Meet the new boss...
Here in handy reference form, is a quick comparison of my two most recent employers (I vaguely recall another Googler posting on a similar topic once). While the differences are great, there are some surprising similarities.
The Mercury News (1999) | Google (1999) | |
| 150 years as a profitable operation | 1 year as a non-profitable operation | |
Thousands of empoyees, many with more than 50 years of service | Tens of employees, most with fewer than 3 months of service | |
Well-defined roles, with 7 unions to enforce them | No defined roles and strange looks if you ask about them | |
Key decisions made around an imposing boardroom table by a committee with the publisher presiding | Key decisions made in the cafeteria line while a founder is loading his plate with baked organic tofu | |
All new products based on P&L projections for five years out | Most new products based on an engineer developing something Larry or Sergey thinks is cool | |
Products not released until perfect - this is the first draft of history and the newspaper cannot appear fallible | Products released as soon as they're checked for security and stability. We'll let users tell us what needs to be fixed | |
Smart, articulate journalists, who know what people really need, even if they don't | Smart, articulate engineers, who know what people really need, even if they don't | |
No tolerance for marketing, which is an unfotunate necessity, but taints the journalistic mission | No tolerance for marketing, which is an unfortunate necessity, but taints the engineering mission |
15 Comments:
I'll be the first to post a comment. As an HTML idiot, I can't figure out why there's a large space appearing between the top text and the table. Is there a 12-year-old out there who can give me some technical advice?
Hmm, that's weird. I have no idea what's causing that. (I'm 19, though -- must be too old.)
I bet that Google is a lot closer to the corporate structure of the Mercury News nowadays.
There are a bunch of br tags outside of your td tags in your html table. All those tags get rendered above the actual table. (why it works that way, I don't know)
Here's a fixed version of your page:
http://www.kylemulka.com/temp/xooglers.htm
-Kyle
Your page is CSS driven, and when two columns don't fit in the browser, one's gotta give and get pushed below the other. Something in your main column is making the column too big to fit. For example, your table. The html for that table is far from validate-able, but I'm assuming its final size stretched the width of the main column and pushed it below the right sidebar like it has.
I might be wrong, but it's just a thought. Comment on my blog if you have any other questions and I'll get back to you.
Nice blog by the way, I've always wondered about the lives of past employees of google.
e-man
Thanks everyone, especially Kyle. There really is a Santa Claus. I used your code, though not as nicely as you would have. I think I'm sticking to text and no tables for a while. This was far too labor intensive, even with my 17-year-old providing some grudging advice and a lot of eye-rolling.
Oh... and just for handy reference, Jason Shellen (formerly of Blogger), tells me nicely to RTFM.
oh uhm too late lol. Thought was the only reader at this hour :P Glad the problem is fixed. Hey kyle which editor did you use?
this blog is a good read. keep'em coming
Very cool as a current Knight ridder employee (Star-Telegram Fort Worth, TX). The comparison between Google(Software Company) and Knight Ridder(Newspaper) is spot on. I went the other direction myself from software house to newspaper. Keep up the posts it’s a great read.
Hi Doug ! Great to see you blogging about Google. I launched my own ex Google blog too in May this year (but in French).
Why don't we open a multi-hands blog of domestic and international ex-googlers ? It should be fun :)
My blog: http://franckpoisson.blogs.com/ from where you can email me.
I couldn't leave this blog without reading all the posts. Impressive...
Just came here from Matt Cutt's blog, I'm very interested in reading what you've put up here. Not so often you see quite such an eloquently written blog.
What I don't get is why there are some people saying this is sucking up to Google, and some saying that you hate them. Good work, anyway.
I retroactively empathize with you during your past few marketing jobs.
I used to work for a tech company east of the Mississippi that had a similar bent to it that Google had--brilliant, 3-Dimensional engineers, a hand-on, engineering-focused management team, but a culture that looked down on marketing and other business practices. Even though I had both a tech & marketing background, my role in marketing was viewed more as slumming than as anything essential to the company. Yeah, they'd pay lip-service and say marketing--and brand management--is important, but the day-to-day actions and water-cooler talk didn't demonstrate that. The prevailing belief was that the creative engineering culture would be dilluted by the business culture.
I look forward to your solutions to this challenge. Thanks for your blog...
re: Smart, articulate engineers, who know what people really need, even if they don't.
So is it the engineers who don't know what people really need, or people who don't know what people really need? Either way, one good ethnographer with a few astute designers go a long way toward telling what the engineers need to build. No more guesswork.
lramirez said: "Hey kyle which editor did you use?"
Haha. Just a fancy text editor: Crimson Editor.
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