Google Employees Question Execs Over 'Decline in Morale' After Blowout Earnings (cnbc.com) 96
"Google's business is growing at its fastest rate in two years," reports CNBC, "and a blowout earnings report in April sparked the biggest rally in Alphabet shares since 2015, pushing the company's market cap past $2 trillion.
"But at an all-hands meeting last week with CEO Sundar Pichai and CFO Ruth Porat, employees were more focused on why that performance isn't translating into higher pay, and how long the company's cost-cutting measures are going to be in place." "We've noticed a significant decline in morale, increased distrust and a disconnect between leadership and the workforce," a comment posted on an internal forum ahead of the meeting read. "How does leadership plan to address these concerns and regain the trust, morale and cohesion that have been foundational to our company's success?"
Google is using artificial intelligence to summarize employee comments and questions for the forum.
Alphabet's top leadership has been on the defensive for the past few years, as vocal staffers have railed about post-pandemic return-to-office mandates, the company's cloud contracts with the military, fewer perks and an extended stretch of layoffs — totaling more than 12,000 last year — along with other cost cuts that began when the economy turned in 2022. Employees have also complained about a lack of trust and demands that they work on tighter deadlines with fewer resources and diminished opportunities for internal advancement.
The internal strife continues despite Alphabet's better-than-expected first-quarter earnings report, in which the company also announced its first dividend as well as a $70 billion buyback. "Despite the company's stellar performance and record earnings, many Googlers have not received meaningful compensation increases" a top-rated employee question read. "When will employee compensation fairly reflect the company's success and is there a conscious decision to keep wages lower due to a cooling employment market?"
"But at an all-hands meeting last week with CEO Sundar Pichai and CFO Ruth Porat, employees were more focused on why that performance isn't translating into higher pay, and how long the company's cost-cutting measures are going to be in place." "We've noticed a significant decline in morale, increased distrust and a disconnect between leadership and the workforce," a comment posted on an internal forum ahead of the meeting read. "How does leadership plan to address these concerns and regain the trust, morale and cohesion that have been foundational to our company's success?"
Google is using artificial intelligence to summarize employee comments and questions for the forum.
Alphabet's top leadership has been on the defensive for the past few years, as vocal staffers have railed about post-pandemic return-to-office mandates, the company's cloud contracts with the military, fewer perks and an extended stretch of layoffs — totaling more than 12,000 last year — along with other cost cuts that began when the economy turned in 2022. Employees have also complained about a lack of trust and demands that they work on tighter deadlines with fewer resources and diminished opportunities for internal advancement.
The internal strife continues despite Alphabet's better-than-expected first-quarter earnings report, in which the company also announced its first dividend as well as a $70 billion buyback. "Despite the company's stellar performance and record earnings, many Googlers have not received meaningful compensation increases" a top-rated employee question read. "When will employee compensation fairly reflect the company's success and is there a conscious decision to keep wages lower due to a cooling employment market?"
Greed (Score:5, Informative)
It's called greed.
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The only meaningful way for employees to earn more is for there to be an alternative purchaser for their labor or for them to own stock in the company that they work for. A good way to achieve both at the same time is for those employees to quit and form their own business to compete against Google.
Re:Greed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Greed (Score:4)
Why did the employee foolishly generate more productivity than they agreed to generate for their pay? This is like back in the 80s or early 90s when you would stop at a red light and someone would squeegee your window and demand to be paid a dollar for the work.
Re:Greed (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Greed (Score:3)
Re: Greed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Greed (Score:5, Interesting)
Not greed - it's lack of new products + revenue (Score:2)
Google, large enough, has an immensely difficult time introducing any product which will grow into 5% or more of total revenue.
A $5 million dollar product with 50% profit margins is good for a few years. If it does not have the geometric sales growth needed to get to 5% of Google's total revenue, it will be ended.
It is the same with most large companies, new products are too small to bother if they are still small after a few years.
Compare it to making a $50 a year side-job when you make $100k a year. Is
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Re: Greed (Score:2)
Re: Greed (Score:3)
I can't build a complex thing without coordinating with others.
Re: Greed (Score:3)
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It's good that it's obvious what every aspect and component of the project looks like in advance of doing the project and nobody has ever made up a project plan based on sheer hopeful ignorance or marketing spiel.
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They're supposedly working on the next big thing, as they've been doing for the last, what, 20 years, while ad revenue has been raining like manna from Heaven. Has there ever been any justification for all that ad spending?
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The fair share is the amount you agreed to be paid. Would it be fair for a Ford employee to demand part of your salary because he contributed to you getting to work and productivity?
Re: Greed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Workers should expect a bit more than just what their contract says. In fact most countries have laws stating that they can.
For morale, it's pretty bad when you see the company laying off large numbers of people in order to maintain short term profits. It's the kind of thing that destroys any loyalty people may have, and gets them to start thinking about the next stage of their career. Every new project is judged based not on if it is rewarding or beneficial to society at large, but on if it's going to end
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If you lay off my coworkers and expect me to pick up their work on top of mine, then yes I do expect a larger share.
Re:Greed (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not how pay works. It is how equity works, though, so if that's the situation you want to be in, go ahead and use you paycheck to purchase stock in your employer. It can pay off, or not.
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Employees are always paid better based on how they perform, and a good hint at employee performance is company profits. Manager "expectations" are often meaningless. Of course, employees have to be paid in full no matter if they are total slackers, that's the agreement. But the expectation is that slackers get fired, and hard workers get bonuses, raises, promotions -- often by moving to a company that appreciates them.
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Your "fair share" is exactly what you agreed to work for and not a penny more.
If your employer is shorting your paychecks, sue them.
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So employees wanting their fair share of the profit they generated for management is 'greedy' now? Human Resources has spoken.
There is no such thing. They (you) are employees, you agreed to do a job for a set amount of compensation. Quit whining and do your job or move on.
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So, if you want to discover other options that cause the price to rise, consider the pricing mechanism. As a simple example which you missed, employee unions have the power to
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Who's being greedy? The company that wants to keep more profit for themselves, the employees who want more pay for themselves, or the customers who want to pay less for the same as before? Everyone is greedy.
One glaring missing omission from this list: executives. Employees produce corporate output, but executives make the decisions. So, it doesn't matter if employees are greedy because their feelings and opinions don't matter in terms of corporate decisions.
Everyone is entitled to their own greed, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. However, competence is another matter. Executives are gambling that they can squeeze the employees with no drop-off in productivity. Instead of increasing corporate margi
Re: Greed (Score:3)
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Who's being greedy? The company that wants to keep more profit for themselves, the employees who want more pay for themselves, or the customers who want to pay less for the same as before? Everyone is greedy.
Both sides!!! Except you're wrong. The company pays their employees. If the cost of everything constantly goes up, it's not greed. It's called not losing money, while providing the same amount of labor. It's not getting conned by greedy executives that want to be kings. Own everything and take everything.
The only meaningful way for employees to earn more is for there to be an alternative purchaser for their labor or for them to own stock in the company that they work for. A good way to achieve both at the same time is for those employees to quit and form their own business to compete against Google. If they're short on cash, there's apparently a large number of groups in the area that will provide that cash in exchange for a stake in the business.
So they should be the alternative purchaser of labor by forming a competitor of google? You sound like a greedy executive. They should do everything, while I sit around and take, take, take.
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This makes perfect sense because the company, employees and customers are all the same size and scale and all have the same bargaining and purchasing power :|
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Indeed. In this case, part of an ongoing enshittification process.
Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
The employees are only part of "the team" as long as they are hard to replace. At any other time, they're just serfs. Now that replacing large numbers of employees with "AI" is perceived to be on the horizon by the company's masters, they're making sure those employees are aware of their serfdom. They can be 'properly' respectful and deferential to their 'betters', or they can be cast out.
Royalty rules by decree and not by consensus, and Alphabet's leadership and large shareholders fancy themselves as royalty. In a de facto day-to-day functional sense, they may actually be correct in that assessment - their dominance in mobile phones and in advertising makes them very powerful. Power corrupts - it encourages arrogance, callousness, and social irresponsibility. Fundamentally, it both breeds and feeds psychopathy. This is why society needs to exercise better, stronger, more ruthless control over corporate entities.
Re:Of course! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
I mostly agree with you.
On the one hand, employer's attitude to compensation is "pay what the market requires, and no more." How well they have lined their pockets has nothing to do with what their people are paid, they pay market rates and maybe a bit above to retain the VIPs, and that's it. And they feel their employees are being uppity with this totally inappropriate demand that the company owners should share their wealth with the workers.
On the other hand, employees MUST push for higher compensation, consistently, or they will receive nothing more than table scraps. The only force that pushes their salaries up is their refusal to stay loyal to companies when others are willing to pay more to poach them. So, a conversation like this is a good starting point, but that's all it is. Either they union up or they shop around for a higher salary and walk as soon as they get it. That's how employees take what they deserve.
It might not be cause for joy that everyone must constantly fight for what they deserve. But seeking one's own best interest is simply human nature. That's never going to change. If you removed every leader at Google and replaced them with anyone else (assuming they had sufficient education to competently lead a business of this size, and hence not run it straight into the ground) you will see the new leaders behave exactly like the old ones, because they have exactly the same incentives. That's just the way it is. All anyone can do is figure out how to make the best of it.
I do agree that we need to keep businesses regulated. Regulation is necessary to protect the freedom of the market. Without regulation, monopolies and cartels dominate and ruin absolutely everything. But (and this is the only point where I disagree with the OP), that doesn't mean that all businesses should be so thoroughly regulated that they are effectively state-owned. We cannot completely destroy the profit incentive, because that incentive is the means by which we get the services and technological advances we want. A balance must be struck, and that means giving as well as taking.
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Thanks for an excellent response - I agree with everything you wrote. That includes your last paragraph. I skew a bit toward total state control as a counter to the forces that push toward full corporate autonomy with a Libertarian bent. You and I might quibble a bit about how far that's appropriate, but I think we're pretty much on the same page here.
But, profit sharing + stock options ? (Score:2)
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AI is getting smarter. Are you?
Re: Of course! (Score:2)
For the case of Google, the transformation to dysfunctional corporation started when Eric Schmidt got replaced by a kid (Larry P
Re: Of course! (Score:2)
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This is why society needs to exercise better, stronger, more ruthless control over corporate entities.
Most of the time they pay of the politicians to be their own regulators.
The biggest change (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest change I see is the trust in engineers by the upper management.
Previously, many projects were started bottom up with individual or small group efforts. Things like GMail or AdSense were given as examples to 20%, but there were many others over time where individuals showed "personal leadership" and started successful project (or smaller things that pushed the envelope in metrics, without users noticing a high level change).
In any case, it seems like Google is now becoming (became?) a top down company where VPs and other execs push for short term wins for their own career growth, while entire teams are left scattering. Constant reorgs, and unknown direction followed by financial uncertainty for engineers does not sound like the Google of the old anymore.
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Constant reorgs, and unknown direction followed by financial uncertainty for engineers does not sound like the Google of the old anymore.
It does not. Instead it sounds like ye old crappy large IT company. Well. Not much or a surprise. I guess they figured out they can coast along on sheer size for a long time now. No need to be innovative or be an attractive workplace.
Nothing new under the sun (Score:1)
Around 2000, Ford, like the other car companies, was struggling with downcycles, and so had deals to limit profit sharing because there was none. Pain sharing so to speak.
Then the economy got better and they had a banner year. Per profit sharing formula, everyone should have gotten a good chunk of change. But the CEO decided something not dissimilar from punishments will continue until morale improves. So only a fraction of what the formula said.
Sorry, Googlians, this is nothing new.
Morale (Score:5, Funny)
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The floggings will continue until morale improves.
Fine. The enshitification of the product will continue until management improves.
And now we know how we got here. Fuck You Very Much, responding with Fuck Us Very Much.
Re: Morale (Score:2)
Talk to the AI hand. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, valued employees raise a valid question about how and why morale is in the shitter while the company wins bigger than ever, and management responds with:
Google is using artificial intelligence to summarize employee comments and questions for the forum.
Here’s a thought Google. How about you act a bit more fucking human in your response here. Having a machine even summarize a very human problem is probably one of the reasons morale is in the shitter.
Meatsack bosses who act like this deserve to have their talent pool rug rapidly pulled out from under them via attrition.
GOOGLE employees? (Score:1)
Those overpaid little brats? I think they'll live.
"Google is using artificial intelligence" (Score:2)
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Get yourself a dictionary. Slavery is when you're forced to work. Nobody was forced to work at Google.They chose it. They could have worked at McDonald's instead.
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Slavery very often is/was a great deal more than just being forced to work.
In wage slavery (which is also in the dictionary, by the way), many people are forced to work, but the other control over one's life is largely confined to when you are at work.
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Under wage slavery your employer cannot beat you, rape you, forcibly split up your family, force you to keep working for them or for someone else of their choosing, nor even force you to remain at the work site if you choose to leave. In fact, the only thing your employer can force you to do is leave, should they decide to fire you.
The phrase is very ill-chosen. Wage-slavery is absolutely nothing like slavery. We just tack the word "slavery" in there because we have to come up with money if we want to ea
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Re:It's Called Slavery. This Country Was Built By (Score:4, Insightful)
You know comparing being "forced" to work in an air conditioned office at Google because you want to own a Tesla and live in a $3 million house while sending your kids to private school to actual slavery which is having the shit beaten of you if you don't work in physically horrible conditions while you watch your children being separated from you and forced to work or in many cases get raped. Can you even try to imagine what that would be like? You've lost your bearings and are suffering from serious mental illness if you think the two situations are even remotely similar. One is being mad about not having a serving of ice cream the other is like having boiling water poured over you. It might do you some good to try that experiment -- deprive yourself of ice cream and see if it compares to the sensation of having actively boiling water poured over your hand. Think that's psycho? Well so is your comparison.
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Wage slavery in this case is easy enough to avoid. Quit and go do your own thing. No wages, there you go. Lots of Google employees have done just that.
Wage slavery has some applicability in situations where people really can't quit or they'll starve. Not lose their nice houses in the suburbs, starve. The rest of the time it's pretty whiney, or, you know, how it originated, as a justification for actual slavery by actual slave owners.
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Everyone has to work except for the silver spooned. It's all slavery. Fuck your dictionary I live in reality. Just because you drank the Kool-Aid, doesn't mean everyone did.
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You're an idiot. Go get yourself whipped in the street and forced to work with no healthcare or money or vacation and tell me it's the same as working at Google for $200k+. It's stupid to use the word slavery for that.
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Get yourself a dictionary. Slavery is when you're forced to work. Nobody was forced to work at Google.They chose it. They could have worked at McDonald's instead.
The vast majority of people are forced to work. We can't all be independently wealthy.
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Forced to work at google? And getting paid? Slavery is when you're forced to work and get nothing in return, even the food you're given is solely so that you can work tomorrow and you can't choose what to do with it.
"performance isn't translating into higher pay" (Score:2)
Re: "performance isn't translating into higher pay (Score:2)
Tech workers are going to need to unionize (Score:5, Insightful)
We cannot directly bargain with multi-billionaires strategizing against us at country clubs. They have vastly more resources than we do. It's the old thing where you can break an arrow easily but a bunch of arrows can't be broken.
A hard part is when you work an IT you talk to idiots all day long and it's easy to get a really really really really really big head. It doesn't matter how smart you are though if somebody was more money and power uses that to come down on you like a ton of bricks. The smartest man in the world still dies if you shoot him
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and to bring in as much cheap overseas labor as possible.
Gee, it's too bad there wasn't some sort of political movement that cared about such concerns.
But ... no more mean tweets, so I guess there's that!
In general you won't find me doing both sides bad (Score:3)
But as much as I hate to admit it when it comes to bringing in cheap labor from overseas both sides are united. The Republicans of course just want the cheap labor and to lower overall wages in the country.
The Democrats have some of those people but we've mostly kick them out of the party (I'm looking
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I mean I have close family who are alive today because the Democratic party paid for their health care while the Republican Party fought tirelessly to take it away and pocket the money for themselves...
That is a blatant lie and you know it. We have not in the post war era been in the habit of letting indigence kill anyone. Now they may have ended up caring a lot more medical debt under other systems and maybe you are happy they were allowed to steal from others because of their bad luck or far more likely given who is posting ridiculously poor choices.
Lets be real about that too - at least 25% of the pre-ACA uninsured and uninsurable were already covered by one or more state and federal program. They were
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Some things, like companies massively over-hiring [businessinsider.com] then following up with mass layoffs could be addressed by legislation that strongly discouraging over-hiring in the first place by mandating continued full-time pay and health coverage for 1 year and instant vesting of all unvested RSUs.
This was NOT about profits/greed (Score:2)
Google will be going through a lay-off every year (or possibly more often) in western nations, while they will hire elsewhere, but mostly in India.
Never (Score:3)
They hate their workers, like all companies.
Collective bargaining (Score:2)
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Supposedly the median total comp is $300K, and the average is higher than that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ITCar... [reddit.com]
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Yeah, if only America's tech industry was more like Europe's. No, wait ...
Searched Google, Found Answer: Capitalism (Score:1)
First, few young talented people build something in their garage (yes, I know, legends
Then, it meets success. Very well
Then, it grows, and hire, hire, hire
Among these new people are financial ones, far from the garage things
Then the founding members leave
Then finance take control
Then it's money money money, make the share holders richer every year, and forget what the true wealth of the company is
There may be variants, their may be success anyway, or qui
Why? Winter is coming. (Score:1)
Why hav companies Dudley all gone for mass layoffs and are earning money hand over fist?
It's because they all know a mass financial reset is coming, they want as much cash and as few people as possible to live through it.
It is a wave that will sweep many companies, and people, aside...
Good luck everyone.
Content providers are getting screwed too (Score:3)
The beatings will continue until morale improves (Score:3)
Between Return To Office, then outsourcing teams offshore, and now not giving raise despite huge profits, Google has completely graduated into your run-of-the-mill giant mature faceless and heartless corporation.
It is futile to hope the execs care about employee morale, execs in a mature corps only care about getting money into their own pocket and nothing else.
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Well, form a union (Score:2)
Google... (Score:3)
...has become IBM.
Can't employees also buy shares in the company? (Score:2)
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Complaining about not sharing in company profits though is not what unions are for. It is supposed to be for fair and humane treatment of employees. Whining that your piece of the pie is not big enough is not what unions are supposed to be about.