Another note in the ongoing opera being written as folks leave Google, this one quite declarative. From a designer leaving Google and blogging about it:
When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because it sounds like the very cultural rift I predicted in January would keep the company from being a truly media (and human) driven player (not that it has to be, mind you, just that it’s in the media business and will struggle with this dichotomy).
I’ve often compared the paths of Google and Microsoft, so his closing quote caught my eye as interesting:
Google was a massive aircraft carrier, and I was just a small dinghy trying to push it a few degrees North.