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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'

#371

Post by MichaelZuo »

jjjjoe wrote: post #281
MichaelZuo wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making it an even percentage across the company is pretty common, it prevents middle management infighting and horse trading over who has to cut more and who gets to cut less. The actual decisions about which specific individuals, after the percentage is arrived at, however seems questionable if what you say is true.

This thinking is taught in MBA programs but does not map onto real businesses. If you're in the ice cube business and you made the profoundly unwise decision to set up vending machines in Inuit communities, you don't recover by laying off x% of both your Alaskan retail and Caribbean Cruise wholesale businesses.

You do if you have multiple primadonnas in middle management that can’t come to an agreement otherwise, and if you can’t sack them due to other factors that require years to resolve.

The real world is thousands of times more complex then ‘MBA programs’ or theoretical examples from people who haven’t been in the hot seat making such serious decisions.

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

#373

Post by refulgentis »

RCitronsBroker wrote: post #370
red-iron-pine wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

coal mines are only hellish while you're down. yeah there is the black lung, but you can wear filters. the goog tracks you (and everyone) 24-7, and depending on teams and egos, could be ugly. you spend your whole life tryin to get to FAANG tier, and now it's miserable.

this comment is really something

I suggest checking if you sense self-deprecating humor, then either:

A) Choose to reject the premise entirely because $ is all that matters

B) Faced with a contradiction, check your premises, and interrogate your interlocutors

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

#374

Post by refulgentis »

sitkack wrote: post #296
refulgentis wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to describe the pure absolute hell that can be working there, you'd be surprised how quickly the money becomes not worth it.

I work at Google, fuck em. The whole place is toxic. I hope it is at peak larping lord of the flies. But if anything about modern history has taught me anything is that there is always lower. Those 12k people they fucked over for zero real benefit, represented due to how Google hires, 240K interviews (5% accept rate). Let’s say they only did the screen. Still minimum 2 hrs, interview plus write up. 500k hours. 250 ye…

Bless. People don't grasp how it's gotten much worse than even bad workplaces. So complicated to explain.

I got pushed out, by an overworking bootlicker hiring their friend with 0 domain experience. Ultimate event was them and shiftless PM lying and said design VP had 0 interest in a project they had been asking for three years. They got away with it completely because SWE management closed ranks and pretended that was normal because fuck design, right? And I was very evil for not just being like "oh that totally makes sense that they don't care at all" (i.e. the PM got nuclear pissed because his boss' boss' boss got called in for a 2nd meeting with the design VP)

All that to say, your comment about LATAM reminded me how much it fucking. sucked. having management pull that in December 2022, and realize there wasn't any escape hatch to an anonymous org elsewhere, because all the roles are in Poland / India / etc.

Flashbacks to my 45 year old dad bitterly complaining about mass off-shoring in tech when I was 10. Now I get it. It's not that it doesn't make sense, we all know the $. What's evil is the lying and games.

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

#375

Post by shrimp_emoji »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #156
treprinum wrote: post #12

"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.’" Is there any mandatory training for CEOs to first understand when somebody is kissing up, second evaluate how devastating is cherry picking rare positive feedback to the company's morale? I can't believe top people can be so inept.

The CEOs job is to make the board happy. That’s it. There’s no other requirement. You make the board mad you’re fired. You make the board happy, then you’re golden and can do whatever. The easiest way to make a board happy is to reduce headcount, increase revenues (ideally wherever you have strongest margins) and prevent collective bargaining. CEO at this level isn’t a people leader like you’d expect because boards d…

This is why private ownership is better than public ownership.

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

#376

Post by red-iron-pine »

RCitronsBroker wrote: post #370
red-iron-pine wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

coal mines are only hellish while you're down. yeah there is the black lung, but you can wear filters. the goog tracks you (and everyone) 24-7, and depending on teams and egos, could be ugly. you spend your whole life tryin to get to FAANG tier, and now it's miserable.

this comment is really something

this comment is really nothing, and provides no real point, nor refutation of anything above.

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

#377

Post by dwb »

ghaff wrote: post #167
skort wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you get to be the CEO of a big tech company by caring about workers.

I don't think that's really fair. But I also think CEOs have to think about tradeoffs and realistically assess needs and strategies going forward which may not mean keeping everyone on payroll.

CEOs have to be competent agents of capital. This is fine to them because they see capital as a force for good.

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

#378

Post by pseudosavant »

kccqzy wrote: post #290
pseudosavant wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That description perfectly fits another massive tech company CEO: Steve Balmer. Revenue tripled under him. But Microsoft's mindshare, brand image, influence, etc. all went down.

So is it appropriate to predict that Pichai will end his tenure as CEO of Google just like Balmer did, which was when he voluntarily quit ("retirement")?

The stock price will be plenty high, but Google will never have been less relevant.

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

#379

Post by slowmovintarget »

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…

"The AI just auto-fired [6%] of the company!"

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

#380

Post by krade »

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…

this worker came to me, crying, tears in his eyes: Thank you Mr. Puchai for firing all these people.
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