Slashdot Mirror
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.
1. Anyone working for Google deserves what they get. We all know what Google is and software is just a means to spy. If you have no issue with it, fuck you.
2. This sort of thing is what eventually happens when a company goes public. Sooner or later, employees become secondary.
3. Stop working for evil companies.
numbnuts
Google needs to be careful with this slippery slope. 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. The moment they become just another HP, IBM, etc, they will start to degrade quickly.
In addition to "cutting costs" why doesn't Google at least fix their deficient software?
One product I can think of is GBoard. Imagine, just adding a new word to its dictionary if so cumbersome. One may think the app is still a beta version. While using it, it underlines any word it doesn't know; long clicking this "unknown" word brings up a menu sans "Add to dictionary!"
Google; you surely can do better.
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...
That's what they say. Yet some of it was implemented. That's a little... coincidental.
The reason they can attract so many great employees
Like who now? Where is the evidence that in the past five years, they have attracted "so many great employees". I see a LOT of failed projects and an inability to stick to anything. Core search remains really good as always, but don't you get the impression of a group of ten people in a small room, who have barricaded all the doors and are trying to keep the howling mob at bay from the one area of Google that still functions perfectly?
because of a culture of taking care of their employees
Yes they certainly have a. culture of "taking care" of employees now. Just ask Damore...
The moment they become just another HP, IBM
Google has chosen a different path, far less boring and far more self-destructive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
.
Time to stop having an important company from being run by a college student-thinking mob.
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.
After decades of failed IT projects, the Deep State entities in the USA were desperate for any new method that would allow their Orwellian concepts to be finally implemented. The rise of Google was a result of the new thinking, where traditional mega corrupt mega expensive projects that took the same form as major weapons contracts in the USA were replaced with Apple/Microsoft (early days) like start-ups that pretended to be entirely in the civilian sector.
Public PR (including 'leaks') is for be-ta public consumption, and is perception controlling psy-op propaganda. Not to say that many of the be-ta drones that work at Google don't believe it to be the absolute 'truth'- because being be-ta drones they obviously buy into the lie.
Meanwhile after perfecting the mining and storage of the Five Eyes data collections from their total surveillance programs, Google has moved on to direct military weapon R+D- namely the future robotic systems of the planet's greatest murder machine- the US armed forces. Google is leading a trillion dollar project to design the drone ground forces for a near-future American army- and Google's various programs are intended to perfect the software systems needed for the killing ability of their drone 'tanks'.
Before Google, IT companies with an explicit military bent had a problem recruiting quality people- so Google 'disguises' many of its fundamental research activities with psuedo-civilian front-ends. Street-view and 'self driving' (actually drone cars with remote operators for the 'difficult' moments) is a prime example.
In reality the truth sits in plain site. Google's association with the NSA is not hidden. Google's aquisition of military robotic companies is not hidden. It's just that neo-liberal propaganda outlets like slashdot never point out these facts to their be-ta dribblers.
I see a LOT of failed projects and an inability to stick to anything.
This is what happens when you try lots of new ideas, and explore all the options. Some will pan out, most will not.
Some will pan out, most will not.
The problem is that some panned out (a user base that liked what they were doing), and Google killed them anyway, in a lot of cases like taking a kitten that you loved and exposing it to powerful miutagens just to see what it would transform into. Or just plain shot the kitten, as per Google Reader.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You got modded down because you are siding with google even after they fired him. When they shouldn't have. You are ok with hurting people because of their beliefs and that is NOT OK. That's why you got modded down. Learn the difference idiot.
Driverless cars and AI.
LOL. How's that koolaid taste?
...they expect their revenues to shrink. It would be interesting to know what they expect from the future. A market that has reached its top ? Loss of market quota to rival companies (if any) ? Heavy sanctions due to misoperating ?
Wages for salaried workers will never be uniform. They are not paid on a fixed and predictable scale. The pay tiers often have a huge range between top and bottom pay, so even with the same title and duties and tier there can be a $50K difference in pay or more.It is also up to the manager to decide how much of the pay increase granted to the group is to be spread around, who gets the bonuses, and so forth, and after that the directors and VPs will often go and revise the manager's decisions. And of course, whoever negotiates the best gets the most pay, which is utterly unfair (except to the good negotiator who firmly believes it is deserved).
If you want predictability and uniformity in pay, then you need a union. But that comes with its own baggage, such as pay by seniority rather than merit.
What has panned out?
Google Maps.
Google Docs.
Gmail.
Android.
YouTube.
Waymo (still in progress).
Each of these is worth billions.
Mod parent up! I'm another AC who'd like to know what projects - other than ad words - have meaningfully added gross margin to Googles bottom line. You said "some do, some don't." List 5 or 10 that have moved the needle. Until you do, I'm going to get the popcorn and watch the snowflakes melt.
I see Google now like bell labs (you know, C, Unix, transistor, background radiation bell labs) then. Minus the over indulged, sjw culture that has produced buckets of cash, intolerance rivaling the Nazis, but little else. I say little as I'm guessing that there might be something, but cannot count android, translate or gdocs amongst them.
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?
If I brainstorm a bunch of ideas with co-workers, I try to present the best ideas to management, rather than every idea that came up. Sometimes a hybrid of multiple different ideas from the brainstorming session sounds better than the original ideas, or even inverting the idea.
It's entirely possible that some of the ideas were presented to top management without this particular document being presented.
It's strange how the administrative employee's, who know absolutely nothing about how the business was built or what it takes to keep highly intelligent people motivated, or even the kinds of problems highly intelligent people face, are discussing "Subtle" "Painless" blood-sucking pricks to the body of their host through budget cuts on systems they quite literally know nothing about and have not taken the time to learn about. Of course, Mosquito's don't think about their hosts catching malaria; like a moth to flame, they only care about the blood.
The reason the money flows is because the value the company generates, and every engineer tries to generate success and value by understanding how that value is delivered; it takes decades to build the skills and decades to build the solutions. The mortal sin committed here is not understanding the system in place, and if you are not intelligent or hardworking enough to understand the reason why the system is there and present it as such to a bunch of engineers, you don't belong in any company. You are a fool to think your college degree and experience are worth anything.
Instead of using your administrative positions to keep the organization on course, you instead try to take charge; People like you shoot from the hip with technology you do not understand, hoping to hit a target you cannot see, and if you happen to hit it, you have no idea what you hit or why it was important. You are part of a cargo cult, and seek to spread an idiot-savantist experiment. When your decision mames or kills people, you don't even know you were responsable.
The correct way to approach the problem was to understand the company. Not engage in some bullshit "brainstorming session" then jump the gun. That is unbelievably reckless and irresponsable. You remind me of an accountant I saw once walking department to department begging "I just need 1%, can't you spare 1%? Do you really need all the break cleaner? Do you really need this or that?".
This behaivour is why we can't have nice things.
There's a reason IT workers never unionize. They're a pretty smart bunch you know and good IT workers never have to worry about getting the wages or wage increases they deserve.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
No it isn't. It's called "employment at will" - don't want to work for the wages you've negotiated or keeping the company hostage for group wage increases without merit and you're fired.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Android is the one original thing theyâ(TM)ve done on that list.
Android was acquired.
Gmail and Waymo were built internally.
According to Marx under normal circumstances capitalists will only pay workers enough to ensure bare survival and reproduction of labor. Which used to mean some rags to cover yourself and a corner in a workers dorm.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
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.
I've worked for many large companies, there are always people that live out in the parking lot and not necessarily because of low wages. I've known doctors that sleep in their offices or cars and bathe in the gym. I've done it myself at times even though I could technically afford housing somewhere.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
When the role of HR becomes cost cutting, instead managing and promoting an effective team environment, then your outfit is just another asshole corporation. And i think days of " Do no Evil " died about the same time.
They wrote gmail, back when they still had the right stuff. They bought Google Docs. They bought Android. They bought YouTube. Dunno about maps, maybe they did something there.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Look how old ALL of those things are... you just proved my point sir by coming up with a slightly larger list than my own.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That depends on where you are located. In California I don't think that "employment at will" applies and since the majority of Google's employees are in California they have the option. Though I can't see them ganging up to form a union.
there has been some vocal user protest against google the last few years, but now more and more protest is comming from within the company, from its employers. this is bad (for google), things like this could point to the start of the downfall of google as a dominant company.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
The problem is that some panned out (a user base that liked what they were doing), and Google killed them anyway
Google has a different definition of "panned out", at least for free services. Unless a service has 100M+ users, or looks likely to get there, it's a flop and not worth the effort it takes to operate it.
Or just plain shot the kitten, as per Google Reader.
Google Reader is a good example. It had a few million devoted users, but wasn't growing and was clearly never going to build a large user base.
In cases like that, I do wish Google would experiment with charging for services and making them profitable that way. I think that might have worked with Reader. Or, if not, it would at least have been more understandable to users. I think Google would be better off with a reputation for making the first hit free then charging later than for making free stuff that abruptly disappears. People understand fee-for-service, even if they often don't want to pay. I'd also like to see more experiments with charging for ad- and tracking-free versions of free services. I think the vast majority of people would opt to continue trading data for services, but I think it would do everyone good to make the choice more explicit.
I'm obviously not speaking for my employer here. If I were in a position to do that, Google would be doing these things.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
"The document said this could be rolled out without upsetting staff because workers didn't know what the existing rate was"
- Many of Google's employees are relatively competent in mathematics. They can be expected to determine the previous rates with little difficulty.
"...also proposed reducing wage bumps when workers get promoted."
- Corporate policy. Perhaps well described as a calculated risk. Win or lose, this is just management.
"also suggested changing Google's approach to "spot bonuses,""
- More corporate policy. More risk.
"The proposal also included converting holiday gifts to staff into charitable donations"
- And so converting these into probable corporate tax deductions instead of expenses. Sharp practice. Look it up.
Overall the evil meter is getting close to the red pin.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Oh please. I remember Google buying Keyhole to eventually turn it into Google Maps. They had a good global renderer but very little data. Google filled it all in with real world data, sending teams of scanners across the globe.
Good-bye
We in no way have 'AI'. Stop falling for the marketing.
Good-bye
And, if you point out how the culture of your giant company is repulsive to women, is a functioning patriarchy that uses systemic and intrinsic sexism to abuse both sexes solely for the benefit of the company, and that changing this corporate culture to something healthy and egalitarian would not only cost the company vast amounts of money, but would also result in the loss of untold amounts of free labor the company currently benefits from, you could bet that said company will do everything they can to undermine and discredit someone so bold as point this out.
My great surprise was how so many on the “left” were so gleefully happy to help a corporation maintain a culture that diminishes the chances for women to participate and succeed. It makes sense that a company would maintain policies that prevent women from asking for raises and promotions. Said company gets to pay more capable workers less money while benefiting from their skill sets and leadership for free. It doesn’t make sense that self declared “feminists” would support a giant corporation in oppressing, exploiting, and intentionally underpaying women, and yet they are in this case.
Ideological problems are probably the reason. It is problematic that current ideologies behind some social change agents are so controlling that getting results which support the stated aims of the ideology will be rejected if the primary assumptions behind them are contrary to the ideology. Essentially, accomplishing the goals is not enough. The right thoughts must be used to get there, and without those thoughts, accomplishing the stated goals is worthless, or even worse, something to be undermined and discredited.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Google has made public moves on cost cutting which cutting the ad revenue sharing for web and youtube as the most obvious.
Google is big and at 25 years old is well past middle age for a tech company.
Innovation, new products, or caretaker of existing products?
Which new google product launches of the last 4 years have done well or contribute more than 3% of google's annual operating revenue?
Waiting on the first bad earnings quarter and the large layoffs or the total employee headcount to decrease for multiple years
He participated in a company discussion. It was the snowflakes that leaked the memo out of the company that should have been fired. If someone asks you for your opinion, I guess you should not ever give it when you work for a company like that one.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
That is an opinion. Damore wrote an essay that misused various studies to make an argument in apparent bad faith. If Google had said "Yeah, well, marketplace of ideas right?" a huge proportion of the workforce would have, rightly, seen the lack of disassociation with Damore as acceptance of behavior that devalued the work they did.
In that context, Google was put in a very difficult position, and given the context - where Google was already under fire for a culture hostile to women - they gave Damore the boot. Which is something that usually happens to people who say "I want to start a union", or who flick off Trump motorcades, or who just say they support Obama's election to their bosses, but in this case happened to someone who said something on the other side and is thus somehow a massive war crime or something.
serverscope_minor, like me (I'm not idiot enough to think I won't be modded down for this too), is expressing "wrongthink" on Slashdot. For the most part, if you say things like "Women are people too", or "maybe saying 'blacks do all the crime' is racist", you get modded down here. This seemed to start around Gamergate, when for some reason Slashdot got infested with people obsessed with a female game developer's sex life, which they got wrong, naturally. The same people likewise think that Brandon Eich was fired as a developer for his private political views, rather than that he resigned as CEO because he recognized his very public homophobic views were divisive and meant 5-10% of his company couldn't reasonably trust him to treat them fairly.
But the fact that you're modding these obvious facts down doesn't make it justified, and it doesn't stop them from being "wrongthink", legitimate and perfectly normal and reasonable opinions, opinions that people with good characters and a sense of decency have, that for some reason you can't express on Slashdot because alt-rightist shitheads are a bunch of snowflakes.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.