Billionaire CEO tells Googlers 'we shouldn’t always equate fun with money' Challenged by questions about Google's cost-cutting at an internal meeting, Alphabet billionaire CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly reassured employees about the internet giant's financial belt tightening by insisting that workplace fun doesn't have to be about money. CNBC obtained an audio recording of a Google town-hall staff …
It would have been so simple and much more useful for him to have said "We don't know what's coming up soon with the economy and so we need to step lightly for awhile."
But instead of saying "we don't understand" he says "you don't understand". Click-head.
also because it is fun, and you get to try out your ideas.
My wife cofounded a biotech company with ex-colleagues after their old company closed.
The beginning was extremely creative but poorly paid (first salary after 1.5y), later as they grew to 80-100 came bureaucracy, internal politics and investors but it then became financially rewarding.
It looks like Google is at the point when the beancounters start saying things like "...reduce waste and get better results..." which means they're not going to be doing anything cool or new or clever, they're just going to watch the bottom line.
It's where IBM and HP have been for the past 20 years or more and is the start of the long, slow slide into irrelevance.
Try to hire the best and then make statements that are obvious bullshit instead of being honest. That is disrespectful. If he is willing to lie about this, what else will he lie about? The economy is a great excuse to trim spending now that the pandemic is over. Maybe they overhired. But they also keep cutting R&D... Normal accounting management to take profits now on the quarterly results to score performance bonuses and forget the long term prospects of the company. Google is becoming what I picture IBM was like... boring and adverse to any risk.
Everyone on Linkedin got hired by google over COVID according to my newsfeed. Industry boards have shown google making terrible lowball offers.
It seems they don't need the brightest minds anymore, just average codes happy to accept average salaries for the prestige of Google on their resume.
Or.. wait, no, they're an enormous giant.
People just want a decent work environment, generous time off and a pay packet that respects their abilities and contribution.
If Google expect "fun" to replace compensation, they're on the wrong track. It can work for a while, but that gimmick will wear off when you need to pay the bills
If Google expect "fun" to replace compensation, they're on the wrong track. It can work for a while, but that gimmick will wear off when you need to pay the bills
Job satisfaction is really important - but unless you're a millionaire, we all have to keep an eye on the size of the paycheck.
A job doesn't need to be fun to be satisfying. Unfortunately we have a whole group of people who think work has to be fun. Usually the same group who like to use the word 'assigned'.
https://youtu.be/9IEFD_JVYd0?t=31
University is supposedly no longer about learning, its about being coddled, and this has moved to the workspace.
Work doesn't have to be fun. However, if you're my boss, it would probably be better for you if it was. The relatively small investment in making people enjoy work may save you from having to deal with a bunch of people who hate the job now. Sure, if you're employing people in an easy job market who are easy to replace, you can get away with that. Otherwise, you have costs when people leave for something that seems better.
How enjoyable a job is can be difficult to predict before taking one, so people who are more risk averse may want to stick with an enjoyable one they have rather than roll the dice on a new one. Also, if they're not doing the work at least partially because they enjoy it, then they're probably doing it just for the money so they'll be faster to leave when someone has more money. For those who are already financially stable, they may be willing to accept a lower compensation if the environment they've got now is bad enough. It's probably easier for you to make your job at least a bit enjoyable rather than have the highest salaries in the market.
Google always had a pretty good compensation — The only people complaining about low compensation are those who never had another job, and think it's normal for fresh grads to have a six-digit base salary, plus the same amount in bonus and stock. Admittedly, the compensation looks worse this year because their stock has gone down 30%, but even then it's pretty good.
However, it used to be good compensation and fun, and now it's good compensation without fun.
Given the rate of inflation, one could argue that a six-figure salary for a new graduate should be normal. Pulling some random dates, $100K (the bare minimum to count as six figures) in today's money would have been about $14K in 1970.
I wasn't paying much attention to pay scales at that time, but a quick Googling makes me think it wasn't that far off of an expectation.
It can be - if you're working for yourself or with others on something that you enjoy doing. However if work means an employment contract, containing requirements on the employee by the employer, then that most definitely needs to be tied to "rewards", however enjoyable or not the work is.
When money gets a bit tight it's not surprising if businesses start to cut back on discretionary expenditure and advertising is going to fall into that category. That sort of cutback will be restored when business picks up.
What's very likely worrying Google senior management is that their customers' senior management might start asking harder questions about advertising policy. Questions like "Does tacking really pay off? How much money are we spending showing adverts to somebody who once enquired about $PRODUCT, who's then bought it, isn't going to buy another and is more and more unhappy about having pointless ads shoved in his face?"
When those sorts of questions start to get asked Google's allegedly value-added services start to get questioned and that might be a hit from which it will be far harder to bounce back.
Ordinarily I wouldn't do this but you are asking for it: plebei
I think you want 'plebes' (or more colloquially 'plebs') and the word exists in English.
Decline plebs, plebis, f please. It is a standard thrird declension noun.
What is 'plebei'? Dative or ablative singular? Or the nominative plural of the adjective 'plebeius'?
Now, I will admit that 'plebei' could be Old Latin.
I never did Old Latin and I am open to correction there.
Don't they currently operate some sort of "own time projects" thing where people can take one day per week to do stuff outside their normal day job? Taking that back should give an instant 20% productivity "bonus" to Google. Or is that special day every week just for the top flying devs? And does Google actually get a lot of benefit from it?
As someone that doesn't get a formal 20% for 'own time' projects but happily takes nearer 40% for them, I suspect that the 20% is where most of the productivity comes from.
Get the day job done, spend the rest of the time adding value to my employer. I get to have fun and be productive; the pay is just the reason I have the job instead of putting that same time and energy into other things.
I'm always amused when some rich twonk, tries to tell those without excessive amounts of money that it's not the answer to everything.
They're right... money cannot buy happiness... it just buys you access to the things that can make you happy... It buys you time to pursue your passions, it makes those passions affordable.
It can't buy you a happy marriage... can it... ole musky... can it Bezos the clown...
In short... fuck these arseclowns and their utter failure to understand their privileged elitism.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
