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> Pichai was asked, in a question that was highly rated by staffers on Google’s internal Dory system, why the company is “nickel-and-diming employees” by slashi

by bko 4y ago

> Pichai was asked, in a question that was highly rated by staffers on Google’s internal Dory system, why the company is “nickel-and-diming employees” by slashing travel and swag budgets at a time when “Google has record profits and huge cash reserves,” as it did coming out of the pandemic. What you focus on can also help you attract a certain type of employee. The best engineers I know want to work on interesting problems. I know plenty of people (myself included) that took pretty drastic pay cuts to work in a more interesting space. To be fair, we were all making above our needs at the time, but the point remains, good engineers care a lot about the things they working on. As a company becomes successful, they should share the gains with those that helped get them there. But no firm is completely closed, it has to attract new people. And the sell to new employees often overly focuses on money and perks. The other problem I see is that companies can fall into the trap of focusing too much on inner reflection and feedback. This leads to a lot of heavy handed happiness initiatives that end up just being chores (e.g. forced team bonding, endless happiness surveys, feedback, etc). I can't speak for non-technical employees, but in my experience the best engineers care most about an interesting product space, autonomy and respect. And colleagues matter as well. So even if you have all this, if your values aren't shared by your peers, its a big negative. For instance, if your peers are more interested in advancing politics at work or exploiting perks, it will create tension with those that just want to do meaningful work. So I think Google's shift is a net positive. Sure it'll upset some employees that care more about catering, travel and perks than their actual work, but that's fine.

orange_joe 4y ago
It’s fine to say the best engineers want to work on the most interesting problems, and that’s totally valid, but truthfully Google and other big tech companies need an army of highly skilled engineers to turn the red button blue. A simple fact is that maintaining the behemoth requires lots of skill and relying on people being intrinsically interested in that doesn’t scale to the army that Google would need to employ (even if it reduced its current headcount).
- bko 4y ago
  I could be wrong as I never worked in the hyper-optimized space, but I don't think that's necessarily a boring problem to work on. It's highly scientific and I'm sure a lot of talented engineers are interested in A/B testing. It's not much different than compiler optimizations that squeeze out tiny efficiencies that are not noticeable and irrelevant to 99.9% of use cases. If you can make red button blue and quantify its effects in terms of UX (people being able to find the button or make reality more aligned with expectations of the user), I think that could be interesting. But I would love to hear from someone that has labored over such a task. If I were hiring someone to figure out which buttons to turn from red to blue, I would at least try to find people curious and serious about the task. I wouldn't just accept that its monkey work, throw some money at it and hope for the best.
  - johnbender 4y ago
    Learning whether the button should change colors is different from actually changing the colors. I agree that the learning part is interesting but at google I suspect those are two different jobs.
  - orange_joe 4y ago
    I was using the phrase “turning the red button blue” as a description of the fundamental toil that goes into maintaining complex systems. There might be thousands of people who find that work interesting, but there are millions of buttons.
  - blululu 4y ago
    It is not monkey work. But A/B testing can often be more a trapping of scientific than the real thing. Google UXR is hit or miss. They have done a number of poorly run studies on what shade of blue to color buttons without thinking about multiple comparison corrections, seasonality or evolution in display technologies. I am increasingly unconvinced that these efficiencies are meaningful for UX. Compilers are different and those optimizations are real and matter for both the bottom line and UX.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
jollyllama 4y ago
Once a business segment gets mature enough, this comes for every firm in it. This happened to storage system vendors in the early and mid 2010s.
UncleMeat 4y ago
It isn't like the trade is that we get to work on interesting problems because the travel budget is slashed. Because of headcount clawbacks and concerns about backfill what I'm seeing is teams becoming more conservative and focused on keeping core customers happy rather than focusing on exciting new problems.
- z9znz 4y ago
  > focused on keeping core customers happy What a shocking business priority!
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    Sure. I think that Google can and should prioritize this more. But when the above argument is something resembling "good people like working on flashy and interesting technical problems so why worry about the travel budget" then it becomes relevant to talk about how there also isn't going to be an unlimited amount of flashy and interesting technical problems.
    - cma 4y ago
      Maybe they don't get to deprecate another chat service and have to support it longer this time or someone has to work on making Google Drive as fast as competitors.
discordance 4y ago
djbusby 4y ago
Of note is that you and peers moved to more enriching work after making above your needs for a time. Those choices are easier when you have a nice cushion.
neilv 4y ago
I wonder whether the mention of swag in the reporting was a red herring. I would've liked to see the full question, and all the other questions, and whatever could be learned from their absolute and relative votings. Questions on my mind: 1. How many people are concerned about loss of swag, and if so, why? (Is it because they want the swag, or see it as a canary, or because they simply don't understand the belt-tightening when they think the company is doing well, or something else?) 2. If some people are concerned about travel, is it because the travel was fun, or effective for project success, or effective for personal advancement, or something else? 3. How concerned are people about possible layoffs, possible declining TC, and/or possible changing nature of the work lifestyle? 4. Are there any pre-existing concerns that talks of belt-tightening are adding to? (For example, were some people already feeling like they were overextending themselves, or stressed over pursuing a promotion, and now they're wondering whether changes will make make that situation harder?) (I'd like to understand how different organizations are feeling, and how that changes with circumstances, and the news article's mention of swag might be confusing things. And also, I've always had a soft spot for Google, and I want it to be its best self.)
- ghaff 4y ago
  Not Google specifically, but in general: 1. Some people are excessively (IMO) attracted to swag and taking away any benefit, however minor, often attracts outsized opposition. 2. Especially people who aren't on the road most of the time, find a trip to an event a nice change of pace and an opportunity to develop professional connections both within your own company and elsewhere. There is business value but it's also often viewed as a significant perk. 3. Well, Pichai has made statements at least suggestive of staffing cuts. And even if there's some trueing up going on with RSUs, I expect a lot of employees used to getting a lot of their comp in stock in a rising market are looking at effectively significant cuts to their TC.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  I'm not a googler, but I'd see this as a canary. Steve Blank's[1] The Elves leave Middle earth - The sodas are no longer free explains why auch "small" changes portend larger cultural shifts 1. https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...
TheRealPomax 4y ago
The best engineers I know want to work on interesting problems for a pay that is high enough to cover quality of life. If your company shows a slowdown in growth--not loss: less growth--the idea that you're suffering from macroeconomic effects and need to cut spending makes very little sense. You're still making a profit quarter after quarter, where's the financial hardship? (You might go "what about that 4 billion dollar fine from the EU??" To which the response is "did you look at their earnings report? Google made just shy of 20 billion in operating income last quarter alone, on a 30+% profit margin. $4b is literally still a trivial amount as a fine, constituting less than a month's worth of earnings)
- WkndTriathlete 4y ago
  The unfortunate truth with any publicly-traded company is that the CEO's job depends on that growth. The simplistic relationship is as follows: - The share price is (theoretically) a reflection of the future earnings expectations of that company - Slowing growth means lower share price/lower dividends - Lower share price/lower dividends means reduced profits or losses for shareholders - 80% of stock is likely owned by institutional investors that have automatic triggers for sale of stock based on certain performance thresholds (think pensions like CALPERS) which further incurs losses for shareholders in the event of sustained periods of lesser growth So when the shareholders band together and demand growth, they will expect the CEO to deliver it or they will replace that CEO with someone who they think will deliver that growth, simply because the system is structured such that growth is expected/required with some minimal level of risk. Personally, I think there are better systems we could come up with that would ensure better stability for employees and shareholders even in the face of temporary slowdowns in growth that are caused by structural economics, but any of them would likely lower shareholder returns by some small amount, and the institutional investment plans would balk at that. (That small amount would translate to billions of dollars in projected future equity and would likely make the institutions insolvent at some point in the future.)
  - danaris 4y ago
    > The unfortunate truth with any publicly-traded company is that the CEO's job depends on that growth. Well, boo hoo for him. That's what he gets the comically outsized paycheck for. We as an industry need to stop accepting that as an excuse for CEOs cutting wages, hiring, and perks for regular employees (not talking about the executives here) when the company is still making massive profits. If there's a genuine cash-flow problem, then yeah; it sucks but it happens. But screw this "We've got record profits, so now we need to shaft the lot of you that got us there so that we can juice those numbers even higher in order to further increase our high scores!"
slg 4y ago
>For instance, if your peers are more interested in advancing politics at work or exploiting perks, it will create tension with those that just want to do meaningful work. It is funny how people always consider their own politics as neutral. This is an inherently political statement as it sets up "advancing politics" as opposition to "meaningful work". For some people the "meaningful work" they "just want to do" is to make the world a better place and that often isn't possible without "advancing politics". Maybe the "interesting product space" is to get one of the world's largest companies to reduce carbon emissions. People like that might view building adtech as the chore they endure for the opportunity to do "meaningful work" of fighting climate change.

by bko 4y ago

orange_joe 4y ago

It’s fine to say the best engineers want to work on the most interesting problems, and that’s totally valid, but truthfully Google and other big tech companies need an army of highly skilled engineers to turn the red button blue. A simple fact is that maintaining the behemoth requires lots of skill and relying on people being intrinsically interested in that doesn’t scale to the army that Google would need to employ (even if it reduced its current headcount).

bko 4y ago
I could be wrong as I never worked in the hyper-optimized space, but I don't think that's necessarily a boring problem to work on. It's highly scientific and I'm sure a lot of talented engineers are interested in A/B testing. It's not much different than compiler optimizations that squeeze out tiny efficiencies that are not noticeable and irrelevant to 99.9% of use cases. If you can make red button blue and quantify its effects in terms of UX (people being able to find the button or make reality more aligned with expectations of the user), I think that could be interesting. But I would love to hear from someone that has labored over such a task. If I were hiring someone to figure out which buttons to turn from red to blue, I would at least try to find people curious and serious about the task. I wouldn't just accept that its monkey work, throw some money at it and hope for the best.
- johnbender 4y ago
  Learning whether the button should change colors is different from actually changing the colors. I agree that the learning part is interesting but at google I suspect those are two different jobs.
- orange_joe 4y ago
  I was using the phrase “turning the red button blue” as a description of the fundamental toil that goes into maintaining complex systems. There might be thousands of people who find that work interesting, but there are millions of buttons.
- blululu 4y ago
  It is not monkey work. But A/B testing can often be more a trapping of scientific than the real thing. Google UXR is hit or miss. They have done a number of poorly run studies on what shade of blue to color buttons without thinking about multiple comparison corrections, seasonality or evolution in display technologies. I am increasingly unconvinced that these efficiencies are meaningful for UX. Compilers are different and those optimizations are real and matter for both the bottom line and UX.
- dmitriid 4y ago

jollyllama 4y ago

Once a business segment gets mature enough, this comes for every firm in it. This happened to storage system vendors in the early and mid 2010s.

UncleMeat 4y ago

It isn't like the trade is that we get to work on interesting problems because the travel budget is slashed. Because of headcount clawbacks and concerns about backfill what I'm seeing is teams becoming more conservative and focused on keeping core customers happy rather than focusing on exciting new problems.

z9znz 4y ago
> focused on keeping core customers happy What a shocking business priority!
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  Sure. I think that Google can and should prioritize this more. But when the above argument is something resembling "good people like working on flashy and interesting technical problems so why worry about the travel budget" then it becomes relevant to talk about how there also isn't going to be an unlimited amount of flashy and interesting technical problems.
  - cma 4y ago
    Maybe they don't get to deprecate another chat service and have to support it longer this time or someone has to work on making Google Drive as fast as competitors.

discordance 4y ago

djbusby 4y ago

Of note is that you and peers moved to more enriching work after making above your needs for a time. Those choices are easier when you have a nice cushion.

neilv 4y ago

I wonder whether the mention of swag in the reporting was a red herring. I would've liked to see the full question, and all the other questions, and whatever could be learned from their absolute and relative votings. Questions on my mind: 1. How many people are concerned about loss of swag, and if so, why? (Is it because they want the swag, or see it as a canary, or because they simply don't understand the belt-tightening when they think the company is doing well, or something else?) 2. If some people are concerned about travel, is it because the travel was fun, or effective for project success, or effective for personal advancement, or something else? 3. How concerned are people about possible layoffs, possible declining TC, and/or possible changing nature of the work lifestyle? 4. Are there any pre-existing concerns that talks of belt-tightening are adding to? (For example, were some people already feeling like they were overextending themselves, or stressed over pursuing a promotion, and now they're wondering whether changes will make make that situation harder?) (I'd like to understand how different organizations are feeling, and how that changes with circumstances, and the news article's mention of swag might be confusing things. And also, I've always had a soft spot for Google, and I want it to be its best self.)

ghaff 4y ago
Not Google specifically, but in general: 1. Some people are excessively (IMO) attracted to swag and taking away any benefit, however minor, often attracts outsized opposition. 2. Especially people who aren't on the road most of the time, find a trip to an event a nice change of pace and an opportunity to develop professional connections both within your own company and elsewhere. There is business value but it's also often viewed as a significant perk. 3. Well, Pichai has made statements at least suggestive of staffing cuts. And even if there's some trueing up going on with RSUs, I expect a lot of employees used to getting a lot of their comp in stock in a rising market are looking at effectively significant cuts to their TC.
sangnoir 4y ago
I'm not a googler, but I'd see this as a canary. Steve Blank's[1] The Elves leave Middle earth - The sodas are no longer free explains why auch "small" changes portend larger cultural shifts 1. https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/ https://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-ear...

TheRealPomax 4y ago

The best engineers I know want to work on interesting problems for a pay that is high enough to cover quality of life. If your company shows a slowdown in growth--not loss: less growth--the idea that you're suffering from macroeconomic effects and need to cut spending makes very little sense. You're still making a profit quarter after quarter, where's the financial hardship? (You might go "what about that 4 billion dollar fine from the EU??" To which the response is "did you look at their earnings report? Google made just shy of 20 billion in operating income last quarter alone, on a 30+% profit margin. $4b is literally still a trivial amount as a fine, constituting less than a month's worth of earnings)

WkndTriathlete 4y ago
The unfortunate truth with any publicly-traded company is that the CEO's job depends on that growth. The simplistic relationship is as follows: - The share price is (theoretically) a reflection of the future earnings expectations of that company - Slowing growth means lower share price/lower dividends - Lower share price/lower dividends means reduced profits or losses for shareholders - 80% of stock is likely owned by institutional investors that have automatic triggers for sale of stock based on certain performance thresholds (think pensions like CALPERS) which further incurs losses for shareholders in the event of sustained periods of lesser growth So when the shareholders band together and demand growth, they will expect the CEO to deliver it or they will replace that CEO with someone who they think will deliver that growth, simply because the system is structured such that growth is expected/required with some minimal level of risk. Personally, I think there are better systems we could come up with that would ensure better stability for employees and shareholders even in the face of temporary slowdowns in growth that are caused by structural economics, but any of them would likely lower shareholder returns by some small amount, and the institutional investment plans would balk at that. (That small amount would translate to billions of dollars in projected future equity and would likely make the institutions insolvent at some point in the future.)
- danaris 4y ago
  > The unfortunate truth with any publicly-traded company is that the CEO's job depends on that growth. Well, boo hoo for him. That's what he gets the comically outsized paycheck for. We as an industry need to stop accepting that as an excuse for CEOs cutting wages, hiring, and perks for regular employees (not talking about the executives here) when the company is still making massive profits. If there's a genuine cash-flow problem, then yeah; it sucks but it happens. But screw this "We've got record profits, so now we need to shaft the lot of you that got us there so that we can juice those numbers even higher in order to further increase our high scores!"

slg 4y ago

>For instance, if your peers are more interested in advancing politics at work or exploiting perks, it will create tension with those that just want to do meaningful work. It is funny how people always consider their own politics as neutral. This is an inherently political statement as it sets up "advancing politics" as opposition to "meaningful work". For some people the "meaningful work" they "just want to do" is to make the world a better place and that often isn't possible without "advancing politics". Maybe the "interesting product space" is to get one of the world's largest companies to reduce carbon emissions. People like that might view building adtech as the chore they endure for the opportunity to do "meaningful work" of fighting climate change.