X seems a strange blend of overly ambitious and overly critical/ constraining (which is partly related to conception of what is "big" enough). It's also unnecessarily secretive and would benefit from being more open, especially in the energy and climate space.
A lot of interesting ideas get shot down quickly, which is not necessarily a bad thing.. but I'm not sure what the false positive vs. false negative rate is in this process. But for those ideas that develop, it seems like perfectly solid technologies that could form the premise of an interesting startup don't get out the door because they don't meet an internal bar of "worthiness". Maybe let the market and external funders decide that?
Their internal process is not intrinsically good or bad, but what's unfortunate is that they don't really publish. I know they're not looking to be Bell Labs, but if they think a lot of these ideas aren't going to pan out, but many person-years of research effort goes in, they really should share the learnings and lessons as opposed to locking it up internally. When these projects don't pass their internal bar for being commercially viable (which seems rather disconnected from what that bar would be if the idea/ tech stood on its own outside), it's basically like academic research. Truly is a shame that a lot of smart people working on interesting non-commercializable ideas don't get to share that. Others might pick up on it, if not now.. maybe a decade or two down the road.
Unpopular opinion from a former Googler (who never worked in X, but knew a lot of people who transfered over there):
In general, people in X get paid too much to make it "worth it" to innovate. Obviously there are exceptions, but I'd say there is a perverse incentive to string the funders (Google) along as long as possible. Line engineers are making $250K+ / year, managers are making $500K / year.
Innovation is kind of a "swing big and go home if you miss". But there's no incentive to "go home" if you have a comfortable lifestyle. You want to keep going and you can convince the management of that because you inherently know more about the tech than they do. It's an information assymetry problem.
I see a similar effect in non-X moonshots funded by Larry Page.
Basically there's an incentive for "demo-ware" and not real innovation.
I'm glad I worked at Google rather than say Tesla, because I was doing "non-moonshot" engineering work. Tesla is notoriously chaotic. I think Chris Lattner said Tesla had the highest turnover rate he'd ever seen.
But I actually think the idea of firing a lot of people makes sense if you're innovating. It should be chaotic and messy because the whole goal is inherently risky.
I used to work in video games and they also fired people all the time and paid them like crap. I made 3-4x at Google what I did in the video game industry. But honestly it makes sense because of the financial profile of the industry vs. Google's industry. Put bluntly: you're filtering for people who really love it and are doing something irrational to innovate hard tech or create a blockbuster game.
I'm sure a lot of people will bristle at this from the employee perspective, but having worked in both environments for many years, I can see how the compensation changes people's behavior. You might not realize it but it does.
Yes, it should be a conscious choice. This dynamic exists in games, academia, Hollywood, stand-up comedy, the minor leagues hoping of most professional sports, etc. The great thing is that software people have a nice choice of fallback jobs, whereas it seems like people get trapped in academia and are prone to being abused because of their vulnerable situation.
When the employees no longer believe in the goal, they can quit, "cash in" and go work a more traditional job. But X removes that natural dynamic, hence the questionable results being achieved IMO.
A lot of interesting ideas get shot down quickly, which is not necessarily a bad thing.. but I'm not sure what the false positive vs. false negative rate is in this process. But for those ideas that develop, it seems like perfectly solid technologies that could form the premise of an interesting startup don't get out the door because they don't meet an internal bar of "worthiness". Maybe let the market and external funders decide that?
Their internal process is not intrinsically good or bad, but what's unfortunate is that they don't really publish. I know they're not looking to be Bell Labs, but if they think a lot of these ideas aren't going to pan out, but many person-years of research effort goes in, they really should share the learnings and lessons as opposed to locking it up internally. When these projects don't pass their internal bar for being commercially viable (which seems rather disconnected from what that bar would be if the idea/ tech stood on its own outside), it's basically like academic research. Truly is a shame that a lot of smart people working on interesting non-commercializable ideas don't get to share that. Others might pick up on it, if not now.. maybe a decade or two down the road.