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Google Businesses

Google Shakes Up Its 'TGIF' -- and Ends Its Culture of Openness (wired.com) 102

Posted by msmash from the end-of-an-era dept.
"It's not working in its current form," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said of what was once the hallmark of Google culture. In 2020, he declared, the meetings would be limited to once a month, and they would be more constrained affairs, sticking to "product and business strategy." Don't Be Evil has changed to Don't Ask Me Anything. From a report: With that, Pichai not only ended an era at Google, he symbolically closed the shutters on a dream held widely in the tech world -- that one can scale a company to global ubiquity while maintaining the camaraderie of an idealistic clan. Pichai cited decreased attendance rates, the difficulty of running a real-time gathering across time zones, and an uptick in meetings among big product groups like Cloud or YouTube. His most resonant reason, however, was that Google employees could no longer be trusted to keep matters confidential.

He cited "a coordinated effort to share our conversations outside of the company after every TGIF ... it has affected our ability to use TGIF as a forum for candid conversations on important topics." He also noted that while many want to hear about product launches and business strategies, some attend to "hear answers on other topics." It seems obvious he was referring to recent moments when aggrieved employees registered objections to Google's policies and missteps -- on developing a search engine for China, bestowing millions of dollars to executives charged with sexual misconduct, or hiring a former Homeland Security apparatchik. Pichai says Google may address such issues in specific town-hall meetings when warranted.
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Google Shakes Up Its 'TGIF' -- and Ends Its Culture of Openness More

Google Shakes Up Its 'TGIF' -- and Ends Its Culture of Openness

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  • its called... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SirAstral ( 1349985 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:05PM (#59440552)

    People no longer buying your bullshit... sucks don't it?

    As a little bitch employee, I can directly tell you right now that your culture and respect for your employees... and compensation... damn definitely the compensation is a key factor in how much I care about working for you. Followed up by how much I enjoy working on projects around people that are good to work with where I don't have stupid political or philosophical differences with.

  • Wait... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:06PM (#59440558)

    Didn't we discuss this story in last week's meeting [slashdot.org]?

  • Openness... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ScienceofSpock ( 637158 )

    He cited "a coordinated effort to share our conversations outside of the company after every TGIF

    THAT'S WHAT OPENNESS MEANS! You can't claim to have an open culture, then complain when your employees start sharing.

    • Re:Openness... (Score:5, Informative)

      by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:26PM (#59440612)
      That's not what openness means. It's about being internally open with actual employees and stakeholders, not shouting your dirty laundry all over the world. In fact, the sort of 'openness' you're talking about dissuades real, useful openness because you are worried your every word will be leaked, analyzed, and taken out of context.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Hmm, so the Catholic Church has a culture of openness about how to handle their child-raping priests. Because you can be damn sure their senior cardinals have discussed it a lot internally even though they keep their mouths shut publically.
        • No. Because that's kept at the highest levels. The equivalent of senior management at a company. The Catholic Church is quite closed. Just the Google going forward. Open would be if the church discussed their pedo problems at lower levels than the top tiers of each country or region down the local priest.

        • Yes. That is the correct use of the word. You just don't seem to understand to whom they are open. *hint: this has never meant the public.

      • That's exactly what openness means [lexico.com].

        Perhaps what you meant to say was "You're right! Google has been using a very limited definition of 'openness' this whole time! Big fat phony!"

        • You've already lost when you try to point to a dictionary definition.

          Openness, of course, as humans would know but probably not robots or dictionaries, can be applied to a specific party. I am very open with my wife, that doesn't mean I'm very open with strangers. You can be very open with your doctor, but not very open with your banker.

          And, again, you can be very open with your employees and stakeholders but not as open with the general public. For example, did you think that since Google tries to be 'open

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rtb61 ( 674572 )

            Quite simply Google PR=B$ public relations fabrication of the faÃade behind which the googlites hid their privacy invasiveness and mass manipulation and the demonstrated intent to corrupt the democratic process to favour them, has collapsed. So now they are going to pretend professionalism instead. Whilst they unashamedly track people's politics to target them, truly sick stuff. Google's message to the general public, WE KNOW WHO YOU VOTED FOR and we know so that we could specifically target you, not s

        • That's exactly what openness means [lexico.com].

          Yeah, that's what the GP said, sharing internally. Fits your definition perfectly. Despite the fact you point to the dictionary, no where does it say in the definition of open that the use of the word needs to apply to everyone and for every action.

          I could personally email you this comment calling you out for your lack of understanding, and I would be completely correct in saying that I was "open" despite no one else seeing it, and despite an expectation that you don't share it.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        That's not what openness means. It's about being internally open with actual employees and stakeholders, not shouting your dirty laundry all over the world. In fact, the sort of 'openness' you're talking about dissuades real, useful openness because you are worried your every word will be leaked, analyzed, and taken out of context.

        Sigh, no openness means exactly that. Neither corporations, nor individuals should have "dirty laundry". That's the exact point. Secrecy is repugnant in a free society. If you can't compete openly, then you're really not competing. The simple truth is people need to hide what they are ashamed of and still went ahead and did for personal gain. It's all about concealing unethical behavior.

        Oldest story in the book.

      • coming out of Google. What I did see is a lot of folks who didn't want Google involved in morally questionable businesses like drones, government surveillance, child separation and the like.

    • Paradox of Tolerance (Score:3, Informative)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      He cited "a coordinated effort to share our conversations outside of the company after every TGIF

      THAT'S WHAT OPENNESS MEANS! You can't claim to have an open culture, then complain when your employees start sharing.

      My prediction is the google-lovers will mod you down soon, but you deserve some visibility. Ergo the quotation.

      However I think the deeper aspect is that the google has been trapped by a kind of jujitsu by people who use the openness of a society or company to close things up. In general terms it's part of the Paradox of Tolerance and on that hand I think the google is trying to defend itself.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      On the other hand, money rulz, not work. (The book should have been called Work Rul

    • Re:Openness... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:38PM (#59440674) Journal
      Umm, no. A company SHOULD be able to have internal openness, but still hold some things private from the outside. This includes corporate moves, product development, marketing strategies, features, even changes in HR and internal concerns.

      • Then it's not a culture of openness. Next.

        • You have a VERY interesting definition of openness... Can you point to an open company, or even an open individual?
        • Your fallacy is the false dichotomy fallacy. Are you being deliberately dishonest or are you just stupid?
      • or even HR changes. This is more about politics, specifically some high level Google engineers threatened to leave the company if Google engaged in business they deemed morally repugnant; and they were smart enough and important enough engineers that Google doesn't want to lose them.

        Google is hoping to stifle those conversations so the engineers will just go back to writing code. That can seem like a good thing if you don't consider what it means when engineers just do their jobs [duckduckgo.com]. And this isn't even th [duckduckgo.com]

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by the_povinator ( 936048 )
          So enforcement of US immigration laws == the holocaust?

          I'm pretty sure the Jews weren't crossing deserts to get in to Nazi Germany.

      • Umm, no. A company SHOULD be able to have internal openness, but still hold some things private from the outside.

        And I SHOULD have a unicorn pony.

        People who have actual, important secrets to keep discovered compartmentalisation and need-to-know long ago. If you tell 100,000 people something it's going to leak whether through carelessness, stupidity, revenge, maliciousness, corporate espionage, foreign espionage or possibly a sense of duty if it's something bad and in the public interest to know.

  • ...Google can't continue being a part of the shitty stuff it is doing (surveillance, disinformation etc) while staff can make a fuss over it..

  • "All Hands" meetings are usually a waste of time. (Score:4, Informative)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:10PM (#59440570)
    In my 30 odd years of being a Software Engineer and System Administrator, I went to only about five All Hands meetings and found them generally pointless and a waste of time, so I basically never went to them... I usually had better things to do, like actual work. Just my $0.02. I did attend one, though, where I was noted as Employee of the Quarter and given $750.00 (and grossed-up for taxes). [ Not going to ignore that... :-) ]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nwf ( 25607 )

      $750 for employee of the quarter? Is that the bottom quarter? I'd find that insulting.

      • $750 for employee of the quarter? Is that the bottom quarter? I'd find that insulting.

        This was back in 2001. Also, you're welcome to be insulted and give your award to someone else, but I bet you won't.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I have been to scores of all-hands meetings. I have found one to be worthwhile and that was because there was some major news about the company that affected every employee. All the others were a waste of time. The one you sited as being worthwhile didn't need to be an all-hands meeting. It could have been a quick meeting with your team and chain of command.

  • TGITFTOTM

    (Thank God it's the fourth Tuesday of the month).

  • Culture of openness is incompatible (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:14PM (#59440590)

    You can't have a culture of "openness" and also have woke-religion police patrolling every space and reading every post, looking for opportunities to destroy insufficiently woke heretical normal people.

    They chose to get rid of the openness rather than defy the inquisition.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Rockoon ( 1252108 )
      Indeed. Google isnt currently being run by management to any great degree. The rank-and-file ideologues are legion there.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      They chose to get rid of the openness rather than defy the inquisition.

      This is not unreasonable, considering that open defiance would result in sabotage, massive layoffs, and likely having to move HQ to some place like Texas. They only need to wait-off SJWs, it is now on the downswing.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Kohath ( 38547 )

        They only need to wait-off SJWs, it is now on the downswing.

        Do you really think they've learned anything? If they were capable of learning these sorts of cultural lessons, why didn't they learn them a long time ago?

    • the problem is those work folk are demanding Google stop engaging in questionable business practices. Especially things like lucrative defense contracts. The US military (and militaries like Saudi Arabia that we supply and support) run on a _lot_ of software and Google wants a piece of the pie.

      On the other hand we kill a _lot_ of civilians with that tech. Go look up how many civilians the drone strikes under Obama killed. And that was a president showing a little bit of restraint.

  • You can heckle at the comedy club (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can heckle at the comedy club because you're paying for drinks and the comic can tear you to shreds.

    This was not some enlightened movement. This was a mob with no responsibility for the outcome of their cause.

    Activism in a Democracy means bringing people to your vision and cause. This is a failure of the activism.

    I'm surprised they gave out free drinks and snacks to be publicly heckled as long as they did.

    It's a testament to Google's money making monopoly.
  • Like oil, drugs and tobacco.

    • Like oil, drugs and tobacco.

      Not sure why this got modded down - it's on-point.

      In fact, Google's ability to do harm far exceeds all of those industries combined, and they have proven that they cannot be trusted with such power.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by micheas ( 231635 )
        From my vantage point, it looks a lot like the biggest problem with Google is Sundar Pichai.

        He is pulling in a huge number of top-level executives from companies that have a culture that is contrary to what most Google employees were promised when they joined. A large number of these employees had job offers from other tech giants that paid more but they were promised that don't be evil was going to be part of the culture. Now that is gone, people are going to walk in mass for higher-paying jobs.

  • The internet has created the biggest threat that power has ever seen - the truth. It used to be hard to get at the truth. It had to be published in books, and those books had to be transported and sold, and people had to read them. Now, we have information that can travel at the speed of light and reveal the truth instantly. And as it turns out, this is very harmful to those in power. Which today includes Google.

    We mustn't be allowed to know the truth. Just look at the Epstein mess - powerful people l

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:35PM (#59440654)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • There's a PhD in sociology there for someone to examine pre/post internet conspiracy theory distribution networks.

        What's weird is that plausible-but-unlikely urban legends have mostly disappeared because people can easily look them up and find out they're not true.

        Yet at the same time, implausible ideas, like anti-vax, that wouldn't have been believed 25 years ago are now taken for fact.

      • I'll take a few anti-vaxers. It's a small price to pay for the truth. It's not hard for most people to see through the conspiracy theories vs. differences of opinion and politics.

      • Have you considered that this anti-vax silliness pales in comparison to getting the truth about what our ruling class is really doing? As in it's an easy trade, one for the other? Jeez.

        I don't get why people get so bent out of shape about this stuff. Flat Earth has been an intellectual joke for decades, and yet you see people getting super angry about it. Pay no attention to silliness. Instead, focus on the truth that we know. Remember when journalists took China's side in the Blizzard scandal? [youtu.be]

      • and a nurse. And she had no trouble finding doctors who agreed with her. I'm about 90% certain I don't have all my shots, and if I ever get enough cash to do some traveling I'll need a ton of them. Hell, either way I really should look into boosters but I honestly keep forgetting. All this was in the 80s when I was a kid.

        Point is anti-vaxxers are a lot more widespread than you realize. The internet just means you're noticing them more. They've been there for ages. Right after we got complacent from chic

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by murdocj ( 543661 )

      Uh... the truth is different from random conspiracy theories.

    • Re:The biggest threat to power (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ZombieCatInABox ( 5665338 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:48PM (#59440716)

      The internet has created the biggest threat that power has ever seen - the truth.

      Do you seriously believe that nonsense ? Are you living in the same universe as I am ?
      It's completely the other way around: The internet is the biggest threat to the truth ! Never, in the history of all mankind, have we seen such rapid and worldwide proliferation of falseness, lies, propaganda, conspiracy theories, cons, deception, and other bullshit, than since the advent on the internet.

      It used to be hard to get at the truth.

      Yes. And now, thanks to the internet, it has become pretty damn well impossible.

      • You are suffering from selection bias. You're only seeing the negative part. We are better able to see what's going on today than ever before in human history. Think about that for a second.

        We know now that a member of the Royal Family is a pedophile. We know now that the US mainstream media ran interference for pedophiles for years, and instead of rewarding a whistleblower, fired her. We now have analysis tools capable of telling us a great deal: New York Times Word Usage Frequency (1970-2019) [imgur.com]. We

      • Nah, you were just as blind to the truth as before, but now you're more aware of it.
      • If nothing else the Internet puts education in people hands. Access to raw facts that can be usefully applied are worth more than you realize. People learn that real information has value. They learn education and knowledge itself has value. Over time that will counteract all the fake news nonsense.

        The trouble is it takes time. And there's billions of dollars in propaganda out there. But there's tons of truth tellers like Secular Talk, Beau of the Fifth Column, Viced Rhino, Contrapoints Aron Ra and more

    • The internet has created the biggest threat that power has ever seen - the truth.

      “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.”— (generally (but falsely) attributed to Mark Twain; the quote was old before he was born.)

      The Internet: "Hold my beer..."

    • I would like to remind you that, when it's good for business, tell the truth. otherwise keep it to yourself. This culture of openness is silly in the internet age. people don't understand that company meeting are confidential and not for th e public.

      Google must go the way of broad based employee non-disclosures

      In reference to what needs to be done: a business must always think of it's legal survival, SO killing the epstein story is valid. making bad parts in not valid. Morality can have a place in business

      • Uh, when your entire reason for existence is exposing pieces of shit like Epstein to the world, and you do the precise opposite of that, cover it up, that's NOT in the interest of survival. Your entire comment is weird and smacks of being poorly put-together based on what you falsely think other people believe.

        • I am not sure of that. the killing of the story is something that I would like to know the truth behind. Because, it's from my observation only, that it's a money play. He might have gotten wind of it ( Epstein ), and bought who he needed to buy to get the story killed. 250,000 cash to a safety deposit box at the bank of your choosing will shut a lot of people up.

          While true news organizations are designed for exposing people. Historically, we just have to look at old Hurst and that would show you that the b

    • That is just bullshit. The internet is full of lies, half-truths, and cherry picking that the signal to noise ratio is about -1,000dB
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • failure of leadership (Score:5, Insightful)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:26PM (#59440618)

    Colin Powell said it best: "The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership." https://www.brainyquote.com/qu... [brainyquote.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Classical shoot-the-messenger problem. But Powell sums it up nicely.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Gimric ( 110667 )

      That would be Colin "Weapons of mass destruction" Powell, the guy who shredded his credibility presenting lies to the UN in service of the Neocon agenda? That Colin Powell?

      I mean, he's right, but the fact the quote came from him gives it negative credibility.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      This is true but there is a difference between an open door and making everyone's dirty laundry public.

      A good leader should be open to being questioned IN PRIVATE. He should not be expected to engage in policy debate with every subordinate in front of the world.

      If a subordinate comes to you in private and says "Sir about your current plan have you considered XYZ because I am concerned that .." and that is a problem for you it probably says something about you.

      As a subordinate though you should be ready to

    • It isn't that the soldier is bringing a problem. It is the private is demanding the general follow the private's preferred war strategy. And, when the private doesn't get his way, the private then goes to the internet and rants about how he doesn't like the general's secret battle plan, which he lists in detail, claiming his plan is better.
  • What does Steve Urkel [wikipedia.org] have to do with Google?

  • Fridays Matter (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Colossus2Guardian ( 6341264 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:29PM (#59440628)
    'Beer Friday' went through various iterations at the tech startup I spent a couple decades at, but it was certainly at its best when first starting out and everybody from the CEO to the receptionist was there and you were equally likely to have a conversation with either. People learned important things, and 'team' meant something. Impossible at a goliath the size of Google, but worth fighting for in smaller companies.
    • Beer Friday at my 1988 startup was Beer Everynight. During one demo, I tried to position myself to block the view of a beer bottle that someone had left in the chassis the night before. I was not clear on what Don Valentine's (Sequoia Capital) opinion would be, and we needed the next round.

  • Evil (Score:3)

    by sit1963nz ( 934837 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:44PM (#59440692)
    You can't be proper evil if everyone knows what you are doing.

  • TGIF (Score:4, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:51PM (#59440736) Journal

    Trans
    Gender
    Intersectionality
    Forever

    I believe that would now work at google.

    • Yeah, won't be able to cancel that one as easily. Employees might walk out or leak it to the press. Except I'd replace that last one with "Feminism" because "Forever" is not a mental ilness.

    • I had to look up what Intersectionality [wikipedia.org] is and it's an idea that all forms of race/gender/disability/sexuality overlap in terms of how they're used to oppress us.

      The idea of Transgender Intersectionality is fundamentally at odds with the whole concept. the point of Intersectionality is that all these distinctions are just tricks used by the ruling class to divide and conquer us. I've been saying that for years, somebody just formalized it, and it happened to be a women so it got tied up with the feminis

      • tricks used by the ruling class to divide and conquer us And, the membership of the ruling class changes depending on what is convenient. It always includes straight white males. It can include all white people. It can include all straight people. It can include all non-trans people. it can include all men. It can include white lesbians when the non-ruling class are "lesbians of color". It may include lesbians when the non-ruling class is "pre-op M2F lesbians"

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Gimric ( 110667 )

      oh, is THAT why this post has attracted the trolls?

  • It's nobody's (or everybody's) fault (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Thursday November 21, 2019 @05:57PM (#59440756) Homepage

    This is expected. It's what usually happens when a group starts thinking that idealism is more important than ideals.

    Large companies (and Google in its younger and smaller days) like to talk about "ethics" and "responsibility" and all those things people love... but they rarely lay out exactly how each project fits their definition of ethics.

    Eventually, some controversy comes up, and the employees try to reconcile it according to their idea of ethics. They accuse the leadership of seeking profits instead of following the undefined ideals. In turn, the leadership accuses the employees of missing the corporate culture. The divide grows until eventually, the company is no longer able to function. It seems Google has now suffered one of the common first symptoms of that divide: leaks of confidential information. The employees don't trust their leadership, so they also don't respect the leadership's request to keep secret things secret. All the NDAs in the world won't help if there's a lack of respect.

    Now the leadership faces a choice. They can either crack down on misbehaving employees, applying a heavy hand to any transgressions and hoping for selection pressure to keep their corporate culture where they want it, or they can try to restore the respectful culture. They seem to have chosen the latter, in this case by breaking the massive company into smaller teams and reducing the interaction with the company as a whole. That means employees have more interaction with their immediate leadership and feel more loyalty to the team. The downside to this approach is a loss of loyalty to the company as a whole, and that's the other half of this change. By ending the "Don't Be Evil" era, the leadership manages the employees' expectations. They won't be disappointed by an unethical project if they weren't expecting ethics to begin with.

    Yes, it's a sad day for aspiring idealist techies. It's also unfortunately predictable as a long-term effect of having structure that's too loosely-defined, in an organization that demands adhering to a monoculture.

  • Expect more control and more work on ads.
    The camaraderie of getting ads past any users ad blocking tech.
    Working for Communist China.
    Doing more censorship.
  • never understood their chaotic approach. this is how work works: -you work for us. -if you don't like it, gtfo. -you're paid to do what we tell you, not have opinions.
  • Never test for an error condition you aren't prepared to handle.

  • Its the end of an era for Google. Mediocre companies with mediocre goals, led by mediocre upper management, shouldn't try to pretend they're something they're not. Google shareholders want to make money enslaving the masses. Come work for Google, and help shareholders realize their dream.

  • His most resonant reason, however, was that Google employees could no longer be trusted to keep matters confidential.

    This is a reflection of the type of people you chose to hire.

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