<story><title>Why OKRs might not work at your company</title><url>https://svpg.com/team-objectives-overview/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>badestrand</author><text>This is objectively false as they have developed many of the most successful products on this planet. There are hundred of web mail products but gmail is the best. Google Maps is the best in class, other great products are Google Earth, Analytics, YouTube, Cloud, Android and many more.&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can find flaws in any of those but it&amp;#x27;s also hard to find better products in the same category. Google is not in any way &amp;quot;terrible at building products&amp;quot;, they are one of the best companies in the whole world in building products.</text></item><item><author>packetlost</author><text>This. Google seems to not have anyone with a cohesive vision or even anyone that knows how to build a platform or maintain a product. I personally would like to know what&amp;#x27;s going on with the product owners at Google, because it really seems like &lt;i&gt;none&lt;/i&gt; of them talk to each other.&lt;p&gt;Google is a fantastic &lt;i&gt;engineering&lt;/i&gt; company, but terrible at building products.</text></item><item><author>staticassertion</author><text>Google seems terribly run, frankly. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t use them as an example of good process, organization, or really anything other than that being early to advertising and being the internet&amp;#x27;s front page for ~20 years is a great way to make money</text></item><item><author>sukilot</author><text>Regardless of whether OKRs are meaningful or important (IMO they aren&amp;#x27;t), Google had OKRs in 1999, less than a year after founding, before AdWords. They didn&amp;#x27;t have notable product teams before OKRs.</text></item><item><author>gregdoesit</author><text>This is the key of the article:&lt;p&gt;“ Those successful companies aren’t successful because they use OKR’s.  They use OKR’s because it is designed to leverage the empowered product team model.  
And as I have tried to make clear with years of articles and talks, the empowered product team model is a fundamentally different approach to building and running a tech-product organization.”&lt;p&gt;Amen to this. Google is an example company that claims to have had great success with OKRs. But let’s not forget that before OKRs, they had empowered teams, a growing market which they disrupted and grew, and a unique culture.&lt;p&gt;My bet is they would have done spectacularly well without OKRs, using some other method as well. You can’t say that OKRs caused Google to succeed, and they certainly won’t be enough to turn a company or org around, like the author argues.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>quanticle</author><text>Android wasn&amp;#x27;t built by Google. It was the result of an acquisition. Same with YouTube. Same with Google Earth. Heck, even Google Docs was the result of them acquiring Writely.&lt;p&gt;Maybe it&amp;#x27;s more accurate to say that Google are one of the best companies in the world at &lt;i&gt;buying&lt;/i&gt; products.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why OKRs might not work at your company</title><url>https://svpg.com/team-objectives-overview/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>badestrand</author><text>This is objectively false as they have developed many of the most successful products on this planet. There are hundred of web mail products but gmail is the best. Google Maps is the best in class, other great products are Google Earth, Analytics, YouTube, Cloud, Android and many more.&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can find flaws in any of those but it&amp;#x27;s also hard to find better products in the same category. Google is not in any way &amp;quot;terrible at building products&amp;quot;, they are one of the best companies in the whole world in building products.</text></item><item><author>packetlost</author><text>This. Google seems to not have anyone with a cohesive vision or even anyone that knows how to build a platform or maintain a product. I personally would like to know what&amp;#x27;s going on with the product owners at Google, because it really seems like &lt;i&gt;none&lt;/i&gt; of them talk to each other.&lt;p&gt;Google is a fantastic &lt;i&gt;engineering&lt;/i&gt; company, but terrible at building products.</text></item><item><author>staticassertion</author><text>Google seems terribly run, frankly. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t use them as an example of good process, organization, or really anything other than that being early to advertising and being the internet&amp;#x27;s front page for ~20 years is a great way to make money</text></item><item><author>sukilot</author><text>Regardless of whether OKRs are meaningful or important (IMO they aren&amp;#x27;t), Google had OKRs in 1999, less than a year after founding, before AdWords. They didn&amp;#x27;t have notable product teams before OKRs.</text></item><item><author>gregdoesit</author><text>This is the key of the article:&lt;p&gt;“ Those successful companies aren’t successful because they use OKR’s.  They use OKR’s because it is designed to leverage the empowered product team model.  
And as I have tried to make clear with years of articles and talks, the empowered product team model is a fundamentally different approach to building and running a tech-product organization.”&lt;p&gt;Amen to this. Google is an example company that claims to have had great success with OKRs. But let’s not forget that before OKRs, they had empowered teams, a growing market which they disrupted and grew, and a unique culture.&lt;p&gt;My bet is they would have done spectacularly well without OKRs, using some other method as well. You can’t say that OKRs caused Google to succeed, and they certainly won’t be enough to turn a company or org around, like the author argues.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kerng</author><text>Gmail is by far &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; the best mail system - in enterprise settings it&amp;#x27;s possible the worst actually. Its cluttered, threads are unreadable,  tiny window by default to write a message... maybe it was hip 16 years ago, but that&amp;#x27;s past. Because of all these things I&amp;#x27;m not even using it in private setting either.&lt;p&gt;YouTube is full with ads and fake comments including spam.&lt;p&gt;I agree with the parent post that Google products benefited most from being first or being acquisitions - it&amp;#x27;s like Microsoft early 2000s or so.</text></comment>