I'm feeling lucky
the confessions of Google employee number 59
by Douglas Edwards · first published 2011
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Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to an Edsel. Edwards, Employee Number 59, offers the first inside view of Google, giving readers a chance to fully experience the bizarre mix of camaraderie and competition at this phenomenal company. Edwards, Google's first director of marketing and brand management, describes it as it happened. We see the first, pioneering steps of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company's young, idiosyncratic partners; the evolution of the company's famously nonhierarchical structure (where every employee finds a problem to tackle or a feat
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…places like Inktomi. Just because a search engine starts small doesn't mean it can't gain traction or market, and if it has compelling enough features, it'll happen in a heartbeat. I suggest reading "I'm Feeling Lucky" by Douglass Edwards - the early chapters describe a lot of Google's anxiety of being killed by other search engines for one reason or another. It helps to explain why they'd be quick to adopt new strategies…
on “ Blocked Sites is discontinued” ↗…Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea by Marc Randolph (Netflix Cofounder) I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 by Douglas Edwards
on “Ask HN: Books like Androids:The Team That Built the Android Operating System?” ↗The Lean Startup - Eric Ries Essays (any) - Paul Graham I personally enjoyed "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59" by Douglas Edwards as well.
on “Show HN: Bootstrappers.io – A community for business bootstrappers” ↗…landed on its business model: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/when_big_businesses_w... See in particular John Battelle's "The Search" (2005), Steven Levy's "In the Plex" (2011), and Doug Edwards' "I'm Feeling Lucky" (2011). As for Facebook, there's probably less public documentation but I have been following/covering it from very early on and personally know a few of its earliest employees. Ads have never been…
on “Are you really Facebook’s product? The history of a dangerous idea” ↗By an amusing coincidence the announcement of Mayer's new job came the day after I finished reading I'm Feeling Lucky[1], the memoirs of "Google employee #59". Its author makes it easy to read between the lines and get the impression that Marissa Mayer was an aggressively disruptive incompetent who could do whatever…
on “Advice for Marissa Mayer from an ex-Yahoo” ↗Not exactly the same thing, but this does remind me of a quote from I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59: "I didn't trust Larry and Sergey as coders," said Craig Silverstein. "I had to deal with their legacy code from the Stanford days and it had a lot of problems.…
on “PG's Rarely Asked Questions” ↗…one-word imprecation to sum up any and all who stood in the way of their master plans. "Bastards!" Larry would exclaim when a blogger raised concerns about user privacy." From Douglas Edwards' book I'm Feeling Lucky: Confessions of Google Employee #59 (2011) Similar books about what goes on inside Meta are actively being supressed There was a time when the internet existed without these intermediaries The internet…
on “EU to legislate about Chat Control behind closed doors” ↗A Google search didn't return much. These are the ones which I know of: "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59" by Douglas Edwards "How Google Tests Software" by James A. Whittaker Any others? Edit: Clarification: I meant those who were Google employees at some…
on “Ask HN: List of books published by Google employees?” ↗…up on the spot... Later I found out that Sergey did this with everyone he interviewed. An hour wasted with an unqualified candidate wasn't a total loss if he gained insight into something new. From "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59" by Douglas Edwards, page 11
on “Hacking job interviews” ↗…stock. I didn't understand why they were so popular, given our limited female staff, until my cousin thanked me for the one I had sent her and added, 'They're quite see-through. Was that intentional?' -"I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee 59", Douglas Edwards, p221-222
on “T-shirts are currency” ↗…willing to waste a few hundred million impressions to reach the dozen or so people they might consider hiring... The page at the other end of the link had been written entirely by Jeff Dean[1]" -From "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee #59" by Douglas Edwards (July 2011) [1] http://labs.google.com/people/jeff/
on “How Elite Firms Hire: The Inside Story” ↗…up on the spot... ... Later I found out that Sergey did this with everyone he interviewed. An hour wasted with an unqualified candidate wasn't a total loss if he gained insight into something new." "I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee #59" - Douglas Edwards
on “The Most Revealing Job Interview Question” ↗"I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59" By Douglas Edwards Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0547416997
on “Sergey Brin's Resume as a Student” ↗…secretly taking people’s data, if folks find out about this, they’re going to be furious; we have to tell them. But the other side said, if we tell people what we’re doing, they will never forgive us. In I’m Feeling Lucky, Douglas Edwards, the first brand manager at Google, writes about a meeting where this argument was going on between the two factions. And Larry Page, the founder, was sitting there very quiet, listening.…
on “Shoshana Zuboff: 'AI is surveillance capitalism continuing to evolve and expand'” ↗