101–107 of 107 posts
https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-t...
and of course those authors aren't paid. But I'd take them to the Google Store and let them pick out a gift for themselves, as a small thank you. They were all very modest in their choices. Eventually Google imposed a hard limit on the amount they could spend. Think of the savings!
But staplers! Good grief, how many staplers did I go through? (actually, I don't think I had one)
If I owned any Google stock right now, I'd be thinking hard about selling it. Not because everything here is silly, but just because: A. over the course of 20+ years in this industry I've noticed a trend that when companies start worrying about things like tape dispensers or staplers (or the free coffee in the cafeteria, or the cost of the subsidized sodas in the breakroom, etc) it's almost always a Really Bad Sign f…
In the past 20 years, how many times have we had a low interest rate? Now ZIRP is dead, the incumbency of the USD as the world reserve currency is not a certain thing anymore. Your average company in average times, sure your heuristic makes sense. I'm guessing this will give many other companies the green light to cut back their perks as well. Just a thought - where are all those "best employees" going to go? Everyon…
The last time I looked there were almost 2 job openings per unemployed person in America. Unemployment right now is around 3.6% which is a slight uptick from other recent numbers, but still close to "historically low" territory. There are jobs out there.
Everyone is battening the hatches for a recession and VCs don't have tons of cash to hand out for new startups.
I would say it's a bit myopic to think that tech workers can only go to work for tech startups, or even companies that identify as "tech companies". So maybe somebody from Google winds up at John Deere, or Kohls, or Farmer's Insurance, or what-have-you. Now of course there's always going to be those people who have the mindset "I'm too good to work for company that makes tractors, pppffawwww." or whatever. So sure, they might not be rushing to leave unless the flood waters are literally swirling around their ankles. But clearly not everybody is going to fall into that category.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I joined a new job about 7 years back I was given a brand new stapler, a roll of tape and other office supplies on the joining day. When I left 4 years later I hadn't even finished one cartridge of stapler lins. Tape was unused as well. A company of Google's size must be wasting a non trivial amount of money on things nobody uses as frequently anymore.
I can get a stapler and a tape dispenser (a really nice heavy one) for 110 yen each at my local Daiso. That's USD$0.83 each, at retail prices.
This is all signaling to shareholders that are panic selling because of BARD vs ChatGPT.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/8/23590864/google-ai-chatbot...