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Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

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Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#71

Post by quatrefoil »

andrewstuart wrote: post #14

Its amazing that the CEO of Google is still there after wholesale wrecking of developer trust over many many years.

Having briefly interacted with the founders of Google a couple of times, I'm pretty sure it's by design. I think that at some point, they recognized that Google must turn into a big, boring company that communicates in platitudes. There is no other way to do it when you have 150,000 employees, trillions of dollars at stake, and every regulatory agency in the world wants a piece of you. Even in the late 2000s, when Google was one tenth the size and was near-universally loved, the model of having frank fireside conversations with execs was already stretched thin.

They basically decided they want to reap the benefits of the company's success, but work on pet projects and not be the face of this anymore. Sundar was and is a perfect pick for a CEO - that is, if you accept that Google really couldn't outrun fate.

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#72

Post by dekhn »

inamberclad wrote: post #52
pcloadletter_ wrote: post #24

I think you're just in for a rude awakening if you expect the Google from 20 years ago. It's no longer a scrappy startup, it's closer to Microsoft at this point.

The thing that struck me about Google is that it's a really well running machine. The documentation is all there, the build system is easy, and just about every issue is fixed with a single form submitted or email sent. You quickly develop a very high standard for how an organization should function.

I think you left out the sarcasm tag

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#73

Post by vineyardmike »

proc0 wrote: post #47

I've wondered about the connection between organizations at the human level, and entropy. Nothing can avoid the increase in entropy, not even teams and their work culture. The processes used get old and unwieldy, domain knowledge becomes fragmented, features take longer and have more bugs, etc. Perhaps this is inevitable, but maybe organizations could become aware of the changes in entropy and try to do the equivalen…

“Refactoring at the org level” sounds like re-orgs and layoffs.

I think it’s unavoidable. You hire to grow, but growth changes you. You can’t layoff to un-grow and return to former self because they layoffs take a toll.

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#74

Post by ungreased0675 »

I’m not sure Google leadership appreciate how fragile their search business is. The core product has slipped significantly in quality and is ripe for disruption.

From the outside, the company looks rudderless, coasting along on (significant) momentum.

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#75

Post by golergka »

andrewstuart wrote: post #14

Its amazing that the CEO of Google is still there after wholesale wrecking of developer trust over many many years.

People were worried that Google would become the best IBM. Now I think it will become the next Boeing.

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#76

Post by DanHulton »

vondur wrote: post #26
andrewstuart wrote: post #14

Its amazing that the CEO of Google is still there after wholesale wrecking of developer trust over many many years.

Google is still making money every quarter. Doubt they will get rid of him.

They're gonna make money due to inertia for a while, until suddenly they won't, and then there won't be anything left to use to salvage the situation. When that happens, there are going to be a whole lot of "Whatever happened to Google?" articles that are going to be easy to sum up as "a long history of shortsighted decisions by inept management finally added up to more than the older history of good, forward thinking decisions ever did."

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#77

Post by ghaff »

ojbyrne wrote: post #33
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #23

What ever happened to Google X, have they released a single product or is it all resume padding just like their balloons or whatever

Waymo came out of X.

The question remains. Waymo is not really a product and it's unclear when it will become one in a broadly-deployed way.

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#78

Post by vineyardmike »

MikeTheRocker wrote: post #17
sianemo wrote: post #11

Outside of ads, and maybe LLM work, what projects are going on at Google that are interesting, to both the top brass and to line level engineers, that might lead people to feel differently? Google has been a rudderless ship cruising on ad dollars for years, with mid level managers launching one unimpressive product after another. Products that get canned by Google months later and only serve to benefit said managers…

I'm hoping they're building a commodity AR/VR operating system -- essentially spatial Android. They've already announced a partnership with Samsung and Qualcomm so I've got to imagine some interesting hardware is coming soon.

Considering they just gutted their AR team I wouldn’t hold my breath on this one. Too bad they couldn’t wait for Apple to launch the Vision Pro, because I bet they’d get a lot more excitement now that the press is out.

Re: Morale plummets at Google as workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'boring'

#79

Post by kajecounterhack »

TillE wrote: post #20

Google does plenty of stuff well, but what's their last big exciting new product or even new feature? Bard is good but they're chasing OpenAI. Same story with the Pixel phones and Samsung. Or YouTube Shorts and Tiktok. It all seems directionless or stagnant, like the bad old days of Microsoft.

Google Photos was pretty great. But yeah, Google is a utility company to me at this point. Search, Maps, GSuite, Chromecast, YouTube: it'd be nice if they could keep the things we use running and charge a reasonable price. Why is the Chromecast with Google TV still using such underpowered hardware?!
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