Google workers complain bosses are 'inept' and 'glassy-eyed'
3 years ago by 1984 to c/technology
It's happening at my company right now. We just merged. I got a taste of power, performed well, then got written up for spending too much time on my power project. Now they have neutered any power I had, and I'm a glorified babysitter and messenger. The hunt now begins in earnest.
Good luck.
Damn that sucks. I've been laid off before, and I was lucky enough to have a bunch of references and ins at other jobs right away.
Just keep making friends and building marketable skills on the company dime, is what I am doing anyway
Yes, I'm in no danger of being fired it doesn't seem. I've been there 6 years and have an enormous amount of knowledge of our product and operations. And it was just a 'verbal counseling' (which is written down, sent to HR, and added to your record; totally verbal though). So I'll just keep on project managing timelines and crap, and collecting my Pacheck. But now I have like 8 months of successful product management under my belt to add to the resume
I thought the same thing at 5 years, and everyone I heard from said it was a mistake to lay me off. Last I heard, my responsibilities were being split up between 3 people. On top of that I found out I was getting underpaid, so I was a good deal on top of that :p
Anyway despite all that, I still wasn't part of whatever vision upper management had going forward, so they gave me a sweet severance and sent me on my way. I'm not mad, but it's definitely made me careful not to expect my job to be safe.
I've watched entire teams of people with 15+ years at a company get decimated. All firedwith made-up BS. From director level down.
All because a bean counter told senior management they weren't firing enough people (their firing stats were below some metric).
Maybe that's because, somehow, you did a good job hiring and on boarding people?
Not for nothing, it doesn’t sound so successful.
Working with people is a very core skill. You suggest that this came out of the blue - but I would bet that there were a lot of missed signals on the way. Escalating straight to verbal warnings and demotion in role or responsibility means you’re missing something very fundamental in what wasn’t working or was missed.
A few years ago the MBA suits took over from the nerds and it became inevitable.
I'm not sure the nerds ever really had the best intentions, so were probably really easy to buy off
TBH I don't get why people criticize selling out as if they wouldn't do it, too. I don't want to sit and amass wealth indefinitely, if I have a company and someone comes along and offers "retire rich forever" money, I'm taking it and fucking off to somewhere fun. Especially if we're talking billions, no one will ever hear my name again.
I am old enough to remember that Apple was the pirate of Silicon Valley, and then it became the most “cooperation” company in the industry. Then it’s Google then there will be a next one. It’s probably inevitable for any company to go this route.
It be the age of pirates no morrre? Arr... :C
It's a well travelled path for any company in the tech sphere. Start out as a disruptor and breath of fresh air in a stagnant industry and then slowly crank the dial toward enshittification over time hoping that the reputation you previously built will keep your customer base from jumping ship too quickly.
They've long been quite mediocre judging by the incredible long hours of those working there and shit quality of basically any technical framework they put out.
They have shoved tons of resources into some things (such as Android) and thus at times succeeded (though usually they don't), but in terms of quality from a technical point of view (i.e. software design, technical architecture) their stuff looks like it was hammered together by a bunch of junior devs.
Lucky timing followed by some smart strategical decisions (and, seemingly, lots of money together with a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks management strategy) are what made Google, not excellence.
It's unfair to discount Google's early days. They DID have technical excellence. Search was leagues better than the competition. Gmail was an amazing leap from other providers. Android started as trash but improved rapidly. The Nexus line of phones was amazing. Google Maps was a huge improvement over what else existed. They did a lot right.
I can't pinpoint exactly when the fall started. Was it when Pichai became CEO? When they removed "don't be evil?" I remember a speech Pichai gave where he talked about "more wood behind fewer arrows" as why they were getting rid of employee child projects, so maybe it was that.
I can't pinpoint exactly when the fall started.
In my opinion, it was when anti-trust laws did not trigger upon Google acquiring YouTube because Google Video couldn't compete. That meant it was open season on start-ups that otherwise might have grown to kill Google or other big tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Microsoft.
Oh yeah, I even forgot Google Video used to be a thing.
Android started as trash
It started off by beating the pants off of iOS in terms of features, but was not nearly as polished.
Definitely not trash. But also not polished for the masses.
And they acquired it in the first place.
To their credit (or at least the Android team), they quickly moved it from Linux-on-a-handheld to a real thing.
Android still isn't as polished as iOS, but it's a far more capable system.
And that's good. iOS has it's place, as does Android.
Gmail was an amazing leap from other providers.
Gmail really wasn't any better than Hotmail at first, it was just that they gave you a huge (at the time) amount of storage, when Hotmail users regularly had to delete old mail or attachments.
I just tried to reproduce your comment. Google home set a timer for me and play/paused my TV (chromecast with google tv) I don't have streaming music to test it on. I do agree that the quality of Google home has gotten terrible though. It takes a lot more prompting to do simple things and has stopped some scheduling tasks as far as I can tell.
When I ask it to set a timer, it tells me that it doesn't understand me. If I ask it to stop playing, it tells me that it doesn't understand me. I have to just say "stop". It also used to transfer whatever you were listening to between speakers, but cannot understand me anymore if I ask for that.
What's a technical architecture? Serious question.
Coding standards, library standards (stuff like naming conventions), software development processes, higher level software design concerns (for example, take in account the need for change in the future as part of a software design), design libraries taking in account extrenal concerns (say, how 3rd parties actually work with them) and so on.
It's basically the next level from software design, which in turns is the next level from coding.
The most senior position one can have in the technical career track in programming is Technical Architect.
As far as I can tell, Google doesn't really have any of those (or they're not at all good at their job).
Having a dedicated technical architect who hovers above the dev team handing architectural decisions down is also not always seen as an ideal construct in software development.
They probably do, but with how expansive they are, the massive variety of acquisitions, and not being clairvoyant, it's gotta be like herding cats.
I've worked in tech companies (systems management, telecom, etc) and in conventional businesses (manufacturing, distributing, production, reselling, banking, etc).
The arch teams in conventional business are more structured, formalized, as their remit is to ensure infrastructure is stable, predictable, and to practically eliminate risk.
The tech companies have arch teams whose focus is interoperability between business units, high communication, maximize utilization, etc. Risk is still a concern, but it's not primary (unless you fuck up). Tech orgs are about flexibility.
I loved Google for so long, but they have really lost it. I switched back to Firefox last year as a meek sign of protest. My work still uses Gmail and my personal email is still Gmail, it's gonna be rough to extricate myself. My fucking phone number is Google voice
When times are tough
Work environment gets rough
I guess.
Tough times create rough workplaces, rough workplaces create strong employees, strong employees create unions, unions create better workplaces.
"Becoming"?
"Don't be evil". Not-evil people don't need to say such things.
Also, any large organization is a shit show, regardless of what it's organized for. It's the nature of humanity.
A (former) boss used to say "if you have 3 employees you have nine problems".
It was a Warrant Canary
“Don’t be evil”. Not-evil people don’t need to say such things.
That was a reference to Microsoft. They were on trial / convicted for abusing their monopoly in awful ways to screw over any potential competitors, and making the experience terrible for Microsoft users. As bad as Google might be today, they're nowhere near as bad as Microsoft was. And, in the early years, they were definitely the anti-Microsoft in the tech world.
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 complicated, duplicative structure,” he said, per the Verge.
Chalmers: People send thank you's for lay offs?
Pichai: Yes.
Chalmers: May I see one?
Pichai: No.
- Who writes an email directly to the CEO of their company, and
- Who would that email have to be from for the CEO to actually bother reading it?
I'm guessing it's not your rank-and-file type "people".
"This is a conversation I could imagine happening if I spoke to my employees directly, and that's as good as an actual conversation."
That is different than for layoffs, which generally is less about rooting out toxic people and more about lowering costs. And people know it usually.
That said, anyone causing trouble for management or viewed as not pulling their weight will be the first on the list since management won't have to justify firing them.
Fired and laid off are different. The people who were laid off weren't let go because they were a drag on their teams or their departments, but because theoretically the company didn't have enough work for them.
I can imagine it, but just a few really awful people. Google, like any company, will have some extreme right-wingers working for it. And, working for Google tends to go with big egos. I can imagine some dude looking at his stock options thinking "yes, all those useless people were holding down the value of my options, now that they're gone I'm going to be rich".
Managers are also 'workers' according to people like this guy, so they're the ones saying thanks (because they are kissing ass.)
Yeah, I thought his clueless reaction not only didn't dispel but just confirmed the problem.
He's in a bubble, clueless that Google is now staffed by up-managing promo-seekers and not people who care about solving problems in a "googly" way like it was 10 years ago. His toadying to Wall Street and corporate culture shift did that, and now he doesn't even notice that people are telling him what he wants to hear and complimenting his policies even when they don't work.
Google employs, what, hundreds of thosuands of people now? All of them have stock options, many are millionaires from their Google stock. They also have big egos, and are often engineers (i.e. not very empathetic).
I can imagine a few people not caring about co-workers they never met being let go, and believing management's story that they were letting go people who weren't needed and were just a drag on the company. Some, especially right-wingers, probably look at their options, see the share price going up, and are happy about the layoffs. They mistakenly believe it wouldn't happen to them because they're much more valuable, and they see themselves more as Google stockholders rather than employees.
Still, a competent CEO knows that those kinds of employees are terrible for the culture of the organization. Rather than admitting that some employees like it their fellow employees are let go, he'd be smarter to say "it's tough for us because we're a family, so nobody likes it when we have to lay people off, but sometimes business realities make it necessary."
I feel like the editor that wrote the headline missed the main point of the article. The headline makes the article sound like there are a bunch of dumb and boring middle managers at Google. The actual article has nothing to do with people's direct bosses or even their bosses' bosses. The article was about how Google execs are ruining the company to appease the shareholders. Best quote from the article is:
“We get that execs are excited about Google’s future,” another question reportedly said. “Why should we be excited, when we might get laid off and not be around to share in that future? If we lose our jobs and equity grants, it’s cold comfort that Google is succeeding off our hard work, and we don’t get rewarded for it, but you do.”
IMO one thing I think should be made into law is that if a company grants unvested equity, everything granted will automatically vest when you get laid off.
If you decide to quit before they vest, I understand that those grants should be forfeited. If you get fired for not doing your job, I also get forfeiting them.
But if the company lays you off, that's on their side, so I think the opposite (automatic vesting) should be guaranteed by law.
I had to verify the current situation in the United States is what you stated because it's intuitively so wrong. I can't believe an employer can set terms for compensation and, through no fault of the employee, legally prevent that employee from completing those terms.
Land of the free!
Yeah, my company just re-organized their shares and reset my vesting schedule after 5 years. And are trying to get rid of me.
Reset the schedule for shares they already granted you? Or for future grants?
Ones they already granted me
Can't think why just can't open contractor positions and keep things honest. "This is a year contract " great, pick if that's your path and move on when it's over.
You're right. Google employs over 140k people.
If the average team is 8-10 people, this article is kinda complaining about 10000+ people being shitty at their jobs.
When really, middle managers are also part of the same worker class.
Kicking the robots just won't grant them the same pleasure as kicking the serfs I bet. Worse yet might make the inevitable thought "maybe I'm bad at this" might get harder to dismiss it with automata following orders near perfectly.
Just kidding of course they will just blame the devs or personify the AGI making it to blame it.
This has been a huge problem for Google for several years now. Under Sundar, Google implemented several regressive "un-Google" policies like Unregretted Attrition (URA) to reduce worker numbers, shifting responsibility to managers and senior leadership to determine technical vision, and promoting people who are solely focused on "empire building" over delivering the best products. The result is a management-heavy structure where policies like "put AI in everything" and "display more ads" are likely to be a business driver over making the best products.
This is why companies should be run by their workers. Even places that start out with a good culture get taken over by the business school blob whose only job is to get promoted and loot the company.
There are some folks that know both how to run a business well and are passionate about the technology, but they are rare unfortunately. More common in smaller organizations at least.
They’re common in small orgs. Once you go public and the only thing that matters is the quarterly bottom line, you almost have no choice but to replace them with people whose only though is “make number go up”
From the article:
“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 complicated, duplicative structure”
Employees think leadership is out of touch. This statement from the CEO proves this problem exists and starts at the top.
Workers: "our bosses are inept"
You: "the gays are making their lives worse!"
This is what Fox News does to people's brains. Truly sickening.
Don’t forget the misogynistic and racist component of his comment.
Yeah, those are just as bad. I simply didn't want to waste more brain power on this individual than absolutely necessary to make my point.
Source: Trust me bro, it definitely happened
So we should stick with the institutional racism that's persisted for centuries because you have a problem with the negros and women?
If you're not a troll, this should be your ok boomer moment.
I read that as DEI hires
Say you're racist without saying your racist speedrun
Racist, misogynist, xenophobic, bigoted, made-up story about a company hiring women+minorities into dedicated departments which then don't do any work
They must have a lot of departments full of white, straight men to compensate, otherwise the company would surely go under. /s
edit: before anyone thinks I actually meant this seriously...I was reacting to a ridiculously bigoted comment by some troll (I know...I shouldn't have reacted) claiming their company had entire departments full of women+minorities not doing any work. The comment no longer exists of course. I
My company had a big diversity push, but it worked well for us, and ended up making it a much more pleasant to work.
Are you sure those are DEI hires, or just the kind of people your co-workers want to be around?
VR ping pong can be played from cubicles, or VR cubicles in a Matrix style bioenergy plant
There is Almost Pizza
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Or a Skynut-style ejaculate-powered-robot testicle gas station bioenergy plant even.
Fuck Scott Adams.
This makes me so sad, I really enjoyed the comic for years and years. Then he had to go and open his fucking mouth and ruin the entire thing. Now I feel a twinge of disgust rather than delight when I see a reference of him.
Not sure if I want to know, but what did he say? I'm out of the loop..
Edit: just found the comment with context from TwilightVulpine below..
Behind the Bastards did an entire takedown on Scott. Dude has never had it together. He can't imagine himself as anything but the smartest person in any room, then he got rich off Dilbert, which only confirmed it. He views all human interaction as an opportunity to impose his views on others while never changing his mind. He blames other races for every inconvenience he has ever experienced. Trump and COVID then sent him into full fascist lunacy.
I didn't know what this was about. I found this that can serve as context for others unaware: https://www.npr.org/...
[...] Adams urged white people "to get the hell away from Black people" during a racist rant on his online video program last week, during which he labeled Black people a "hate group."
On his video show last week, the 65 year old said he had been identifying as Black "because I like to be on the winning team," and that he used to help the Black community. Adams said the results of the Rasmussen poll changed his mind.
"It turns out that nearly half of that team doesn't think I'm okay to be white," he said, adding that he would re-identify as white. "I'm going to back off from being helpful to Black America because it doesn't seem like it pays off," he said. "I get called a racist. That's the only outcome. It makes no sense to help Black Americans if you're white. It's over. Don't even think it's worth trying."
This is not the first time Adams' strip has been dropped. Last year, The San Francisco Chronicle and 76 other newspapers published by Lee Enterprises reportedly dropped Dilbert after Adams introduced his first Black character. Quinn noted that the move was "apparently to poke fun at 'woke' culture and the LGBTQ community."
Well go figure... Rasmussen polls have been seen to drift with a rightward bias over the last decade or so. In the early 2000s they were the gold standard, but eventually they started with the political manipulation bullshit by wording their polls in a biased way.
More than likely whatever poll this asshat read about was one of those manipulative ones that was created to serve a specific political purpose to help Republicans.
The whole "it's okay to be white" thing is a dogwhistle to begin with. It might seem benign, if weirdly unprompted without context. The issue is that among some groups this is often followed up with accusing black movements and immigrants of wanting to get rid of white people, rather than just seeking equality, which is done to fuel racism. This is why a lot of black people might be suspicious of that statement. Nevermind that not agreeing with it might simply mean unsure rather than against.
This whole thing is a roundabout rhetorical play to bait people who are more afraid of being accused of being racist, you know, because racism is bad, than understand that racism has a whole history, that black people have good reasons to be wary of people who are a little too proud of being white. But detached white people might be fooled by a superficial read of "why is it okay to be you but not okay to be me, maybe you are the racist".
If anything he proved that he is exactly the kind of white guy that black people might be worried about. He doesn't care about them unless he's on the "winning team" and gets a reward for it.
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Who could've imagined that Google is becoming just as mediocre and boring as any other large corporation. What a surprise!
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