Current Googler for close to a decade. Another big problem is that the current leadership formed their leadership skills in history's longest bull run (2009-20

Current Googler for close to a decade. Another big problem is that the current leadership formed their leadership skills in history's longest bull run (2009-2020), and none of them seem to know how to be scrappy and get stuff done. Our engineering leadership loves to just sit around and pontificate about theoreticals. Without blinking an eye they'll happily block projects for months on end over minutiae that don't matter. Often even simple features would languish in design reviews for 6-12 months. A lot of my job is "driving for alignment" between dozens of stakeholders on any given project, often at the request of our eng leaders. There is an incredible amount of bureaucracy to get anything done. People who don't leap through every hoop get labeled as having "not enough technical rigor". Our product team has begun to wisen up on how we need to start shipping more things. Currently a lot of the eng teams are caught between our eng leaders who move at the rate as molasses, and product teams who are pushing us to actually get things done. It'll be interesting to see who wins here.