Google’s Once Happy Offices Feel the Chill of Layoffs

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Google’s Once Happy Offices Feel the Chill of Layoffs::undefined

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Sundar Pichai needs to go. In his tenure there has lead to more bad decisions than good, and now their show horse Google Search, is beginning to stagnate.

They need to turn things around fast if they want to keep their reputation and marketshare from dwindling.
- As long as it's on the stock market and the expectation from share holders is infinite growth nothing will change no matter who's in charge.
- Stagnating? A lot of people would argue that it's gotten considerably worse than it used to be.
  
  I would probably use the word "fester" instead of "stagnate"
  
  SEO vs search engines is an arms race. Stagnating means the quality of results declines over time.
- A few days ago I got one of the Google IO talks about Android from 2011 recommended on YT. You really can just feel that it was a totally different company. You had devs from Google on stage extremly excitied to show off the cool things they added. Incomparable to now.
- Agreed, the problem is that Google has zero vision and product roadmap and that responsibility rests on the CEO and the team they have below. They have continually eroded their customers' and users' trust in the company under Sundar's leadership. At some point this has to affect their bottom line at which point he will have to answer to the shareholders.
- The problem is there's no one better to do it. He's not great, but anyone else the board would pick as replacement is going to bow even harder to Wall Street.
  
  Is Google turning into IBM?
Layoffs fundamentally change the tone of a company in a serious way. I think "chilling" is a good word.
Article link broken for anyone else?
- Yes
  
  Broken broken, not pay walled
- They double pasted it:
  
  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/technology/google-layoffs-work-culture.html
Definitely feels reminiscent of the "Leopards Eating People's Faces Party" joke. They've been increasingly antagonistic towards their own customers regarding the efficiency of search and numerous other pipelines. It shouldn't come as a huge surprise that they are also being dicks to their own employees
I don't know the worth of this opinion, but it resonates for me. .

I have never worked for Google or an affiliate, so I have no inside take.
Archive link

https://web.archive.org/web/20240206160534/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/05/technology/google-layoffs-work-culture.html

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