back to article Google CEO Pichai: We need to up productivity by a fifth

Google execs are embarking on a company-wide efficiency drive to make the digital advertising and cloud computing business 20 percent more productive. Taking to the stage at the Code Conference in Los Angeles, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and its parent Alphabet, pointed to economic storms on the horizon. "The more we try to …

  1. trevorde Silver badge

    Meeting Tax

    Worked at a company where my manager was in back to back meetings 8hrs a day, 5 days a week. I suggested the idea of a 'meetings tax':

    * 10% of your salary is allocated as a 'meetings allowance'

    * any meetings you attend are charged at £100/hr from your allowance

    * first 15 mins of a meeting are free, after that it is chargeable

    * you can leave a meeting at any time

    * all meetings are optional

    * if you absolutely require someone at a meeting, you have to pay for them

    * at the end of the year, you get to keep anything in your 'meetings allowance' as a bonus

    The idea is to incentivize:

    * short, focused meetings

    * emails not meetings

    * only going to meetings if you can contribute or get value

    * only call meetings if absolutely necessary

    He thought I was joking. I wasn't.

    1. nautica Silver badge
      Holmes

      Re: Meeting Tax

      Forget the "Meeting Tax"; how about Pichai simply "...putting his money where his mouth is..."

      From the article:

      "...Ideas include restructuring key goals and expunging needless meetings...”

      "...According to an Insider report, the CEO last week told staff at the monthly all-hands meeting that he intends to "simplify" the organization..."

      "...Ideas being considered include reducing by a third the list of "objectives and key results" to set goals for staff in 2023 and expunging needless meetings...

      -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      "If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.' "---Dave Barry

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Just wanted to say great useful idea your incentivization scheme

      I back you 100% (and the downvotes are incomprehesible)

      Tried for many years to get corporate IT to add something along those lines to our meeting software: Whenever you organize for a meeting and enter the dozens of people who have to attend, display how much 1h of time prorated from their position salaries this meeting costs. Question: "You organized a meeting: Is it worth blowing $40k ($300k revenue needed for this) on this time block" Answer: Never. Especially bc people are not organized going into these meetings.

      1. Vometia has insomnia. Again. Silver badge

        Re: Just wanted to say great useful idea your incentivization scheme

        When I worked at DEC I had to give precise costing details for their insanely complex time recording system. I'd often ask these prolific meeting obsessives for the relevant cost code to charge my time to. I never got one so I'd refuse to attend unless physically dragged in there (which happened once or twice!)

        It's not as if I was that pedantic about timesheets, I mean I hated the bloody thing, but I hated pointless meetings even more. The sound of some bore droning on for hours in a windowless room felt like it was giving me brain leprosy.

        1. Youngone Silver badge

          Re: Just wanted to say great useful idea your incentivization scheme

          I've refused to itemise my timesheet, as the vast corporation I work for doesn't pay me by the hour, they give me the same amount of money every month.

          I told the last beancounter who tried to lecture me about it that she could feel free to charge my time wherever she saw fit.

          I haven't heard back.

        2. nautica Silver badge
          Boffin

          Re: Just wanted to say great useful idea your incentivization scheme

          https://dilbert.com/strip/2000-08-16

          "Powerpoint Poisoning"

          'Dilbert', Wednesday, 16 August, 2020, by Scott Adams.

          You can view it here.

          1. EricB123 Bronze badge

            Re: Just wanted to say great useful idea your incentivization scheme

            Thanks for actually coding the HTML for the Dilbert link.

            A rather nice touch to the post.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Just wanted to say great useful idea your incentivization scheme

            It's bad form referencing Dilbert now that we know the author considers the PHB to be the good guy.

    3. trevorde Silver badge

      Re: Meeting Tax

      We had an hour long, 200 person, division level meeting which could be summed up as:

      Company is doing fine and we're getting into cloud

      They should've just sent an email and saved £20k

    4. Eclectic Man Silver badge

      Re: Meeting Tax - Corporate Events

      Hmm, I wonder how well that would have gone down with the Operating Committee board level exec who took the entire BT sales teams to Las Vegas for two days to 'motivate them' (he even hired first man to walk on the Moon, Neil Armstrong, to give them a speech).

      The execs travelled first class direct, the 'plebs' travelled steerage, so effectively 4 days out of their working weeks. It must have cost millions. (The senior who decided to do this was 'let go' shortly after, with a multi-million pound payment.)

      As I understand your 'meeting tax', each attendee would have been charged for their attendance, which seems unfair as they had no choice, surely it is the meeting caller whose budget should be charged?

      1. trevorde Silver badge

        Re: Meeting Tax - Corporate Events

        * if you absolutely require someone at a meeting, you have to pay for them

        If you're invited to a jolly in Las Vegas, and your attendance is optional, it's still going to cost you

  2. trevorde Silver badge

    Depressing

    Worked on an NHS project where there were a *lot* of pointless meetings and people whose raison d'etre seemed to be attending meetings.

    After one particularly pointless meeting, I looked at the number of people in the room and said:

    "That meeting just cost us £1200. Just think how many cancer treatments that could fund."

    1. Victor Ludorum

      Re: Depressing

      Don't leave us guessing, what was the reaction?

      1. Drat

        Re: Depressing

        > Don't leave us guessing, what was the reaction?

        Their reaction was probably: Let's have a meeting to discuss that

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Depressing

      How many people were in the room? 2/3?

    3. Electric Panda

      Re: Depressing

      I know someone who went through a discipline case for a £350 corporate charge card bill he didn't pay on time because of a cockup on the expenses claim. They eventually took the money out of payroll and the bill was settled.

      Six weeks later they started the discipline process, with misconduct hearing. His MD demanded from HR (he was a senior MD and had clout) how much money had been spent on investigating something that had already been sorted - they came up with a figure of nearly 10x what the original now-paid bill was.

      He gave them some blue air and warned them against that sort of nonsense in the future.

      1. trevorde Silver badge

        Re: Depressing

        Worked at a company (1992) where the accounts people pointed out that it cost them $1000 to process a $100 expense claim. The bean counters still insisted they process every claim rather than just paying it out.

    4. EricB123 Bronze badge

      Re: Depressing

      In America 1200 pounds would not be enough to fund the admissions process for a single cancer patient.

  3. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    So just fire 20%

    Google runs ads for other people's successful business. The ads are priced and sold automatically by a bidding algorithm. It needs a couple of admins to keep the lights on. All Google has to do is reduce it's own costs faster than other successful businesses reduce their ad spend.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So just fire 20%

      I think you missed the point. The 20% increase is to cover the various countries that think 4 day work-weeks are a good thing, so, either increase your productivity or get fired.

    2. pimppetgaeghsr

      Re: So just fire 20%

      In cults like these it causes repurcussions internally and people realise not all is well in paradise, especially when your entire engineering workforce under 35 suddenly realise maybe they are more expendable than they realised.

      We have an entire generation of SW departments and data scientists that think they are invincible due to loose monetary policy and bullish revenue numbers. Once it becomes a zero sum game again expect major cultural shifts internally.

      Google already changed their appraisals process to more of a carrot on stick process rather than a "we had a good year here is X00k of stock".

      1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        IThe "Internal Repercussions"

        ... are that employees in such companies start playing the back-stabbing politics games hard. The smart people leave, and the less-smart people remain in a spirit-grinding working environment.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    maybe do better before faster

    I manage info sec at a FI, a scammer bought advertisement on goog with a scam website impersonating us (multiple times). Pure fraud. Goog not only refused to take the ad down, they told us they paid more and so their rankings would be higher on the results page. So we went after the host (also) and they took the scammers down immediately.

    Most scammers now use Gmail, and goog docs are one of the most hazardous links we get regularly due to them not scanning for malware in their own cloud offerings.

    Now sure lots of cloud companies (including amazon) have a HUGE way to go in security 'effectiveness". but goog should be putting more thought into "Don't be evil" than how to make more money - because the fact is, goog is not respected, due to it's level of greed/data harvesting.

    Fix the real problem and the others issues will resolve themselves.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: maybe do better before faster

      >Most scammers now use Gmail

      Cos everyone uses gmail.

      That's like saying most scammers use Fujitsu optical fibre

  5. An_Old_Dog Silver badge
    Joke

    New Automobile, Efficiency

    Is Pichai going to make a film, Driving Miss Daisy Massive Impact?

    Google would be more efficient if they focussed on their primary goal: taking over the world.

    1. very angry man

      Re: New Automobile, Efficiency

      I would laugh if it was not true

  6. bazza Silver badge

    Why?

    Is this so they can churn out messaging apps we'll not use even more regularly?

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Why?

      If they launch 5new ones then cancel one a year later, that's a 20% saving right there

  7. Filippo Silver badge

    I came to the comments page to post something to reiterate that needless meetings are a drain on productivity, but while thinking about that I got a minor epiphany.

    I make bespoke industrial automation software, and I've followed dozens of IT projects from the beginning to the end, across a wide variety of companies, from 5-employees shops all the way to megacorps.

    I just realized that the projects with the largest number of meetings were generally the ones with the worst communication in practice. They were the ones where you don't know who is supposed to deal with a problem. Or you do, but they won't answer emails, or calls, or anything, unless you go to their boss, who will then call a meeting. Or where someone knows there is a problem, but they won't tell you, or anyone else, and if they happen to miss the right meeting, nobody will know about the problem until deployment time.

    Looking back, I start to wonder whether needless meetings are not only a waste of time, but are rather actively harmful on top of that.

    The best projects were the ones where there are well-isolated boxes (e.g. automation, network, accounting), and for each box there is one person who is in charge of everything, and communication between boxes is strictly point-to-point. Everyone who finds a problem knows who has to deal with it, goes directly to that person, and the problem gets fixed.

    It might well be that I'm reversing cause and effect, and maybe the companies with crap communication are the ones that have to call meetings to try to get shit done. But the correlation at least is fairly strong in my mind.

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      I think the correlation probably does go the other way at least somewhat, combined with the fact that, if you waste half of everyone's week in meetings, then you may not be able to rely on single points of contact anymore because the chances are high that they'll be unavailable because they're in a meeting or too busy to deal with your request. It probably also puts off some people, resulting in a more mixed set of people to work on the product. Managers who set up all those meetings may also be managing badly in other ways as well, leading to inefficient team organization which also harms communication.

    2. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

      Well-Isolated Boxes

      I think you're right about well-isolated boxes and limited, hierarchical communications, but also think there's a balancing act at work.

      + If you have to report a problem to a box-boss, you tend to think more about the problem and carefully organise your presentation of it.

      - If the boxes are too big, the number of people in the communication chain grows (boss-box to divisional manager, to group manager, to team manager, to worker-bee); longer communication chains increase the likelihood of misunderstandings.

      Apart from that balancing act, the book, "The Deadline" (by Ed Yourdon?) pointed out that when meetings are run with pre-published agendas, and those agendas are adhered to, people are more-likely to skip meetings which don't pertain to them. If office-politics levels are high, people tend to attend irrelevant meetings as an office-politics-defensive-measure.

  8. IGnatius T Foobar !

    Big Tech companies should simply divest

    Seriously. Break themselves up. Let each business unit live or die on its own.

    1. Steve Button Silver badge

      Re: Big Tech companies should simply divest

      Does this also work with governments? Would it be better to shift the power / money / decision making out to regional sub governments? To what extent?

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Big Tech companies should simply divest

        Obvious it's even called alphabet.

        Just split Google search into 26 different companies and you just go to a different one depending on what initial letter you want to search for

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My thoughts

    There is nothing worse than a "standup call" for five people that's scheduled in for an hour only for most of it to be trivial personal banter (usually a repeat biography of someone's kids and how they're ill yet again) and the actual work talk takes less than 20 minutes once you finally get round to it.

    Bonus points for wasting ages directly helping someone with an issue (often farting around in terminals etc.) while everyone else sits in silence waiting their turn. The correct approach is "let's take this offline" and arrange a private conversation for later on. Keep the main call moving and don't hold everyone else up.

    Then when it IS your turn you realise the chair couldn't sound any less interested in what you're telling them and their tone noticeably changes, only to perk up for the next person.

    And ever since the pandemic, it's also suddenly become acceptable to schedule meetings for sparrowfart (people either don't turn up or are so tired they're incoherent) and peak lunchtime (everyone is chewing and slurping). You can also expect someone calling you on Teams at 17:50 for a "quick catchup".

    I promise you this is creative writing and fanfiction not in any way related to direct personal experience...

    Also there seems to be a record number of people I know who report that they're just totally despondent, having symptoms of ADD and brain fog, just can't be bothered. Perhaps it's a sign of the times, perhaps it's boredom in the role, I don't know.

    1. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: My thoughts

      "There is nothing worse than a "standup call" for five people that's scheduled in for an hour only for most of it to be trivial personal banter (usually a repeat biography of someone's kids and how they're ill yet again) and the actual work talk takes less than 20 minutes once you finally get round to it."

      That's bad, but I think there is one thing worse than it. At least with unimportant banter, there's a chance it's about something of interest to you, so you can have a fun unproductive meeting. What is worse is a meeting where you have to be there or someone will complain, but you don't have to know what they're talking about (bonus points if you don't even understand what they're talking about). Now, you're wasting the same amount of time, but there's no chance you're enjoying any of it. If you're me, then I'm sorry for you, but you would also get mildly annoyed at everyone in the meeting and ponder whether they'd notice if you had network failures about twenty minutes into each of these meetings.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Too many people

    Clearly too many people.... 174,000 staff and only $69.9billion dollars revenue... that is a tiny $400K per employee. Just not good enough. Might as well pack it all in and go home when so little is being made.

    Certainly can't afford all those staff... will have to suggest voluntary paycuts so the bosses can have some bigger bonuses.

  11. FuzzyTheBear
    Flame

    Pointless exec press conferences.

    Add to the list executives and top brass who take time off work to hold speeches and press conferences ..

    Get back to your office Pichai , shut up and work >.<

  12. StrangerHereMyself Silver badge

    Expunge managers

    How about setting a limit on the number of managers per employees? Say one manager per 250 employees. That would most likely result in thousands of managers being let go and resulting in hundreds of millions in savings, with no or little productivity loss and most likely happier employees.

    1. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: Expunge managers

      Managers are modern parasites. They suck time and motivation from employees, and they suck money from the company. They should be considered as welcome as fleas.

      1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        Re: Expunge managers

        Do you want to have to explain detailed technical matters to the CIO in a way s/he/it can understand? Will the CIO believe and trust you if you simply say, "We need to stop doing X," "We need to start doing Y," or, "We need to buy Z." ?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Expunge managers

          How is that really any worse than the rounds of "telephone game" which happen when passing a technical matter up the management chain?

          If you have a good management chain right above you, with firm grasp of issues, maybe upwards communication works out well enough most of the time. But IME, above a layer or 3, things get ... murky. And the communication even moreso.

  13. CrackedNoggin Bronze badge

    I don't think that was a very inspirational roadmap. I don't think the ad business has more room for expansion, it is extremely sensitive to (overdue) market contraction, privacy battles loom, cell phone app market is close to saturated (Maps cannot be improved much further), cloud is nearing saturation and is highly competitive.

    On the other hand, AI and AI/robotics in factory automation is probably ripe for growth.

  14. jake Silver badge

    Getting rid of 20% is easy.

    Put out a "MANDATORY! MUST ANSWER BY THURSDAY COB OR YOU'RE FIRED!" 20 question corporate questionnaire. Most of the actual questions are unimportant, except include a block of three that says "how important to you are MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint", with 1 being not at all, to 5 being absolutely vital. Fire everybody who answers 3, 4 or 5 to the Powerpoint line, and also fire everybody who doesn't return the questionaire at all.

    You'll have just cut the 20%, almost all mostly useless middle management, with no loss to your company.

    Throw away the rest of the answers. Note: This will only work once.

    1. luminous
      Mushroom

      Re: Getting rid of 20% is easy.

      Surely you fire everyone who uses MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint for not using Google's alternatives.

      1. Eclectic Man Silver badge
        Mushroom

        Re: Getting rid of 20% is easy.

        Well, certainly fire anyone who uses Excel as a database and uses an old version that limits the numbers to 65536 rows thereby missing off a lot of people in a global health crisis. (Who could I be thinking of?*)

        *Answer - Baroness Dido Harding.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    UP wha?

    We'll up our productivity

    SO UP YOURS

    1. Eclectic Man Silver badge

      Re: UP wha?

      Oh yes, good old 'productivity'. Trouble is, folks that it is often not how much you produce that matters, but what use it is. I can create any amount of totally shit code (high productivity), but quality code that actually works, and does what I want it to do efficiently, well, that takes time and thought and care, and, frankly is usually much much smaller (fewer lines) than the crap code. Or to put it in terms a manager might (not) like, I can do what you tell me to do, but you'd better tell me to do things that are sensible otherwise it is all waste, however 'productive' I am.

  16. Potemkine! Silver badge

    Companies complain consumers don't spend enough, but they refuse to give higher wages. When will they realise their wage slaves are also their customers?

    A note on meetings: efficiency of a meeting is inversely proportional to the number of participants.

    == Bring us Dabbsy back! ==

  17. wobball

    Crazy Idea but how about reducing expectations of growth to something reasonable and stop whinging about not having enough money already. Fucking capitalists!

  18. pimppetgaeghsr

    Google is known in the tech/engineering world as the top paying "rest and vest" company alongside Microsoft. They haven't built anything decent in years despite the ridiculous bars to entry (which seem to have dropped along with salaries in the past year or so).

    No point bringing in geniuses when all you need is an H1b to keep the lights on.

  19. Doogie Howser MD

    Beatings will continue until morale improves.

  20. Eclectic Man Silver badge

    My team leader once decided that he would host a weekly team meeting / call at 4:30 every Friday. Each member of the team informed him that he would be the only attendee, as we generally worked late two or three days each week and therefore left early on Fridays as an unofficial 'Time Off In Lieu'. He changed to 9:00 on Friday mornings, but the calls were just as pointless - he seems to be trying to engender a 'team spirit' in a group of consultants each working for a different client.

  21. pavel.petrman

    Google's productivity should be decreased for humanity's sake

    Given what Google have produced over the last few years (heaps of money, a privacy nightmare and a totally crippled information structure throughout the Web), I can understand that they are hungry for more money but wish few orders of magnitude less productivity if they want to keep their current course.

  22. aerogems Silver badge
    Devil

    How about

    Instead of telling other people to get to work, he goes down into the trenches himself and takes on some unfilled role. No palatial office with more square footage than the dwellings of most employees, no assistant to juggle his schedule, no executive restroom, no separate entrance so he can avoid the unwashed masses, no segregated c-suite where he only has to deal with sycophants and general ass-kissers... Take a real job that is open somewhere in the company. Work at the same desk as any other regular employee would get. Park in the same parking lots, use the same communal restrooms... basically try out life as one of the faceless employees at the company. If he does that, I'll be much more inclined to listen to anything he has to say.

  23. Matt Collins

    Hang on a mo...

    I may be out of touch with working practices at Google, but don't they have a 'work on your own thing one day per week' policy? If that's still a thing, there's the solution right there.

    1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

      Re: Hang on a mo...

      That was my thought too, but I think that was quietly abandoned some time ago, probably around the same time as the motto "Don't Be Evil":

      https://www.businessinsider.com/google-20-percent-time-policy-2015-4

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