At an all-hands meeting last week, Google executives responded to employee questions about declining morale even with financial performance improving.
“Despite the company’s stellar performance and record earnings, many Googlers have not received meaningful compensation increases” a top-rated employee question read. “When will employee compensation fairly reflect the company’s success and is there a conscious decision to keep wages lower due to a cooling employment market?”
With this leadership, when you unionize. It’s literally what they’re for.
Still, asking the question in this clear way that almost evokes the answer by itself is important. It puts it into the heads of people watching. Could be a union instigator. 😅
It’s also why there’s no way Google can sustain these numbers. They pay workers like a random startup, just without any possibility of striking it rich on stock options. They are likely to be hemorrhaging talent at all engineering positions.
For as long as Google is part of FAANG, they will have a nearly unlimited supply of fresh grads to burn through, and fresh grads still line up to work there to get that name on their CV.
Google will always be part of FAANG. It’s in the name.
But if they fail in AI and their advertising business dries up (which if you listen to earnings calls, is pretty much all anyone is concerned about), then their name won’t be stapled to FAANG anymore. It’ll just be FAAN. When you run the gamble of having great talent but wasting it, eventually you reach the point where you’re no longer a desirable location for the talent in the first place.
Ads are built. what do they need engineers for?
Yes, the suits have taken over and switched the money squeeze to max.
And they’ll argue “you don’t need [all the things that make this company great]”. And then we’ll wonder how a once leading company is dying on their now crappy products/services.
And that’s how Microsoft moved into irrelevance under Ballmer until Satya Nadella started focussing on innovation again. When sales lead technology businesses they always decline.
To be eventually bought up by a private equity firm that gives it the last squeeze before throwing the withered husk on the final Google Graveyard.
You would be mortified at how many people in big tech, including those that have directly experienced injustice or unfair treatment at work, simply want no part of a tech union.
Frankly, some industries absolutely need it (e.g. games). If they’ll put up with what they put up with and still choose not to unionize I don’t really know how software engineers will…
Oh I’m aware, am part of the industry. I think the disparately higher compensation relative to the rest of the economy has given us a false idea we’re paid fairly (perhaps even unfairly high) for what we produce. Which I have definitely felt myself. In fact I’ve felt very strange of the disparities within the industry itself. However that’s completely the wrong way to look at it. There’s no magical upper number that our labor deserves. Everything is determined by what people pay and how much they buy. (I’m not saying that’s the only way it should be) So if the revenues and profits are sky high, and we know labor makes most of it happen, then our labor is simply worth that much more. Given that someone will collect the difference, we may as well get a larger share of it. The sooner we recognize that, the sooner we’ll get even higher compensation which will be much more beneficial for people in the wider economy than a much smaller proportion of the exec class getting wealthier. But that can’t happen without unions. We mistake the temporary labor shortage for stable and strong negotiation leverage.
Am I dumb or does th article not mention the executive’s response to this question?
If it’s like a lot of other tech companies, likely this was posted in a questions thread during a large meeting, and while everyone can see the questions being posed, Execs pick and choose which questions they’re interested in answering, ignoring the ones they don’t like. It’s a good way of determining employee morale while avoiding all accountability.
It’s not really a question anyways, just a statement rephrased to fit into the format.
It is a fair and square question. “This is our position, what is your response to that?” And the answer is also clear “We care so little about you, that we don’t even recognize your position.”
A decline in morale after record profits? I think a pizza party is an order.
I’ll take Hawaiian.
I’ll take a deep pan bbq executive
You will take 1/64th of a plain cheese and like it.
My firm threw a staff BBQ at one of the satellite sites yesterday. My director was texting me about going…45 mins away…for a hot dog… standing in a field on a rainy day…
Sorry boss, deadlines to meet gotta prioritize my work here.
Yet, there’s managers who very likely pay attention to who shows up and who doesn’t and judge their work based on it.
*in
AN order I said.
Company-wide email: “We’ve had our best year EVER and it’s all thanks to YOU!”
Me: “Great. Can I have a raise?”
Company: “Oh, we can’t afford THAT.”
“here’s a layoff”
Best we can do is a pizza party
We don’t even get those any more.
Best we can do is mass layoffs and a strictly enforced return-to-office policy
I wish you were joking.
Do no evil.Beatings will continue until morale improves.
Beatings will continue until the stock price improves.
The stock price has improved yet the beatings continue
The beatings will inevitably continue
Alright then the beatings will stop when the stock price goes down. Which should be never.
They sure as hell don’t 🤣
Beatings will continue
until
Google is using artificial intelligence to summarize employee comments and questions for the forum.
Well, isn’t that a good start?
Anyway, the TLDR “answer” from CFO Porat is “We were spending too much”, while Pichai’s answer is “We hired too much people”. Way to dodge the question, assholes.
Alphabet’s full-time headcount climbed to over 190,000 at the end of 2022, up almost 22% from a year earlier and 40% higher than at the close of 2020.
So they had around 135k employees in 2020. Why the fuck did you overhire, then? Just to lay off and show off to investors as someone who increased profits in the most asinine way?
Pichai then joked that leadership should hold a “Finance 101” Ted Talk for employees.
Yeah, nevermind me, Sundar Pichai, earning way more money year after year while you’re all begging for raises, it’s just finances, you guys!
Ah yes, employees are only mad because they don’t understand the finances. Like, no, we’re disgruntled by layoffs no matter what. Layoffs trade morale and productivity for cash
Yeah. Let’s let him teach a Finance 101 class.
I’d be interested in the lessons a guy that approved a 40% headcount increase then did layoffs and said “I take full responsibility” can teach anyone.
How’s the saying go? Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach.. Go on professor. Schools us. The Investors are listening.
This is the same company that fired a bunch of people for opposing genocide, right? That didn’t help morale? \s \s \s
Huh who would have seen that coming out of prioritising income over employees (and users)
Exactly, the CEO uses the word “expense” to refer to employees at least 4 times according to my count.
“The problem is a couple of years ago — two years ago, to be precise — we actually got that upside down and expenses started growing faster than revenues,” said Porat
They even joke that they need to give a Finance 101 Ted Talk, as if that will help. From their perspective, employees are not people. They’re not even resources to be nurtured. They’re expenses. And the company has a duty to keep expenses low.
What a tone-deaf response.
I feel like I’ve been having whiplash at work every other month. One month we’ll get word of record profits or cheery news about how we’re beating performance targets or whatever, but then the next month we’ll hear about some new internal cost-cutting initiative that feels like we’re having to tighten our belts with a hint of desperation to it. I never actually know how we’re doing because it feels like I’m getting two conflicting impressions.
Companies can seem very bipolar that way. Always yelling about how well they’re doing, while also cutting costs to maximize investor confidence.
They’d sell your soul for a couple of bucks.
That’s precisely what they do. But not only their souls but the souls of the employees just trying to provide for their families and live a normal and fulfilled life.
After 20+ in software, my loyalty towards my current employer is as strong and unyielding as theirs is to me: Not at all.
I wonder if the decline in morale correlates with the decline in morals.
Knowledge workers need to get out of this ego-driven complex that they don’t need unions. You’re working class and chattle, believing anything else is delusional and pathetic.
For real, we need unions. It’s a slow boil now, knowledge workers are the next factory workers.
Soon to be displaced as corporations gobble up another chunk of worker wealth.
