Google engineer Steve Yegge apologized in a recent blog post for his rant about Google+ and Amazon that he accidentally published to approximately 2,000 of his followers.
“Last week I accidentally posted an internal rant about service platforms to my public Google+ account (i.e. this one),” Yegge writes. “Bagging on the company, even in an internal memo, was uncharacteristically unprofessional of me. So I’ve been feeling pretty guilty for the past week.”
In his 5,000-word post that he intended to publish internally for other Google employees, Yegge pinpoints several flaws at Amazon, including inconsistent hiring practices, weak operations, indifference to charities and low pay compared to other companies. He also describes Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, as a micromanager fanatic.
Yegge then continued his rant about the company’s inability to understand platforms.
“Google+ is a prime example of our complete failure to understand platforms from the very highest levels of executive leadership (hi Larry, Sergey, Eric, Vic, howdy howdy) down to the very lowest leaf workers (hey yo),” Yegge wrote. “Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.”
“Last week I accidentally posted an internal rant about service platforms to my public Google+ account…. Bagging on the company, even in an internal memo, was uncharacteristically unprofessional of me. So I’ve been feeling pretty guilty for the past week.”
In his apologetic post about his Google and Amazon rants, Yegge notes that there were no repercussions at Google for his post except for his employees laughing at him for “having committed what must be the great-granddaddy of all Reply-All screwups in tech history.”
According to Yegge, Google is now trying to find solutions to the topics that were raised in his post. He confirmed that he actually meant it when he wrote, “Google does everything right.”
Yegge admitted to feeling guilty about the how he represented Amazon, and describes the company as “one hell of an interesting place” in his new post. He shares a story in which he recalls the disappointment and defeat that he watched many of his former employees face after giving presentations to Bezos, and explains the different tactics he used to prepare for his first presentation with the Amazon CEO.
He continues his story by sharing advice on how to present to someone like Bezos who he previously characterized as an obsessive micromanager, but in his new post, now exalts for his brilliance, referring to him as an “incredibly smart person, arguably a first-class genius.”
This is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Accordingly, it is difficult to figure out when to end it. But then, this is dummy text. It is not meant to be read. Period.
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon