Google didn’t used to be quite so bad at this. Back when they closed the Atlanta office, people there got a lot of notice and opportunity to find another role. The complaints were about not being allowed to go full-time remote.
I wonder what changed?
Ruth and Fiona aren't Patrick and Laszlo.
It feels like there was leadership turnover in the late 2010s where "conventional company" people assumed the reins of power and started managing it like one.
The founders are complicit too. People like to think "before Larry and Sergey stepped down…" but the founders still control the board (tacitly or explicitly approving of the company's current behavior). Plus, there's Sergey's "60h/w or GTFO" note from a few months back.
Yeah, this is really common at Big Tech, I saw it happen at FB, and it's only gotten worse since then.
The issue is that if you keep hiring leadership/people from the rest of the corporate world (which is basically unavoidable if you are growing) then you'll end up trending towards the median of corporate behaviour over time.
It's mostly unavoidable, unless you never hire external managers (which would be very very difficult to do).
Sundar Pichai. That's what changed. He's one of the most uninspiring tech leaders of today who just wants to run an already established business with more and more ads with some AI sprinkled upon everything. And cost cutting. That's all, that's his entire vision.
It's him and CFO Ruth Porat. Both happened in the same year. The latter is your stereotypical banking type.
When these businesses are in their growth phase, they're relatively lenient about spending and generous to employees. When these businesses run out of opportunities for market growth or entering new markets to improve the bottom line, they turn to cost cutting and squeezing more out of employees to improve the bottom line instead. It's a natural progression for every megacorporation as they hit the limits of their growth.
IIRC during Google's first few mass layoffs in January 2023 and in January 2024, it gave people lots of notice, including opportunities to find another role. As time went on, it just stopped caring.