To understand why Google isn't what it used to be, one has to understand what happened in 2009-2011. This is the era when Google decided to get "real managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM, and Intel. If Google had told them to wipe their fucking feet off before tracking shitty culture into the place, it might have survived. It didn't.
Google has an immense amount of talent "under its roof". Unfortunately, there's a necrotic layer of useless and counterproductive middle management coming up with a series of "innovations" that each have made the company worse. For a few examples:
* 20% time is dead. It requires managerial approval. More on that later.
* Until recently, people were hired "between levels" on the engineering ladder (which is generally a disaster at Google; see this: http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/04/promotion-systems.html) and then about 2/3 of them were "downslotted" to a lower level. It didn't affect their pay, but it blocked future raises, was a career kiss-of-death, and generally shat all over morale. What's amazing to me is that no one ever said, before this bit of syphilitic idiocy could reach implementation, "This is a terrible idea and you need to stop abusing cough syrup on the job." Fucking California culture, man. In New York, terrible ideas cause buildings to fall down kill people and so we refuse to tolerate them. Unfortunately, Google's executives seemed to lack the insight to recognize an obviously horrible idea as horrible. (Downslotting was abolished last year, but I'm astonished that such idiocy got in the door in the first place.)
* Engineers (not just managers) literally drop everything for 1-2 weeks each year to write "Perf" (for themselves and peers). The high-stakes performance review process is just that important.
* Google is resistant to any change that might improve engineer productivity beyond the rather plodding rate it has now. C++ and Java are the real house languages; Scala's not even on the table. Python is listed as a house language so Google can still hire people but it's rarely used and nearly deprecated in production.
* Managers have free rein to fuck over an employee in Perf if they believe him to be "distracted" or at risk of future distraction by 20% time, even if that employee's performance is otherwise strong. This doesn't make Google any worse or any different from more traditionally managed companies. It does deprive them of the right to market 20% time as a perk without being called out as liars.
* Last summer, it was announced that every employee had to have a 3-word "mission statement" that managers could change, and a 63-word quarterly summaries of their work. This was the infamous "7/20" all-hands in which the deprecation of 20%-time was announced.
* HR ignores severe ethical lapses by influential managers, including a person who was outright proven to be using low performance scores and PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans, which stop transfers) to block transfers.
To make it clear, Google still has some really great people and could turn itself around if it just fired most of the middle layers. The company still has an incredible number of immensely talented engineers of whom I think quite highly, but the company is so horribly managed that I see nothing but a cold, miserable twilight in its future.
The problem with blog posts like this one is that they're largely ignored for their content. Instead, those with an agenda or an axe to grind (on either side) come out of the woodwork.
Your comment is a case in point. Anyone familiar with your story (at Google and, as you know, there are many of us who are) knows how totally skewed your perception is.
Many people (including me) tried to offer you constructive advice. Without getting into specifics I think it's fair to say that any problems you had were pretty much entirely of your own making.
Regarding a few specifics:
- You mischaracterize the slotting process, which is now largely gone anyway (and you should know this so I'm not sure why you're bring it up as if it were a present problem);
- I can't speak for how much time managers spend on Perf but managing their people and the careers of those people is kinda their job. As for engineers, it depends on how much feedback you need to do. One engineer I know how to do >20 feedbacks and this took him a couple of days. Generally speaking, the more you have to do it, the quicker you are (at each one);
The fact that performance is peer-driven is overall a good thing. It means your relationship with your peers matters and this isn't just an arbitrary managerial decision. I see you still don't get that.
Google isn't perfect. Then again, nothing is. But it's pretty great. Or, rather, it can be. You get as much out of it as you put in. See something that needs fixing? Then fix it. It's certainly not a place for those that simply like to sit back and complain.
> Your comment is a case in point. Anyone familiar with your story (at Google and, as you know, there are many of us who are) knows how totally skewed your perception is.
Speak for yourself, would you? I'm myself a victim, unfortunately. I never even knew my Perf when I was with the company, only discovered it accidentally after I left. The process is very broken for me. Thanks @michaelochurch, I now know better about what had happened.
Generally yes, you can see your peer reviews. What you can't see is your calibration score. And your calibration drives all of your compensation. There have been folks with really good reading peer reviews who have had really low calibration scores because their manager, for one reason or another, gave them that score.
I agree that many cases are different but the HR process is broken at Google, and it happens to be broken in a way unique to how Google set things up, but the effect is the same at other companies where reviews are a beauty contest.
@anthonydchang No, I never received such emails. My manager and / or HR never bother. When I discovered this accidently after I left, I complained by submitting a ticket. But you know what, almost whole managements at that subsidiary (read: Google China) has been sacked. So nobody could care less about it. I must say working for Google is THE worst working experience for me.
Even without the emails, there are the links on the left in Perf that you can see your peer and manager reviews. Unless you're telling me Google China used a different Perf.
I'm sorry to hear that you feel your time at Google is the worst experience for you, but your story just doesn't make sense. How can you submit a ticket after you left? Were you in eng? Did you not see mchurch's delusional rants and all the people that came out trying to help him? If anything, the support, advice given to mchurch is exactly why Google is a pretty awesome place to work.
The only reason I visited my personal profile was to write weekly snippet. So no, I didn't pay attention to the links you mentioned if there were no Perf emails to remind me.
I submitted a ticket from outside as an alumnus. It is a fact. Credit to Google for setting this up. That being said, if there is anyone gets delusional, it is you.
I'm an engineer and used to work for Sun Microsystems. It was awesome. So I have pretty good idea about what it takes and what to expect working for a good silicon valley company in general, including Google. It just didn't apply to what happened to me in Google.
No, GP is right, your story seems odd. I'm not saying it's false, but it certainly isn't related to what mchurch is talking about. If you visited the perf website (which you have to do at least every year), then you saw the "Received feedback" link at the top of the page. If you were bothered by not knowing your performance results, you should have clicked that link.
Saying you didn't explore your personal profile or look at the perf website and then complaining that you never knew your performance scores is like saying you never visited your calendar page and being upset about not knowing your meeting schedule.
It sounds like you may have had issues with poor management, but the fact that you didn't know your performance scores has nothing to do with mchurch's fictional manager retaliation, nor is it common for managers to blackmail their reports with poor perf scores over differences of opinion the way he alleges.
1. Perf is different from your personal profile or snippets. Were you even at Google long enough for Perf?
2. "I didn't pay attention." there you go :)
Guys, it sounds like he worked for Google China. I don't know how tech works between different Google entities (as I don't/never have worked for Google), but its possible that Google China wasn't using the same system as Google US at the time edwardw was working for them.
It's possible, yes, but highly unlikely as he uses all the US terms. What is possible was that he was a contractor rather than employee, and then your compensation has nothing to do with your Google managers, it's up to your contracting company.
Yes, this was certainly questioned. His threads on internal engineering lists (adopting this tone after just a few months at Google) are somewhat legendary. I'd caution anyone from forming an impression of the company from mchurch.
You mischaracterize the slotting process, which is now largely gone anyway (and you should know this so I'm not sure why you're bring it up as if it were a present problem)
I said that they got rid of it, but I think the fact that such an obviously bad idea could get in the door in the first place is symptomatic of out-of-touch managers, and the same people are still there-- just coming up with new bad ideas (like the 3 word mission statements) that will linger around for 5 years.
The fact that performance is peer-driven is overall a good thing. It means your relationship with your peers matters and this isn't just an arbitrary managerial decision.
In theory, this would be true. In practice at Google, manager-as-SPOF is as much in force as it is in any other company. Actually, I think it's more the case at Google than at most places, because managers can unilaterally block transfers and because HR does nothing about abuse-of-process issues.
What Perf does is that it gives more reasons to deny promotions, not more avenues toward success. Managers can block promotions, and so can influential peers. So, in some cases, can trigger-happy idiots who abuse the unsolicited feedback feature (which does nothing but breed distrust, especially with the "manager-only feedback" feature, which is, at best, a quarter-step up from "XXX is a slut" gossip in fraternity bathrooms).
See something that needs fixing? Then fix it.
If you try to fix managerial, cultural, or product problems you just make enemies of the people who are invested in bad ideas and stupid decisions. It's really not worth doing.
I wish the full contents of the e-mail threads you started inside Google would be made public, including the hundreds of replies from random Googlers giving you advice on how to succeed and be happy there. I found this phenomenon inspirational, honestly: dozens and dozens of people helping out a frustrated co-worker they had never met. The advice they gave you was mostly quite insightful, and I feel fortunate to have been a lurker on these threads.
I'm glad that Perf at Google involves peer reviews, and that colleagues can volunteer to contribute to your review packet. I found the 3-word mission statement to be a fun thing. (For outsiders: this is just a text field on your intranet profile page where you can make up a slogan that concisely describes your goals.) It's about the same as being at liberty to make up your own job title for your business cards. People get very creative with it.
I came to Google as part of a medium-sized acquisition and I've seen HR solve complex problems (we brought some baggage with us that they had to deal with), and seen managers' managers overrule their attempts to block transfers. Problems were not solved overnight, but they were definitely solved. People worked hard and got promoted. Things work pretty well from my point of view. I've experienced my fair share of frustrations at Google, but I have also found that the company is full of people who are trying to make employees successful and happy.
The successful path requires that you employ patience, humility, and hard work in equal measure. If you can do that, you can thrive.
If you come in with a giant ego, pick fights with everyone you encounter, and ignore advice, obviously you're not going to succeed. When Yoda says "Your weapons, you will not need them", LEAVE THEM OUTSIDE. He is the Jedi master and you are the padawan; if you cannot recognize that, forever will the Dark Side control your destiny. :)
Google has a lot of people I really like. I never intended that post to be anti-Google. I just think the company made some really serious mistakes in terms of whom to give audience on major decisions and, as long as it has the wrong people making important decisions, it's going to lurch toward mediocrity even though a lot of the individual engineers are really great.
A lot of Googlers are reacting as if I attacked them. I didn't. Not in the least (unless they personally made some of the moronic decisions I listed). And Google is, despite the attempts of many influential and powerful people to destroy it, still a great company. I found most individual Googlers are really great people, but I think the danger of having the wrong people make decisions that affect thousands of people cannot be understated.
I have a feeling that you are just venting your specific personal frustrations in public while pretending that they represent some universal truth about Google.
>This is the era when Google decided to get "real managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM, and Intel.
Wrong. The problem with Google started with the new CEO. The decision to focus on Facebook, the Motorola acquisition, Google+, integration across all Google products and services,etc. these are not mid-level management decisions. These are decisions made by Larry Page.
This is not true. Google does not sell personal information; no advertiser ever learns anything about you. Google learns about you and it learns about the advertiser, and then uses that information to match ads and users. Yes, we make money from that. But it's a huge leap from that to "selling your personal information".
The privacy policy says: "We will ask for your consent before using information for a purpose other than those that are set out in this Privacy Policy," and selling your information is not listed there. Read it for yourself, it's pretty short!
Just a nitpick... but is there a particular link in these results that you want us to view?
There's probably ample evidence to support your claim, but linking to search results doesn't seem all that helpful. (If Google is still personalizing web searches or if someone has blocked a domain from their results we could be looking at different lists.)
Why would I not want to share my personal information with advertisers. I certainly don't want to be marketed feminine hygiene products if I am a male. I also don't want to get offered oracle integration products if I am a Microsoft SQL shop. Targeted advertising is fine by me.
Is it possible, that you haven't thought this to the end. When you don't get advertising of feminine hygiene products, because you are a male, it is also possible, that you get no insurance advertisings, because you do free climbing. More, it is possible, you don't get cheap insurance or even any insurance because you habe only searched for free climbing or clicked on advertisement for free climbing products.
You understand. The industrie washes your brain to only see the positive side effects and don't think about the negative ones.
I think those decisions are totally right. It is very clear that social network is important. It is very clear that google needs really good phone/tablet products that other manufactures can not provide.
Google+ is a new product. Don't make a judgement so early. It is getting better everyday.
To understand why Google isn't what it used to be, one has to understand what happened in 2009-2011. This is the era when Google decided to get "real managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM, and Intel. If Google had told them to wipe their fucking feet off before tracking shitty culture into the place, it might have survived. It didn't.
You were only there for 6 months in 2011. That hardly makes you an authority on what happened in 2009-2011, or about how the company is managed. Perhaps it's time to consider the possibility that the problem was more with yourself than with Google.
Hi, I don't know you personally, but I joined Google a year or so ago and I disagree with many of your subjective judgements above. I have personally run into the problem of managers hired from outside (heck, I was one :)) and that's serious. But AFAIK, none of those other things you talk about were caused by incoming crappy managers; they were invented by good old fashioned Google culture.
People absolutely do not "literally drop everything for 1-2 weeks" for perf. That's just ridiculous. People complain about it, but it's more like a few hours of work, not a week. Moreover, the Google perf system is hands down the most amazingly great employee performance review system I've ever seen. Okay, my worldly experience only goes so far, but I sat in on calibration meetings and promotion committee meetings and so on, and I was absolutely shocked at how fair and objective people were. I'm sure there are cases of abuse or where it goes wrong - there are in any such system - but your examples of eg. using low performance scores to prevent transfers ought to be hard to achieve; the system gives such high weight to peer reviews that a crazy manager should be shown as crazy in fairly short order. At least in the group where I sat in these meetings (Commerce) this was absolutely the case.
I have mixed feelings about Google. But your accusations here are mostly misguided IMHO.
Currently, managers get in trouble if they deny you 20% time for more than one quarter. This seems reasonable and I've never heard of anyone (in my department) being denied even for one quarter. But you're right, there is a bit too much management in general.
The depressing part is that Google is so far ahead of everyone else that they can fuck up a lot of things and still be the best place to work by light years. (They even pay better than the investment banks now!)
I haven't done a Perf cycle yet, but the only problem I foresee is that nobody really knows what my job title is supposed to do. That hasn't stopped my coworkers from being promoted, though, so I can roll with it :)
Doesn't your 20% time project still require managerial approval? You can't just work on whatever you want, you need to get it approved by a manager? This is what I've read, I don't know if it's true or not.
No, 20% doesn't require any approval. Your manager can ask you to set it aside during crunch time (one quarter max) and you might eventually get dinged if you're doing something wildly irrelevant. 20% time is alive and well and not at all "deprecated".
Technically the particular project you work on is supposed to require approval. So far I haven't met any manager who does anything but rubber stamp anything you suggest, but theoretically you could get one who is picky, and that would defeat the point of 20% time a bit if it actually happens.
Seconded. In theory, a manager could veto a 20% project, but I have never heard of it happen.
I personally think "managerial approval" is just for 3 things:
1) If someone decides to do something wrong/illegal as 20% project, the manager should've caught this (so this 'approval' is really a 'we reserve the right to blame the manager if things go wrong') ;)
2) People probably want their 20% project (and progress therewith) to be factored into their perf, as such, their managers need to know about it.
3) So that people don't pick clearly fraudulent 20% projects (such as 'my 20% project is to stay at home and watch TV')
> * Google is resistant to any change that might improve engineer productivity beyond the rather plodding rate it has now. C++ and Java are the real house languages; Scala's not even on the table. Python is listed as a house language so Google can still hire people but it's rarely used and nearly deprecated in production.
Google is developing Go precisely to improve engineer productivity, so this claim is rather suspect.
And, there are plenty of languages that are first-class citizens with respect to tool support. The reality is that most engineers and teams are happy with Java and C++, and only those that really want to do something different do something different. It's decided at the team level what language to use; if everyone wants to write Haskell, congratulations, you're now on a Haskell project.
Java is unproductive when you are a startup with one developer, but it works rather well at Google. Each change has to be manually code reviewed before submission anyway, so you aren't saving much time by using Python instead of Java. Agreeing on one language means that it's easy to switch teams; if you did Haskell and another team used OCaml, it would be hard to switch. If you both use Java, though, the barrier to moving is smaller and that means you can switch projects without losing productivity. And that's a good thing.
(Remember: Java at Google is not the same as Java at Bank of America. The toolchain is better, the libraries are better, the culture is better, and the codebase is better. There's really very little I hate about Google-style Java, and that's after hating Java with a passion for about 10 years.)
Hmm. I see (and write) some Python around me. I see a lot of Scala around me. And it's production code, actively developed, not phased out. I also keep hearing about Go.
Of course, I'm a mere contractor, I don't see the bigger picture, and all. But I _hope_ that on the language front things are not as grim.
Channeling Paul Graham: "Microsoft is dead" != "Microsoft is going to be out of business tomorrow". Same with Google. Yes, that company will be around for 50 years, but what Google used to be is gone.
Honestly, I've worked both on Wall Street and at Google. Individual people at Google are nicer, but the careerism and mentality (among people who want to move up) are nearly identical.
You are truly either delusional or an attention-monger that needs to troll to feel better about yourself.
Like cletus mentioned, many people reached out to offer you constructive advice. You ignored everyone, thought yourself superior to everyone.
I bet you were just waiting to be the first to comment, no? You did well...not only did you throw Google under the bus, you also threw California under the bus. Learn to have a little class.
cletus said: "The problem with blog posts like this one is that they're largely ignored for their content. Instead, those with an agenda or an axe to grind (on either side) come out of the woodwork."
Speaking purely as an outsider, you and cletus' comment prove his statement. You both clearly have an agenda, and the tone of your comments only lend credence to the stories.
Suffice it to say that I would recommend that someone who is a junior engineer and new to any company _not_ try to tell everyone on a company-wide engineering list that he or she knows more than the all of the other engineers in the company, and to not try to claim that he or she has superior technical vision, such that ignoring all of the engineering tradeoffs and to just do things His way is the right way to go --- and that anyone who doesn't see things his way is a total idiot.
Furthermore, in general, it's a bad idea not to make yourself look like a total ass in public; it's a career limiting move in most companies, but in a company where it is truly the case that your peers have a lot more to do with your getting promoted than what your manager might have to say, it really, Really is a bad idea.
Hopefully everyone would agree that this is good advice....
And if you join an engineering company where the engineers pride themselves on data and accomplishments rather than speculations, it may be worthwhile to provide evidence to support your theory than just argue with everyone without anything to it up.
And if you join a company and someone more senior than you with ACTUAL accomplishments and that is respected in and outside of the company tries to take you under his wings and guide you through the corporate landscape, don't dismiss their actual accomplishments as "irrelevant" at the same time boasting about your success in a product for a "niche market that doesn't exist"
And if you join a company, you should not claim expertise in something unless you are an ACTUAL expert and have the knowledge, experience, and accomplishments to back that up. Saying that you're a T7-9 visionary doesn't make you a T7-9 visionary!
And if you join a company, don't dismiss your fellow colleagues and make a fool of yourself because even if you don't work with them now at the current company, you may encounter them again in the future.
I'm not speaking to any specific incident. Just general advice that any new junior employee to any company should follow.
For people skeptical of the other replies here, the reputation of OP is pretty well known... it has almost become a shibboleth of the people that were around during his tenure.
There's a huge, internal backstory to mchurch at Google. Most of which I don't have the right to share with the public. Most Googlers' responses here are based on that. That's why there is a visible disconnect in their heated responses to mchurch here when viewed from the outside.
I'm really disturbed by this. I'm not a stranger to being the smartest person in the room - it happens from time to time - but, while interviewing at Google (I did it a couple times), I was always amazed with my interviewers, who were, with no exceptions, exceedingly smart people.
I'm going to take you seriously even though you don't deserve it.
Any rip on a state with 50 million people in it is somewhat in jest. Anyway, there are a lot of great things about "California culture". When applied to technology, an open-minded and experimental "Let's try it" mentality is great. Necessary, even. When applied to management without enough attention paid to the fact that some of the people posing ideas have bad intentions, some awful ideas get into implementation and it damages companies. It hurts people. So more conservatism in selecting what to implement is in order, and discussing ideas that might be harmful (with thousands of people) until they've been explored is a bad idea.
The problem with Google is that it's got the conservative New York culture technically (I mean, even Scala isn't allowed) and the California culture with respect to hare-brained managerial ideas like downslotting-- the exact opposite of how things should be.
Put it this way: technological and managerial innovation are utterly different. If you do a tech demo and it's slightly rough around the edges, that's fine. You're awesome for having the courage to put yourself out there. If you're putting forward suggestions that are going to affect the way thousands of people work, the traditionally sloppy (for tech, I mean "sloppy" in a positive sense) tech demo is not how you should be communicating.
I think I agree that the existence of downslotting was a mistake. However, the problem it was attempting to solve (you got hired at one level, but performed at a lower level, because you managed to fool people in the interview) is a real one and there is no good solution for it. So I appreciate that they tried to find one, and realized their attempt didn't work, and tried something else.
If management was easy, we could all read a book about how to manage a company and then all do it optimally. Since that's not the case, experiments are necessary, and I admire the attitude that leaves them open to things that might not work. I disagree that it was "obvious" that the downslotting mechanism would not work - or rather, that it was obviously worse than any other alternative, because once you have the "not performing as expected" problem, all your options suck.
However, the problem it was attempting to solve (you got hired at one level, but performed at a lower level, because you managed to fool people in the interview) is a real one and there is no good solution for it.
These levels are a convenient fiction. Performance is way too context-dependent to believe that there's some "platonic" level for each engineer. This (http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajector...) is the best model I could come up with for the software engineer trajectory, and even it has a 0.2 to 0.4 point (out of 3.0) swing for most individuals based on technology choices, interpersonal topologies, motivational flux, etc.
What you mean is "some people don't work out". Right. So there are people you "manage out" (that is, try to get them to find another job and fire them after ~6 months if they don't get the hint and you absolutely have to) and there are people you work with to bring them up to speed, or to figure out what's blocking them. Typical management stuff. What doesn't work is to keep people around but at a lower level than they were promised in the hiring process. That just creates a class of miserable, shafted people who hate their jobs and the company they work for.
By the way, a lot of the idiots on this subthread think I'm airing personal gripes. I joined after slotting. I'm just pointing out what kinds of ridiculous results come from an out-of-touch management culture. What drove me insane at Google was being at a company where the engineers were so good at their jobs and yet the people making important decisions were so epically bad. The disconnect was shocking. I was watching an awesome company self-destruct in front of me.
Also, on downslotting: careers are sensitive things and once you make one overt move so directly against an employee's interests, you've essentially lost that person. Loyalty is pretty much binary. Once you make a move like that on someone, you now have someone whose full-time interest is career repair, which usually involves getting the fuck out and lining up the next job. If this is what you want, then fine. (If someone really is a bad fit, for that person to begin full-time job searching is the best thing.) That category doesn't encompass most of the company. Downslotting only makes sense as a mechanism for managing people out, and (1) there are better ways of doing that, and (2) you shouldn't be managing out over 50% of new hires.
The real reason for slotting, I think, was to put a better job title in the offer letter than people were actually expected to get, since the upper title is what was used. This works only because of Google's brand: what keeps it from doing major damage is that downslotted people have the Google name on their resumes and can get the fuck out long before they become "problem employees".
I work for a start-up, and we have a lot of autonomy. However, we can't afford 20% time on a regular basis. It's usually closer to 15% during a good week.
I couldn't help but leave an (infographic of my reaction to the outrage re: 20% time.
Google has an immense amount of talent "under its roof". Unfortunately, there's a necrotic layer of useless and counterproductive middle management coming up with a series of "innovations" that each have made the company worse. For a few examples:
* 20% time is dead. It requires managerial approval. More on that later.
* Until recently, people were hired "between levels" on the engineering ladder (which is generally a disaster at Google; see this: http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/04/promotion-systems.html) and then about 2/3 of them were "downslotted" to a lower level. It didn't affect their pay, but it blocked future raises, was a career kiss-of-death, and generally shat all over morale. What's amazing to me is that no one ever said, before this bit of syphilitic idiocy could reach implementation, "This is a terrible idea and you need to stop abusing cough syrup on the job." Fucking California culture, man. In New York, terrible ideas cause buildings to fall down kill people and so we refuse to tolerate them. Unfortunately, Google's executives seemed to lack the insight to recognize an obviously horrible idea as horrible. (Downslotting was abolished last year, but I'm astonished that such idiocy got in the door in the first place.)
* Engineers (not just managers) literally drop everything for 1-2 weeks each year to write "Perf" (for themselves and peers). The high-stakes performance review process is just that important.
* Google is resistant to any change that might improve engineer productivity beyond the rather plodding rate it has now. C++ and Java are the real house languages; Scala's not even on the table. Python is listed as a house language so Google can still hire people but it's rarely used and nearly deprecated in production.
* Managers have free rein to fuck over an employee in Perf if they believe him to be "distracted" or at risk of future distraction by 20% time, even if that employee's performance is otherwise strong. This doesn't make Google any worse or any different from more traditionally managed companies. It does deprive them of the right to market 20% time as a perk without being called out as liars.
* Last summer, it was announced that every employee had to have a 3-word "mission statement" that managers could change, and a 63-word quarterly summaries of their work. This was the infamous "7/20" all-hands in which the deprecation of 20%-time was announced.
* HR ignores severe ethical lapses by influential managers, including a person who was outright proven to be using low performance scores and PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans, which stop transfers) to block transfers.
To make it clear, Google still has some really great people and could turn itself around if it just fired most of the middle layers. The company still has an incredible number of immensely talented engineers of whom I think quite highly, but the company is so horribly managed that I see nothing but a cold, miserable twilight in its future.