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gerdesjyesterday at 11:45 PM1 replyview on HN

I would encourage this sort of thing in my company. I'm not google. I'm not legally beholden to anyone except myself and my business partners ... and my own sense (which is worryingly odd!)

Google can never be exciting or interesting evermore by design and intent. They dived on in and went "money" full on. They exist to generate revenue for their shareholders. They dumped the "Don't be evil" thing without blushing.


Replies

Grombobuloustoday at 2:53 AM

I think your encouragement is admirable but could be interpreted as naive.

For one thing, the author of this tool used Google trademarks (the logo) to represent the project.

If you are even slightly larger than a mom and pop small business you pretty much have to defend that trademark or else you risk losing it.

But, okay, fine, you can just tell them not to use your trademark and have them say it's not an official thing. No big deal.

The other thing I would say is that growing beyond even a relatively small number of employees fundamentally changes everything. Once you don't have that face to face with all your employees that trust level between you and them can't possibly be the same, no matter how good your intentions are. Even a modest company with 25-50 people...how well can you know those people, really? Even if you try your hardest to know them?

Once you have a certain number of employees you run into probabilistic realities.

Google has over 100,000 employees, which means statistically speaking a few of them have committed or will commit homicide. The idea of "we trust all our employees" can't exist from a mathematical perspective, even if the leadership happens to be the nicest people in the world who really want their employees to have freedom and autonomy.