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Google CEO Pichai Tells Employees Not To 'Equate Fun With Money' in Heated All-Hands Meeting (cnbc.com) 208

As Google tries to navigate an unfamiliar environment of slowing growth, cost-cutting and employee dissent over cultural changes, CEO Sundar Pichai is finding himself on the defensive. From a report: At a companywide all-hands meeting this week, Pichai was faced with tough questions from employees related to cuts to travel and entertainment budgets, managing productivity, and potential layoffs, according to audio obtained by CNBC. Pichai was asked, in a question that was highly rated by staffers on Google's internal Dory system, why the company is "nickel-and-diming employees" by slashing travel and swag budgets at a time when "Google has record profits and huge cash reserves," as it did coming out of the Covid pandemic. "How do I say it?" Pichai began his measured response. "Look, I hope all of you are reading the news, externally. The fact that you know, we are being a bit more responsible through one of the toughest macroeconomic conditions underway in the past decade, I think it's important that as a company, we pull together to get through moments like this."
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Google CEO Pichai Tells Employees Not To 'Equate Fun With Money' in Heated All-Hands Meeting

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  • by AmazingRuss ( 555076 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:32AM (#62907759)
    ... money just makes a prole unhappy, after all. Arbeit macht frei!
  • by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:33AM (#62907763)

    > I think it's important that as a company, we pull together to get through moments like this.

    That is thing that should happen, but in reality it seems like it normally only goes only one way and companies do not take care of their employees.

    • by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @01:08PM (#62908381)

      This is Google, they have always been extremely unusual, and spending well above average on employees, letting them do their own thing 15% of the time (until the boss decides no and fires them, I know several fired googlers), and often acting like an extended college environment. Now tightening the belt allows them to experience how things work at every other company on the planet.

      Doesn't matter how rich Google is, they are publically traded and are beholden to the board. This normally means don't waste money. Expenses must be justified, so things like travel tend to be the first things to be scrutinized - instead of sending a team of 8 out to a site they'll instead send just the 1 person who actually does the work and the managers all have to stay home.

      So they have a lot of money now, but the economy doesn't look particularly rosy. So the smart thing to do (whether a business or an individual) is start being thrifty now instead of waiting until it's dire.

  • Shareholders (Score:4, Insightful)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:35AM (#62907771) Homepage

    Just come out and say it: "shareholders are more valuable than employees"

    That's Google (Alphabet). That's every public company.

    That's just how it is.

    Fuck the people that make the money, because the people that want the money are more important.

    • Re: Shareholders (Score:3, Insightful)

      by scourfish ( 573542 )
      Shareholders represent millions of people, including the middle-class investing in retirement.
      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        Yes, when Google had its IPO, they got money from shareholders. Now the shareholders are merely buying and selling on the market. Their "ownership" is squat although it does make the C suite shareholders richer.

        • Those IPO shares, the one's where you make a lot of money, are not available to the average person when they are offered.

    • Re:Shareholders (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:41AM (#62907797)

      Pichai is hopeless, I don't know why Google's shareholders are still bothering with him. Google has made no meaningful progress with new products for about 10 - 15 years now, the handful of successful products they have had in that time frame are things they bought in, rather than developed themselves.

      Pretty clear that under Pichai, innovation and productivity at Google is well and truly dead. It's just coasting at that this point. As soon as someone disrupts its key profit areas like ads/search it's just going to become the next Yahoo, and until then it's not growing or protecting itself with diversification into other successful areas. Google Cloud it's only meaningful new profit centre in recent years is still so far behind AWS and Azure it's not even funny.

      But this is what happens when you kill all new projects before they've even had time to mature and find adoption.

      • Pichai is hopeless, I don't know why Google's shareholders are still bothering with him. Google has made no meaningful progress with new products for about 10 - 15 years now,

        From the very beginning I've never been able to figure out how this incompetent doofus got the job. Seriously, WTF?

        Now, years later, his incompetence is blatantly obvious and yet ... nobody cares. I guess the fact that Google is enormously profitable in spite of him (instead of because of him) is good enough for the shareholders.

        • From the very beginning I've never been able to figure out how this incompetent doofus got the job. Seriously, WTF?

          He treated corporate culture as though he was on a season of Survivor. Since the rest of the company didn't know how to play the game, he won.

      • Google has made no meaningful progress with new products for about 10 - 15 years now, the handful of successful products they have had in that time frame are things they bought in, rather than developed themselves.

        Chromebooks have taken over a huge chunk of the education market.

  • by kmahan ( 80459 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:38AM (#62907783)

    I'm guessing upper management isn't flying in coach.

    • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:49AM (#62907845) Homepage

      I'm guessing upper management isn't flying in coach.

      Exactly this. What does the CEO take home? What does his travel-and-swag budget look like? What cuts has he (and the rest of the top management team) taken? Odd are, none. "Pull together" in management speak means "you sacrifice, while I take my bonus for cutting costs".

      That said, because Google/Alphabet has been so successful, they have built up a huge mass of personnel. According to Pournelle's Iron Law, any organization collects cruft. An occasional housecleaning is necessary. The hard part is cleaning house in a way that the cruft goes away, while keeping your good people.

      • by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday September 23, 2022 @11:08AM (#62907943) Homepage Journal

        You also have to be careful. A person who is cruft in one position may be insanely valuable in another. Then there's the Peter Principle - people are promoted to their level of incompetence. How often has this happened within Google, where valuable employees are made worthless through inept promotion strategies?

      • At Google, the cruft is almost certainly all in management. The reason being that they have processes to get rid of underperforming individual contributors, while the management class protects its own. You have to be really bad to get fired as a manager at Google.

        • by HiThere ( 15173 )

          No. Perhaps you mean instead "all the management is cruft", and that's probably also false, but much less certainly.

  • Now the fun starts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jfetjunky ( 4359471 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:40AM (#62907791)
    Once the fun-times growth train starts to slow, the pencils come out. Because your investors don't want just a healthy business, they demand constant growth! Expect a now constant stream of reorganizations, talks about efficiency, tensions about employee benefits, and struggles with staff / workload ratio. All the while hearing about how great it is to work there. You can probably guess how I know this...
    • by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <slashdot@nOSpam.keirstead.org> on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:46AM (#62907829)

      Everyone at Google is an investor in Google because equity is a huge part of the compensation model. 50% or more of your compensation is usually tied to stock.

      *ALL* Googlers care a lot about the stock price.

      • Always demand cash for work, stock is generally undervalued and is given away as part of compensation because it's cheaper to the company than cash. Always invest your own money in retirement, don't be like those Enron employees who had their retirement tied up in a single stock. Any stock must be considered bonus only, not base compensation, but if you do have a significant chunk your own company's stock then sell it and diversify into something else.

        Now what are the google employes actually complaining

    • It's an expected measure from most any company that has "swag budgets". Hell, at my company someone had the bright idea of dropping $8,000 to buy a custom table that has the lid flip over to make a D&D miniature layout complete with storage. It was cool at first but after a couple of years it ended up being sold off and a plain shitty table put in its place.
    • Depends on the kind of investor. Some investors don't care so much about stock price as a nice steady flow of dividends. Now the two are linked, obviously, but it's not a one-to-one correlation, though it does mean revenues have to stay healthy.

  • Cut your salary (Score:4, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:40AM (#62907793) Journal

    If one shouldn't equate fun with money, then he should lead by example and have his salary cut. Reduce or remove any bonuses and stock options as well.

    If you expect others to sacrifice, you should be willing to lead by example. If not, expect your people to leave.

    • by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:44AM (#62907811)
      "Going forward, some of you are going to lose your jobs, but that's a sacrifice I am willing to make."
    • Re:Cut your salary (Score:5, Insightful)

      by khchung ( 462899 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:46AM (#62907823) Journal

      If you expect others to sacrifice, you should be willing to lead by example. If not, expect your people to leave.

      I wouldn't be surprised if getting people to leave is exactly what Pichai wanted. It is cheaper than doing layoffs.

      • I wouldn't be surprised if getting people to leave is exactly what Pichai wanted. It is cheaper than doing layoffs.

        It's cheaper in dollars, but it costs your top talent. They can most easily go somewhere else, and often don't even need a job any time soon.

        • by sfcat ( 872532 )
          What makes you think Google has much "top talent" today? Those folks left years ago. It is only the bureaucrats and ladder climbers left.
        • They can go elsewhere, but they will never get back the good old days of Google, because no one else ever splurged as much on employee perks as the old style Google.

    • If one shouldn't equate fun with money, then he should lead by example and have his salary cut.

      He didn't say anything about salary cuts.

      He's talking about cutbacks in the ridiculous niceties that Google offers at it's offices: swag, well-stocked snacks, etc. In his statement, the talked about the fun of the work itself, which he experienced in his startup life. His point is that the fun at the office comes from the projects you work on, not what you consume.

  • by HetMes ( 1074585 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:43AM (#62907799)
    Because this is how you get your best people to leave.

    People that consider themselves lucky to be working at Google because they'll never make that kind of money anywhere else will be the last to voluntarily leave

    This sort of announcement is universally a sign that working at that company is going to suck for the foreseeable future. I understand it from the CEO's perspective. During economic turmoil, he'll need to have some good news to report to shareholders so he can prolong his tenure for as long as possible. But the real bottom line is that he's hollowing out the company culture and atmosphere to stay in the shareholder's favor for just one er two bonus and equity cycles longer.
    • It's also how you get a union.

    • Those who would be driven away because the entertainment budget was cut, are probably not focused on being the "best people."

  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:43AM (#62907805)

    The mothership doesn't pay cover their travel enterternments as much as it used to... I'm really really sad.

    Try unemployment you pricks.

  • by way2trivial ( 601132 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:44AM (#62907815) Homepage Journal

    Is the reason he is paid the top dollar that he is.
    Seriously the ability to generate a masterpiece of corporate gobbledegook disingenuity on the fly like that is worth a lot of money.

    • by sodul ( 833177 )

      He came in that meeting prepared on how to answer these questions ... that's not an on the fly answer. They got the mike away from Sergey in these meetings because he was not preparing properly and spoke his min, getting the company in trouble. I attended these meetings during the 2008 crisis, so no surprises here.

  • "You need to form a Union right now, because I'm getting ready to slash your pay and benefits and I don't think you guys have enough bargaining power to stop me".
    • I thought it was more like "I'm cutting your travel, swag and entertainment budgets so my bonus is even bigger this year..."

    • "Travel and swag" are not benefits. They're perks. I guarantee you they aren't in the employment contract. How do you think a union is going to help?

  • Wrong answer (Score:2, Informative)

    by reanjr ( 588767 )

    During economic rough patches it is the well-heeled profligate spenders who help the economy weather the storm.

  • ... screw you!" - Sundar Pichai
  • by Junta ( 36770 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:58AM (#62907873)

    People have wanted to work at Google because of it's reputation as a nice place to work and well paid. No one inherently cares about the mission of Google.

    So if you make it a soul-crushing place to work, no don't expect people to 'pull together for the sake of the company', expect them to be as mercenary to you as you are to them.

    It would be one thing if Google actually was under demonstrable financial crisis, or if they were some noble institution like a non-corrupt charity. But they are an ad company flush with cash with no imminent need to crack down deciding to crack down and being shocked their employees aren't just super loyal to the mission of advertising.

    It's well within their rights to try to become a more efficient business, but they have to expect morale and retention to take a hit in the process.

    • No one inherently cares about the mission of Google.

      I used to, when the mission was "organize the world's information," and they went around doing massive projects with low potential for reward (like Google books).

      Now their mission seems to be "maximize profits" and if you want me to care about that, you better pay me accordingly.

  • by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @10:59AM (#62907883)

    The bottom line is that any and every thing your employer gives you in exchange for your work... be it salary, medical & dental, PTO, stock, "free" lunch, gym memberships, activities, snacks & drinks, or whatever else... is part of the compensation package for said work. Taking away any of that, without a corresponding increase in salary so the employee can replace it with an equivalent from an another source, is a pay cut. If it's not classified as a "pay cut" under accounting rules, so what? Reducing compensation of any sort is still a pay cut in every way that matters.

    So, yeah... if benefits are being cut without salaries being adjusted upwards so that they can be replaced independently, employees have every right to be PO'd.

    • When I apply for jobs, I do take those things into consideration. For example, "free lunch" is worth roughly $10 a day (more or less, depending on if you bring a lunch).

    • You're not wrong, but those who focus on perks are focused on the wrong thing, IMO.

      Throughout my career, I've never considered bonuses and snacks to be part of my employment package. I focus on the bottom line, what is the base pay. Bonuses and perks always come and go, but it's a lot harder for a company to cut the actual salary.

  • The textbooks and building were literally falling apart, but they still managed to find room in the budget to make sure the gymnasium was kept immaculate, and the boys sports teams had top rate equipment. And before you say, "well maybe that was paid for by boosters" the administration decided to kick the special ed kids out of their little hovel at the far end of the building because it happened to have AC. They then spent who knows how much constructing a posh new office for the principal. And again, the

  • If he followed up with: "To show the support from the executive branch, all executive salaries will be cut to put them inline with average employee salaries, and we'll be forgoing executive stock this year, and continue to do so until this rough patch, is over.", then I might have some respect for support for him, but clearly they're just screwing the employees.
  • If the employees asking those questions owned Google stock, they might understand why it's important to keep costs under control when your revenue is expected to plummet. Google has to compete with other companies on compensation, sure, but they're in business for the shareholders, not for the employees. I assume these employees weren't around for 2008?
    • Do the employees own stock in Google?
      by RobinH ( 124750 ) on 09-23-22 9:37 (#62908069)
      If the employees asking those questions owned Google stock, they might understand why it's important to keep costs under control when your revenue is expected to plummet.

      If you were one tenth as smart as you think you are you would have googled that question instead of typing it into the subject line on Slashdot, which you apparently mistook for your browser's address bar, or a search engine's search term input field. Then you would have known that most Google employees get stock options when they are hired, and also that Google stock vests sooner than most of their rivals, and you wouldn't have had to post this ignorant horse shit.

      Google is sitting on fat stacks of actual

      • by RobinH ( 124750 )
        Yeah, it was rhetorical. So imagine you're an employee who's been working there for a while and you have some vested Google stock options. Do you want the company pissing away their cash on frivolous shit like entertainment stipends for quiet quitting Gen Z'ers, or do you want the share price to go up?
    • Your kind of logic is why unions get formed. If you claim employees have no power and start abusing them because of it, then the employees will form a union and flex their power.

      It's really, really better to just treat your employees well, not like animals.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @11:49AM (#62908103)

    We have a contract. You pay money, I work. You stop paying money, I stop working

    Yes, it's that simple.

    We don't have a relationship, we're doing business here. If that was a relationship, I'd get half the company when you decide to divorce me, and I doubt the severance package is that great.

  • Yep, I can see why they became CEO. And why people in power control all conversations (pick and choose questions, and decide when they're done answering), especially public ones.

  • Yet another version of "We're all in this together!" (as he's sitting on a mega yacht next to your leaking rubber raft) Yeah the economy is having a rough time, but when your company is sitting on train-loads of cash I don't buy the whole "we've got to tighten our belts" BS.
  • If Google keeps heading in this direction, they will be one of the first software companies to unionize.

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