> Google launched an effort in July called “Simplicity Sprint,” which aimed to solicit ideas from its more than 174,000 employees on how to “get to better resul

> Google launched an effort in July called “Simplicity Sprint,” which aimed to solicit ideas from its more than 174,000 employees on how to “get to better results faster” and “eliminate waste.” Earlier this month, Pichai said he hoped to make the company 20% more productive while slowing hiring and investments. > One of the top-rated questions posed by employees at this week’s meeting asked Pichai to elaborate on his commentary regarding improved productivity and the 20% goal. > “I think you could be a 20-person team or a 100-person team, we are going to be constrained in our growth in a looking-ahead basis,” Pichai said. “Maybe you were planning on hiring six more people but maybe you are going to have to do with four and how are you going to make that happen? The answers are going to be different with different teams.” Lol, this reads like Google just got bought by a private-equity firm. Just desperately trying to cut costs any way they can, with little regard to how that will play into the core business I'm obviously biased here, but imo an engineering organization succeeds by hiring smart engineers, making them happy, giving them agency, and giving them just enough structure so that they're working towards useful goals instead of spinning their wheels. This is what made Google so successful in the earlier days. The more you constrain with management and process, the more you slash-and-burn costs, the more you kill that energy: > Pichai admitted that it’s not just the economy that’s caused challenges at Google but also an expanding bureaucracy at Google. Sounds like Google's on the downhill. Subjectively feels like it started around the time Pichai became CEO- though correlation isn't causation. > Google has record profits and huge cash reserves It's clear this is being driven by short-term shareholder demands instead of actual operational desperation. Sad to see Google get strangled like this (though maybe also not sad, given what they've morphed into over the years).