As a person who views our current method of organizing firms in our economy as deeply flawed, the conclusion of this article is incredible to me. The author goes out of their way to describe a structural problem as being regularly blamed on the wrong cause - executives - and then proceeds to blame it on a different wrong cause - engineers. I appreciate the point of the article as written, which I think is to encourage engineers to push harder against the grain when their plans for the product really are the right idea, but to me the very obvious conclusion is that the structure of the business is wrong.
That is an unsatisfying conclusion as the general structure of Google is unlikely to ever change, but it does seem correct to me.
The real structural problem is that the needs of the shareholders and by some extension the needs of the high level executives and managers at Google are simply not aligned with the needs of the users. This is why the “nudges” inch along in a direction which is often at odds with the needs of the users.
The solution to this broad class of structural problem in our economy, as argued by economists like Richard Wolff, is to build our economy out of firms which are largely cooperative in structure, where the workers and members of the co-op are representative of the users of the product or service. For example if your local water company is a co-op of users, with cooperative decision making power, the co-op isn’t going to vote to raise water rates unnecessarily against their own users.
A middle ground in many cases is unions. So if anything this article is unintentionally making a case for a tech workers union at Google. This would change the structure at Google in the most significant way currently possible under today’s legal system.
I think the idea that engineers should take more responsibility is a noble one, but it’s not the real problem here. The problem is the structure of the firm.
You don't think the local water co-op would raise water rates 10% to give themselves 10% raises? Unless literally every user is an owner, there will always be the incentive to extract as much from the general public as possible to distribute to the owners. Same with unions, they exist to benefit their members, not the general public.
Typically in utility co-ops, every utility user is an owner. My local power company is a co-op. I get a vote on who is on the board. I get a dividend from time to time. They waste an inordinate amount of money on feel-good marketing crap just the same.
Yes I am saying it would be a user owned cooperative. These are common. Not all users would be workers, but workers would be part of the same community and users would vote on pay packages. If the pay is so low workers quit and quality suffers, they will vote to pay them more.
The article is about nudges. In that context, the more you align the users with the owners of the co-op, the fewer nudges move the product away from the users. Depending on opportunities to change the structure, this effect can be very strong. For example in a utility co-op, a structure already in use in some places, the owners are literally the users and they wouldn’t raise rates on themselves. Note that isn’t employee owned. If you had an employee owned manufacturing facility, they’re less likely to pollute local waterways as they’d be polluting themselves.
The status quo alternative is elite ownership of the utilities and manufacturing facilities, where those individuals receive a large share of the profits which they can use to insulate themselves from environmental pollution or cost of living concerns.
The fact that co-ops aren’t absolutely perfect in all cases is not strictly a knock against them. The status quo is particularly troubled.
> I appreciate the point of the article as written, which I think is to encourage engineers to push harder against the grain when their plans for the product really are the right idea,
My interpretation of the article is different.
I think the author is merely drawing attention to a force that pushes businesses in a particular direction, without proposing any specific solution.
The article doesn't say he had an alternative design or vision he wishes he had pushed harder, or anything like that. In fact he's full of praise for Manifest V3, which he considers the most elegant technical solution to a real problem, which he considered an indefensible security and privacy risk.
Right. I read it as merely an argument again “this thing Google did to be evil.”
It’s more complicated than that and there’s no way to discuss things if someone takes that stance.
The article wasn’t trying to convince you the changes was good or bad.
People can do what they see as the right thing (limiting plugins) for the right reason (they had WAY too much access to data), and despite no evil being intended or agenda to protect the ad business existing, people come to that conclusion.
This facts are just all more complicated than the common talking points you see. That’s it seems to be trying to show.
I agree. As the article says, organizations give an "easier road" to projects that help the bottom line; also they give an "easier road" to people who will promote the bottom line, with fewer ethical qualms, and reward people for becoming more like that. The cause of the problem is the organization and how it's aimed.
In that sentence? That was talking about my interpretation of the OP, which suggests individual engineers advocate for themselves in traditional organizations when they believe in their ideas. So it would be the individual engineer deciding if they believe in their idea, though in traditional orgs it would be the managers that have some say in what gets implemented.
However I also see people respond to me when I talk about co-ops who somehow think I want to be Joseph Stalin, where in the imagined case they are skewering me for wanting all the decision making power. But that is a fantasy as the whole point of a co-op is to have more diffuse decision making power than under traditional orgs!
That is an unsatisfying conclusion as the general structure of Google is unlikely to ever change, but it does seem correct to me.
The real structural problem is that the needs of the shareholders and by some extension the needs of the high level executives and managers at Google are simply not aligned with the needs of the users. This is why the “nudges” inch along in a direction which is often at odds with the needs of the users.
The solution to this broad class of structural problem in our economy, as argued by economists like Richard Wolff, is to build our economy out of firms which are largely cooperative in structure, where the workers and members of the co-op are representative of the users of the product or service. For example if your local water company is a co-op of users, with cooperative decision making power, the co-op isn’t going to vote to raise water rates unnecessarily against their own users.
A middle ground in many cases is unions. So if anything this article is unintentionally making a case for a tech workers union at Google. This would change the structure at Google in the most significant way currently possible under today’s legal system.
I think the idea that engineers should take more responsibility is a noble one, but it’s not the real problem here. The problem is the structure of the firm.