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You just made me realise it will be a total disaster. Because Google aren't buying the entirety of Motorola, they are buying the cellphone/consumer division of

by rjd 15y ago

You just made me realise it will be a total disaster. Because Google aren't buying the entirety of Motorola, they are buying the cellphone/consumer division of the company. Hence if the clever ploys are true which John Gruber alluded too, then motorola are smart. And being smart they have already moved the best talent back to the other company "Motorola Solutions" and Google are buying a pile of average to bad. Plus I doubt Google is ready for the HR mess thats about to hit them. If anyone here has been through a large restructure or merger then you can appreciate just how disruptive and demoralising the process is. Productivity and loyalty will plummet. If you haven't been through a process like that go watch the movie "Office Space" its a light hearted view of a dark subject, and is way to close to home on many points.

anigbrowl 15y ago
Talent issue, no I don't think so. Google's a company where individual talent matters a great deal, they're not oblivious to those issues. There will be a big culture clash and you are right that there will be many HR challenges. I worked as a contracter for Motorola (very briefly and many years ago) and can relate to the problems Google will encounter...but that's well known about Motorola. I don't agree that large mergers are always a failure; Ernst & Young is still together and successful, even though there was a huge clash of cultures there - it was literally a case of ne company being a Mac and one a PC.
- rjd 15y ago
  But if reporting is to be believed Google is struggling to hire and keep talent, and there hiring approach has been heavily criticised for encouraging 'generic' and 'average' employees. The entire truth behind that I can't comment on myself, but thats what goes through my blogs feeds form time to time. I know from every restructure I've ever been in the first casualty is the talented staff. They don't hang around to mucked about, they are in demand so they just flow somewhere where those issues don't exist. But who knows, I guess there was a lot of sleepiness nights at Google before this went ahead, so our conjecture would have already been through more solid risk/benefit analysis than what a chat thread could offer.

by rjd 15y ago

anigbrowl 15y ago

Talent issue, no I don't think so. Google's a company where individual talent matters a great deal, they're not oblivious to those issues. There will be a big culture clash and you are right that there will be many HR challenges. I worked as a contracter for Motorola (very briefly and many years ago) and can relate to the problems Google will encounter...but that's well known about Motorola. I don't agree that large mergers are always a failure; Ernst & Young is still together and successful, even though there was a huge clash of cultures there - it was literally a case of ne company being a Mac and one a PC.

rjd 15y ago
But if reporting is to be believed Google is struggling to hire and keep talent, and there hiring approach has been heavily criticised for encouraging 'generic' and 'average' employees. The entire truth behind that I can't comment on myself, but thats what goes through my blogs feeds form time to time. I know from every restructure I've ever been in the first casualty is the talented staff. They don't hang around to mucked about, they are in demand so they just flow somewhere where those issues don't exist. But who knows, I guess there was a lot of sleepiness nights at Google before this went ahead, so our conjecture would have already been through more solid risk/benefit analysis than what a chat thread could offer.