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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'

#251

Post by refulgentis »

lxgr wrote: post #188
refulgentis wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want me to really bake your noodle? Ready? It has Markdown mode as an option. Peak HN, perfectly executed: - "it's obvious my pet peeve feature X should be added to Y, the company in the article". - "I don't like X". - "Can we have both?" I'm guffawing

Peak HN is also claiming Y already supports X without showing any evidence. And no, converting a `#` into a H1 is not "markdown support". I want a non-WYSIWYG mode that can let me work on plain text and export it without changing a single comma or tab, optionally with a WYSIWYG presentation layer on top of that like Dropbox Paper does, but one that does not let me add non-markdown features (which would inevitably get…

You redefined Markdown support into "only Markdown support." No refunds, sorry. :)*

Absolutely no trillion-dollar company is going to ship a product at scale that's simultaneously obsessed with: Markdown only, non-formatted Markdown, and Markdown.

That's a niche feature available in many code editors, I suggest Visual Studio Code.

* also, note both my and my parent post are proceeding with the premise that perhaps both are desirable, I'm not sure why you felt deceived that Docs didn't become a Markdown-only editor

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

#252

Post by scarmig »

ChatGTP wrote: post #231
kibwen wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Google Search is worse today because the web is worse today. But to be ultra-fair, the web is worse today because of the perverse incentives created by Google Search and Google Ads.

Who was a key player in ensuring the web is worse do you think?

If you had to pin it on a single actor, Google. Ads have corrupted the original vision of the web. When you offer a path for other actors to monetize the web, they will, and Google did that more than anybody.

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

#253

Post by arvinsim »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #241
willio58 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I saw a team lose its sole TL with a decade+ of tenure on the team, then turn around and hire 4-6 people to try and catch up. My god.. That's pure ineptitude and I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now. This basically sends the message "doesn't matter how good you are, we're going to spin the wheel every so often and if it lands on you you're out"

Is it possible they did this on purpose to expand their team size?

Not uncommon. Take out the old guard and hire new people for empire building.

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

#254

Post by refulgentis »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #241
willio58 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I saw a team lose its sole TL with a decade+ of tenure on the team, then turn around and hire 4-6 people to try and catch up. My god.. That's pure ineptitude and I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now. This basically sends the message "doesn't matter how good you are, we're going to spin the wheel every so often and if it lands on you you're out"

Is it possible they did this on purpose to expand their team size?

No that's absolutely bonkers and an edge case. 5 women don't have a baby in 1.8 months, and headcount has been frozen-ish since late 2021 unless you're Bard, so we're looking at someone dangerously stupid sticking their neck out to over-compensate, for no good reason, and inexperienced with basic tech shibboleths.

Also, the large firing decisions in January 2023 and January 2024 were made up several steps up the ladder. There's been probably just as much firings done informally inbetween, and to your point, some were very purposeful: multiple people in Assistant org. reported independently that new directors and their couterie were grafted onto the org, they were shuffled onto "Still Very Important" Assistant teams, then the not-so-important Assistant teams were let go en masse.

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

#255

Post by MuffinFlavored »

willio58 wrote: post #228
jjjjoe wrote: post #204

The reason the word "inept" keeps coming up is just how opaque and senseless to the rank and file the January 2023 layoffs were. High performers, low performers, newest hires, most tenure: we saw all kinds of heads roll. I saw a team lose its sole TL with a decade+ of tenure on the team, then turn around and hire 4-6 people to try and catch up. A growing deployment team was actively hiring before and after it got a 6…

> I saw a team lose its sole TL with a decade+ of tenure on the team, then turn around and hire 4-6 people to try and catch up. My god.. That's pure ineptitude and I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now. This basically sends the message "doesn't matter how good you are, we're going to spin the wheel every so often and if it lands on you you're out"

> I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now

The average total compensation for an engineer is $250k-$350k/yr+

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-Sa...

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Citrix,UKG,American%2...

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

#256

Post by geodel »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #244
quatrefoil wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Go…

But couldn't the founders put a competent CEO in the chair and still pursue their passion projects on the side?

Well, if they could've they would've. Also in unlikely case they could've different thinking about competence than yours.

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

#257

Post by dang »

asah wrote: post #93

(repost after every Google-bashing...) Alternate perspective as a longtime googler, ex-googler, mostly-happy user and shareholder. Please hear me out. As user, I'm pretty ok with Google. Websearch is sputtering sure but that's normal after a challenge like chatgpt. I tried Bing again and came back after a day. Google seems ok on privacy: in 2024, you don't see hackers exfiltrate Google data, employees abuse privilege…

> (repost after every Google-bashing...)

That's not ok here, so please don't. We want curious conversation, not repetition. (Fortunately it doesn't look like you've repeated this more than once, but that is already too often.)

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#258

Post by Ferret7446 »

jjjjoe wrote: post #204

The reason the word "inept" keeps coming up is just how opaque and senseless to the rank and file the January 2023 layoffs were. High performers, low performers, newest hires, most tenure: we saw all kinds of heads roll. I saw a team lose its sole TL with a decade+ of tenure on the team, then turn around and hire 4-6 people to try and catch up. A growing deployment team was actively hiring before and after it got a 6…

Was the TL in a high cost area, and the replacements junior SWEs in low cost areas? It's likely that they have a set budget for human resource (for lack of a better term), so they're cutting the "high cost items". Unfortunately, institutional knowledge/skill doesn't show up on a spreadsheet.

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

#259

Post by bdangubic »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #255
willio58 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I saw a team lose its sole TL with a decade+ of tenure on the team, then turn around and hire 4-6 people to try and catch up. My god.. That's pure ineptitude and I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now. This basically sends the message "doesn't matter how good you are, we're going to spin the wheel every so often and if it lands on you you're out"

> I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now The average total compensation for an engineer is $250k-$350k/yr+ https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-Sa... https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Citrix,UKG,American%2...

that is supposed make you not feel sorry, $250k-$350k…? feel sorry for you for posting this…

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

#260

Post by diogenescynic »

My friend who works there says it's because they let people who've been there a long enough time transfer into roles they have no experience in, but because of their experience, they are automatically put into senior positions but lack the experience to actually do the job.
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