Ex-Googler: 'Tons of Engineers' Want to Leave Google | Hacker News Reader

Ex-Googler: 'Tons of Engineers' Want to Leave Google

finance.yahoo.com

118 pointsethana54 comments

The article is a bit too fluffy for my taste, but in observing my own online behavior, I think that this part is key:

> People are searching for products on Amazon, rather than using Google.

My own habits suggest that I have a "looking for something to buy mode" and "looking for information mode". When I want to buy something, I go straight to Amazon (and sometimes New Egg). When I want to look for information, I use Google. These two modes don't seem to intersect very frequently, if at all.

^This. Until I read this comment I hadn't consciously realised that's what I was doing, and I'm not sure I know when the division came as I used to use Google for everything.

Can you remember when you split into the two different modes?

Edit: Spelling.

When they broke Shopping is when I switched.

You know, that's probably it. It used to be so useful, and with Amazon getting stronger I can't see a good reason why they would have b0rked it so much.

Anybody got any ideas why Google Shopping isn't getting more love?

because Google always likes to do things the most difficult way possible. They've screwed over too many products over a long period of time for it to be surprising anymore.

Because they transitioned to paid inclusion so the prices and objectivity of the results are not as reliable.

Weird. I'm pretty sure my usage of Amazon predates Google Shopping.

This implies you don't do any research for products other than amazon reviews and official marketing material. I think this is typical for some kinds of products, but not necessarily typical overall.

That's a good point, but from my own behavior: when I'm ready to buy, I go search for that product on Amazon. My general thinking is "Well, now I'm ready to get a better deal on this thing."

And if people aren't clicking "buy" through Google's ads, then that's really... not good.

> I think this is typical for some kinds of products, but not necessarily typical overall.

I think it's typical for most products people buy. I'll do research and compare products/vendors when I'm purchasing a TV, but if I need sponges for the kitchen I'm just going to type "sponges" on Amazon and [most likely] purchase something from the first page of results.

We all purchase a lot more sponge-like products than TV-like ones.

True, but more advertising dollars are spent on TV-like products.

Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I would totally look for sponge reviews before buying them.

You can read the sponge reviews on Amazon:)

Ditto except I've recently begun opening a new tab and googling the product (once found) to price compare.

I prefer amazon for ease of use (prime, trust & not having to key my personal info) and security (less footprint giving my credit card out)

Im the same way. I think, in my 14 years of using google, I clicked through for one ad on a laptop charger. Their revenue...I still just dont get it.

My mom makes this spinach lasagna. I emailed her asking for the recipe, and she sent back "Just google spinach lasagna and click the first link". It was an ad from Kraft's website. She's probably clicked it dozens of times.

The top keywords, by the price Google charges to advertise on, are: insurance, loans, mortgage, attorney, credit, lawyer, donate, degree, hosting, claim, conference call, trading, software, recovery, transfer, electricity, classes, rehab, treatment, and cord blood.

None of those are the sort of term you type into Amazon.

Give Bezos time.

cord blood? Who buys ads around that, and for what?

Edit- Apparently cord blood banking is a thing.

But what percentage of income do those keywords add up to? Eating away at the bottom can still cause quite a bit of loss.

Those are bigger ticket items with bigger margins than, say, a pair of sneakers so it makes sense for the market to command a higher price for those ads. Would be better to see total amount spent on ads for different categories, trended over the last 10 years.

I feel like I'm in a thread from 2007.

People go to Amazon to search when they want to buy something? What a new trend!

Think back to when this started for you. I bet you quite a bit it wasn't recently.

Just to give context (it's easy to forget how quickly time goes by): Amazon Prime is turning a decade old this year.

Google is scared shitless of Amazon for e-tail (from my discussion with people at Google) and at first this notion didn't make sense to me. Dig further and you'll realize the following: as more and more people rely on Amazon to buy physical things, they'll eventually rely on Amazon to buy everything. Google is one step removed from people's online purchasing behavior.

People were leaving right after bonuses years ago. Think about it. First, it's a huge company, so there are going to be a decent number of people who want to leave at any given time. And unless you're utterly miserable, it's pretty foolish to leave right before you get a big bonus. Just wait it out and then go. It's possible there's an uptick lately, but this is far from a new phenomenon.

The article explicitly states that this is an "ancient cycle." Apparently, there is (or will be) a significant uptick this year with a decreasing stock price.

Working at Amazon, I can say that there's always a suspicious uptick in ex-Microsoft hires in late-summmer/early-fall, just after Microsoft gives out their bonuses.

I think you're absolutely right to attribute that to just being a normal cyclical thing. I know that whenever I get wanderlust I look to my RSU vesting schedule.

Many companies, when you say "gee, I'd love to start two weeks from now, but my next batch of RSUs doesn't vest / bonus doesn't come until two months from now.", will cover what you're losing out on (or will meet you halfway) with a hiring bonus or something like it.

Don't let a little vesting keep you from grabbing an opportunity. Two-months-from-now you will probably look at that next chunk of vesting RSUs the same way Right-Now you is looking at the upcoming one. Meanwhile, things are moving really fast at small companies and Two-months-from-now you missed a couple months of it.

The article to me seems much like the one I read back in 2012, when people were predicting Google's gradual downfall. It's important to note that Google will lose people and so will other companies. Talent will migrate out and come in. The article seemed too biased to me. Google's search share might be shrinking, but they have too many strong businesses.

In short, there's nothing new in the article, the same has been said before about Google and many other firms.

> Google's search share might be shrinking, but they have too many strong businesses.

90% of their revenue[1] comes from advertising (and 75% of that from ads displayed on their own properties) - I'd consider that one strong business (selling ads), not "many" (selling ads on search, selling ads in gmail, etc.)

[1] https://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html

Do you consider the major media networks (NBCUniversal, CBS, News Corp) to be in one business - selling ads - or do you consider them to be in many (selling ads on TV, selling ads on websites, selling ads on Internet Video, selling ads on Hulu, selling ads in magazines)?

NBCUniversal makes money through making movies, amusement parks, and selling ads. CBS Corporation is mostly ads, but they're owned by National Amusements so it's really films + ads. News Corp owns HarperCollins (and books seem to be the one thing companies have never decided to stick ads in) so books + ads for them.

But to answer your real question, yes I consider all of their "ad businesses" as one business (selling ads). Perhaps I could be convinced that selling ads in magazines is a completely different business than selling ads on TV - but I think it's quite a reach to suggest selling ads on search is completely different than selling ads in gmail.

An engineer is certainly not a good person to make such claims. A director or an executive, yes.

Regardless, what I've observed is that a lot of Googlers interview around, get an offer from a company and then they use that as leverage to get pay raises at Google because promotions are extremely competitive and scarce.

And it works great.

Well, it's a little sketchy. It's never clear from an employer's point of view why someone is looking around. People look around for other jobs for lots of reasons.

If they're not satisfied at work due to reasons other than money such as lack of autonomy or boring projects and their employer offers them more money then they'll stick around without solving the underlying issue. It's very hard for an employer to distinguish which case an employee falls under. Does this person just want more money or do they hate their job?

When the time for promotions or layoffs rolls around, this kind of stuff is a factor. Maybe not on purpose, heck, maybe not at google. But for two identical candidates - except for this one trick for a raise, people are going to tend to pick the loyal one for promotion.

Loyalty doesn't count for anything in the modern workforce except it does. It factors into people's decision making in spite of their best intentions, because it's part of biological wiring.

It's unfortunate that poeple can't get raises without leverage. Using leverage brings all these other factors in to play.

There is another bit of biological wiring that skews your analysis - proof of value. Two employees, A is loyal, B has a competing offer? Well loyalty is good but I'll wager that most managers would assume that B's competing offer means they are "better" and give B both the promotion and the raise, while A gets to go on being loyal (or in management-speak, a sucker) for another year.

Same reason it is easier to get a job if you already have a job.

I can't help but feel there is something fishy about the article. It didn't feel like a genuine write up.

It doesn't help that it's appearing on Yahoo Finance and being written by Marrisa Mayers' autobiographer.

This article should've been named: "Yahoo!'s attempt! at! Fear! Uncertainty! and! Doubt! against! Google!"

I doubt they would start charging developers to publish to their app store. This seems completely out of line with the rest of their Android strategy. I wonder why the VC said it?

Google already do charge, don't they? From memory there was a one-off $25 fee to sign up to sell on the Play Store.

But even if they did, it wouldn't contribute significantly to the company's revenue - not sure how many developers Google has, but Apple has 380,000 registered developers[1], and even if they all pay $99/yr, that's 'only' $38 Million. Against Google's approx $60 Billion revenue[2], that doesn't move the needle at all.

[1] https://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/

[2] https://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html

I don't think they mean an annual subscription. I assume they mean taking a larger share of the purchase price of apps, in-app purchases, and maybe even ad revenue. In the 12 months prior to June, developers earned $5bln for these things (Apple paid out north of $7.5bln in the same period) [1].

Google used to give developers 70% of app purchase revenue, give carriers 25%, and keep only 5% for themselves. A year or so ago they moved to keeping almost all of the non-developer pie. That pie is closer to $2bln than $38mln. But if they're going to take more, the only place left to take it from is developers. I can't believe that's going to go over well for them, but I already can't believe carriers rolled over so easily despite giving Google things it really needed, like carrier billing for app purchases.

[1] http://www.beyonddevic.es/2014/06/25/what-we-learned-about-g...

There are some fluffy problems with the article..

If you look back at cofounder and CEO comments before the release of iphone 1.0 and android 1.0 you will find that not only Did Google Know of the decrease in ads per mobile but that they did plan to offset that via the mobile app store and other efforts..

If you compare the mobile app store revenue to any decrease in ad revenue you get a very different pciture than the article portrays

I could be genuinely concerned about the future of Google at this point. A trivial comparison would be to the position of Microsoft in the 90s, but it doesn't quite hold up for the very simple reason Microsoft diversified their revenue streams, crucially into business back office processes, wildly successfully.

Google's search dominance really is "all they have", and while it is something others would practically murder for it is now under assault from many angles such as Siri, Cortana, and most viciously Amazon and Facebook. Heaven forbid Apple really do launch a search engine because then it will be trouble. There is simply no way Google will be able to monetise Android devs more because iOS still has the lion's share of the valuable customers.

More and more people are realising that the PR does not match reality (both potential talent pool and end users), and this is eroding the Fluffy Google Halo very fast. Since Page became CEO it feels like even the pretense of it being some sort of happy-go-lucky hackathon that occasionally produces a wonder business has disappeared, and let's face it, that image is precisely why they managed to slurp up so much talent in the first place. Once such people get enough money to feel secure then yes, they are going to jump.

"Heaven forbid Apple do launch a search engine.." . No they wont and Siri is your search engine for future.

> Specifically, this VC predicted that Google would soon begin charging [...] developers more (or, as much as Apple) for selling apps through the Google app store.

He seriously believes Google would do this, after the Play Store is already completely flooded and discovery is still extremely lacking compared to desktop search? I don't believe it.

Does anybody know if there is a way to force Amazon to only show Prime products by default? Sometimes the cheapest is less than the prime price but the free shipping is like 2 weeks vs 2 days.

I know that I can click "Show prime only" after I've done the search, but for people like my wife, they typically just click the first cheap listing and see it is says free shipping. But then the order takes 2 weeks instead of 2 days to arrive.

Having to sift through all the listings is annoying.

The idea that people are doing product searches elsewhere should be deeply troubling for Google. Product keyword ads are arguably the most valuable keyword searches. Any "buying keyword" is the most valuable. It's a huge deal.

I don't.

Why don't they leave then?

Dignity is dead...

Did you read the article? Bonuses that they only receive if they stay for a certain period of time.

... and?

And money is important to them?

And you know what dignity is?

I think you just burned what little you had left here.

Maybe it's the end of the vesting period for the previous year's bonus?

Think about it. You're tired of your job and interested in making a change. It's, say, August. You know that if you wait until the end of January you'll get your annual cash bonus, say, $30K. Also, between August and the end of January you get a few stock vesting periods which amounts to, say, another $50K. So you can leave now, or you can stick it out for a few more months and get $80K to help smooth your transition.

What do you think you'd do? If you're the sort who doesn't need money and only works for the challenge and the chance to contribute to something important, you would probably just leave. If your paychecks actually matter to you, the $80K (plus whatever your salary is during the interval), will probably make you decide that waiting a bit is a good idea.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com