This theme has been repeated a bunch over the last 10 years or so. Google has been in a constant state of decline since the employment surge in the back half of 2010s culminating with a hiring fervor in 2020 that diluted out all of the extremely talented employees.
This severe decline of the median engineer means comp gets cut back, perks get cut back, and most importantly, autonomy gets cut back. Oppressive process and political gamesmanship reign supreme.
Even when I left nearly a decade ago, the idea that something like Gmail could be made in 20% time was a joke. 20% time itself was being snuffed out and dipshit PMs in turf wars would kill anything that did manage to emerge because it wasn’t “polished enough”.
At this point Google is far beyond recovery because it is inundated with B, C and now D players. It’s following the same trajectory of Intel, Cisco, and IBM.
It has been happening - I was there from 2011 to 2022 and it happened steadily for my last five years. The food got worse, they stopped handing out free phones every year, they cut equity refresh multipliers for strongly exceeds ratings, 20% time became 120% time (as noted elsewhere), and -- shortly after I left -- they changed the rating system such that there were real quotas for people being below expectations. Gone were the days they'd randomly hand out Osprey backpacks outside the cafeteria for no reason (I still use mine), or when your manager could send you to space for creating Memegen, or even when Memegen was controlled by its creator and the team he got funded for it, and not HR.
I actually attribute it to Ruth more than Sundar, but who really knows? All I know is I saw a major decline...and people were already saying similar things when I joined, and they were probably right too.
This isn't to say Google isn't still a great employer...but yes, perks and comp declined.
Perks have gotten better in some dimensions - for example, parental leave is much more generous than it was even 5 years ago. And that’s probably a more important perk than free backpacks tbh.
I'd be interested in utilization. When I was there and had my kids, it was 12 weeks, and I never took the full 12 weeks because it was too long for me. (I took 6, the 7, then 4-5 IIRC.)
That's bullshit. Inflation-adjusted compensation has been on a decline (nevermind the decision to reschedule the bonus/promotion cycle from January to April).
At least half of the micro-kitchens and cafes have been shutdown. On-site tech support has been dropped. Medical benefits support was changed from Anthem premium to some third-party that is worse than useless. Medical plan costs are up and covered benefits down. Hardware refreshes (even for engineers) has been cancelled, so everyone is working with pre-pandemic hardware.
Yeah, that’s my point. Anyone who joined in the last 4 years doesn’t even realize how far everything has deteriorated into a bog standard huge corporation.
This severe decline of the median engineer means comp gets cut back, perks get cut back, and most importantly, autonomy gets cut back. Oppressive process and political gamesmanship reign supreme.
Even when I left nearly a decade ago, the idea that something like Gmail could be made in 20% time was a joke. 20% time itself was being snuffed out and dipshit PMs in turf wars would kill anything that did manage to emerge because it wasn’t “polished enough”.
At this point Google is far beyond recovery because it is inundated with B, C and now D players. It’s following the same trajectory of Intel, Cisco, and IBM.
Pockets of brilliance drowning in mediocrity