Why Are The Biggest Tech Companies So Dominant? - Alex Kantrowitz
嘉宾：Alex Kantrowitz
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So, Jeff Bezos goes in front of this audience and there's probably more than 10,000 people in the stadium and you go, "What does day two look like?" And he says something like, "Day two is stasis followed by irrelevance followed by slow painful decline followed by death." In front of the whole company. And he looks out and he goes, "And that's why it's always day one."
Alex Kantrowitz in the building. How you doing, man? I'm doing great. Really glad to be on with you, Chris. Thanks for having me It's timely for me to have someone that reports on tech given that an hour ago from when we're recording this, Elon Musk just tweeted, "Tesla stock price is too high IMO." And they're now down 11%. That's right, Chris. But to be honest, anytime you we have recorded this podcast, whether it
was today, a couple weeks ago, or a few weeks from now, Elon would definitely tweet something absolutely ridiculous that would send his company in some sort of tailspin. So, uh it's not very surprising that he tried to tank his stock about five minutes before we hopped on here. So, um Elon's just going to keep being Elon. That's just how he does things. Elon did an Elon, didn't he? Yes, he did. Yes, he did.
He did an Elon. his Twitter is definitely fun to follow. I mean, you just just mostly because of the unpredictability about it. Like, he's got this valuable thing in Tesla he keeps playing with its future every time he hits that tweet button. Like, for him especially, maybe he should just, you know, have someone where he has to read the tweets aloud and then they type it into the box and then they send it and that might prevent some of
this stuff from happening, but it doesn't seem like he's really interested in that. So, No, yeah. I think a guardian of his Twitter. You know, like you get when you've got your kids and your kids aren't allowed to use the iPad for more than an hour a day or whatever. You're like, "Look, Elon. This this this tweet's got the word stock price in it. This means that it needs to go through five layers of security first."
Maybe you don't want to send that. But um until until he does his Twitter account's going to be a lot of fun to watch. So right. You're right as well. Despite the fact he's done that today, whenever this gets published, whenever this episode goes live, he'll probably done something that day too. So just go and have a look at Elon Musk's Twitter right now and see what he's done. I'd love to find out.
the same reaction. You'll be like, "Oh, that's ridiculous." Yeah, exactly. Anyway, we're not talking about Elon Musk today. We're talking about your new book Always Day One. Why is it called Always Day One? Yeah, it's a great question. So So Jeff Bezos gets in front of Amazon's employees a couple years ago. And he's got this note card with him. And it's at the end of this all hands And it's a it's a question submitted
from one of his employees. And it says, "What does day two look like?" This is sort of not the thing that you want to ask Jeff Bezos because he's been preaching this always day one mentality inside Amazon. And I always thought that always day one just sort of meant you get one of work as hard as you possibly can. You work nights. You work weekends. You work holidays. And if you take your foot off the gas
pedal, you're done. And so Jeff Bezos goes in front of this audience. And there's 10, I mean, yeah, probably more than 10,000 people in the stadium in Seattle. And he goes, "What does day two look like?" And he says something like, "Day two is stasis followed by irrelevance followed by slow painful decline followed by death." In front of the whole company. And he looks out and he goes, "And that's why it's always day one."
And you know, I saw this clip when I was getting deep into my reporting on Amazon. And my first view of it was, "Oh, he is doing this hustle porn thing. Work so hard, you know, work 80, 90 hours. Otherwise, you're out of Amazon." And if that was the case, I definitely wouldn't have had it would not have had it as the title of the book. Because I, you know, I do think that it's important to work hard. But I'm kind of skeptical
of these people that say you need to work 100 hours a week or you're not going to make it. I think it's possible to have a healthy work-life balance and still do okay. What I found out that always Day One means inside Amazon is that they're always inventing the next business line without any regard for what they have today and what they had in the past. So, for them it's about reinvention. It's about let's keep building new products.
We won't sit on our flagship products and wait for them to take us, um, you know, all the way because, um, you know, right now it's just impossible to do that. In the 1920s, the average uh, company would sit on the fortune uh, fortune 500 for 67 years. Today, it's 15 years. So, that's why Amazon and and the rest of the tech giants live in this always Day One mentality. They're constantly reinventing because they know
if they get too precious about the present and the past, they're going to miss the future. So, there's this this mentality that they have to continually be inventing themselves into the future or else they're done. And there's a culture that underpins it. It's not enough to have this mentality and say we want to live in Day One and just go about your business as a traditional company. What they've done,
the real ingenuity inside these companies is building the culture, technology, and process that's allowed them to keep reinventing, um, and that's helped them stay on top. How did you get such access to all of these companies? Like, who are you? Why why should you be the person that's able to peer into the most exciting, biggest, most innovative companies on the planet? You know, that is a great question and
sometimes I've been a bit surprised, but I will say that I'm a tech reporter here in Silicon Valley, live in San Francisco. So, I've spent the last 5 years here and I was reporting on tech in New York before that. And so, I have spent a lot of time meeting with these companies in Silicon um, and my reporting has, um, has been out there. People people recognize it, so, um, I think there might have been a sense that this book
was going to have an impact. And then one thing that, um, I have that most tech reporters don't is a background in industrial and labor relations, meaning that I've studied the nature of work and organizational behavior, human resources, how companies are run, how people are motivated. And I've brought that with me here. So, by having that background and then looking at the tech companies and saying
I want to write a book about how they how they work and what it means for the future of the way that we work and the way we lead companies, to me that must have resonated. Yeah, I think so. As opposed to I imagine some tech reporters must armchair philosophize about how the world might be as opposed to perhaps someone like yourself who's got more real-world experience of what actually happens within these companies, what a
culture like this means to the people who live it and breathe it and work it. That's right. Yeah, and I also worked in sales and marketing for 3 years before becoming a reporter. So, I have an idea of how like companies that sell products work. Um so, there's potentially that you know, that that background helps. But, yeah, my main philosophy as a reporter is don't get lost in narratives, you know, don't try
to make someone look good or try to make someone look bad. Just tell the truth. And, you know, I think that um I think that's that's helped me out in my career for sure. That's awesome. So, high-level, what's what's the book? You're covering different companies and looking at different uh cultures within them? Yeah, so it's all about how they put this always day one mentality into action inside their companies.
And so, they've done this in two in well, actually really three ways. One is have the mentality, right? If you have the mentality that you're going to try to milk your asset, your flagship business, and not worry about building another business, you're going to be in you're going to be screwed. So, they have the mentality. The second thing is they do they do is they view work differently than most of
us do. Right? So, I think that we need to separate work the work we do into two buckets. One is idea work. That's anything that's involved in coming up with new ideas and bringing it to life. And the other is execution work. You know, and that's anything that's involved in supporting the existing products that you have. So, we've gone through three major transformat- two major transformations, but three eras
uh in our work life since the factory era. You know, people forget the factory was only 100 years ago that was dominating our economy 100 years ago. Uh human existence is much longer than 100 years. So, we've had radical transformations in the way that we work uh in just a century. And our systems are like our cultural systems, our leadership systems are always a little bit slow to catch up, and they certainly have in this
point. So, let's start with the factory. In the industrial era, almost all the work that we did was execution work. There would be like one little bit of idea work which came from like the owner of the factory, right? Who said, "Let's make widgets." And what did they hire employees to do? All execution work. Just being in the factory making Okay, then in the middle of the 1900s, we transitioned to what's called the
knowledge economy, which all of a sudden employee ideas actually mattered. Um but because we were we were so process-heavy, we would have a teeny tiny bit of our time, and this is what exists in most companies now, a teeny tiny bit of our time on idea work, and still most of it was on execution work. Now, we weren't pushing buttons and hitting levers like we were in the factory, but we were doing similar um
work that that um wasn't really involved in creating anything new. So, that could be anything from moving numbers from one spreadsheet to another, or putting the same invoice into to buy at the same product at the same amount every week, or writing the same letters to the same people every week. I mean, anyone who's been in a job knows this, right? And because there's been there was so much execution work in the knowledge economy,
our ideas really haven't been taken into consideration by management. So, you know, I think that um anyone who's, you know, people come into companies, they're creative and they're filled with energy, and they want to change the way the company works. And they see all this opportunity because all this opportunity is there. Uh and they know we can do this and and launch this product line, and we can
change this process. And hey, what have you thought about connecting these two groups? And that energy usually lasts for the first 6 months or so until they're told, "Actually, you know, we don't we don't you're not really here for your ideas. You're here just to like do this one little task." And doesn't matter how much you can contribute to making this company better, we're not actually really concerned with
it. That's the message that gets sent. Because anyone who's brought these ideas inside the company knows generally people say, "Oh, you know, not really time for that." Or, "You know, you were hired to do this. Why are you saying Um and that's a factor of the fact that we're living in this execution work economy. Because even in the knowledge economy, most companies don't have the capability to take those employee ideas
and turn them into into life because they're spending all of their time supporting their existing products. Okay, so this brings me into what the tech giants do. What they've done is use technology, process automation, um and process optimization to take the amount of execution work they have in their companies down. And then make room for idea work. And then once they have their employees, you know, thinking of new
ideas and having permission to actually come up with ideas cuz that's a big part of it. They build system to take those ideas to decision makers and bring them to reality. And everyone's saying, "Why are Amazon Apple Facebook Google Microsoft so strong? You know, what are they doing that's illegal?" And they definitely have some nefarious behavior. But to me, the most important thing is culture. It starts with culture. It
begins with taking down execution work, making room for idea work, building the systems to turn those ideas into life. And that's why they're lapping the economy more than anything. It's just not something anyone talks about. And I think if the rest of us start paying attention to these systems, we're going to have a much better chance of competing in their world, competing with them, carving our own carving out
our own niches to be able to make this happen in today. And and that's sort of that's the point of the book is I I said enough of this, right? I I wanted to know the secret sauce. Yeah, teach me the secret sauce. That's right. So, I was just like, yeah, enough of this. I'm in Silicon Valley. Might as well let know what's going on so the rest of us can start to come and and, you know, act the way they do in our own companies
and, you know, start to make some progress in evening this economy out. Yeah, it's fascinating that the the friction of taking idea from in someone's head to the market is one of the major barriers that people need to get over. So, you got to have the capacity within the company um operationally, uh innovatively in in order to be able to deliver that, right? But then you also need to give have the talent and the time for that talent to
come up with the right amount of ideas and then probably iterate on them and get rid of the bad ones and get rid of the bad ones and get rid of the bad ones and then finally you come up with this super left field thing and that's how you end up with companies, you know, going through the book. It's mad all of the different stuff, specifically Amazon, but all of the companies have their fingers in lit- little different
pies like E- and you think, oh, why why are they It doesn't really seem to make so much sense. It's not part of their core business. But then you actually realize when you're constantly innovating and iterating on these different things, you these ideas are going to come to the forefront and you're the person that's able to bring it to the market. It's um it's mad. That's right. And it sounds so simple,
Give people more time for ideas and bring them to life. It's actually fairly complex um and that's what these companies do uh so well. And I can give you an example if you're interested. It is. So, you mentioned Amazon. Amazon to me does this in the in the most wild way that I had no idea about and actually hasn't really been reported about uh too uh and I got to see it firsthand when I was out in Seattle. Spent a good chunk
of two summers in Seattle hanging out um reporting on Amazon and cat sitting uh my friend mother's cat, Lady the Cat, who was was a good friend of the process and, you know, really Yeah, it was fun. Lady really kept me uh kept me going in you know those days I didn't know many people in Seattle. So it was nice to have that cat friend in that time. But I will say that okay. So Amazon so one of the things I would really want to
know is how does Amazon use automation not just in the factories and the sorry the warehouses but in their headquarters as well cuz I heard some rumblings that like hey people are getting their jobs automated in in in Amazon's headquarters and you don't hear that too often. So what I found out is that they have a program called Hands-Off-The-Wheel and Hands-Off-The-Wheel automates a lot of the traditional retail tasks for
employees in Amazon's retail division. So I'll explain. So typically when you you're company like Amazon you have these people called vendor managers and vendor managers are on the phone all day with with suppliers saying we need this many units in this these many fulfillment centers at this time at this price. So you got a vendor manager they're on the phone Procter & Gamble and they say we want detergent give us
like X number of units of detergent you know in these locations we want it at like 6:50 a unit and we want it there you know in installments of every other week or something like that. And Amazon built an army of people who are working with vendor who are working with vendors to stock their fulfillment And uh all of a sudden in the in the mid-2010s Amazon's like wait a second we have all this data that shows us what people
want. Actually our data probably knows better than the vendor managers what they want because it's precise. And um what if we decide that we could have our machine learning team work on this? And they figure out how to use computers to do all this stuff instead of people. And that's what they did. They started a project that was called project Yoda which is instead of the vendor managers doing this they would use the force and
the force being machine learning. That's so good. And yeah it's it's funny name and you know it's obviously like when you got nerds running the company you're going to get good jokes like that. Lots of Star Wars references yeah. That's right. Yeah. And then they they moved so they they worked on this a bit. They were they they moved uh moved it further. The program changed from project Yoda to hands-off the wheel, essentially taking
telling their vendor managers, you've been driving the car, now we're going to let the machine learning do it on its own. And a good portion of tasks inside Amazon right now are all being handled by a machine learning. So, things like ordering, inventory management, even when a vendor wants to negotiate with Amazon, they instead of picking up the phone, now start to like suggest prices in a computer portal. And Amazon says,
yeah, okay, cool, or no. That's all being done by machine learning today. I mean, in some in some cases there's human intervention, but very little. And actually, um, just citing like a figure to talk about the magnitude, one of Amazon's machine learning uh, head said vendor managers used to go uh, used to be able to handle 1,000 projects products. Now they can handle somewhere around 100,000. They later clarified
saying he was just ballparking, it's not really, but come on. Like that's that must be the, um, you know, in the range of the type of mag orders of magnitude more they're able to handle. Okay, so what happens now when all these tasks are being taken over by uh, machine learning? A dumb company would say, great, let's fire the vendor managers, right? But that's not what happens inside Amazon. So, these vendor managers are now all on
product and program manager jobs where they're basically professional inventors inside the company working to shepherd new ideas along. Um, and they have uh, a process inside Amazon called the six-pager, where instead of starting projects uh, with a PowerPoint, they start it where you write everything down in six pages, single spaced, 11-point font, no pictures. And it's supposed to be like, okay, you're going to write the entire
way that the project's going to look like, and we can get that to a decision maker pretty quickly, and doesn't matter which level you're in, right? Just a couple of forwards can get that thing to Bezos or his top lieutenants. So, that's the system to get ideas to decision makers. Okay, I'll just finish with a example to bring this all to Uh there's a guy named Dilip Kumar in Apple in in Amazon's pricing and
promotions division. And um Kumar spends a couple of years under Bezos as his technical advisor, uh meaning that he's shadowing Bezos all of Bezos' meetings and learning how to do the Amazon culture pretty well uh and and sort of how how does Amazon work inside, what is what businesses is it does it excel at. Typically, after someone finishes that, so he moves from pricing and promotions to the technical advis- advisor job.
Typically, when someone finishes that, they can take a big swing. Um and when he finishes with Bezos as his technical advisor, pricing and promotions is almost all automated. So, he's not going to go back and do that. So, he gets together with a bunch of people from the retail division and says, "We need to uh figure out a way to solve the most annoying part of shopping in real life with technology." And they decide the
most annoying part of shopping in real life is checkout. People don't like waiting on lines and, you know, scanning and all that stuff um takes a lot of time. They just rather pick their items and get the hell out. So, they started thinking, "Okay, maybe we're going to do a big vending machine." But, they're like, "Okay, that kind of kicks the can down the curb." So, they say, "Instead, um what if we use computer vision and
sensors and create a store where people could just scan in with a QR code, take whatever they want off the shelves, and then leave." And that is what became Amazon's Go store, which exists now in a bunch of cities. It's still kind of experimental, but I've used it in San Francisco and Seattle and I've tried it. Oh, it feels like you're shoplifting. It's unbelievable. You go in, you take the stuff, and you're like, "I'm out. I'm
free. I just got like nine Cliff bars on the house. Thanks, Bezos." And then 2 minutes later, they're like, "Nine Cliff bars. Here's Here's your receipt." And you're like, "Dang it, Amazon." You know? It's really this wild just wild experience. And Amazon, if you read the between the lines of Jeff Bezos' annual shareholder letters, like they're going to make this a more prominent part of their retail operation. Uh and so
because so it's just all the parts coming together, right? It's like you they've taken the technology, minimized execution work, made room for idea work, built a system to get ideas from people to decision makers, and when that system works as well as it does, you get another new invention from Amazon, which is Go. And this is sort of how they've been able to do so many different things from like a first-party marketplace to a
third-party marketplace to a logistics and fulfillment center, uh sorry, logistics and fulfillment operation to a cloud services division to a voice computing platform and a hardware manufacturer that does things like the Kindle and all of their speakers, and then not to mention an Academy Award-winning movie studio and a grocer. All of this is a it's yeah, this is a product of culture. And that's people think, you know,
there's this be when you don't see inside, there's this vision, oh, Bezos is the guy doing this. He presses a button, and that's how it happens. Actually, what he's done is built the culture to harness other people's ingenuity and bring it to decision makers, and that's how Amazon's been able to be so inventive. It's no surprise that that's so dominant, man. Like absolu- How can you How are you supposed to
compete with that? It's a company who has the most innovation, the most resources to bring that innovation to market. So even if you have the idea, they can probably execute the same idea as you've had, but quicker and better, and deploy it more through a a wider geographic range and all the rest of it. Um you mentioned about Jeff Bezos and PowerPoint. He banned PowerPoint by sending an email with just a subject
line. And it just said, uh like no more PowerPoint presentations allowed in meetings or something. I'd never heard of UiPath before. Can you tell us what UiPath is, please? Yeah, it's an automation company. So, a lot of times people say, "Well, the tech giants are doing this, so I could never do it." But, it's really not the case. And when we talk about minimizing execution work, making room for idea
work, there are off-the-shelf solutions that any company can use. So, in the introduction of the book, I talk about this company called UIPath. And what UIPath does, its software will watch your screen as you work. So, you sort of open up a session, and let's say you're like filling out a form, uh it can watch your screen as you work, and each button you click and each you know, keystroke you make, you just label
it to the um to the machine learning system, and it will remember how to do it on its own. Um and so, it can do it can fill out forms, it can send letters, it can move data from one spreadsheet to another. It can take over all this execution work that we do all day long, and you know, take it over via automation. So, um I went to this conference in Miami, and it was crazy, and CeeLo Green was the opening singer, which was hilarious.
He's going to the audience, "All right, if you got someone you need to say [ __ ] you do, now is the time." And they're all like, "Fuck you!" And I'm like, "You guys are like automating people's jobs? Like, is that It's kind of weird." Um but but and it was amazing to see how many people how many different industries were represented at this conference. Let alone the stuff that it can do. But, it was like you saw
automotive, you saw insurance, you saw uh you saw technology companies there, you saw banks. And you know, one of the things that I was striking to me was that this technology is available to people, clearly there's interest uh inside companies to to put it into place, but it's almost as if they're like driving blind. They're like, "Yeah, we want to automate." But, I I heard very little about the broader strategy of why to
automate. So, I do think that like if they're able to do this and put some of the lessons from the tech giants uh in place, then they'll be in much better Didn't you say that it's able to do hiring, it can sort hiring people, and then when it comes time to get rid of them as well that this UI path thing can send them their their letter. Yeah, so it's able it's able I know it's wild but it's able to write letters so
if you you know new hire letters are pretty formulaic. So when you have a new hire letter UI UI path can handle that. And so of course you can have a termination letter that it can do as It's there's just something about it. Oh man. And so upon kind of seeing this big overview obviously we've touched on Amazon but there's Google and Microsoft and Apple and stuff as well. And it sounds dumb but I I kind of presumed
that these big companies just operate the same way. You know, like when you get to the sort of size of these companies you'll have optimized everything and the size of the operation will have whittled away any ability to actually enact real change, cultural or operational. And you just kind of they were all they were all going to be super homogeneous but again upon reading and having a look at the different ways
that companies are deployed. Now the end result's still the same which is we need to be able to innovate quickly, we need to have a lack of friction from idea to deployment and we need to keep resources and blah blah blah and look cool and wear hoodies. But other than Hoodies are important. Hoodies are very very important. Um you know I mean like I was surprised. I would have thought it would have been
much more homogeneous. That's right. Yeah, so I would say in always do when I talk about how each one of these companies has has their own flavor to build it putting these systems into place. So we talk about Amazon it's the six-pager, it's the use of machine learning. Inside Facebook it's a feedback culture which is something that a lot of people might be surprised by. You know, Facebook isn't exactly the company that
you think is one that takes feedback very well given that people from the outside have protested almost every product decision that they've made and they've said basically like F off like I'm going to do this on our own. Yes, But inside the company there is this feedback culture and in the book I actually sit in on a day-long feedback training where people inside Facebook are taught to give and receive feedback.
Uh major meetings end with a request for it. There are posters around Facebook's uh Menlo Park offices that say feedback is a gift. And actually, the first time I met Zuckerberg, um I was surprised because typically your um your typical CEO briefing is the CEO will tell you, "Okay, sit down. Here's 25 minutes of me selling our new product." Then the PR person will sort of watch your facial expressions, maybe
allow you to ask one question, oftentimes just say, "Okay, and that's it. Have a good day." Is that what it's like being a tech reporter with the big dogs? That's right. Yeah, yeah, that's usually what it's like. But with Zuckerberg, it was totally different because we walked in there and he's like, "I want your feedback on this." It's like, "Okay." He has He has what you think? Yeah, he's he more interested in
listening to what was going on than selling. And that's when I started asking people in Facebook's orbit, "What's going on?" And that's how I learned that there's this feedback culture inside Facebook, where people are encouraged to bring ideas not only to their boss, but to their skip-level manager, and all the way up to Zuckerberg himself. And so, feedback a lot of people's people say feedback is
about putting people in their place, letting them know what's going to happen before the review, right? So, they're not surprised when they sit in there and you get like a meets, or you know, you you're not meeting your expectations. Okay, you should know. I think that's totally wrong way to look at feedback. I mean, it's good to not have your people surprised. But what feedback functions for inside Facebook is that it makes
sure that people feel comfortable sharing ideas with anybody inside the company, and then people inside the company feel comfortable receiving other And when Facebook has been told, "Hey, from people inside, actually we're not approaching this right." It has shown an ability to change and shift direction. And that's why it's gone from an online directory to a broadcast platform that operates largely on desktop to a mobile
app that's still in doing this sort of broadcast to all your friends, and now it's changing again, moving to more intimate networks like groups and So, this is all because of feedback. These aren't Zuckerberg's brilliant ideas on his own. It's and and people when they read the book, they'll see it's other people inside the organization pulling him aside and being like, "Hey Mark, we're missing this
important thing. We got to make a change." And he when he's listened, it's actually worked out pretty well for The CEOs are made to look like just these bottomless pits of innovation, aren't they? But it's actually the it's the coalition of everything that's happened below that. So, before we get on to a couple of the other companies, I want to see if you can if you can do this. I want to see if you can try and
personify each of the companies that you looked at into a character. So, for instance, I think Amazon would be uh kind of the jock in school, super clean-cut, dates the prom queen. Apple might be like the arty philosophy student who all the girls fancy, but he keeps himself to himself and spends his lunchtime sketching trees. How would you sort of personify some of the companies that you looked at?
Yeah, Amazon would be the MBA that's brilliant, uh but doesn't have very much empathy for other people. Okay, yeah. On the spectrum somewhere. Yeah, let's put him there.
who Facebook is um almost like the the the kid in high school that um everyone thought was perfect, you know, that was good at sports and good at talking to people and you know, was attractive, uh but also sort of missed part of what living is all about because everything was so easy for them. Uh yeah, yeah. No challenge. No challenge, yeah. So, that's kind of what I think. Google might be um Google
just your classic nerd, nerd with You know? Yeah. Nerd nerd with a half-sleeve That's right. Nerdy kid and you're like, "Oh, okay." But not like, you know, a nerd you feel bad about just like or that you know, okay, this person's going to be very successful. Uh Apple. Apple is like one of those high society people that, you know, speaks their own language and, you know, feels very comfortable around people
like them. Uh but most of this is but when they try to get out to most of they can't really relate. Microsoft. Okay, and then Microsoft is um someone who's had a glow up. You know, they were like an ugly teen and they became the hottest person that, you know, That's Microsoft. You've nailed you've nailed Microsoft there. I I absolutely agree. Um so, yeah, we've talked about Amazon. We've talked about the feedback and stuff in
in um in Facebook. What characterized Microsoft for you? Well, Microsoft is this amazing case study because they were in this day two mentality under Steve Ballmer, their former CEO. And back in the day all they cared about was Windows, their desktop operating system. And in the age where we were not doing any computing on the browser and using desktop computers instead of mobile phones, they were the king,
right? And they knew it. And Congress knew it and they ended up, you know, bringing antitrust action against them. and then everything shifted. And this is sort of why time is generally more potent than um government regulation or um you know, your competitors because um Microsoft could sit on this um on this desktop operating system for as long as it wanted, but the world changed and we started doing computing on the
browser and we started using our phones uh instead of our desktops. And then what use is Windows? It's much more I mean, it is exactly how Bezos described that day one day two mentality, right? Stasis? Yes. Irrelevance? Uh-huh. You know, slow painful decline? Check. Okay, death? It was heading that way until they had to change their their Um and so after Ballmer, a guy named Satya Nadella came in and took over and became the
And Satya had been a 20-year veteran of Microsoft and worked on Bing, which is kind of funny. Everyone makes fun of Bing like, "Oh, that's just the shitty search engine." needs version of Google, isn't it? Yeah. I wouldn't go that far, but yeah, it's it's somewhere in that range. Um and so uh the So, the thing with with Bing is that um it's a cloud computing system. And uh because it works on it's a
powerful program that works on the internet that has to make sense of all of these different uh links coming in and spits something out to people that So, because Satya had worked on that, uh he had been able to um uh see where the future of computing was going. Basically saying, "We're not going to work on programs that we install like come in the mail and we install on our computers anymore. You know, put it on Windows. We're going to
be working on our browser, and that's cloud computing, and there's going to need to be an infrastructure that's going to support cloud computing." And the funny thing about that is um when you enable cloud computing, you actually hasten Windows' decline. Because if you can access a program on the browser, you can use it on a Windows machine or an Apple machine or a Chromebook, and you don't really need
Microsoft anymore or at least in the Windows component. So, it's actually a pretty gutsy move to say we're going to go support cloud first. And the other thing he says is, "We're going to make sure that our services are available everywhere." So, Microsoft Office, you know, you used to only really be able to get on a Windows machine. You couldn't really get on the internet. And that ended, and they made
an app for the iPhone, which is sort of unbelievable given Microsoft's history. You know, back in the Ballmer days, you weren't even allowed to or yeah, you're basically not allowed to have an iPhone or an Apple product inside the company. And Oh, yeah, totally. People like would to get scorned, and Ballmer even pretended to smash an iPhone when he saw it in a meeting. No way. Satya was like, "Okay, we got to move
past this." So, what he did was he reoriented this company, which was in a day-two mentality, brought it to day one. And then once he figured out we're going to the company was going to structure itself in a way that supports cloud collaboration, the internet, then the tough job started, which was to change Microsoft's culture, which had been, you know, alpha male or large I mean, loudest person in the room, yell
at each other to a culture where they had to start using technology. And again, I'm going to sound like a broken record, but it's really what happened, minimizing execution work, making room for idea work, channeling ideas to decision makers, and that's how Microsoft turned it around and is now the most valuable tech company again, which is unbelievable. turned it around? Because to me, as someone who doesn't really know, I'm not
watching this this share price. I don't know what's going on, who's got what amount of market and this that and the other. But to me, still now feels like just the granddad at the party type thing, this sort of older guy who used to kind of maybe have it, but now is playing second string to these other companies, but it sounds like the work that the new CEO's done has actually given them a resurgence.
That's right. Yeah, they're the most valuable of all the five big tech Which is because I do think that investors see the value in what they're doing, which is moving towards the future. So, the products that they work on are not as sexy, like cloud computing back end is not as sexy as an iPhone. But it has, you know, a very bright future. And you look at now, like we're all sitting at home right now, and
Microsoft's collaboration technology with things like Teams, the usage is going through the roof. So, they are really moving to where the enter like where I mean, they're definitely B2B enterprise technology, but they're crushing it there. And there's a bright future for them. Well, I mean, businesses have far more money to spend than consumers do on these sort of high high ticket, low volume kind of
apps and services, I suppose. But yeah, that's interesting that is interesting that the one person, obviously he'll have brought the CEO will have brought a team with him and other people have had to have get on board to deploy his ideas. But the a business the size of Microsoft can be changed by the fundamental ideas and the vision of just some bloke. He's just some guy. You know, I mean he's a very capable guy, obviously, who
understands what he's talking about. But he's just some fellow that's got like, I think we should try and do this. And then the entire shape and direction of a company changes. It's so Yeah, it is amazing. And by the way, it sort of that that characterization sort of underscores how difficult it is to do what he did. Because it is one person that's pushing this change. And it's like pretty remarkable that he was able
to do it. Most people that try end up failing. But he was able to make it happen. Yeah. Okay, Google. Let's talk to us about Google. What was Google's signature special move? Their their special move like I feel like this is like a Mortal Kombat exactly what it is. Yeah, exactly. Um they're like that Mortal Kombat character that can go across the screen, you know, shoot across the screen. yeah, yeah. I know you mean.
Um because they're you know, Facebook if ideas go up and down from the bottom to inside Google ideas go side to side, you know, across divisions very well. And that's because Google's interconnected in a series of their own social networks. They have email listservs that span the whole company. They have their own meme board like almost like a Reddit or an Imager where people make memes about the company and vote them up
and vote them down. They have Q&As where people can ask the leadership any questions they want, although that's been paired back a little bit. Um and most importantly, they work in an open Meaning they use Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets and the sharing on almost all those Docs is set to open. So, anybody in the company can go look into anyone else's documents. And at first, you know, people say that's kind of weird,
but what it does is it allows people to get caught up to speed on projects incredibly fast. And they can, you know, when you're in a Google Doc, you can also add your ideas and comments, and people do that. Right? So, just like the six-pager got ideas to Bezos quickly, and the feedback culture gets ideas to Zuckerberg quickly, ideas inside Google can move side to side incredibly fast. And the example to show how this has
worked really well is the Google Assistant, right? Which is their voice assistant. And the Google Assistant combines so many different products. It combines search and Android and mail and calendar and maps and YouTube. And in order to build an effective assistant, you need everybody working together. Otherwise, you know, it's going to be pretty dysfunctional, and people won't use it. And people don't have a lot of
patience for a voice assistant. Like, if you say, "Hey Google" enough and it doesn't respond, you're not going to keep saying it. You're just going to have to type this [ __ ] in. So, you know, so because they were able to collaborate, they're able to build this pretty effective uh assistant. And and the assistant, again, is this evolution of search. It's another reinvention, right? Because the when you speak with a voice assistant,
you say, "What's the weather going to be?" Right? How would you find that otherwise? Type it into search. You say, "When's my package coming?" How would you find that out? Type it into search or type it into Gmail. So, if Amazon was able to get the lead because got to mute her. Because uh you know, Alexa started answering those questions instead of Google, Google's domination search was really would really be uh uh
challenged. But because uh Google was able to reinvent this way through collaboration, now it has a real foothold in the voice assistant space and is able to hold its own in its most important product. Is that going to be Is the voice assistant space going to be as big as some of my friends think it is? Cuz I've got a couple of buddies who are addicted to Siri. Like, absolutely addicted. They won't do anything. They refuse to touch
their phones. Um for me, other than controlling music and stuff when I'm listening to it, I tend to not use it that much, but moving forward, can you see voice assist is it the next big thing, one of the next big things? I think it very well could be. And the reason why I say that is because we're still at like the pretty early moments of artificial intelligence technology. And what we're doing by talking to these
things is training them. And every conversation they have helps them get a little bit better. So, I think that um it's amazing there's already tens of millions of these things in people's homes. Um and as that grows, they'll get better at figuring out what we want from them. They'll get better at talking back to us. Like I even see that the Alexa starts to um get more conversational with time. Like
I say set an alarm and she goes, "All right, I'm setting your alarm for 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. You want me to set that for every day this week?" And I'm like, "How the hell did you know that, right?" So, I do think, yeah, this is going to be big. It will be big and they'll also start plugging in with other people's uh products and, you know, I I can have I have an idea why your friend likes Siri so much, right? Because we're I mean,
especially now, we're all on our screens all the you know, all this time. Uh we're tapping, we're looking, watching and it's like, you know, if we can do any computing by not having to deal with a screen, um some people love that. And I think especially as that gets better, um you know, people will really embrace it. So, I'm bullish on it. Nice. Bullish That's it. Alex controls bullish on on voice voice commands, all
of it. Um that's an interesting point about how uh voice control other um versions of input will affect our tech use, you know? Because if you can do a ton of the on your phone, let's say it's 100 years further on and we're able to we've got microchips that can uh detect the correct neurons that are firing in our brain and we can just control stuff with our brains or we got some some of wearable or whatever it is,
the line between screen time and not screen time could either diverge or could completely come together so that either there's barely any screen time or that all time is screen time. You know what I mean? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I would bet that we're heading towards a world where almost all time is screen time. But the cool thing about voices is it enables screen time to not be screen time, right? Like you can be plugged in, but
it can be ambient, sort of in the great way Unless it's something requiring your full attention. That's a brilliant way to put it. I've never thought of it like that, but it is. It's part of the environment when you use Hey Siri or or Hey Hey Siri. Hey Google. Okay Google. Okay Google, Hey Google. I think both Got you. And then what's the Yeah, Amazon is just Alexa. one? It's just Alexa. Imagine if someone's if someone's kid's
been called Alexa, what a nightmare. I know, man. I'm Alex. I'm like one letter away from a nightmare, man. Yeah, you're right. Chris, you don't use any of these uh voice assistants at all? Not really. Um so I use I use um Siri for controlling music and podcasts and stuff like that. I know there's tons of things I can do with it, but I don't know. I don't know. And this is someone who's trying to down regulate his screen
time and you know, he's into new tips and tricks and things like that, but it's just not Like I I I feel like trying to do it will end up creating more work than if I just put it in myself. I'm like, "Hey Siri, direct me home using this like this route." And then it'll open up Google Maps instead of Apple Maps or Apple Maps instead of Google Maps or something. So I think maybe maybe there's just another, you
know, 10 or 20% of progress that needs to be made and then I'll probably just be all over it and I'll just be talking talking to my phone all all across the day. Yeah, and it's probably cuz you're talking to Siri, that's why you're frustrated. The other two are much Are they? That's interesting. So I had Stephen Wolfram on. You know Stephen, guy who created Wolfram Language and Wolfram Wolfram And um I talking to him about like those
answer engines and the ways that for the people that don't know Stephen Wolfram is his company is the company that created the answer engine that's able to take words that you say, convert that into code, and then re-give you back whatever the answer is. So, it's actually super complex to take the noise that comes out of your mouth, work out what you meant, turn that into something the computer or the phone can
read, and then give it back out. And um the fact that even we take it so much for granted, man, but the fact that you can just make a sound with your face, and then your phone does a thing is like Totally unbelievable. It's unreal, man. And the fact that innovation just continues to pump away, you know? And then you've got oh, well, a couple of like 10 years ago maybe you'd watch like some 3D film with like
a you know, crap like red and blue things and cardboard things you used to get over your face. You'd be like, "Wow, this is amazing." You'd be at Disneyland. And then now you've got like an Oculus Go headset, all-in-one, no extra stuff required. You just slip this thing on, and now you're in like Jurassic Park fighting dinosaurs and stuff. It's it's wild, man. I spoke to um a a lady as well who has the world's
first PhD in immersive storytelling. is like cutting-edge VR stuff. And she recommended that I go to Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds immersive uh VR experience down in London. And I went to go and do it. Dude, it is the wildest thing I have That was crazy. Oh, like combination of um VR, AR, holographics, and real-life actors. Dude, it was just like the the the craziest 2 hours ever. You just feel uh I don't know. I don't know what the
entertainment industry is going to be like in sort of 30 or 40 years' time when that sort of stuff gets scaled out. But you're not even going to watch movies anymore. You'll be living movies. You know? I'm into it. I'm ready for that. That sounds great. so good. And then you go back and you're like, "Oh, watch a YouTube video of a trailer." And you realize just how much less impact that has. So, yeah, like
when your iPhone's able to throw smells at you and stuff like that, that's when we're going to be That's when we're going to be killing it. So, okay, Apple, my favorite one out of the lot. Everybody here is an Apple fan. What's going on with Apple? Tell us. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint your listeners, but it is a a company with a culture that needs a Ooh, why? And I think that's because um and inside Apple, they've been very good
I I call it a culture of refinement. They've been very good at at refining the iPhone, which is their flagship product, right? And they do that by keeping people in silos and keeping everything secret. And what that does, it allows people to concentrate on their one task. So, the people that make the battery life live longer, that's what they're focused on. The people that make the screen better, that's what they're
focused on. The people that uh make the iPhone thinner, that's what they're focused on. The computing power, that's what they're focused on. And they don't spend a lot of time distracted speaking to other people. And that's helped make the iPhone the best phone on the market. I don't think there's any doubt about that. I have Um but for Apple, it's made it difficult for the company to reinvent itself. And
I think we can go back to the voice assistant uh example. And And while your friends might be using Siri only uh be using Siri as the only way they use their phones, they're probably the only two people on the planet to do that because um Siri's terrible. And the reason why Siri's terrible is because it was thought about as not as a voice platform, but as a feature on the iPhone. So, it's just sort of like this
fun thing that like a fun magical assistant you could talk to, not something that could connect you via your voice to the rest of the internet. And because of that, Apple said, "Okay, well, Siri folks, why don't you sit in your own room?" And that's not how it works. Like we talked about the Google Assistant. Google needed, you know, people across search and and Android and YouTube and Maps and Calendar, um all
these different divisions and uh yeah, and music to be able to integrate with each other and be able to talk to each other to be able to build this thing um without any barriers at all. And inside Apple, these silos have prevented the assistant folks from actually getting out there uh in a way that would be meaningful and helping Siri uh you know, become something that can overtake the Google Assistant and the Echo. Um and the one
the one uh example that I give is that you know, the the Google I mean, Apple gave Amazon a multi-year head start. It gave Google like a 5-year head start on Google Assistant. Like Siri came out in 2012, these other things came out in 2016, 2017, 2018. And then Apple said, "Okay, finally they're going to build a speaker to put Siri inside of." Great. So, they build the HomePod. The HomePod is not selling
at all. It's uh it's total embarrassment. And the Echo and and Google Home are in in tens of millions of homes. And it's again, it's funny because like for Apple Apple's so interested in design, right? So, they think about the um they think about the sound of the speaker and the look of the speaker and the feel of the speaker. Whereas the Echo is the ugliest appliance I have in my whole life. It's disgusting to look at. I'm
looking at it now and I want to throw it out the window. But it's not about the speaker the way it looks, it's about the assistant inside. And so, that's something that Apple's going to have to change cuz it's not going to be a visual or physical design first. It's going to be computer design and that requires collaboration. And it's struck out on the HomePod. It's also struck out I mean, yeah, I think
it's fair to say it's really struggled to build its own car. It's trying to build a self-driving car. And the way they think about this Yeah, yeah, the way they think about this is sort of like the iPhone, right? The iPhone had beautiful hardware, great software, put it together, best phone on Car self-driving car is similar, right? Beautiful hardware, the um that the way that it looks, and then and then, you
know, functional software, which is the self-driving software. Bam, Apple should have the elite on the market there. But, it's had put this old iPhone style mentality into into building this car. So, they don't let the machine learning engineers talk to each other that are working on different projects. So, you'd have people working on the car, people working on Face ID. One of them is locating like lanes and markers and
stuff like that. The other one is locating facial features, and it's been difficult for them to talk to each other, which means their technology develops slower. Then also, there's been the influence of design, right? So, design inside Apple is the is the most important division. First, they figure out how it's going to look, then they figure out what's going on inside. Backwards engineering something
Yeah, yeah. Well, it's worked it's worked very well for a lot of products, but for the car, just hasn't worked well because um and I spoke with some people who had worked on it. The design team asked them to take the sensors that are out there to figure out what's going on on the road and embed them in the car because typically with the self-driving car, it looks like this horrific, you know, rolling submarine uh with all
these different, you know, knobs and and that was round and it yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks almost as bad as the Echo. And so, of course, Apple isn't going to be down with that. So, they said, "Okay, take the sensors, put it in the car." So, it looks much nicer, but for the machine learning engineers, it's much more difficult to figure out what they're trying to do because it's like putting blinders on your eyes, right?
Now, you can only see this, you know, this much, and your peripheral vision is cut in a certain way. And then, how do you make a a machine learn how to do self-driving if it can't get the full range of vision? And so, that's one of the reasons why the product has struggled. So, look, Yeah, sorry, sorry, go ahead. I just think that my uh seduction into Apple is probably very common amongst like just normal consumers, you
know? You think all of their products are super slick. I'm speaking to you on a MacBook Pro that I upgraded to even though I didn't need to just because the new one looked good. Got an iPhone, I got AirPods. I bought my mom and dad AirPods for like last Christmas and the Christmas before and blah blah. You know, like but because the design is so seductive and um so visceral and so easy to see, right? You
know, like Microsoft, perfect example. Like I do not think sexy when I think Microsoft, but money talks, you know? The numbers don't lie and they're the biggest the biggest company of all the ones that we've spoken about and they're doing like some of the least sexy [ __ ] but I guess it all depends on what the vision is. The the other thing as well that I've noticed when you're talking about Apple
is it seems like a very old-style approach to um management and also careers within a company in that you've got specialization. You know, like this is Henry Ford [ __ ] You know, this is like 1910 [ __ ] The guy that that turns the knob he's the knob turner and the guy that pulls the lever he's the lever puller and the you know what I mean? And it seems like that siloing um could go one of two ways, but given the
fact that all of your competitors are are being super effective with this super transparent free flow of information, it seems surprising that Amazon have done that. Do you think that they're going to be forced to make a change or start really losing losing Yeah, and I do think that this sort of goes to show how difficult it is for a lot of companies to get away from the factory mentality. Right? And Apple's
definitely still in it. Like Ford is a good example, specialization, right? Like that's what happens inside the company. So, I think Apple's going to be okay. I think that like the things that you're talking about like I'm also I have an iPhone, I have AirPods, um I'm talking to you through uh an Apple computer. So, I do think that they're going to be doing fine, but to go back to where we were in the
beginning of the conversation, if the average company on the Fortune 500 lasts for 15 years now instead of 67, that means there's going to be shifts that will come along that they won't be prepared for unless they're ready to adapt. And to me, the main question is, is Apple going to be ready to adapt when those shifts come for it? Like maybe it is voice computing, maybe it's some other shift that we're not aware of. Um
and are they going to lose their lead because of that? And I think it's quite possible. So, I do still have hope that there will be a culture change there, and they'll be able I think they'd be as effective as they are today even if they opened up a bit. Um and uh yeah, I think that they if there's not a culture change, they'll be they'll still make good phones, but they'll struggle to navigate the the
next change. So, they're kind they'll kind of be like Microsoft if Microsoft stuck with Windows and didn't get into new businesses. Yeah, I get it. Look, Alex, man, it's been really, really awesome. Finishing up, final question, what is your uh vision for tech, or what are your predictions for the big things happening in tech over the next 5 to 10 years? What should we be on the lookout for? I mean, I would say be be on the
lookout. So, right now we've had like tech change our consumer lives in a big Um meaning that like we are now we use Netflix to watch TV to watch yeah, TV and movies, um and we all have phones and apps, um and it's really changed our experience living life outside of the And it's funny because in the office, it feels like we're still living in the 1990s sometimes, um given like the programs that we use. So, I I my first
big prediction is that we're going to start to see technology change our work lives in the same way that it changed our consumer lives. And I think work is always a little bit slower uh to adapt, and I think that that's really um going to make a difference for in terms of the way that we work. So, I would look out for that. I think AI is going to be way more advanced and change the way that we live uh in ways that I'm not
even sure how to predict. Like one thing I thought about guy, Alex, it has to be you. If it's not you, who's it going to be? Yeah, well, I I guess like it sort of goes to the point of of the book, right? It can't be just one person with the vision. It's everybody's ideas that come together that actually, you know, push forward the change. Uh but it's going to have happen in so many different industries.
You know, my dad is a podiatrist and so in in the US um when when you're a doctor, you spend you know, some of your time working with patients and almost all of your time filling out charts. And my dad, every time I come home, he was just filling out charts. I'm like, "Dad, do you do anything else but fill fill out charts?" He's like, "Nope." So, I mean, it'll be amazing when we start to see this technology start to gain,
you know, if the if if uh you iPad technology can write an HR letter, right? Why can't there be other technology that starts filling out the paperwork for doctors? I mean, of course, you'd have to have it at a um pretty high, you know, specification. It'd have to you know, understand privacy, but a lot of this stuff is is just like you know, write down and spit back. It's not so so complex. It's just
you have to key it into all these different systems. So, there needs to be technology to be able to do that. That might change the medical field. Because instead of having doctors spend their time doing paperwork, you might actually have doctors spending their time taking care of patients. And wouldn't that be cool? So, and I think it'd change government as well. I expect us to see if we have the political will to see
leaner, more effective governments. You know, our governments are the ultimate Bloated creatures. groups. Bloated groups. I mean, talk about execution work. All the government does execution work. Imagine those people had some time to come up with ideas to figure out problems like climate and poverty and health. That would be amazing. Well, the fact of the matter is, within a government, you have to use the word
think tank, you know, in that That's right. The think tank is the exception. Because everybody else is busy doing the That's exactly right, Chris. And that's a freaking big problem. So, we need to work to solve that. Hey, it looks like it looks like we've got a good handle on on what we're talking about. Alex, your link, the link to your book will be in the show notes below, Always Day One, highly recommended. Where can people go
to check out your stuff online? Yeah, I appreciate it, Chris. So, you can yeah, they check the show notes for the book. Also, you can Google Always Day One and read some of the reviews. I think people have been happy with it so far. And then if you want to connect with me, I'm a pretty online person. You could just type my last name into Twitter, k a n t r o w i t z. My DMs are open and I check my mentions, so I'd love to hear
from you there. Amazing. Everything that we've spoken about will be linked in the show notes below. You already know what to do. If you enjoyed the episode, go and give Alex a follow, let him know what you Dude, I I really enjoyed that. I'm I'm looking forward to seeing what the next few years has got in store now. I'm Thank you. Yeah, me too. It's It's going to be a wild few years, that's for sure.
I hope it becomes calmer and less trapped in our houses than it is now, but yeah. We'll see. We'll see. Dude, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Chris. This was really great.