A Group without a Leader: Lost in the Digital Wilderness. No Signal, No Hope
August 10, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I read a story in a business magazine which may not make executives at a certain company happy. In fact, some of these executives may be thinking about some form of digital retribution. The story concerns Google Maps, a Google product/service which I find is pretty much unusable. Keep in mind that I am a dinobaby and dinobaby talons can’t hit the miniature graphics which cover Google maps like my ninth-grade acne. (Yeah, ugly.)
A high technology company’s project team. The group is lost. No one has any idea what to do or which direction to take. Their manager told them, “Rely on the digital maps your colleagues made.” How is that working out for you? Thanks, MidJourney. You have the desperation look nailed.
“Google Maps Has Become an Eyesore. 5 Examples of How the App Has Lost Its Way” contains a list of issues the author who probably has more online experience than I do identifies five issues with the much-loved service. The “love” refers to the revenue generated from Google Maps, not the “love” or lack of it from users like me.
These range from icon acne to weird behaviors with the street name “feature.” I am not going to romp through the issues the article flags. I want to focus on two which are deal breakers for me. In fact, the digital map thing recently forced me to purchase a trucker’s edition of a printed road map to the United States.
For me, Google has made it difficult for me (probably not you, dear GenX reader) to find the street view. I quite like finding a location and then being able to look at the physical surroundings. How do I address this need now? I use Bing Maps.
The second issue that drives me crazy is the omission of businesses (intentionally or unintentionally) because the business does not advertise. I have written about the Cuba Libre Restaurant issue, and it bedevils me even today. I was standing in front of the bustling Washington, DC, restaurant, but my digital map service did not show it. Objectivity, they name is not Googzilla, I say.
Let me shift gears and offer my hypothesis why Google Maps is almost unusable for me.
Imagine a team responsible for a mapping product. There are a couple of people who have some tenure with the team. A couple have escaped from a more dysfunctional team; for example, a failed smart software project. Plus, there are two new hires with zero clue how or why they are working on maps. These individuals are experts in data center engineering and never leave the servers and, therefore, don’t know anything about maps, just wiring diagrams.
Okay, now the group sits around and someone says, “What are we supposed to do?” The most senior person who is totally occupied about getting on a hot team focused on killing another vendor’s AI effort, says, “Let’s just come up with some ideas and implement a couple.” The group mumbles, plays with their mobile devices, chats with the data center wizard about slow response on the internal messaging system, and look out the windows. One hard charger says, “Let’s make a list of ideas on the whiteboard, rank them, and do the top two or three.” More mumbles. A list is generated. The six team breaks into two groups and the employees retreat to the snack area to talk about implementing the functions. The work is agreed upon and the coding is dumped on the two network professionals. These individuals write the code, make sure it doesn’t kill anything, and emails it to the others on the team. No one looks at it but everyone says, “Fine.” Done.
This work procedure evidences:
- Zero guidance from an involved, motivated “manager”
- The mental attitude of the engineers
- The indifference of the individuals to the idea of delivering useful, quality features.
Now the author of the article about Google Maps knows nothing about this modern management approach to adding features at an unnamed high technology company.
That’s why I don’t rely on digital maps. The printed map works just fine. Plus I have to stop and read the map. None of the figure out a map driving or walking, which can lead to a collision with a smart, self driving automobile or an engineer looking for work at another company.
Stephen E Arnold, August 10, 2023
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