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Google Memo On Cost Cuts Sparks Heated Debate Inside Company (bloomberg.com)
"A 2016 document proposing cost cuts at Alphabet's Google, including fewer promotions and bonuses, sparked heated debate when it was shared inside the technology company for the first time this week," reports Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. "At a companywide townhall meeting on Thursday, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai fielded questions about the proposals, some of which have been implemented." From the report: The ideas were in a 2016 slide deck drafted by the company's human resources department from a brainstorming session. The document, portions of which were read to Bloomberg News, was circulated in recent days by employees via Google's internal communications systems. It detailed proposed changes to employee compensation, benefits and perks. The document also discussed how the proposals could be best presented to employees to minimize frustration, according to one of the people. That caused the most anger among some staff after the document was circulated, said this person.
Perhaps the most significant change in the proposal called for trimming the rate of promotions. Each year, a certain number of employees are up for promotions based on performance and other metrics. The slide deck suggested reducing this by 2 percentage points. The document said this could be rolled out without upsetting staff because workers didn't know what the existing rate was, so wouldn't notice if it declined. The brainstorming deck also proposed reducing wage bumps when workers get promoted. It also suggested changing Google's approach to "spot bonuses," sums that managers can award at any time of year. Managers receive emails reminding them to dispense this money. The slide deck proposed ending the emails, arguing that few people would notice. The proposal also included converting holiday gifts to staff into charitable donations -- something Google did at the end of 2016. Google confirmed the veracity of the 2016 document, although it was never presented to the company's top management.
Perhaps the most significant change in the proposal called for trimming the rate of promotions. Each year, a certain number of employees are up for promotions based on performance and other metrics. The slide deck suggested reducing this by 2 percentage points. The document said this could be rolled out without upsetting staff because workers didn't know what the existing rate was, so wouldn't notice if it declined. The brainstorming deck also proposed reducing wage bumps when workers get promoted. It also suggested changing Google's approach to "spot bonuses," sums that managers can award at any time of year. Managers receive emails reminding them to dispense this money. The slide deck proposed ending the emails, arguing that few people would notice. The proposal also included converting holiday gifts to staff into charitable donations -- something Google did at the end of 2016. Google confirmed the veracity of the 2016 document, although it was never presented to the company's top management.
This is an established company following a predictable path. From the maxing-out-your-personal-creditcard days of the startup, to the exuberant days of VC money rolling in and the freedom to shape the company in your own ideal image, to the celebratory IPO and early bird employees getting their payday, to the bean counters taking over. So from bonuses and generous wages and free fruit and foosball tables, to the soon to be accelerated penny shaving. The only surprise is that it took this long to begin.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I figured they'd start doing this sort of shit. I used to simply dislike Google, because Google. In the last few years, it's become a deep, profound loathing.
I avoid Google and the other Intertube predators any way I can, including removal, or if unremovable disabling, and avoiding the restart of any Google shit. I can't say I'm certain I've ended Google's collection of my data from my Android phone, but I've certainly done my best to minimize it. Fortunately it's easy to find alternatives to the Googleplex for anything I want to do, but I'm frequently astonished by the length of the Googlefingers, and the depth to which they've pressed them into the 'net.
As much as I love having so much of human knowledge at my fingertips today, along with the wealth of "free" time retirement allows me, I'm beginning to believe that the Intertubes are terribly misused, and I'd not want to be young today. Glad I was young when I was.
Really? I've only seen the opposite happen where I work: A very big hospital company that many cyberpunk fans might refer to as a megacorp.
And I gotta say, it's good to work for a megacorp like the one I work at, and nothing is more fun than making conspiracy theorists that think they live in a cyberpunk novel feel opressed.
And it's also nice that the megacorp I work for paid 100% of the cost of my lung transplant (caused by CF) in addition to paying 100% of the cost of the meds I need for it for as long as I work for them. (And for those wondering: I'm part of the rank and file, not management.)
That's what they say. Yet some of it was implemented. That's a little... coincidental.
This was probably the first draft; what was actually presented to management was much, much worse.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The reason they can attract so many great employees despite being a huge company is because of a culture of taking care of their employees better than most big companies.
I realize this is just a very-small-size anecdote, but - back six or seven years ago, it seemed like we were losing one or two faculty members (or people we were trying to recruit as new faculty) to Google. It also seemed like our best and brightest grad students were largely going to Google after graduation. But nowadays, the faculty I know who went there have all left, save one... and it doesn’t seem like our students regard it nearly as highly as before.
#DeleteChrome
Really? I've worked at 3 places, a university, a mid-sized 850 person corporation (independent branch of a larger, 20k person multinational) and a small business (now about 50 people).
The small business has near zero perks. Pop in the warehouse fridge, sometimes and if you like diet cherry Coke or some Mt. Dew variant about half the time. Shitty TGIFridays level appetizer platters about 3 times a year during phony quarterly meetings held at 3 PM on Friday. Travel and other expenses can be parsimonious.
The university was about what you expected from a state institution, there was no free stuff but we seemed to have more food around the office than the small biz. The department was run by seasoned bureaucrats, I imagine they had weaseled in some staff welfare line item that let them buy grub.
The bigger business seemed way more generous. Food/pop was common in meetings, including lunches. Expense limits for travel were beyond generous, I actually asked the guy responsible for them if I could split the savings if I stayed in cheaper hotels and ate cheaper meals but he gave me some song and dance about how I should eat and sleep well to perform well away from home, the company had some concern about employee safety, etc.
My sense is there's just more slop in a large organization than a small one. I'm sure big companies are top notch at treating large groups of identical employees cheaply, but they aren't always very efficient and you can sometimes get in on the extras. Small business is the worst.
From all my experience as a software developer since 1984 to the present day at many different companies, I will argue strongly that the combination of less experienced developers and healthy team dynamics make for the highest quality and more successful software with users. They design software that is easier to read and more intuitive for users, even if not super fancy and stylish. This is important because the real key to commercial success in software is:
** it must be very practical and useful **
-- practical means quick and easy to learn and use.
-- useful means readily applicable to some clear and obvious use by users
Why? Experienced software developers have the following bad tendencies:
1. They are assholes. They hold strong opinions on technological choices, methods, and philosophies.
2. They loose user perspective. What they see as simple and intuitive is often not so much so for users. Furthermore, they will often put technical perfection over usability or the interests of stake holders.
3. They don't really learn. Once a person feels they know, they become incredulous to teach. They become more likely to criticize new tools than learn them and use them, or methods, or philosophies.
That said, every generation of new tools seems to lack any notion of most of the lessons learned in the past. Why Slack, for example? It does nothing more than has IRC, which has been around for decades. The reason is simple: the new generation of developers don't know what IRC is. It remains vibrant with experts of all kinds active on it but this latest generation just doesn't know it exists.
New software development stacks like node + express + react + redux lack most of the focuses of importance in the past like, maintainability and performance in huge ways. However, the new generation of developers see it as doing the opposite. They argue how react's virtual DOM is faster to work with than the real DOM, and therefore react is faster. In truth, it depends on how to use the real DOM and many people had been using it very poorly. Another truth is that react's server-side rendering makes it even slower, regardless. And one more thing on this -- diffing between a virtual DOM before and after modifications is also not a very efficient way to do this.
Google search has been pissing me off for a while now, specifically its insistence on presenting results that don't have one or more of my keywords. Yes, i know I can put quotes around required words, but I shouldn't have to enquote every word in a query. /Maybe theres a global setting, too lazy to look.
Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.