I keep seeing references to this recent “uncomfortable culture” at Google. Can someone from Google (past or present) explain what this is?
replies(3):
* Loss of trust, loss of openness. Someone kept leaking TGIF presentations to the media, so TGIF turned into contentless corpspeak and dodging of any hard questions. Someone kept leaking internal docs, so new docs now are locked down to specific teams or divisions instead of being readable company-wide.
* Attempts to start some lucrative but morally questionable projects (like the CBP contract or the China reengagement) that many employees felt went against "don't be evil".
* Cost cutting everywhere. Putting more work on fewer, burned out people. Desk hoteling in some places. No hardware refreshes. Very limited travel. And of course, cancelling or downsizing some fun but experimental projects.
* The pointlessly insulting way the 2023 layoffs were handled - e.g. cutting the laid off people off from all corp network access, even their email, without warning.