Hi Victor, I appreciate your commentary but I think you’ve missed the core issues here. You’re looking more at the newspaper version of the story than the inside baseball. Whatever shows up in the papers is basically guaranteed to only be the most attractive version of the story that can be told.
Let me explain where I’m coming from and why I think my perspective is credible.
I’m close to this — I am from Kansas City, I participated in the Think Big Google Fiber challenge in 2010, I joined the Mayor’s Bistate Innovation Team in 2011, I was part of the KC Economic Development Corporation’s Google Fiber Roundtable until 2013 (and won a Cornerstone award for my contributions), and I had my home wired with Google Fiber in June of 2014. I am also an entrepreneur, project manager, and construction professional, having been “in the trenches” for 10 years in construction labor, 10 in project management, and 5 in company management.
Google initially hired Atlantic Engineering to build the network, but they were beset by management and cost control issues. The initial build effort lost millions in time, labor, and materials, misplacing many expensive spools of fiber, and ending up 9 months behind the initial construction schedule largely because of poor build management, resulting in tons of validation & verification rework orders when the outside quality control subcontractor identified hundreds of handholes that were placed in the wrong locations.
Another company was brought in and did a fantastic job at turning it around, particularly a local firm whose leadership in project management and asset controls resulted in making up nearly the entire timeline and recovering a lot of the lost materials, significantly reducing (but not eliminating) the original setbacks and overages that resulted in Atlantic’s departure.
The core problem here is not the build issues (build issues are a symptom, not a cause), it’s always been a problem of diligent, competent construction leadership.
Unfortunately, Google has continually hired executives for the Fiber build that are not build-phase construction professionals, and are not competent in constructing fiber optic networks. Being good at operating a network that’s already built is not at all the same as being good at building one.
Instead of hiring someone who was quietly diligent in building out the network and meeting Google’s goals, they repeatedly hired bombastic executives who cared more about their self-promotion and career advancement. Hiring a self-promoter who’s looking at the job as a stepping stone to a more visible and lucrative position is a great way to ruin a network buildout.
When you’re trying to construct real, physical assets, you want someone who is deeply competent, extremely experienced, and realizes that their career advancement won’t come from appearances of success, but from an actual successful buildout. You can bullshit your way out of failure when it comes to software development (the classic “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature”), but there’s no way to bullshit your way out of a network that doesn’t work — if the signal doesn’t get to the terminal, it’s impossible to pretend you meant it that way.
Google can still turn this around, I know several construction professionals who could build this network blindfolded, upside down, with both hands behind their back, and do it because they absolutely love building awesome shit, without the slightest regard to whose name is on it or who gets the credit. Will they ever get the job? Nope, because their resume is a list of “boring” construction projects that came in on-time and on-budget, instead of a list of high-profile self-aggrandizing bombastic nonsense that only impresses people who don’t understand physical project delivery.
When you’re building stuff, hire the quiet guy who knows what he’s doing and knows that project success is his success, not the self-aggrandizing blowhard who’s more interested in adding a line to his resume than getting the work done.
The guy in the expensive, immaculately tailored suit is not the guy you want or need. If he doesn’t have mud on his boots, callouses on his hands, and grease on his jeans, you should pass over him for the guy who does. But that guy? The guy who knows what he’s doing? He probably doesn’t draw attention to himself, because he’s more worried about being competent and performing a job well done than looking impressive on paper.
Hopefully this helps inform what happened with Fiber, that didn’t make the news.
