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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'

#381

Post by johnnyanmac »

darreninthenet wrote: post #337
lotsofpulp wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barring an agreement to the contrary, employers and employees can terminate employment any time they want, except in Montana, as long as the termination is not due to the employee being in a protected class.

So apart from the protected class thing, there's no concept of wrongful dismissal in the US? And what's different in Montana?

Nope, not unless you're let go due to slander/libel. Even then I'm not sure if that means you guarantee your job back.

Some states have stronger protections in terms of how much warning an employee gets or severerance. But it's not widespread.

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

#382

Post by ryloric »

throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #343
ryloric wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, you say it as if every board member is an android focused only on short term results. They've had a board when Eric was CEO and Google was doing it's best work as well. It's not really about the board, Google has become a mature company that's not going to grow 20% YoY anymore and this is what happens to such businesses. Unless they're lead by an exceptionally strong person who can stand up to economic force…

> It's not really about the board. > Unless they're lead by an exceptionally strong person who can stand up to economic forces Isnt the board the ultimate force, including the economic one? You are supporting OPs claim actually. Becoming a mature company brings declining workforce morale. > they will turn them into IBM. because > The CEOs job is to make the board happy. That’s it.

Not agreeing with OP, boards don't always focus on immediate results and CEOs aren't androids that just care about pleasing the board. The world is rarely that simplistic.

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

#383

Post by johnnyanmac »

wolverine876 wrote: post #207
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s very true. However in this specific case, the OP is correct for anyone with decision making power at Google

I think by dehumanizing them, you sacrifice your own influence and humanity. They are humans, with empathy and other human emotions, and can be persuaded. On a slight tangent: A popular technique these days is to aggressively demonstrate amorality, sociopathic lack of compassion, etc. There's a reason they go out of their way to demonstrate it and so aggressively - it's BS. It's a negotiating tactic from the second w…

>I think by dehumanizing them, you sacrifice your own influence and humanity. They are humans, with empathy and other human emotions, and can be persuaded.

Sure, but these are humans with no stake in the company. They are not investing in Google because they believe in their mission nor do they even care if Google crashes in 5 years. They believe it's a way to quickly grow their portfolio, and will change as the market does.

This isn't to say they aren't human, just that they are at best more invested in other things or at worst are greedy and selfish.

>Act angry to put things out of reach and to intimidate people into backing down

I don't exactly feel better knowing it's just a facade towards the above spectrum.

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

#384

Post by johnnyanmac »

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")?

Probably. The question is less when he retires/quit and more about how he affected the company during his final days (and of course his legacy). Unity is a great anti-example of this: The former CEO IPO'd, made big money for Unity, and on the way out arguably burned the longterm status of the company while he fell with his golden parachute.

That's a lot of the problem. There's no teeth in it for modern day C-class execs. The only difference when they leave is whether they leave a billionaire or a hundred-million aire.

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

#385

Post by johnnyanmac »

avidiax wrote: post #362
anacrolix wrote: post #351

I left Google 10 years ago because it was boring. Any interesting things it does is restricted to an elite cabal. It's horribly conservative with programming innovation for a company its size. Its main reason to hire is to deny talented programmers to its competitors.

> Its main reason to hire is to deny talented programmers to its competitors. Maybe they think that they don't really have competitors at this point, or rather, no competitors that can meaningfully reduce the market share in key areas, or competitors that are in a position to hire the laid off employees.

Yeah, pretty much. I think Meta was more or less on record saying this back in the early 2010's. I think by the late 2010's they stopped doing this because they are well established in the market now.

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

#386

Post by johnnyanmac »

paxys wrote: post #136

Is there a single tech company where morale has been high since 2022? Microsoft had multiple layoffs and froze promos, bonuses and stock grants for all employees, and now they are the most valuable company in the world and have a great reputation in the industry. Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta and the rest aren't much different. If you are looking for groundbreaking innovation, competent management, no politics, freedom…

Probably Apple. They didn't go on a hiring spree, most of their products are still consumer focused, and there isn't really too many employee complaints unless you're a contractor. And of course they still have excellent PR from the customers.

They probably aren't making anything groundbreaking (outside of some obligatory LLM) but they seem least likely to drop employees as if they were throwing darts on a board.

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

#387

Post by johnnyanmac »

smeej wrote: post #357
nine_zeros wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> contribute to the vision of what could happen next, you're going to hate working under three layers of management, all of which have to be seen to be "doing something," so they tell you how to do your job even though they have no actual idea how to do your job. This is by far the biggest frustration for smart people. You can't just have so many layers of mediocrity have authority over smart people. When you have so…

I think it also behooves these smart people just to realize that they're not "one company for the long haul" people. I'm one of the people who likes working in startups. My peers who like working in established companies are appalled by my resume, with 1-3 years each in a handful of different places, often separated by 6-12 months of unemployment. But I've never had a hiring manager at the kind of startup I'm applyin…

A bit ironic because oods are the established companies are indeed the ones laying off people (which inevitably targets the 1-3 years more than the 5+ year seniority). If you're not an active detriment to a startup, you're probably not going to get fired unless you get caught in office politics (which can be much more personal and nasty than bigCo politics, admitedly).

>But there's not much written for the people who know they're going to be in and out of work, how to maximize each while preparing for the other, stuff like that, and I wish there were.

like you said, a lot of financial advice is based on stability. The job hop strategy is inherently unstable. No traditional advisor is ever going to suggest going into a job with the mindset to quit in 2 years for better job.

It's also because it's an inherently unique bubble that is tech. Tech moves fast , blazing fast. You can have 3-4 different domains under your belt in a decade if you wanted, whereas you may not even be considered a master of a particular domain if you spent 10 years in more traditional prestige like doctors or lawyers (if you count school you'd just barely be starting in such careers!). And even in tech this is a pretty recent trend isolated to the mid-00's to now (minus a few housing crisis years). the oldest authority exposed to such trends would either be retired and still have spent most of their lives pre-boom, or still currently in the workforce. There's no formal advisor available yet.

---------

I say all this as someone who wanted to be a "long haul" type. I wanted to be that deep domain tech guru to uncover the various secrets in my field. The reality is I just get laid off every 2-3 years. so what's even the point?

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

#388

Post by hiptobecubic »

Rastonbury wrote: post #317
refulgentis wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, except, it was 1 employee replaced by 5, and there isn't headcount backfill.

I don't find that story believable, you don't layoff then open backfill or let alone multiple roles on the team. The handful of Googlers I spoke to are now in smaller teams handling the same workload. If true it must've been some AI related team

Good for you, i guess? It was absolutely as stupid as they describe. There were multiple teams that were literally interviewing people to join and then laid people off in the middle of it. My own team was trying to fill multiple positions and then they fired one of us (long tenure, good perf) and told us we could hire backfill as long as it wasn't the experienced, useful person we just let go. We explicitly asked and the answer we got was that this stupid shit was somehow protecting alphabet.

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

#389

Post by hiptobecubic »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #371
jjjjoe wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If your management team can't figure out how to do what you're asking, maybe you should be firing them instead. If _no one_ can figure it out, maybe you should be firing you.

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

#390

Post by protocolture »

asah wrote: post #211
protocolture wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a multi billion dollar machine built by developers with the goal of doing good things and profiting by them. >Cell phone privacy Sure we make a cell phone and we make a cell phone OS but its best to look the other way and never trust your privacy to a device that society has decided should follow you 24/7.

Sorry for the flippant comment - I wasn't just referring to the code and apps running on your phone, but the servers and cell towers that collect tons of details about you. Plus, the physical emanations as your phone connects and responds to signals from 4g, 5g, wifi, bluetooth and more. A secure OS is cute but so what - there's a million other ways to p0wn your privacy. On the plus side, the digital trail is so inte…

Yes. The entire system is flawed end to end. No one decrypts anything anymore, they just ask the government for access to your hardware that has already decrypted the message.

If google was a small garage startup I would agree that they would have nothing they could do. But they aren't. They are massive. And this is their field. and this is their mission.

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