Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who has since moved on to greener and perhaps more dangerous pastures, told an audience of Stanford students recently that “Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning.” Evidently this hot take was not for wider consumption, as Stanford — which posted the video this week on YouTube — today made the video of the event private.
Because Google was so focused and strategic before the pandemic rollseyes.
The issue is Google’s broken governance and incentive system, which gives product owners and executives incentives for new products and actively disincentivizes maintaining and improving existing products…and that was a thing from well before the pandemic hit.
It’s why Google launched three pay systems and had five messaging systems at the same time.
And, finally, this is all because of the strategy set by senior leaders.
a) you’re right. Everyone who says this is right
b) If the senior leaders have designed their own ivory towers to force obsequious behaviour from their own people, they sure as shit won’t listen to totally reasonable analysis from people who don’t work for them. As such, they have engineered their own demise. I wish them well with it.
Yeah and they make ad revenue hand over fist. So anything else is just “experimental” to them aka a cost center. Since they don’t commit to these side products they don’t become profitable and inevitably get cancelled.
Also the ads are just so obscenely profitable that anything else will always just be a small side project. Google ad revenue is $200 billion/year.
If a new product has revenue of $500 million/year it’s still peanuts that are just a distraction and can be canceled with zero impact.
Of course, of course. It can’t possibly have been management infighting, lack of direction and destructive short term greed. No, it was people wanting to see their kids that are to blame.
The suits have taken over and are cannibalizing the current portfolio. Search is being transformed into a large AI powered advertisement billboard to pump up the profit. Now they’re all surprised search is less used and realize that search is the gateway to their other services. And the management blame storm begins.
If only people had worked more unpaid overtime, none of this would had happened.
none of this would had happened as fast
They always forget that part. Stupid executive decisions will still bring everything down.
I don’t know man, it looks like the lack of focus started well before 2020.
Well, clearly, their executive team all need to be in the office. Their actual workers can be trusted to work from home.
Work/life balance, going home early, and working from home is winning.
They have nap pods, full restaurants, and snack bars, and “fun” office spaces so you don’t want to leave the office.
Someone I knew worked there and wouldn’t actually buy groceries. He just at at the office for all his meals. He didn’t own a car. Rode his bike down or used public transportation.
It saved him like several hundred per month.
They know this and will try to use it as a way to suck you in and keep you in the office longer.
It’s pretty easy to be in the office and not working. Especially with all those different places to get lost. I really doubt that works out the way they want it to
Sounds like you could practically live there like you would from home almost
I have heard from many sources that at least the past ~4 years, if you are seen using the fun office things, you’re seen as not busy enough and will be pipped/fired
Cunt
Did some companies really go back to the office100%? We sure did not, going to the office is more of a social thing, maybe for all hands meetings, customer presentations and that kind of stuff.
The company wins because they can have a shiny office in the city that does not need to have workplaces for all employees but maybe 20% of them at a time.
With all the weird stuff that people do at home, productivity is still higher. In times of crunch working from home has saved me more than once. Etc blabla is this really still a discussion nowadays?
In my time managing a team of about a dozen WFH employees, I had 10 of the 12 overworking every damn week. They were putting in time off-the-clock just because they were sitting at their desk without anyone coming in to shut off the lights and because they were comfortable at home. In the four years or so that I did that job, I had more problems with people overworking themselves than slacking off.
There were a couple times employees were obviously doing the bare minimum and playing video games. Since I managed in-person teams as well in the past, I know that this is normal, there will always be some percentage of employees that cannot stand working and try to do anything to avoid it. This happens WFH as well as in offices, but when it’s WFH the company managers and owners don’t have visibility on it, and thus feel not in control, and that’s the very worst feeling for most of these folks who run companies.
How do you work the office only having space for 20% of employees? Makes a lot of sense but would be annoying to hot desk. My office only has us in two days a week but has not cut down on the number of desks at all, giving up the potential savings.
You book a desk in an online tool a week in advance or so. Not sure I get the question. Maybe it’s 30% I made that number up.
I think you got it and effectively answered it, thanks.
If the company grows they don’t need to have desks for every new person, so they won’t run out of space as quickly, saving the cost of relocating to a bigger office for further down the road.
My last two companies have been mostly fully remote, we’ve done all hands meetings, we’ve done regular scheduled meetings, and everything in between all remotely. It works well, employees are happier and we produce better work as a result.
cmon, it is the internet, a copy must be somewhere
Did the students boo him? I hope so.
Of course not. They were taking notes as they expect to be next in line to grind the peasants.
Fucking billionaire luck babies telling others they need to work harder. Such a piece of shit.
He retired? This fuck better not get an appointment in the next administration.
