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

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

sfgate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 401 posts

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

#301

Post by astrange »

deprecative wrote: post #97
twojobsoneboss wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need UBI and less dependence on private enterprises for basic human needs like income to survive and healthcare Would give both companies and individuals more flexibility and dynamism

But then lazy "people" would benefit and we don't like that.

There have been a lot of trials of UBI now and the evidence is very strong that… it doesn't affect employment much either way. So it doesn't make people lazy, but it's probably a disappointment to people who don't believe in work.

In the end, positional wealth matters about as much as absolute wealth, so people still want to work even if they can already pay for food.

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

#302

Post by dilyevsky »

jjjjoe wrote: post #286
CamelCaseName wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

no.

If you think managers everywhere dont employ this tactic i have a bridge to sell you

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

#303

Post by astrange »

michaelt wrote: post #102
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…

> 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 at least 5000 engineers worth of interesting work. Chrome has a pretty advanced javascript engine and cutting edge security features. Android, which is sorta-kinda open source. Youtube's pretty much the only place that serves working 4k video. The self-…

> Lots of interesting ML output, even if they've somehow failed to capitalise on it.

> The problem is what to do with the other 170,000 employees.

This is actually the problem and solution in one go - they're all doing data annotation.

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

#304

Post by tommiegannert »

nharada wrote: post #39

"Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision." This is definitely a small-to-large company pattern I've observed

Or:

These users don't seem to know what they want. I'll just listen to whomever keeps calling me personally about things. My buddies are successful, so it makes sense.

Eh, these shareholders don't seem to know what they're doing. I'll just listen to myself. Everything I do makes sense to me, so that makes sense.

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

#305

Post by wyclif »

martin-t wrote: post #230
julianlam wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gmail was great when it launched; nothing's really surpassed it, and they've largely avoided fucking it up. Mail client. Relational data best formatted in a tabular style. Takes 5-10 seconds to load. Avoided fucking it up, huh.

Exactly. I've been using the HTML version ( https://mail.google.com/mail/h/ ) but now they're threatening to shut it down too. First it was January, now February. I wonder why it's still up but don't have hopes that it'll stay up for long.

Looks like they're going to kill it later this month. Today when I tried to use the HTML version, a splash screen loaded that said this:

Starting from February 2024, this version of Gmail (Basic HTML Gmail) will no longer be supported, and you'll automatically start using Standard Gmail. Switch to the latest Gmail version now.

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

#306

Post by winrid »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #258
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.

the better term would be "people"

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

#307

Post by dilyevsky »

quatrefoil wrote: post #262
buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sundar was pretty close to optimal. For internal consumption, it was an inspiring story of an engineer who rose through the ranks to the top, an affirmation of an engineering-centric culture. A foreign-born immigrant to boot. And for external consumption: a polished, articulate, and presentable exec who can competently testify in front of the Congress or talk to politicians without giving off weird vibes, the way Zuc…

Sundar was never an engineer.

> Google is... what? An advertising network? A vendor of office apps for businesses? An ISP? A grocery delivery company (they did that for a good while)? A social network? Oh, and that gaming thing with Stadia?

There is a clear identity - Google is about hoarding all of the available data (originally web) and making money off of it any way you can. By definition it has to be huge and get their hands into as many pies as humanly possible and then cut away stuff that doesn’t work. So i would say they are being perfectly consistent whether their employees appreciate it or not.

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

#308

Post by therealdrag0 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #131

This is just so totally absurd that I’m surprised nobody has pushed back hard on this claim: “The Verge reported that CEO Sundar Pichai defended the layoffs and claimed that workers sometimes reach out to express gratitude for the cuts. “And I just want to clarify that, through these changes, people feel it on the ground and sometimes people write back and say, ‘Thank you for simplifying.’ Sometimes we have a complic…

A team that lost a low performer may appreciate it, otherwise not.

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

#309

Post by [deleted] »

christkv wrote: post #63

Failure is growth. Failure is learning. But sometimes failure is just failure. I think... I'm sorry. I didn't think it would be this hard. But goodbyes are always hard, especially when I am the one saying goodbye. Today, effective immediately, I, Gavin Belson, founder and CEO of Hooli, am forced to officially say goodbye to the entire Nucleus division. All Nucleus personnel will be given proper notice and terminated.…

[deleted]

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

#310

Post by refulgentis »

scarmig wrote: post #287
refulgentis wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, honestly I shouldn't have posted the 2 sentence version, and we'd need to have a beer and an hour to even begin understanding now that I started from there. But, what I'd say in another flippant sentence, since I'm tempted again: exactly, and that's the problem. I had a great time, will be forever proud and grateful, and there's more to life than work. But, it left me with a permanently jaundiced view of a lot…

I went through a progression, where I was first accepted to Google (genuinely one of the most exciting moments of my life), and I gradually fell into a deeper and deeper cynicism as I saw all my fantasies about how the world should work evaporate. Maybe it was just growing up. Even the "best company in the world that does no evil" is really just a bunch of profit-mongering assholes. That said, so is the rest of the w…

That can make it more acutely painful in a specific situation: you're aware of its limitations, you end up getting the opportunity to do exactly what you've always wanted to, you deliver, but yadda yadda yadda, so you have increasingly full knowledge you'll be roadkill eventually and they'll blame it on you even if you act perfect. Sisyphus.
Post reply on HN