I worked for Google for a decade and decided to leave after three years in Google Cloud. I haven’t seen a more dysfunctional organization in my life. We hired tons of people who had no context about the business or the tech, our execs have been completely replaced by TK, they are way too many annoying and disrespectful managers everywhere.
Wow that sounds unlike Google. Elaborate more?
Congrats on your IPO pop!
Well thanks, but pop is temporary, product innovation is permanent. Focus on the balance sheet.
GCP Enterprise focus will push Google culture in this direction of beurocracy over technical leadership. GCP has hired all Enterprise leaders , what else do you expect !
I totally agree. I worked at Google for 12 years as well. Google cloud is the worst of all orgs in every possible way. (There are other orgs bad at something or other, but cloud is worst in everything anyone cares) 1. I remember speaking to a number of folks in Google cloud (staff, senior staff ICs and Talks). None of them actually tried running a simple server in Google cloud. That shows their interest and commitment. 2. Almost everyone said, they knew Google cloud will grow, and they will grow with it. Easy promotions. Sadly, it was true. 3. Politics and race to hire bigger teams. Everyone wants to have a bigger team to do the same stuff. Unfortunately, the rewards are aligned that way. Honestly that is an industry problem. 4. Sales driven and copy cat. This is the saddest thing about Google cloud. Google was the pioneer in distributed computing. Technology wise Google is still the best. However, when it comes to Google cloud, the PMs and the leadership cares only about copying what Amazon has already launched. You will actually hear, people argue why the new technology is not useful for the rest of the world. Then Amazon launches a halfass solution, then Google PMs would want to copy it by the next year. They will want to copy the crappy parts as well, even if the solution we have is strictly better, we get to work hard to match Amazon's suboptimal solution. So, almost always Google cloud products end up being worse than amazon's. 5. Google cloud accounts for 35% of Google. That is, more than search + ads + maps combined.
How hard is it to move from GCP to a different organization? Would you even recommend joining Google if it's gcp?
Moving is pretty simple but I was a specialist in certain distributed systems topic and worked for technical infra for a long time. There are not many good options outside of Cloud if you are in my position.
What GCP needs now is a turn around expert. Some may disagree, but I believe they should put Urs Hölzle back as head of cloud. He did make a mistake betting against IAAS. everyone makes bad bets occasionally, but urs knows and understands developers and what they really need.
Nope Urs is more like someone who’s past his prime!
He had mentioned multiple times that IAAS will never make business sense, because infrastructure is a commodity business.
I'm joining Google Cloud this month. Wish me luck!
Look, despite all the negativity, it is not as bad. For example, if the only offer I had is Lyft vs Google cloud, I would choose Google cloud. I'm not sure how happy you are with your current job and I don't know how your company is, but there's a good chance you'll not be wrong joining Google. (Note, I left Lyft to a startup shortly after joining)
Pullingo - why did you leave Lyft soon after joining?
What is TK in the question posted by op
Thomas kurian.. The CEO of Google cloud
Ex oracle cloud head
Is the Google Engineering Culture truly what is required to make Cloud a commercial success?
Whether someone wants to work in it or not is a different story but does cloud really need to look like Ads Search or Core?
It doesn’t and it shouldn’t. It doesn’t justify them being this dysfunctional though.
Actually the reason they bought an enterprise guy is to be able to sell better and catch up to the leader.. the culture part and empire building is unfortunate though
Google boys not like the Oracle Indian top brass at GCP.
I am not a cloud expert, was/is Oracle a big player in Cloud.
And the intent of your question?
Are u saying Google Cloud is entirely a different company than Google ? like OCI is completely different form Oracle.
No but the culture is entirely different.
They are different then. A company is all about it's culture.