A few days ago, yet another provocative headline caught my eye: "Google is awful now. An ex-employee's memoir reveals how it got this way" -- SF Chronicle
At some point, possibly in the early 2010s, maybe a bit earlier, Google staged a dramatic transformation, from being the among the world's most loved companies, famous among my generation for their "Don't Be Evil" mantra, into a place that occupied the same block in the public's mind as a Bond villain. So the headline itself is not surprising. The bigger surprise is that with everything else that has been going on with the world since then, all the wars, all the movements, all the new diets and injectables, the "Google is Evil Now" narrative still manages to hijack a headline or two.
Once upon a time, I held Googlers in very high esteem. Ex-Googlers in particular, seemed to proudly display their ex-credentials on LinkedIn for everyone to see. Never mind why they were exes, by the way. Bit of a tangent, but more than vaguely reminds me of my favorite @GSElevator tweet (yes, they were called tweets back then):
#1: I love it when someone starts a sentence with 'When I was at Goldman Sachs'... Well, you aren't at Goldman Sachs now, cocksucker.
— GSElevator (@GSElevator) March 10, 2012
Anyhoo, back to Google, truly the Goldman Sachs of tech (before the AI era at least). The writer of this latest memoir, Claire Stapleton, might easily have been a classmate at Penn (had I gone), though the English major thing might suggest otherwise. I don't know this person, but I think I know this profile pretty well. Too well. Her background, education, and career path reek of privilege, irking me in a way I haven't felt from a perfect stranger since Sheryl Sandberg.
Full disclosure, I am an Alphabet shareholder. I think most people are, either directly or indirectly, through some kind of index fund or another. So I have every incentive to want this company to succeed, continue to be profitable, etc. But I've also been frustrated by all these different ventures that ultimately run into a dead end, all the projects that now collect dust in the infamous Google Graveyard, and the tens of thousands of people who I know for a fact aren't adding any tangible value to the company whatsoever. Yes, these are the folks who have been collectively suckling at the teat of Larry and Sergey's brilliant search engine. In most cases, their paycheck is still paid for in some form by the fruits born from that original tool.
Now, I know that dead weight employees is something that is pervasive throughout the world and the entire economy. Google monopolizes many things, but not that. However, a different standard should apply when you're making gobs of money. I mean, Monopoly money. Scratch that, more than Monopoly money. Gemini was kind enough to inform me that a standard US edition of Monopoly ships with a bit over $20k of fake money. Yeah, no. Try half a million dollars. More, if you add the RSUs. Now, I'm not the type of person who thinks there's some magic number below which you can be excused for blowing off your job. Don't like the pay? Just, leave.
Do you think I'm being facetious? Just remember, some product marketing manager was being paid the better part of a million dollars a year in order to sign off on giving products such brilliant names like Google Pay and Google Play (which simultaneously exist), while being displayed side-by-side by who I guess is either the junior-most UIUX Designer, making $300k, or the most IDGAF Senior UIUX at a multiple more, all while being coded by some poor schmuck front end dev who probably wanted to save the world at some point during undergrad, but couldn't escape the orbit of a $200k starting position in Mountain View Remote. Yes, all those people's work culminated in this masterpiece:
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