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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.
Look at http://www.paullee.com/computers/index.php and follow the link in the second bullet point. The f*ckers are trying legal tricks to shut me up.
My web domain.
Interesting. Looks like it starts at 15 days, and moves up to 25 days after 6 years. Their 6 year level has reached the mandatory minimum number of paid vacation days in many EU countries.
Is that mistreatment? If you've come from Eurpoe, then it may feel that way.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
One wonders how Google helping China to field underage gymnasts by making sure their caches were all purged of copies of the real documents is going to play in the media.
Of course, the way the media fawned over the Chinese during the Olympics (Tibet?!?! Huh?), I doubt Google's going to take any heat about that.
While I understand that Google must increase shareholder value at all cost, I would like to see Google do the following:
Respond to Yahoo Mail's new web mail's interface. I find Yahoo Mail's scrolling calender events found at the bottom while composing email really sweet. The whole [new] interface is quite impressive.
Google should put more efforts into getting KDE 4.1 up to "standards". Right now, KDE 4.1 really needs lots of work. The Summer of Code efforts leave the situation still wanting.
Get GMail out of beta. Heck, it's been over 2 years!
Google should walk the walk...that is make ODF documents, .ogg streams searcheable from www.google.com.
What do you think?
Only if there is not a compensating benefit that rewards non-parents but is of no use to parents. It really depends a lot on how the benefit package is constructed.
The interesting metric is whether a business has policies that allow its employees to "grow up". If they do not, then eventually as people get older, they will be forced at some point to say that in order to merely accommodate the ordinary and anticipatable life events, they must go to a different company or face a pay cut because the benefits they used to like are now no longer benefits.
For example, why should an employee who has a family at home shopping and fixing food be penalized because of the availability of free food at work that surely must be paid for somehow. Google has an open cafeteria, and tons of free junk food in the hallways, which people who have a life do not need. But it has been said of Google (and I am trying to be neutral about expressing an opinion myself, only observing that it's a topic worthy of discussion) that it prefers employees who are willing to work long hours and sleep under their desks to employees who want to have families and lives outside of work. Now if this were true, you might not see it as age discrimination. And it might really not be. 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.
So if Google is offering both the daycare and the cafeteria, then maybe it's balanced. But if it's giving up the daycare expenses to focus on cafeteria expenses, then maybe there are questions to ask. Just as one example for conversation--if I knew their benefit policy, maybe something else better would present itself.
In fact, I bet whether you think this is an age issue varies by age, suggesting at least the possibility that some people who thought it wasn't an age issue changed their mind with experience, as well as the possibility that some who are quite sure it's not will eventually come to decide they were wrong.
Google offers itself as an ethical company. Here's my definition of ethical: Ethical means you continue to ask yourself hard questions and to not quite be sure you're ethical. So people will evaluate the answer to these questions differently, but the day Google thinks the questions are inappropriate to ask is the day it's lost its ethics. Ethics are an exercise in continuous choice, and everything about intent. Once choice is sacrificed, you're at best coincidentally aligned with those whose outcomes are the same, but as the result of an actual thoughtful choice. If outcome without choice can be deemed ethical, then there are rocks that may be more ethical than some people...
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Google has lost some of it's Mojo
Speaking as a Googler, "some" is an understatement. The best and brightest have been exiting Google at the earliest for months, leaving behind the political climbers, backbiters and the just plain incompetent. Now Google mainly runs on interns, everybody else is too "smart" to do the grunt work like coding, debugging, or much at all beyond getting face time. The reason for this is simple: narcissistic managers whose main talent is claiming credit for the work of their subordinates while punishing anyone who shows initiative, and thus possibly could get promoted. These days at Google, showing skill and dedication is a great way to get a bad review from your manager. Eric and friends seem blissfully unaware of the developing train wreck.
You think Google would offer a higher salary? Not if your just a normal engineer guy. They'll give you what they want to give you, and you better be grateful you're getting the offer in the first place, buddy.
I made probably about 20-25% less than my similarly-employed friends. Google likes to say that it compensates in other ways. I calculated that the free food alone was worth about $8000 per year to me. The yearly bonuses were beyond generous. I negotiated a good stock grant when I was hired. But the actual pay pretty much sucks, and they're cutting back in all sorts of ways. I saw it happening starting in late 2006, and it kept on rolling. They'll cut back on perks and then try to convince everyone they have the best thing going regardless, especially with regards to recruiting (keep pushing that 20% project myth, guys...). A certain TGIF is a good example (TGIF is a big gathering in Charlie's Cafe every Friday at 4:30, where Larry and/or Sergey and/or Eric talk about company issues and take questions).
During the QA portion, a guy got up and asked about our health care plan. Apparently, it wasn't as good as Microsoft's, yet in a then-recent magazine article, Eric said that we had the best benefits in the world and was really talking up the perks - even as they were routinely being scaled back. So this guy was comparing notes with his MS buddy and our health plan wasn't all that great (the dental in particular was worse than some government jobs I've had). Eric said he'd look at it and get back to us. (One of the things I really liked about working there was that sort of transparency and openness.)
Couple weeks later, same guy gets up to ask about what they found out. Eric says they did the numbers, and it was going to cost a few 10s of millions more per year to implement a comparable health plan. So, no dice. The crowd generally grumbled, and Eric was quick to pipe up with "But just think, by working here, you get to change the world!"
Was shortly after that I gave serious thought about examining my options. I'm not sure if/how that influenced my decision to leave, but some kool-aid you should never drink.
No, the only way to get more money at Google is to work 80 hours a week or sleep with someone important. Leaving and coming back won't do it, unless you're a high-flier and they're trying to headhunt you back for some particular reason.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
"Employers aren't responsible for an employee's children."
They can be selfish assholes, but then people chose another place to work and they close. Assuming you are skilled labor - if you are without education you are fucked.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
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?
My wife is a stay at home mom. We made the decision to forgo a second income for the benefits of actually raising our kids at home, at least at very young ages. We never wanted to be one of those couples that had a child, and then had it in some form of third-party care two months later for career's sake. I very much sympathize with what you're arguing.
However, this is the Bay Area we're talking about, a place that's become notorious for being both child-unfriendly, and a mecca for young, single, childless workers with high skill. In that kind of atmosphere, a top company wanting top talent should consider on-site childcare as a perk if they want to keep these studs past age 30 or so. Sooner or later, nature calls, and most of them marry and start families. Google, for all its fame in supplying wild perks, is actually wise in supplying this one. They don't have to, but they have been smart in doing so. Top companies supply top perks if they want to stay top companies. You'll never see Goldman Sachs, Mercedes Benz, or Harvard cheaping out on their benefits.
That said, if there's any truth to the quote the NY Times attributes to Sergey Brin ("no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of Googlers who felt entitled to perks like bottled water and M&Ms), then it sounds like something is indeed turning sour at Google. It seems like every hot company that skyrockets eventually has to come back to Earth hard. If this is indeed happening at Google, perks will soon be the least of their problems.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
JWZ identified the turning point for Netscape, where the decline started, as the point at which they started hiring people who wanted to work there because it was a great place to work, rather than people who wanted to work there to make it a great place. I interviewed at Google about a year ago[1] and I made a point of asking my interviewers why they wanted to work at Google. All five told me that they were there because it was such a great place to work. Looking around, it was hard to disagree with this (it really did seem like a great place to work), but it was sad to see that this was the main reason people went there. I only got to talk to half a dozen people, so maybe I got a skewed perspective (although, I believe, the interview process is meant to select a good cross section of the workplace for each interviewee).
[1] I'd really recommend this to anyone, by the way. I didn't get in, but the mental work-out from the interview was incredible, and I spent much of the next two months implementing ideas I came up with during the interview (and got a journal paper out of one of them).
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