Oh yeah, that paragraph really nailed it. Every place I've worked that's started to go downhill, it always started with executives, who never acknowledged their role in the problem or did anything to fix it.
I'm increasingly convinced that a large portion of our problems as a society is our absolute refusal to hold anyone in power accountable for anything.
Innovation no longer happens at these places. I can't think of the last thing Google did that was all that impressive. The only google products I still use are search, gmail and google maps. That's it. The same as in 2005.
These companies no longer need to innovate to stay relevant. They focus instead on stifling competition, lobbying politicians, marketing, advertising, dark patterns, etc. The good people eventually get shut out and shut down and leave or stop trying to influence change. The bureaucracy wins and eventually the music stops.
> I'm increasingly convinced that a large portion of our problems as a society is our absolute refusal to hold anyone in power accountable for anything.
The problem is power is too concentrated. Companies no longer need to innovate. This isn't just in tech. Everyone wants their assets to grow at others expense society be damned.
> Everyone wants their assets to grow at others expense society be damned.
Which is sad and short sighted, because the best way to increase the absolute value of your assets is to encourage large scale societal innovation. Grow the pie, not your relative share of the pie.
Sadly, I think there are too many people who would rather be king of the wastelands than relatively equal to all others in a post scarcity world.
We need to become collectively better about extracting these dark personalities from power if we want a good future.
> best way to increase the absolute value of your assets is to encourage large scale societal innovation
but from a company & shareholder perspective, this sort of societal innovation and improvement is not privately capturable. Back in the 70-80's, Bell labs did this sort of innovation, but they were funded directly via a gov't subsidy (because they are given a monopoly on telecommunications), and so management didn't have to care that the expenditure on R&D returned profit, as long as it is innovative.
I wish we could return to those days, but i dont believe it is possible today.
You might only use Maps, Gmail, and Search, but you've probably also:
- Used a ton of services hosted in Google Cloud (which Google built outright),
- interacted with data that was filtered through BigQuery or Cloud Spanner (which Google built)
- Edited something in Sheets, Docs, Slides, or Forms (all acquisitions, I think)
- Viewed a photo on Google Photos,
- Used Chrome,
- etc.
And that's before all of the stuff Google has produced that's open-source (Golang, Kubernetes, Flutter/Dart, V8, etc), or their AI stuff (DeepMind, AlphaGo, Brain), or their autonomous driving stuff (Waymo, which is probably a patent factory on its own accord)
Also, let's not discount that Maps has gotten a LOT of innovations over time. Is there another mapping service that can give you historical street view of almost any road in the US within seconds?
I worked there in 2015 and also disliked my experience, but Google definitely definitely moves the needle on stuff.
I don't think anything in your list is all that impressive or innovative, other companies do most of those things, or do them better. In any case, none of them changed the way I interacted with the world like Search did. If any of them disappeared, I wouldn't really notice.
Google's "innovations" are minor evolutions now. They have some moonshots, sure, if Waymo is succesful, but nothing impacted the world like search did. Historical street view? Really?
The whole GSuite (Google Docs, Google Drive, Etc.) have been very productive tools in my experience. (Although Google Drive was launched in like 2012, and Docs in 2006)
The Dart language and Flutter framework have been a rather innovative attempt at making cross platform apps.
But yeah, the amount of innovation at Google has certainly decreased over time.
> The only google products I still use are search, gmail and google maps. That's it. The same as in 2005.
Its even worse than that for me in that not only am I not using any new products Google is producing, but they killed off a number of the ones I did use (some which they produced, some which they acquired and killed).
So not only are they not producing products I care about to begin with, even if they managed to change this I'd be super hesitant to adopt the product because of the reasonable expectation they will kill it off after I start to depend on it.
Fundamentally, the C-level/senior executives are rarely connected with what's actually going at the ground level. And IME a lot of them simply don't care. They make decisions without understanding the impacts to the rest of the organization, and when objections or concerns are raised, they're filtered or attenuated at the middle management layer (due, usually, to a culture of fear) or dismissed at the top levels.
Put another way: When the decision makers don't feel the consequences of their decisions, those consequences will be ignored. It's a kind of corporate negative externality.
The issue, IMO, is the only accountability C levels face is from either a board or stock prices. Otherwise, nothing they do has any real impact on them personally.
Another major problem is the effects of their decisions are long delayed. Do something that slows development to a crawl and you still have a functional product for years (even if you can't add new features to it). Tying the original decision to the impact on the org is hard, and even harder since whoever made that decision isn't likely to want to take responsibility for it.
From my management experience the leaders are actually doing their job when they do this. Leaders at that level are expected to make strong decisions and to stick with them. It is thought better to have a leader make the wrong decisions firmly and adjust later with a well planned change than the business wobling down the road. So the senior executives are actually doing what the board expects/tasked them to do, keep the direction stable until the next planned/controlled correction. That is why it feels like you are talking to a wall. You are. What you see as a 'bug' the board sees as a 'feature' and the expected output of a C-level.
Bad analogy (I'm old) the light at the intersection is going to stay red until it is time to turn green, even though it would make more sense right now for it to turn green for you because you are the only one at the intersection. Bigger picture, having the lights on timers works better than everyone having a stop sign, even though it looks/feels stupid waiting at a red light with no one else there. The lights seem stupid sometimes, but it scales better than a bunch of stop and go stop signs. (Yes, I know that now lights have sensors, bad analogy now like I said).
TLDR; What if it's not a bug, but it's actually the output the board wants.
What should be kept stable are the goals the company wants to reach, not the details in execution.
When you notice your navigation app is sending you down a cliff, do you still follow that route? Of course not.
It's the same with organizations, except a lot of organizations are not intelligent and agile enough to course-correct. Just imagine what they could accomplish with better leadership.
I think there's also an element of overestimating how much power "people in power" actually have. Unless you're at the point in the org chart where you can actually move money and people you're stuck trying to keep your little zen garden clean inside a massive constantly shifting system you have no control over.
Power in an organization should probably be measured by "resources they have unilateral control over" instead of "authority." Because if all you have is authority you're a glorified manager.
There's an incredible amount of soft power in simple leadership, which is extraordinarily rare in both politics and business. Simply setting out an agenda in clear terms and getting people on board.
If you can do that, you don't need to micromanage all the levers yourself, because people will eagerly working with you towards your shared goal.
OMG yes. Leadership and vision are essential for success. There is an absolute shit-ton of asshat, visionless leadership in the world, and in my experience they act so entitled and worldly while they crush the business that feeds them. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
I highlighted this in TFA,
> Any team needs expert leadership to thrive, and expert leaders need support from the people they report to so they can do what’s necessary.
But isn't vision just holding firmly to a plan and sticking with it? The same thing people here are complaining about C-Levels doing? Rigidly plunging ahead (driving towards the vision) and not sidetracking from the vision instead taking everyone's input?
Not the same, no. Plans are tactical; vision is strategic, or maybe even above strategy. And in my experience, people really struggle to understand that some plans just aren’t compatible with the vision, and should be abandoned.
A good definition of power is from Hannah Arendt, it's "the ability to coordinate voluntary collective action". If you can do this you have power because you can't coerce everyone at once all the time.
>I'm increasingly convinced that a large portion of our problems as a society is our absolute refusal to hold anyone in power accountable for anything.
Well the problem is you try and then you disappear either because you self-select out of that environment or you get managed out because that's an easier problem for the manager to solve because it doesn't involve admitting they're the problem.
I wonder if presenting concerns to them in the form of problem-consequences would compel them to action.
If an employee is just complaining to them they are likely to just be annoyed, but if they are told about future negative impact then they would need to take some form of action (presumably).
> it always started with executives, who never acknowledged their role in the problem or did anything to fix it
Wow I see a lot of executive hate on HN. Sure some is probably deserved, but I have seen a lot projects and companies (after being brought in as a consultant to fix) where the technologists had a pretty clear business vision given to them and were left to their own devices with good budgets, platform, and process freedom fail miserably due to team dysfunction and all too often—incompetence.
I'm increasingly convinced that a large portion of our problems as a society is our absolute refusal to hold anyone in power accountable for anything.