures to get things done the way they want. And when a company no longer has to fight for its life every quarter, there is room for a world of distractions beyond getting things done.

The question worth asking is whether this can be avoided. Is there a large, old company that manages to be vigorous and action-oriented rather than a mass of politics and process?

Summary: A very interesting essay providing context for Silicon Valley's management style. Google is not as different from GM as we might think, and is trying to solve many of the same organizational problems. GM was the great innovator in management at one time and there is a long history of celebrating the current management fad as freeing employees, and as being generalizable.

There are some interesting similarities. And that could have been the extent of the article.

Unlike Google, GM was born in corporate intrigue and the kind of inward-looking backstabbing that hasn't taken hold at Google. It isn't as if there ever was a golden age of GM management culture.

Back in Sloan's day it was a huge achievement to make a large, people-powered management hierarchy work at all. Google was born after those large hierarchies became a liability.

It would be better to compare Google to a lightwieght management structure like that of the East India Company. It would be interesting to compare the square footage devoted to management at the East India Company (East India House, one of the first buildings purpose-built as a corporate office building), Google, and GM.

> Unlike Google, GM was born in corporate intrigue and the kind of inward-looking backstabbing that hasn't taken hold at Google

This is just completely false. Google has just as much backstabing and infighting at the exec level as an company out there.

Well at least according the Larry Page:

> Finally, Page laid down the law: "If you keep fighting, we'll be very happy to send you to the competition."

> During the speech, one of the executives who was in the room turned to a friend and whispered:

> "Did he just say, 'zero tolerance for fighting? I've been here for years. All we do is fight."

http://www.businessinsider.com/sex-and-politics-at-google-it...

>This is just completely false. Google has just as much backstabing and infighting at the exec level as an company out there.

Of course it does. And much more then people outside of the company think. As long as people like Eric Schmidt are on board there will be no shortage of hypocrisy and backstabbing.

Disclaimer: I work for TAGA (The Arrogant Google Assholes)

That article doesn't say what you think it says. It starts with an HR person tut-tutting about desktop sex. About the only example of overt empire-building it cites is Google+, and we know how that ended. It also cites examples of self-organization and un-management, where leadership emerges bottom up. Argumentative meetings with the CEO are pretty much the opposite of a backstabbing culture.

I wonder if it would have made a difference for GM to have pursued more moonshots in automobiles and transportation in general over the last 50-60 years instead of just operational & profit/cost efficiencies and incremental product improvements.

I too often find myself wondering this same thing. Anyone have any insight?

I work at GM and have read several books on the subject.

GM DID pursue some moonshots - see below.

In my opinion GM's great downfall was not pursuing continuous improvement. Top management had the belief that GM was the market leader and thus people would buy cars from the market leader. This led to all sorts of bad decisions in the service of running high-volume low quality vehicles.

V-8-6-4 L62 Engine (variable cylinder usage): It ran rough and didn't work very well - Later efforts worked much better and go under the name Active Fuel Management

EV1: some people loved it; it may have been before it's time

Quadrasteer: All 4 wheels can turn. People who bought this option loved it; not enough people bought it.

GM definitely had that attitude at some point.[1][2] I think cynicism, infighting, poor incentives[3], and poor attitudes smothered all of that.

In addition GM did a very poor job at improving the things you mention, especially product improvements. Toyota took a look at what GM was doing and trying to do, and then went and executed that vision with a very high level of excellence and urgency that GM was slow to respond to.

I do think GM now makes a viable (and in some cases excellent) product. It just took them a very long time to get back to that mentality that they had in the 20s-50s.