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Has Google Lost Its Mojo?
CWmike writes "Google looks as if it's on top of the world right now, holding an ever-increasing lion's share of the search market. So why do I think it's lost its mojo? Let's start with the way it treats its employees, writes Preston Gralla. Another example: Google employees, such as Sergey Solyanik, have started deserting the company. And its share price is down double that of the Dow or Nasdaq since November 2007. Even if Google has lost its mojo, why should you care? It won't make your searches any less effective, will it? Nope. But Google has its eyes on bigger things than search, notably your IT department. It's looking to displace Microsoft with hosted services like Google Apps, Gmail and Google Docs. Solyanik warns that Google's engineers care more about the 'coolness' of a service than about the service's effectiveness." Of course Google employees version of being mistreated is often laughable, and quite a shock when they look for their massage therapist at wherever they end up next.
When they decided to abuse people's right to privacy & do evil things...
Yes
Unless Yahoo or MS can get their act together on search and ads Google has little to fear.
Google has been a media darling for a long time. Now that they are finally out of the whiz-bang stage, you're ready to say they're going downhill? No, they've just gotten just about all of the internet that they can, and they are now waiting (and actively pushing) for mobile internet so they can do it all over again.
I'm personally all for trying to expand the economy itself instead of making a complete monopoly (and Google can't get much stronger without becoming a monopoly).
Now we all just get to sit and wait until wireless matures and Google takes over it. I'm speculating they'll start pushing platform-neutral stuff big-time after that (which may mean overt Linux pushing). They can't compete well with MS's enterprise dominance until they've dislodged Windows, but the wireless apple is much riper at the moment.
The government can't save you.
This actually reminds me of a story of the wandering engineer. They'd work for google, then move to MS because they lack quality control. The engineer would then transfer to Yahoo because MS isn't doing anything interesting. They'd then move to Google and start the cycle anew because Yahoo wasn't on the cutting edge. Maybe the novelty of working at Google, or any other place for that matter, wears off once you've been there for quite a few months and you have the qualifications to change things up. Engineers can be a fickle lot where the interesting aspects of a project outweigh how much it pays.
...is one guy who returned to Microsoft, the price of an employee service was raised, and the stock price is lower than it was at a point in the past.
I don't think that's enough to declare that Google has lost its mojo. Think of how many times Apple was "dying" according to the press. I think this author is just bored with Google and wants to cause a stir.
"Sufferin' succotash."
He's impressed with the rock solid stability of the.......office suit software ? Enterprise level word processor and spread sheets ? Setting the bar pretty low.....
Why in blazes should people who don't have kids, or who responsibly make arrangements for them to be cared for (such as *gasp* having Mom stay home and actually raise them), have to pay in the form of a lower salary for yours?
And a reduction in this silly benefit that you shouldn't have in the first place is age discrimination against you?
Subsidized child care and similar benefits reward parents at the expense of other employees. It's hardly "age discrimination" to do less of it.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
That was a great write up man. BTW, you will find that this is the norm. You, as a software engineer, have to learn to manage your manager. You need to correct their expectations by giving them constant feedback. You need to say to them that you're having trouble and won't be achieving the timeline they have proscribed.. and if they casually don't proscribe a timeline, you have to make one up yourself.
Good luck in the future.
How we know is more important than what we know.
it seems like it's becoming a benefit that only older employees (ipo-millionaires) and executives (high salary, stock options) can enjoy. Sure, it's offered to everyone, but they're intentionally choosing a very expensive day-care program when a less expensive one was more than adequate. So people who would otherwise use it now go elsewhere (paying full price) while still subsidizing wealthier people who can afford it.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Quoting: "Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500"... WTF? How much do people in the US earn? This amount of money per month, is what is almost the total monthly salary in Europe is for many people! How could you give that for just infant care?? Renting an apartment is like 400 euros per month, much cheaper than this infant care (even the so called cheap $1425 one)! How do you pay for rent, survival costs, and saving, if you have a baby and use that infant care?
Well, the question is really one of ethics. If I get recruited with "we have the greatest child care in the world at X dollars", and a year later the X becomes X+1000, then I'd be thinking someone lied to me to the tune of $12,000 a year.
Quite obviously not many of Google's employees were using the service anyway (1% daycare spots based on the number of employees, that number should be around 10% realistically), and they still needed to heavily subsidize it. Someone can't do their math, what's bad for business in any case.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
"Of course Google employees version of being mistreated is often laughable, and quite a shock when they look for their massage therapist at wherever they end up next."
Surely you're not suggesting that benefits listed on Google's website is proof that their employees couldn't possibly have any legitimate complaints? After all, even if Google does pamper its employees, unless you can point to an actual example of a "laughable" claim of mistreatment all you have is a list of perks that in no way support your statement that "Google employees version of being mistreated is often laughable".
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
What about their laundry service? Why should they provide that? What about the people who have their own washers at home?
What about the car servicing thing? What about the people that don't have cars?
What about the bus service with Wifi? What about people who live close and don't need the bus?
By your logic all these are discrimination against people who don't need these services.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't understand the fuss. Like it or not, this seems to be the normal evolution of any "startup company" that becomes a publicly-traded company. Often, when any type of economic difficulties hit, benefits can be lost or reduced, and -- surprise, surprise -- they don't often come back. One big issue is that the investors have, of course, a lot of control, and investors want profit (think Carl Icahn, people). Management doesn't look good if they can't deliver sufficient profit, and so there's incentive to not increase benefits.
I'm not even going to touch the google services issue. Let's just say that some google services appear to be stagnating (minor tweaks don't cut it), and google is opening itself up to a competitor leapfrogging them. (Yeah, with Yahoo in not-so-good shape, Microsoft is probably the only company that could do that .... Bleah.)
Well as Google matures so do its employees. As they get older they find the Google culture no longer fits their needs. The projects get boring, working long hours on projects that may or may not give any fruit gets redundant and unappealing. Having to prove to the new Whippersnappers that that crazy way of doing things will not work just as they didn't work when you started working a decade ago. Things like code purity, open source, trying a new windows manager every week... start to see more trivial and has lost its spark or interest, you are happy to use a Mac, even if you are running windows your cool with that to. You focus on your job and doing a good job, but at the end of the day you want to go home with your family.
Over the years you got a lot better at your job you are 3 times more productive then those whippersnappers and when you were a whippersnapper, but the company culture reprimands you for leaving work on time. Younger managers come in straight out of business school trying to prove themselves by trying to change everything even what currently works, just because it worked for FedEx, or SAS.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"What went wrong? ..."
Share holders are penny wise and pound foolish. It isn't about the longterm investment but the quarterly or annual review. Eventually, when the stock starts to lose value, you simply have to make changes (drop operating costs) to make revenues reflect a larger profit.
The good news is most companies just fire a bunch of people. Google just happens to be taking away free dinner.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Parents lose big when a company downsizes or restructures their benefits. This is an indirect form of age discrimination because older folks are more likely to have families.
Then by that logic it is a form of discrimination to have those benefits, like child care, that are unusable by employees who choose to not have children. But really it isn't discrimination at all in either case. For it to be discrimination the motivation would have to be centered around age, but really age is just a correlation. I realize that's it's popular to cry "it's discrimination" whenever you want the world to conform to your needs, but really the change is just about money. Sure it might cost a parent more money for daycare, but every dollar my employer spends on daycare is a loss to my stock value or equipment quality or potential for a raise. If anything the subsidizing of child care, family insurance, and other family-centric benefits is discrimination in favor of parents. So please, don't cry about discrimination when the favors done to you are scaled back. Add the difference in market value of the insurance package a family gets to your annual income and see if you still have a net loss vs the "no dependents" employees. You should come out even. The same job deserves the same annual salary + benefits total, anything else would be favoritism.
We are all just people.
But.... Who the heck is he? I wikipedia'd him, and found nothing. Reading his blog, he seemed like the main reason he left was because Google was giving stuff away for free. And that annoyed him. Made him feel incompetent.
... the only direction is down.
For what it's worth, Microsoft makes more in a good quarter than Google makes in a year. I can't tell if that affects your point because I couldn't actually figure out what that was.
Parents who expect to get day care for their kids as a free ride really piss me off. Why should the childless pay for somebody else's kids, so that the parents can have a cushy job?
I realize this is an unpopular view with some, but if you can't afford to have kids (and raise them, and school them) then you shouldn't be having kids. And if I worked at Google, I would be damned if I would want to pay for YOUR kids, so you can have a job at Google. That is not the way life works.
What ever happened to those particular values of the 50s, when one parent would say to the other, "Well, Johnny is 3 now, and you just got a raise... maybe we can afford to have another kid!"
I am with Sergey... I am not very sympathetic. They want the very best day care -- to the tune of $37,000 a year! -- then they can pay for it.
Day care is NOT like public education, in which everybody has a stake. It is the duty of the parents to care for their kids until they get to school age. If they cannot, they should put the kids up for adoption. It is not ethical to expect the public (or their co-workers) to subsidize their children.
Google has an open cafeteria, and tons of free junk food in the hallways, which people who have a life do not need.
Gratuitous insult aside, employees with families still need to eat, and their spouses are probably not delivering meals to their offices. Free food is a far more egalitarian benefit than subsidized daycare.
But it's a reasonable observation to make or question to ask, given that the set of people who don't mind this kind of lifestyle is probably unevenly distributed agewise.
The set of IT workers in general is unevenly distributed agewise (and gender-wise). That doesn't make every tech company guilty of discrimination.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Companies aren't obligated to compensate workers who have to take on additional responsibilities to cover for the workers who chose to have children and then feel entitled.
Using "Common Sense" is being either to arrogant or to ignorant to ask people who know more about something than you.
A disgruntled employee and stock price? Tell me again how stock price is correlated with performance? Ditto for disgruntled employee?
I'm not arguing that Google hasn't turned evil/lost its mojo/whatever - I'm willing to consider it. But are you serious these are the "arguments agaist"???
And for the last time: Benefits are a luxury. Your pay is your pay. Duh...don't let em sell you the sizzle!
Heh...on that note I'm not mad I RTFA'd, but I will say they poured more thought into the headline than the article. Sizzle in deed.
-Matt
"Seriously? "Women should abandon their careers to beome housewives" gets modded +5? WTF is wrong with this website?"
Well, obviously we'll have to do something about that "differing opinions" stuff here. Can't have any of that. Thanks for pointing it out; the management will take care of it.
And now a question for you; what do you think about the legions of women that have decided that, well, yes they'd prefer to give up their careers because they consider raising their children job Numero Uno? Since we've been 3 decades into the sexual revolution now, many women have decided that they can't have it all, at least not in any meaningful sense. Is there something wrong with them?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Sorry, to all you childless bachelors out there, but my loyalty lies 110% to my son and family not to you or anybody else outside my family, I already have precious little time with him as is, I don't care if you or management or *anyone else* thinks I'm a team player or not, truly. I do my contracted work, take my pay then I'm outta there.
It does go both ways as well. People without kids bitch that people with kids leave when their child is sick (you know, to be *parents*) or whatever, but then people without kids want to work their lives away, then expect us to as well? Sorry if your to spineless to stand up to your boss that's YOUR problem, no one elses. Otherwise you enjoy doing it, and well if you expect me to work late and have my boy miss out on seeing his old man before bed because you have nothing better to do than work for an extra few hours you can fuck right off.
The worst thing here, is that the 90% of people complaining about "people with kids" statistically, in a a few years when they grow up will BE "people with kids". Then will understand, not through a selfish hypocritical flip-flop, but because when that little tacker comes along you have *no choice* as your brain changes and with it your priorities, whether you like it or not.
And we *people with kids* were all just like you once, I even used to bitch about *people with kids*, just like you.
Ironically all the people without kids bitching here will then bitch about how people don't, you know, "be a parent" to their kids in the multitude of other stories regarding kids. Well I'll tell ya it's a little hard when you all expect us to forget about them for 8-12 hours a day and see them awake for twenty minutes, because we know how much your going to cry because you choose to marry your job/company and we treat it like a means to an end and leave on time.
So much juvenile idiocy in this thread.
So they can have a standard of living that isn't hand-to-mouth? It's really fucking hard to make ends meet at a level that doesn't feel suspiciously like poverty or society-dropout-cult-membership without both spouses working.
There's also both spouses who have paid dearly for post-secondary education and want to put it to use so that they add some meaning and value to their life outside of childcare and homemaking.
I know a lot of people, usually women but some men too, who would love a part-time job that would enable them to do a lot more childcare, but we have a labor market that is quite hostile to part-time employment at meaningful wages.
I don't know where the idea came from that having children was some bad economic choice made by self-absorbed assholes who want to suck up more resources at the expense of all the "smart" people who decided that children were a bad idea. But clearly its seen that way by many people, and the labor market largely reinforces this.