Two great reads, one about Google and the other about the financial world

[delta4]

Why I left Google - a simple quote: "The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus."

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs - quote: " ... I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it."

Have a great read

[JJMcClure]

Nice post.

This quote from the Google post sums up how I currently feel about Google.

"Google was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers."

The second I feel that's not true anymore and this is true instead:

"The new Google seems more focused on the commercials themselves."

I'll be done with Google faster than you guys can say 'I told you so...'

As for Goldman Sachs (who I worked for a long time ago funnily enough) I was waaaaaay ahead of the curve on that one and have long thought that "the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it." has been the case. We could lose all the financial futures and investment firms overnight and the world would be a better place. We'd have to find a new way for companies to source funding but the gambling on the value of those shares should be banned.

[crabfoot]

Is a picture worth a thousand words?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wandereye/4566103215/

[JJMcClure]

Is a picture worth a thousand words?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wandereye/4566103215/

Thing is, you're never going to get rid of advertising, as long as there are competing businesses it's necessary. In any case, trying to beat advertising is just dealing with the symptom and not the problem itself which of course is money, which in turn is necessary because of limited resources and our inability to work cooperatively. We've evolved to be greedy because it offers a survival benefit. That's a vast over-simplification but the point is that without radical changes to how we think and behave advertising is here to stay. It's only going to get worse.

Companies like Goldman Sachs are exactly the same, the only difference being the context and manner in which that greed manifests.

[bwelford]

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[tke71709]

Power corrupts and absolute power is kind of cool.

[JJMcClure]

That Goldman Sachs story was all over the front page of the Daily Fail today (noticed it in a waiting room). I guess Paul Dacre, the owner, doesn't have any rich buddies working at Goldmans.

I haven't seen the other dailies, it probably features in those too. Tomorrow it will all be forgotten and Goldman's clients will be cashing their cheques and rubbing their hands together waiting for the next greed fest.

greg-smith-said-nothing-goldman-clients-didnt-already-know/

“If you want to dedicate your life to serving humanity, do not go to work for Goldman Sachs. That’s not its function, and it never will be. … it is not charity work. Goldman’s clients are mostly very well-off. Smith’s lament that the bank no longer serves their needs above and beyond its own does not tug at our heartstrings.”

It wasn't meant to tug at your heart strings, way to totally not get it you greedy scumbags.....

[bwelford]

Hardly forgotten. Just check out the headlines today:
Goldman Roiled by Op-Ed Loses $2.2 Billion for Shareholders

[JJMcClure]

Hardly forgotten. Just check out the headlines today:

Yeah, a small bounce like the article says, give it a couple of months.... Even if Goldmans fell it wouldn't take someone long to fill the gap and it would be business as usual, that's what we do.

As a side note, I absolutely hate articles like this that blame everything on greed and divert the attention from the real culprit.

By it's very definition greed is bad. Greed is wanting more than you need and that's why our species has a pretty short term future, we're too stupid to lift our noses out of the trough long enough to see the writing on the wall. It had a survival benefit as we evolved but like many other behaviours, it's now working against us.

The real irony is that if we finally sort out our myopic view of reality, realise how vulnerable we are to die back, and get off this planet it will most likely be greed that causes it to happen.

[Saul]

By it's very definition greed is bad.

Wanting more than you need is not bad. Otherwise, we are all inherently bad. It makes no sense. Greed is depicted as bad in most social cultures (especially religion) but it's a big fallacy. That's why you get paradoxes like greed (a "bad thing") causing something good to happen, or you blame all problems on greed failing to identify and address the real problem.