‘Morale is at an all-time low’: Ex-Googler writes scathing latter slamming layoffs and ‘eroded’ culture::An ex-Googler wrote a 1,500-word letter criticizing the firm and CEO Sundar Pichai’s lack of “visionary leadership.”
Sundar Pichai has got to be the worst CEO in the silicon valley period
Google has managed to produce next to nothing of value with a dreamteam of engineers the likes of which no one else had access to
From one uninspired leadership decision to the next they’ve just been sitting there bolstering what’s already there while every once in a while adding a new product to the Google graveyard
They did produce something of value, Stadia, but instead of investing in it further with some exclusive games to show off its capabilities and lure more people and developers in … or just outright signing a deal to paying for the development cost to port some hits or Call of Duty to Stadia, they wrote it off, refunded everything, and shut it down.
It’s a major fail, they tried next to nothing to fix their messaging issues, failed to invest in areas that would’ve made a difference, and didn’t stick with it to challenge people’s beliefs that Stadia was going to be shut down.
They should’ve:
- Made a guarantee that if they shut down within the next 10 years, every game you play will be refunded in full.
- Did a hardware upgrade to bring Stadia past consoles.
- Never shut down their in house studios and invested even more into bringing other studios in.
- Really upsold the cheat free experience (with no client side anticheat spyware necessary) and the ability for the platform to make even the games with the worst netcode stable multiplayer experiences.
- Made something like steam workshop for Stadia and worked with at least one developer to prove that it works (they said they were open to mods, but they needed developers to take interest)
- Potentially resolved the “you have to buy all your games again” concern by offering to buy everything on the platform in your steam, xbox, or PlayStation library 1 time (so you couldn’t “import” multiple times or buy new games on another platform and then import them for free).
Imagine if people literally just pressed a few buttons on their old gaming computer and suddenly could play a bunch of their steam library in the cloud with better graphics for free on any device they wanted. I can’t imagine folks wouldn’t have stuck around with that kind of a deal.
Made a guarantee that if they shut down within the next 10 years, every game you play will be refunded in full.
This would have given people confidence, but really doesn’t reflect on Google as a whole, and just reinforces that they as a company will kill things at a moment’s notice.
I think in addition to all your points, they could have distanced Stadia from Google, and announced a new gaming company under the Alphabet umbrella. The hardware bundles they were selling with Chromecasts probably wouldn’t have been a thing, but I’m not sure if that would have been a bad thing. Having stadia as a completely separate entity from Google may have given it the breathing room it needed to get a good user base, without the stigma of google killing products.
with some exclusive games
Sweetie, you don’t just get heavy-hitting exclusives right out the gate.
In what world does Google shell out enough cash for a game that’s so good it pulls people to Stadia when the developers can just sell their good game on already-proven platforms?
They’d have to make their own studio or contract it out. I never saw Google shelling out $50m for a AAA game, and small-time shit is stuff people can just get on their phones.
That’s the point. They started their own game studio when Stadia was launched and shut it down about a year later.
They also paid a lot of money for some of the licenses they got in the early days of Stadia. And then someone a pay grade or two above decided to stop this and suffocate the little bit of momentum the platform had gained.
From a shareholder’s perspective, which is the only perspective C suite executives care about, he’s been the best CEO of all time for Google.
Yup, he’s the absolute worst. I can’t think of a single product that Google has even improved during his tenure as CEO… let alone a product that he successfully launched on his own. All he can do is make existing products more expensive.
Look at how he completely lost his shit when chatgpt was released - probably a huge part of the reason he lost it is cause he realized he’d have to actually do something useful instead of just squeezing more blood from the collective stone of all Google’s existing products. His claim to fame is creating Chrome. What fucking good is that? Web browsers have existed since the time he was born. There’s nothing to innovate there, and there never has been. It’s clear: he’s not an innovator.
Whoever takes over after he’s gone is going to be in for a hell of a time. The only thing he’s created for Google is a shit-ton of anti-trust lawsuits. The company is an empty husk at this point. There’s nothing left for them to become.
Was GO made during Pichai’s tenure? I don’t use GO but apparently they got the guy who wrote C on it so…?
No, Go dates back to when Eric Schmidt was running things.
Google’s decisions in the time Pichai has been CEO, have been anti-consumer all the way. Not the fun conpany it used to be, now users are beind forced out of adblockers and a products promise is abandoned way too often.
Yeah Google kind of sucks now and everyone paying attention knows. They kill a lot of products and don’t really make anything new and good.
Their search returns too many ads and SEO garbage sites.
They can’t unify on messaging. Talk, hangouts, allo, duo, meet… Just pick one. But I guess that doesn’t look as good on someone’s resume.
Frustrating part is how G+ coulda gone somewhere if they’d not been dumbasses rolling it out
Literally even the circles feature would have been so great
Yep, layoffs tend to hurt culture and trust.
Some companies seem to thrive on regular culls in the name of operational efficiencies. All that happens is talent leaves the organisation and then those left behind struggle because expertise has gone.
It erodes good will and good will is something you can’t win back.
By the time things look like they are normalising, in comes another cull!
The letter is a post on his own blog . Hard to distill into a summary so I recommend reading it get more context. But it seems to have boiled down to:
-
How It Was:
- Strong adherence to the “don’t be evil” ethos, focusing on societal good over profits.
- Open, transparent communication and decision-making processes.
- High morale, with a culture of learning from successes and failures.
- Work focused on benefitting the web and users, rather than Google’s immediate interests.
- Collaboration and lack of internal silos, encouraging innovation and autonomy.
-
How It Is Now:
- Shift from user-centric to Google-centric, and then to individual-centric decision making.
- Eroded transparency and increase in organizational silos.
- Decline in morale and a culture of distrust between employees and management.
- Focus on short-term financial gains leading to layoffs and defensive employee behavior.
- Lack of clear vision and leadership, resulting in confused and ineffective management.
- Overall deterioration of Google’s unique, innovative culture and values.
-
It’s been a long time brewing with how Google manages projects and people, and Sundar is just the dipshit who’s been helming it. Google needs a rethink, because once the ad market collapses (and it will collapse, they’re helping it along with their crusade against YouTube) they will be rudderless and moneyless.
I really wish I was motivated to finish my transition off Google because right now, storage and email are the two things left to address. And without funding, I can’t keep investing in NAS storage, or be bothered to move off Gmail for a new email vendor (which has its own problems with any non-Google email sinking into someone’s XBL).
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I would disagree and say that Pichai is a visionary, in turning Google into a monopolistic dystopian megacorporation.
On a completely unrelated matter, can Lemmy topic post titles be edited?
The randomness of this comment actually fucked me up for a good minute 🤣
No shit that moral too is all time low
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LoL no shit. You don’t even need to be an employee to figure this out. Even as a customer I feel that way. I’m looking to leave Google altogether.
I went to modify my 2018 Google Wi-Fi router to add a simple port forwarding rule, and the functionality is completely GONE from their already shitty Google Home app. It used to be so easy and simple on the old Wi-Fi app. I’m never buying another Google device.
This company has reached enshittification nirvana.
It’s still there for me in “Advanced networking”->“Port Management”.
If you click into mine, all you see are two options both of which only serve to allow Google to Hoover more of your data.
Looking into this more a couple days ago, it seemed that without IP reservations, you can’t get the port forwarding option to appear. Which I haven’t messed with. On principal I refuse to deal with a router that has regressed in functionality and am instead dedicating my time to de-Google my life haha. I bought an openwrt compatible router this weekend.
I do have a bunch of IP reservations. I don’t really know how you’d do port forwarding without subs static IP address to forward to. I have not seen any of the data sharing options, but it could be that I gave those permissions years ago and forgot…
IIRC the Google Wi-Fi app had some extremely simple selection process in the port forwarding that allowed you to review the device list with IPs and select for port forwarding. The app would then carry the pf rule regardless of dynamic DHCP. Seems very simple functionality that now requires multiple steps to achieve. I’m sure in the product management meetings they assumed the new Nest users were too dumb to handle such logic or just overlooked the functionality in general to speed the migration from Google Wi-Fi to Google Home. Seems like a great mini case study for poor product management.
Ah, you’re right. It does work with dynamic addresses.
It works like this for me, currently:
Gotcha, maybe it’s the fact I’m running iOS, I can’t get any type of rule or DHCP assignment options to show up. Just the same two options for telemetry and Nest. Oh well, thanks for the help. I’m getting my new router Tuesday and should be off to the races!
I’ve switched to duck duck go and I’m working on leaving Gmail, but damn it’s taking a while to update my email address everywhere, hoping after couple of months I won’t have any Google products left in my name.
I’ve switched to Kagi for search, and Fastmail for email. Though a bit more difficult to escape Google when you’ve got a pixel 8 pro ;)
Actually, it’s easiest to escape google with a Pixel, even more than an iPhone with GrapheneOS (only if not a carrier phone though).
Rather easier I’d say, as it has an unlockable bootloader, unlike most other phones. I have a pixel 7 on Graphene, but there’s a bunch of other versions you can try.
Only the google edition, not carrier versions.
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You see the problem here is that lives are not disposable. Taking all the risks and making the people suffer the consequences is really shitty. I if they instead focused on steady growth rather than giant leaps, nobody would get laid off. Layoffs are a sign of incompetence from leadership
Employer can still make good decisions with the market in the shitter.
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Oh no, those poor poor billionaires. Whatever shall they do?
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