Google CEO says company genuinely struggling with employee trust
Googlers are overwhelmingly young compared to what they used to be. What these people want most, beyond the usuals of money and perks, is for their employer to give them moral structure in life and the constant reassurance that they are good people - something they&#x27;ve been told since birth is the most important thing to be but with nearly no guidance on what that means, beyond the plots of Disney movies.<p>In effect they want Google to be a church and executives to be priests, preaching a moral code and equally importantly railing against heretics, sinners and apostates.<p>This need for a new religion can be seen in many walks of life but it seems strongest amongst those immersed in the university system for longest. They&#x27;ve never been judged by any system that wasn&#x27;t artificial and based purely on the opinions of superiors - from school to college to promo committees and peer bonuses, very few of them have ever really hunted hard for a job, made a product themselves or taken any risky decisions. They&#x27;ve got nothing to give them self confidence and thus fall back on membership of a group identity defined by a mishmash of whatever ideas they picked up from others just like them. Google struggles with them the most because it has hired so many and because Google internally is such a poor approximation of the real world: absolutely stuffed with &quot;rewrite X in Y&quot; style projects and people that don&#x27;t have any strong reason to be there.<p>The best way for Google to solve this is a major reduction in headcount, least experienced first. But I think headcount is rather sacred there as it&#x27;s used as a proxy for ambition, so instead they will continue struggling to be as holy as their student staff demand.