Doubleclick has been Google for decades now. The difference is that (at least these days) most companies wouldn’t accept it if doubleclick ads had obnoxious pop-ups. But, they choose to have a Google sign-in form that has an obnoxious pop-up. Yes, it’s annoying that Google made an annoying login pop-up. But, much worse is that places like Reddit choose to go with that obnoxious pop-up instead of saying “we don’t want to force that on our users”.
Worth noting, this isn’t really a Google thing. It’s something other websites do to allow you to login with various other credentials: Facebook, Google, Amazon – Twitter used to be common. It’s just that Google is obnoxious because when say Reddit allows you to login with your Google account, the login widget Google uses is an obnoxious pop-up.
I argue that it’s nothing special.
I disagree given that as far as I know, Valve is the only company in the world that operates this way. I’ve worked plenty of places where the leadership talked about not having a hierarchy, but none of them could actually pull it off. When push came to shove, there were always bosses and those bosses had bosses, and decisions flowed down from the top. There are probably small communes where they’re able to make decisions using consensus, but Valve is a 1000 person company that’s a key player in a major industry.
The way he runs the company (flat-hierarchy), it’s mostly self-governing
Is it really? Or is it a dictatorship under Gabe, but he’s a benevolent dictator who very rarely uses his dictatorial powers? Are there any influential people at Valve who don’t share his vision? Or is he using his power to softly, maybe even unconsciously, ensure that everyone influential sees eye-to-eye with him?
Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing. I like Valve and I like its leadership. But, I don’t think there’s any chance it would survive his death or his stepping down.
This headline sounds a lot funnier if you assume “it” means Signal, like I did.