We don't have a Steve Jobs here.
October 15, 2011 10:36 PM   Subscribe

"There have been precious few people in the world, over the entire history of computing, who have been able to [predict what people want and deliver it to them] reliably. Steve Jobs was one of them. We don't have a Steve Jobs here. I'm sorry, but we don't." Google's Steve Yegge outlines why his employer is in trouble.
posted by Blazecock Pileon (6 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Posted last week -- mathowie



 
is this a double?
posted by ReeMonster at 10:36 PM on October 15, 2011


Too soon.
posted by bardic at 10:38 PM on October 15, 2011


I always thought Google was willing to throw stuff at the wall and hope that it sticks. The only thing they give a shit about (and, thus, the only product that is truly well-managed) is their ad platform. And it continues to make Google profitable, beating expectations.
posted by KokuRyu at 10:42 PM on October 15, 2011


Yes, this is a double.
posted by kenko at 10:42 PM on October 15, 2011


Microsoft started out as a platform, so they've just had lots of practice at it.

Facebook, though: they worry me. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure they started off as a Product and they rode that success pretty far. So I'm not sure exactly how they made the transition to a platform. It was a relatively long time ago, since they had to be a platform before (now very old) things like Mafia Wars could come along.

Maybe they just looked at us and asked: "How can we beat Google? What are they missing?"

The problem we face is pretty huge, because it will take a dramatic cultural change in order for us to start catching up. We don't do internal service-oriented platforms, and we just as equally don't do external ones. This means that the "not getting it" is endemic across the company: the PMs don't get it, the engineers don't get it, the product teams don't get it, nobody gets it. Even if individuals do, even if YOU do, it doesn't matter one bit unless we're treating it as an all-hands-on-deck emergency. We can't keep launching products and pretending we'll turn them into magical beautiful extensible platforms later. We've tried that and it's not working.

The Golden Rule of Platforms, "Eat Your Own Dogfood", can be rephrased as "Start with a Platform, and Then Use it for Everything." You can't just bolt it on later. Certainly not easily at any rate -- ask anyone who worked on platformizing MS Office. Or anyone who worked on platformizing Amazon. If you delay it, it'll be ten times as much work as just doing it correctly up front. You can't cheat. You can't have secret back doors for internal apps to get special priority access, not for ANY reason. You need to solve the hard problems up front.

posted by KokuRyu at 10:43 PM on October 15, 2011


It's a dooble.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:44 PM on October 15, 2011


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