Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 600 posts

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#361

Post by bamboozled »

drewg123 wrote: post #107

As an Xoogler (left in 2015) I find that news highly disappointing. I think that without honest, regular Q&A at events like TGIF, the company will become more and more out of touch. When I was there, TGIF was watered down, but we still asked uncomfortable questions of management. I remember asking a question of Sundar when he was head of Android when the Nexus 6 came out questioning our chasing Apple into the high en…

I thought the same thing, this sounds like the CEOs approach is to cover up the issues rather than work on addressing them, probably one of the worst things you can do honestly and he now has the issue to solve of making sure the right information is communicated effectively without misinterpretation.

It sounds like they might even need more transparency rather than less of it. If some of the conversations were being leaked, well why not just open it up?

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#362

Post by kortilla »

jeromegv wrote: post #342
cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is historically revisionist. Google was a money-making behemoth with its tentacles in many areas of innovation before it became the politicized entity we know it to be today. Google only really became politicized a couple of years ago when certain media publications started making demands for diversity numbers within the organization and publicly shaming them for not meeting some imaginary bar in the area. Githu…

You seem to be the revisionist. Implying that people of colour that were brought at the company changed the culture for the worse because this is what the media wanted. Implying that politics came in only because they tried to bring diversity in the workplace. We are talking of the company that was advocating do not evil. This was political from day 1, remember their stand on China?

> You seem to be the revisionist. Implying that people of colour that were brought at the company changed the culture for the worse because this is what the media wanted. Implying that politics came in only because they tried to bring diversity in the workplace.

Yes, when they stopped caring about engineering skills and starting caring about diversity checkboxes, their overall engineering capabilities declined. Google has done relatively little of note over the last 5 years given their size, and part of it is that they have an incompetence cancer and engineering teams cannot trust other teams (or even coworkers in larger teams).

Do you realize how harmful it is to an organization when you can’t tell if a coworker you are depending on is competent or if they were hired because of their genes?

> This was political from day 1, remember their stand on China?

Which stand? Because they flip-flop all of the time.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#363

Post by 2stop »

heavyset_go wrote: post #358
monocasa wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when were advertising agencies button-up affairs? Crispin Porter is down the street from me and they seem to be every silly brogrammer stereotype, just in a different market. Like their shuttle looks like a prison bus but is labeled "disruptive thinkers transport" or some such. That's Mike Judge levels of ridiculousness.

> Like their shuttle looks like a prison bus but is labeled "disruptive thinkers transport" or some such. You're joking, right?

I love you guys are giggling about what’s written on the company shuttle while everyone else is giggling that company shuttles are a thing in SV.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#364

Post by SquishyPanda23 »

nostrademons wrote: post #37
malvosenior wrote: post #5

I wonder if companies like Google and GitHub that actively courted activists are now regretting their decision. For a long time it was common knowledge that you would try to keep stuff like that out of the workplace. The past 10 years have been an about face to that strategy and now we're seeing more or less complete chaos internally at these previously pro-politics (some kinds of politics) workplaces. My guess is th…

I think it's more that they actively courted assertive people with opinions and then created a culture where you can bring your whole self to work. They did this so that they could get the benefits of creativity, which inherently requires emotional engagement, which requires that you not repress your emotions. (It turns out that it's not possible to selectively repress emotions: "I've got to watch what I say about po…

It's true that Google doesn't need creative all stars. It needs line workers, and there's no way its culture of whimsical creativity could have survived expanding so much and so quickly.

Your point about emotions is also good. Here is another way to put it.

The issue IMO is that they told people they were changing the world and by making information universally available etc etc. The people who went to work for them early really believed it and those people seeded their culture.

The people who just wanted to make a bunch of money went into other fields (like Wall Street or law). Those people also talk about politics and undoubtedly have political activists. But the politics of someone who just wants to make a ton of money are aligned with a company whose stated goal is to just make a ton of money.

This political alignment doesn't happen for free at Google. And since they seeded their culture with people who cared about improving the world, they have a higher than average rate of influencial employees who don't want to make money in traditionally "dirty" fields like arms dealing and private prisons.

Google has to solve this problem because their cloud division can't survive if they can't take government contracts. I see no way of solving it except that they just have to kill the old culture while attempting to minimize attrition.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#365

Post by scarmig »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #328
hgytr wrote: post #305

First. Thanks to HN for not demanding phone numbers: anonymity allows to say things that cannot be said. Second. Many googlers read HN. In some sense, HN is the extension of the internal forums. CNBC made a good summary and I can comment on each bullet point. Larry and Brin probably stopped attending because nothing important is said on TGIFs. More people -> more leaks -> less interesting information -> less attenden…

> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Sorry but I cannot stand that level of internal koolaid. I guess you also think that Google got the "smartest" people? There are literally thousands of companies working on problems way more interesting and with more stakes and upsides for…

Google throws away obscene amounts of money on non-adtech things. Some of those are pretty interesting and useful for humanity.

You can say, well, those don't count, because Google isn't making money from them! But if you take that route, you also have to exclude all the startups working on "interesting" problems that don't and won't make money. You're left with a very small set of companies. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the null set.

I'd say a fair assessment is a random team at Google is as likely to be doing something interesting and beneficial as a team at a random startup (which is to say, unlikely but possible). At Google, though, you're going to have both better average financial outcomes and lower risk.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#366

Post by kortilla »

ekianjo wrote: post #322
redblacktree wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> typical big corporation with typical corporate politics I don't know why this would surprise anyone. People are people and politics are politics in any large organization. There is no reason to think Google would be exempt.

> There is no reason to think Google would be exempt. It can be controlled in some way. If you only hire people from the same political pool, for example. Or getting them early enough (young enough) to shape them in a way that will lower internal tensions. Not every large company is burning in political fires.

> If you only hire people from the same political pool, for example.

That’s not possible. In fact, one of the best ways to stoke internal political fires is to make the mistake of convincing those holding the majority political viewpoint that they represent the viewpoint of the whole company.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#367

Post by OneMoreGoogler »

hgytr wrote: post #346
rainyMammoth wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't get me wrong. Google is still the best workplace with top notch pay, but as it's got big, it's also morphed into a typical big corporation with typical corporate politics. Sorry but I cannot stand that level of internal koolaid. I guess you also think that Google got the "smartest" people? There are literally thousands of companies working on problems way more interesting and with more stakes and upsides for…

If you know names of those better workplaces, I'm all ears.

Over 16 years I've worked at only four companies, but one of them was Google, and it was honestly my least favorite.

Creature comforts: I have an actual cubicle with >2x the space. Excellent meals are still provided, but now lines are Engineering culture: No more promo or perf review nonsense. There's none of the internal competition / pressure that I felt every day at Google. The org and leadership has vastly less churn. The place is dead at 5:15pm. And the people I work with are incredibly smart.

In terms of company: my new employer is not creepy. My grandmother understands what I work on.

Do follow your heart, but I'm so happy I left.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#368

Post by manigandham »

joshuamorton wrote: post #259
manigandham wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm discussing. This isn't a workplace, it's a public internet forum. Nobody is prevented from participating here by my posts. You're free to discuss whatever you want as well. Replying to your edit => A workplace is different than the state. You do not have complete freedom within a corporation, and expression is very different from beliefs. Nobody cares about your beliefs, but your expression will be limited to…

You didn't actually address my question, and I made no mention of the state. I'm going to quote you again: you claimed that > When you protest against it publicly in the workplace and shout down others for as little as not vehemently agreeing with you, then we have a problem. I'm asking if you think that's generally true. For example, if you actually believe this, you would presumably make no attempt to silence me if…

1) Surely you can see the difference between topics? Politics are not relevant to work. Office policies are. You can discuss and protest the latter if you want, but not the former. I'm sure you don't discuss porn habits and drug usage with your coworkers, do you? But of course it's fine to discuss working from home or new laptops. There is no paradox here.

2) I would prefer any feedback and protests be in private when are relevant to the company. You don't make a fuss and nobody else does either, so we can all work in peace and quiet. Most companies implement these rules for the sake of everyone.

3) "unless you're clear about what makes something political." This is exceedingly clear for the vast majority of people, except the activists who are making the fuss.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#369

Post by bbddg »

zozbot234 wrote: post #32
bbddg wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what they mean by status quo is the political and power dynamics. Not how much "politics" is discussed.

Because discussing garden-variety, oppositional politics at work is how you can change "political and power dynamics" most effectively, of course. Not, e.g. by focusing on the actual policy issues you care most about, applying systems thinking and seeking plausible points of leverage (which often boils down to rejecting the oppositional game entirely and "pushing the rope sideways" in wholly unexpected ways). Serious…

I don't understand what you mean. I'm definitely not saying that "garden-variety, oppositional politics at work is how you can change "political and power dynamics" most effectively."

The type of politics I want in the workplace is the politics of building worker power and fomenting radical labor unrest.

Re: Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings

#370

Post by AlexB138 »

crooked-v wrote: post #308
Aeolun wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the book is wrong?

"The book" in this case starts with legal obligations under the Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment act, etc. A milquetoast 'well, I treat everyone equally' doesn't even come close.

How is treating people equally "not even close" to complying with those laws? I feel like I'm misreading to your comment, but it seems like treating people equally is exactly the point of those laws.
Post reply on HN