Re:Google is shutting down Stadia
by cmrdporcupine on Thursday September 29, 2022 @05:21PM
(#33027375)
The whole stack was great. Google engineers worked their asses off on it. Very smart people throughout. The management was awful though.
In the 10 years I was at Google I never really had to face a "crunch" situation but there I was right before Christmas working til midnight on the very tiny bit of Stadia I had somehow been dragged into despite telling my manager I didn't want to be anywhere near it because it was radioactive (My rule learned the hard way was always stay away from the "hot" project at a company like Google. It just becomes a feeding frenzy of empire building and egos, and steady incremental contribution will get you nowhere.)
I had it much better than most though. If I recall: The original app setup (integrated into the existing Home app) was tossed at the last minute. The entire out of box process for the controller redone in the process. In literally the last few weeks before ship date.
The controller folks I knew were heroes. It's sad to see their hard work thrown away.
There's no way Stadia in its entire existence made enough revenue to cover the sheer number of SWE-hours put into it, especially the spent SWE-hours caused by last minute product changes; which nobody further up ever had to pay a consequence for.
In the 10 years I was at Google I never really had to face a "crunch" situation but there I was right before Christmas working til midnight on the very tiny bit of Stadia I had somehow been dragged into despite telling my manager I didn't want to be anywhere near it because it was radioactive (My rule learned the hard way was always stay away from the "hot" project at a company like Google. It just becomes a feeding frenzy of empire building and egos, and steady incremental contribution will get you nowhere.)
I had it much better than most though. If I recall: The original app setup (integrated into the existing Home app) was tossed at the last minute. The entire out of box process for the controller redone in the process. In literally the last few weeks before ship date.
The controller folks I knew were heroes. It's sad to see their hard work thrown away.
There's no way Stadia in its entire existence made enough revenue to cover the sheer number of SWE-hours put into it, especially the spent SWE-hours caused by last minute product changes; which nobody further up ever had to pay a consequence for.