I'm seeing quite a few sudden posts/blogs/tweets/etc., once the new round of firing is going on at Google. This time we seem to be dealing with people having been with the company for a min of 10/15+ years, which makes them direct participants in what they now so strongly criticize. Why aren't people starting documenting degradation while there may still be time to fix things?!?
Publicly "documenting degradation" - at the huge, tech-savvy firm you're still employed by - may not be the best of career moves. Nor of much use if you're trying to fight the degradation. Who, in middle 80% of Google's org chart pyramid, actually cares?
> "Who, in middle 80% of Google's org chart pyramid, actually cares?"
I agree with you except for this part. People at the FAANG level sometimes actually do care about fixing problems for both good and bad reasons. Some people take pride in their work and want to see their product succeed; it can be immensely gratifying to see your work garner positive press and be used by tens of millions of people. Some people tie aspects of their identity to pride in being at a FAANG; arguably this isn't healthy but if it motivates them to create better products, who are we to judge? Some people care because being seen to point out and propose solutions brings them visibility and promotions and this, for good or of ill, does work. And last but by no means least, some care because fixing problems hopefully will increase share price and make them even wealthier.
If they actually didn't care, they wouldn't have bothered to write their posts after being laid off.
It does happen occasionally. For example Justin Garrison wrote what I would consider a fairly scathing review of Amazon's HR practices related to laying people off, while he was still at Amazon: https://justingarrison.com/blog/2023-12-30-amazons-silent-sa...
He left recently, but he wrote this blog while still being employed there, as mentioned at the bottom of the post.
Trash talking your current employer publicly isn’t a great career move. It arguably could be more effective to work internally, but even if it’s not as effective, it’s far less risky.
Then later, you have been at Google long enough you’re relatively wealthy. You feel free to speak your mind.
I work at Google. I like it fine. As I pointed out in another comment, these days the gap between Google and say, any moderately well run company is much smaller than it was 15 years ago. Lots of the good things about google, both technical wise and culture wise, has spread throughout the industry.
For almost every amazing 'web scale' tech or developer tool that google has, there is pretty darn good open source equivalents now. Giving employees stock for retention and rewarding high performers is now much more common, as well as snacks and perks and pleasant offices.
Most companies have a more consistent hiring bar to some degree. When I joined the industry in the early 2000s, many companies didn't make candidates code at all, so half your coworkers might be fakers. Now that's a lot less common.
Say what you will about the pros and cons of whiteboard coding, but some coding to have a consistent bar is probably a good thing overall for the industry.
Google still has pretty darn good free food and pays pretty well, and most people who work there are at least fairly smart. It still has plenty of hard problems to solve at scale, which is the most fun part of the job.
However, it's not 2007, where the choices were the fantasy land of Google or Office Space. Now there are a lot of great companies to work for.
Documenting/blogging about organizational dysfunction externally probably won't go over very well with one's management chain. I imagine the giant bags of cash and stock options are a strong incentive to not bite the hand that's feeding you.
People tend to think big tech companies are somehow immune from human behaviors but I would counter that any organization beyond a certain size is going to have a fair amount of dysfunction (bureaucracy, politics, sociopaths, etc.) it doesn't matter what industry the company is in.
FAANG are likely to operate similarly to IBM, GE, ATT, and any other large mega-corp except they have hip furniture and cafe's.
wow. I'd just take the payment and never think about them again. Win-win for me and my psyche. Getting paid for non-disparagement is literally financial motivation to do what is healthy anyway and just let old frustrations go and move on with life.
