<story><title>Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-08/google-makes-so-much-money-it-never-had-to-worry-about-financial-discipline</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>matwood</author><text>Reminds me of Valve&amp;#x27;s no manager management style: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2012-04-27&amp;#x2F;why-there-are-no-bosses-at-valve&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2012-04-27&amp;#x2F;why-there...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you have a lot of money, a lot of things work because you have a lot of money. You often see the same thing with people trying to emulate pro-athletes training methods. A genetically gifted pro-athlete can often succeed in spite of their training, and not necessarily because of their training.</text></item><item><author>Periodic</author><text>So many companies try to emulate how Google works.  There are multiple books, hundreds or thousands of articles.  People speculate on the perks, the review structure, the hierarchy, the autonomy.&lt;p&gt;However, when other companies try to imitate Google they always fail because they&amp;#x27;re missing a crucial piece:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Billions of dollars in ad revenue&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Google doesn&amp;#x27;t work the way it does to be successful.  It works that way &lt;i&gt;because&lt;/i&gt; it is successful.&lt;p&gt;I found this no more evident than when I worked on Google Search itself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thearn4</author><text>The endless spigot of cash from Steam is something that does enable Valve to take some very experimental leaps (VR, Steam machines, SteamOS, etc.)&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, Valve also has the same shortcomings as google: practically zero customer support, and an un-curated app platform full of shovelware (finding gems on the Steam and the Google Play &amp;amp; Chrome Web Stores can be tricky).&lt;p&gt;But there is still a ton to admire in both organizations.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Makes So Much Money, It Never Had to Worry About Financial Discipline</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-08/google-makes-so-much-money-it-never-had-to-worry-about-financial-discipline</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>matwood</author><text>Reminds me of Valve&amp;#x27;s no manager management style: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2012-04-27&amp;#x2F;why-there-are-no-bosses-at-valve&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2012-04-27&amp;#x2F;why-there...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;When you have a lot of money, a lot of things work because you have a lot of money. You often see the same thing with people trying to emulate pro-athletes training methods. A genetically gifted pro-athlete can often succeed in spite of their training, and not necessarily because of their training.</text></item><item><author>Periodic</author><text>So many companies try to emulate how Google works.  There are multiple books, hundreds or thousands of articles.  People speculate on the perks, the review structure, the hierarchy, the autonomy.&lt;p&gt;However, when other companies try to imitate Google they always fail because they&amp;#x27;re missing a crucial piece:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Billions of dollars in ad revenue&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Google doesn&amp;#x27;t work the way it does to be successful.  It works that way &lt;i&gt;because&lt;/i&gt; it is successful.&lt;p&gt;I found this no more evident than when I worked on Google Search itself.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rqebmm</author><text>Valve also has the prestige of being a high-profile gaming company, which brings with it choice pick of engineers. A &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; enterprise app consulting shop doesn&amp;#x27;t have the luxury of every computer geek clamoring to work there.&lt;p&gt;If you have first-pick of incoming talent, it makes sense that you can get away with giving those employees an extremely high degree of autonomy.</text></comment>