Google CEO tells employees productivity and focus must improve - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32300444 - Aug 2022 (99 comments)
"At least when I was there, google seemed like an island with melancholic, but smart and kind pandas who never had to compete for food, for the food was brought to them by a ferry, and never had to do any work, unless they had a spark of curiosity that made them explore an interesting rock or mess with sand on the beach. All pandas were consistently exceeding expectations, even if they slept on a tree most of the day."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25609594
Now, whenever I read "Google", my mind instantly sub "Island of melancholy pandas."
And once morale is gone, it is a very short time until there is nothing but dead weight.
If there is a way to cast of dead weight with layoffs, I've never seen it happen. I've seen layoffs kill companies entirely, and make them into dead husks, unable to die, but even less able to live. But that's the best possible outcome.
Google makes money with ads. Tons of Google's engineering is utterly besides that core business. Productive might mean an excellent ad salesperson, and lazy slob a programmer only working on irrelevant efficiency.
That work is now your problem.
Tut, tut, Bogantech.
The real question is: Are they SoMoLo or MoSoLo or LoMoSo?
I'd generally take that in a heartbeat.
With manager approval, you can go down to as low as 60% time (and equivalent total comp reduction). I believe it's called flextime internally.
Amazon has also been experimenting for years with teams of 32 hour/week SWEs. https://www.amazon.jobs/en/landing_pages/part-time-tech
Interestingly, when I was at Amazon, I talked to one of the part time SWE managers. I expressed my surprised that the program wasn't more popular. He said most engineers just aren't that interested in the idea unless they're going through some major life event that requires their time, like a new baby or sick relative.
Perhaps only a cultural shift of the entire company to 4 day weeks would get everyone on board with the idea, without feeling like they're risking getting left behind and jumping to the top of the future layoff list.
Why would you say something so stupid? Has the most powerful CEO in the world really never heard the adage, "Praise publicly, criticize privately"? Criticism is fine but blanket criticism of staff is virtually never the right move.
The memo was "leaked" by cnbc, so Pichai wasn't even doing what you say he did anyway.
My initial impression was that this was a memo that had been fanned out to the majority of Googlers, which is the sin I was referring to. Now that you mention it, though, it's possible that the "Google employees" the above quote is referring to is actually just select members of management, which would be much better.
Google needs to do what Coinbase did and give an ultimatum to their woke social justice warriors.