[manux]

> Demis now has a load of people reporting to him who previously were rooting for his failure

Having been in both places (Brain and DM), this feels so far from what I experienced that I must ask, what are you basing this on?

[sangnoir]

One of HNs failure-modes is inaccuracies get voted to the top if they seem correct to the majority of voters whose biases resonate with poster's.

Aside: thank you for asking. When I previously encountered incorrect top-level comments that I knew to be wrong (insider information), I'd simply ignore and move on. You've inspired me to push back more often.

[hazn]

This is a accurate reflection of biases of humans in general. A good story trumps truth.

[bookofjoe]

But not always! There are those among us who like nothing better than to double down in a flame war. One nice thing about having visited often over the past 7 years is that I know whom to avoid responding to (for the most part).

[return_to_monke]

this is actually what an AI would do!

[caminante]

You worked there and didn't know of any of the intra-company autonomy infighting that leaked into the news? [0] [1]

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/20/google-consolidates-ai-res...

[1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-unit-deepmind-triedand-f...

[sangnoir]

If you've worked at a large organization, you'll know the news can paint a cartoonishly distorted picture largely informed by the perspective of the anonymous sources, journalist and news organization.

[f5e4]

Could you provide a quote from either of these articles that supports the statement being questioned:

> Demis now has a load of people reporting to him who previously were rooting for his failure

[nr2x]

Good managers insulate reports from the politics, if you weren’t plugged into it it’s either your manager did a good job or it’s the only part of Google that isn’t 90% politics.

Signed, “didn’t work at brain or dm but was involved in a lot of alphabet level decision making”.

[uptownfunk]

This reads pretty normal for big tech corporate politics.

[khazhoux]

I never like the word “politics.” It carries the association of a bunch of people just playing backstabbing games to further themselves.

While this does occur, in general what I see is that with any large-enough group of people, there will be strong differences of opinions on how to steer the project to success.

In fact, I don’t think I can remember a single “political battle” that didn’t stem from a legitimate concern in how some project was being run and what they had decided to focus on.