I keep reading these Google stories that appear flawless examples of exceptional thinking and execution. But heck, at some point, the stories just wash over without effect. Do they have no problem employees? Management feudal battles? Studies and organizational change movements that produce nothing appreciative?
I understand that Google is basically a giant marketing company ran by engineers who own the web, so I get the fact that there's a lot of creative spin that goes with anything you're going to see published on the web about them. But hell, it sure would be interesting to poke around behind the scenes and see how things really work.
I'm not saying that to disparage this article or work, it's actually quite impressive. I simply wanted to point out that at some point, a company that does no evil and always is inventing things along the lines of time machines and faster-than-light travel every month starts to be a bit much for a reader to consume. Surely with 40K+ employees and that much money there is some other story here.
Do you recognize, that GOOG is primarily a PR firm based on surveillance? (revenues, ads etc.) Their business is telling stories to influence (euphemism for fooling and diversion of) people using surveillance.
-8≤----
Upon this layer of commercial surveillance activity two things, then, happen with respect to government: the complicity and the thievery.
The data-mining companies believed, by and large, with respect to the United States and other governments around the world with whom they deal, that they were merely in a situation of complicity.
Having created unsafe technological structures that mined you, they thought they were merely engaged in quiet—that is to say, undisclosed—bargaining with power over how much of what they had on you they should deliver to others.
This was, of course, a mingled game of greed and fear.
But what the US data-mining giants of the West Coast basically believed, until Mr. Snowden woke them, was that by complicity they had gained immunity from actual thievery.
What sent both Facebook and Google into orbit since we were all last together—or rather, what had come out two weeks ago on the Wednesday that we were last together—was the news that their complicity had bought them nothing.
[...]
So the problem is that, for the data-miners, the situation is not controllable, just as for the American listeners it is no longer controllable.
And it will only be controllable for Us if we bend our attention closely to the environmental nature of the problem that we face because environmental problems—like climate change, or water pollution, or slavery—are not solved transactionally by individuals.
There are problem employees and management feud battles, but measured as a percentage of my time that I have to spend dealing with them, they are less of a problem in 35,000-person Google than in the 10-20 person startups I've worked in.
We do have problem employees and management feudal battles -- although I have only personally witnessed the latter. I have only worked here, not counting internships before I graduated, but I hear from colleagues who worked elsewhere that these two problems are of a lesser degree here.
There was a story about Google and sex at the workplace, recently. So we are seeing both positive and negative articles about Google. While Google would like to portray itself as something akin to what Toyota was, naysayers would try to do the opposite.
Yes, I am sure the source really said that : "Inside Google, it's a Game of Thrones." /s
btw, the article tries to frame the issue as bad but if there are no sexual harassment suits, who cares? Google employees are smart enough to figure it out I suppose.
The absence of suits does not mean the absence of trouble. If that article is to be believed there were executives and managers in relationships with their subordinates. Assuming no pressure was applied (a big assumption), it can wreak havoc on the morale of others in the office, and seriously degrade the respect people have for their boss. Especially if the subordinate seems to get favorable treatment (whether it's actually happening or not).
Also, a lack of overt pressure does not mean there is no covert pressure being applied. Perhaps the new assistant knows what happened when the last one refused the advances and doesn't want to get demoted/fired. Placing subordinates in a position of apparent helplessness can be just as effective and harmful as real threats of violence, job loss or loss of status.
> I keep reading these Google stories that appear flawless examples of exceptional thinking and execution.
I also can't help but add that they seem to go the long way round to figuring out what everybody else already knows in the end.
I can't wait till they do this kind of intense analysis on why their social network efforts seem to grind so many people the wrong way and then arrive at the same conclusion that's already been talked to death out in the world at large.
Everybody already knows what's wrong with traditional corporations. It's just that Google takes steps to actively fix this.
I think it's ultimately the same with social networking - everybody knows it's not quite there yet, but trying to take concrete steps to produce something that's right is actually really hard. Facebook has been at this for 9 years and people hate them too. Real-world social norms took centuries to evolve.
It's a case study of managers by managers for managers, of course everything went well.
It would take an epically shitty manager to not be able to sweep that kind of failure under the rug and not manage to blame some programmers / QA for their failure.
One thing I would recommend though is to spread out their 360-degree annual reviews into a daily 1 degree review which will net Google an additional 5 degrees of review every year.
I believe management feudal battles only expose another type of problem employee. With an adequate model that can measure and predict future problems, it may just be possible to get rid of the problem employees (and managers who engage in feudal disputes are just that too) or even fix them by removing the factors that created the behavior in the first place.
If anyone can turn management into a real science, it's Google.
I understand that Google is basically a giant marketing company ran by engineers who own the web, so I get the fact that there's a lot of creative spin that goes with anything you're going to see published on the web about them. But hell, it sure would be interesting to poke around behind the scenes and see how things really work.
I'm not saying that to disparage this article or work, it's actually quite impressive. I simply wanted to point out that at some point, a company that does no evil and always is inventing things along the lines of time machines and faster-than-light travel every month starts to be a bit much for a reader to consume. Surely with 40K+ employees and that much money there is some other story here.