Google cancels TGIF weekly all-hands meetings
I'll repost what I posted on my Facebook timeline since it seems relevant to this discussion.  One thing I'd like to add though:  given how things have changed over the past decade, the culture at Google is no longer just a shareholder or employee concern:  it is a societal concern.  Companies like Google and Facebook own our lives and it is in humanity's interest that the company be under proper leadership.  The alternative is more regulation on these kinds of companies (which probably isn't a bad thing in any case).It has been a decade since I worked at Google, but this makes me really sad.To be fair, the Google culture had its fair share of problems with whiny, entitled little shits and "brogrammers". And it has had its some spectacularly bad executives who are probably irredeemable assholes as well as executives who are too weak to keep their colleagues in line.But even at around 30.000 employees it was a fundamentally good place to work.Yes, it was competitive as fuck, but that's what happens when you have a high density of talent and ambition in one place. Much of the internal competitiveness was good. At least the way I saw it. I haven't worked many places where you start to work on something, only to discover that someone else is working on the same thing and this becomes a positive. You can collaborate and/or compete. And both can, and did, lead to better outcomes.Of course, occasionally you'd have deadbeats that would game the system and use the efforts of others to promote themselves unfairly, but largely I think people deserved their success.A few friends of mine still at Google have told me that the company I worked for is gone. It is a different company now. More corporate. Less open. Less creative. Less fun.
Most don't really talk about Google anymore. Be it in positive or negative terms.TGIF was among the things that set Google apart. That even inspired other companies and led them to understand that it is important to bring the top and bottom of the company in contact with each other on a regular basis.I don't buy that Google has outgrown TGIF. I think the problem is that top management simply haven't been capable of evolving. I suspect Sundar Pichai simply isn't able to lead the company in a manner that can preserve what was good about Google. If "only" 25% of employees follow TGIF (which would be a great turnout for most companies) that's on Sundar. That is his failure as a leader. It isn't that the company has outgrown it.And that's sad, because when the soul of a company dies, eventually, so will its ability to attract talent and perform. It'll be a slow decline. But this is nonetheless a clear symptom of decline.Sundar needs to get his act together or Larry needs to find a more suitable CEO.