4 ms·
I worked at Google from the early(-ish) days up till 2019. My hot take is that the employees broke the social contract first. Sundar "MBA" Pichai is not the cau
by altaltson 3y ago
I worked at Google from the early(-ish) days up till 2019. My hot take is that the employees broke the social contract first. Sundar "MBA" Pichai is not the cause, he's the effect.
The truth is, the early Google would have had no patience for the "problems" Googlers cared about between 2014 and 2020. The levels of internal hubris and employee activism about every random topic were insane. People cared more about cafe menus and banning words like "deficient" and "all hands" than doing things users cared about. They cared more about working three days a week than delivering a project. And they still expected to be paid top 5% of the market and to get pats on the back for being amazing and oh-so-smart.
By the time I left, it was normal to see a team of 10 people taking a year to deliver something that would've taken me a month on my own in 2012. Something had to give. It's justified to give employees rock star treatment when they are actually 5-10x more productive than their peers at Microsoft. When they're less productive, you have to ask yourself "am I being taken for a ride?"
I think it's not unlikely that Sundar's mission statement from the founders was explicitly to get rid of this culture. It's clear he doesn't want or know how to turn the current Google into the innovative, bright eyed tech company it used to be. So the next best thing is to turn it into Oracle.
But the Google of ~2015 deserved to die.
- alephnerd 3y agoThis is a very hot take, but does mesh with my own experience with mentors, friends, and family at GOOG at the time. I remember plenty of early career people around the time were given advice to start your career elsewhere, and then join GOOG in order to maximize the rest-and-vest life. There needs to be a middle ground between Google's QoL and Amazon's laser focus on execution and customer value. Makes sense that Google of 2024 is basically like Microsoft in 2009.
- dns_snek 3y agoDo you care to speculate about why the culture changed?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- geekasm 3y agowas speaking about this with my friend, mgr @ google. He agreed with whatever you said. employees at current google are entitled bunch, non-performing. layoffs at google are justified.
- throwaway20045 3y ago2015-current Googler here. This take rings true for me. Many Googlers show no drive in their role. Good enough work gives high compensation. Firings are for egregious performance. If that wasn't enough, the internal culture slows output too. endless infrastructure migrations. Design docs for small changes. "Demonstrate leadership". Strategic timing of "demonstrate trajectory". Belt tightening and slimming is a good idea.
- andromeduck 3y agoI agree tbh but it feels like the current environment doesn't reward risk taking and heads down work, especially with diffuse or longer term payoffs, and our AI efforts are still being retardedby safetiests/activists. Rest & vest types are still doing fine, it's the passionate/care-a-lots that are increasingly burning out and disengaging or leaving.