Dare Obansanjo (a great follow on Mastodon) shared a LinkedIn post from Diane Hirsh Theriault, a staff software engineer at Google. The atmosphere at Google sounds grim. The fact that Sundar Pichai notified Google employees that there will be more layoffs this year wouldn't have helped.

This post does run into the danger of reading too much into one person's opinion. However, this is not the first instance I've heard of people complaining about the leadership and lack of morale in Google. Praveen Seshadri wrote this in a Medium post after he left Google last year.

The way I see it, Google has four core cultural problems. They are all the natural consequences of having a money-printing machine called “Ads” that has kept growing relentlessly every year, hiding all other sins.

(1) no mission, (2) no urgency, (3) delusions of exceptionalism, (4) mismanagement.

The maze is in the mouse (Praveen Seshadri/Medium)

That's a real indictment of the culture and management in Google.

A couple of things stood out from the LinkedIn post to me.

1. Leadership, or lack thereof, is a major problem

Theriault starts her post like this:

My hot take: Google does not have one single visionary leader. Not a one. From the C-suite to the SVPs to the VPs, they are all profoundly boring and glassy-eyed.

Diane Hirsh Theriault on LinkedIn

and it only gets worse from there. There appears to be a lack of direction and a problem with communication. People are being let go seemingly at random which is disrupting functioning teams.

Google has had the benefit of the money machine that is their search for such a long time that they have taken their eye off the ball in terms of new products.

The Google Graveyard is a real problem because whenever Google launches a new service, people are not using it because it could be gone again in a few years. I don't trust Google to maintain their services. That has become their brand to me.

2. There is a fine line between excitement in work and exploitation

There is a pervasive sense of nihilism that has taken hold. "Well, I guess I will just do the job until they fire me." A lot of people have golden handcuffs situations and aren't going to walk away from the salary, but nobody works late anymore. The buildings are half empty at 4:30. I know a lot of people, myself included, who used to happily do extra work evenings and weekends to get the demo done or just out of boredom. That's gone. 

Diane Hirsh Theriault on LinkedIn

I work in the IT industry and I enjoy my job. I have done the long evenings and weekend work. I regret some of that now.

There are times when extra hours are required. Sometimes you just need to drive through to hit a deadline.

When I see people being encouraged to stay late by peer pressure when there is not urgency to the work, that is a red flag for the workplace. What I regret from working in environments like these is that all my social relationships were tied to work. Companies that encourage this behaviour will drain every drop of effort they can from their employees.

The problem is that, oftentimes, I enjoyed myself while working. There's a real feeling of accomplishment when completing a project or learning a new language, framework or technology. There was a sense of camaraderie that developed in teams when hitting targets we weren't expected to. Most times, we didn't receive any benefit. Maybe a pat on the back, some drinks and dinner. Then get back to work.

If you find yourself in a situation like this, take stock if this is something you want. Is this a temporary work schedule? Is this expected even during quieter times during the year? Can you keep working this way until retirement? What will it do to your relationships?

If you plan to be in this industry for the long haul, consider what is sustainable for you. Keep adjusting that baseline as you get older. You could say life gets in the way. That's wrong. Life is what's important but work can get in the way of that.

Sunday Independent - 17 December 2023

FAI is still making the same mistakes: Hill's idea of staff relations is at odds with reality

The FAI's payments to CEO Jonathan Hill epitomised a familiar form of modern entitlement. Yet again, someone already paid more than enough got to plunge their snout further into the trough.

The Ryan Tubridy deal that almost capsized RTÉ was a classic example. The sums are smaller in Hill's case but the mentality, that fat cats can never have enough cream, is the same.

Former FAI chairman Roy Barrett told last weekend's AGM that he made the extra payment to "incentivise the executive." Seriously? Hill earns €258,000 per annum. Shouldn't that be sufficient incentive for him?

FAI administrative staff, meanwhile, are supposed to stay incentivised on an average wage of €32,000 a year. The figure for development staff is €40,000. Comments that the Hill payment doesn't matter because"€12,000 isn't that much money" is an insult to people for whom it's several months wages.

Hill claims he has a good relationship with Siptu, who represent many of those workers. But Siptu Services Division Organiser Teresa Hannick doesn't agree: "We would like to clarify that relations in terms of dealing with management have broken down to such a degree that the employees are bringing management to the Workplace Relations Commission. Both parties have agreed to attend."

Hannick insists Hill misled Wednesday's Dáil Committee hearing by describing their members as merely, "a small cohort," within the organisation. She says Siptu has, "a sizeable membership within the FAI."

Hill has caused, "extreme annoyance" by failing to recognise the union for collective bargaining purposes. "The staff are continuously told 'we are one' but this is far from the truth," laments Hannick.

What also rankles is the double standard operated as regards pay. While the CEO's pay is benchmarked against the public sector, the FAI refused to do the same for staff. The result is that while Hill's pay has risen by 22 per cent in the last years, some employee's with over 10 years experience have seen their pay rise by just three per cent compared to 2011 figures.

This is a poor reward for people who agreed to pay cuts so the Association could stay afloat during the Delaney era. It's a classic example of the modern trend where those at the top are afforded every consideration, but those lower down must like it or lump it. It's Class War.

Four years ago, Siptu asked for a worker director position to be made available on the board. The request, which still stands, was turned down. The workers apparently aren't qualified to deal with the really important issues.

Corporate Ireland's values were writ large in the Hill payment saga. Barrett implied that he didn't tell the FAI board about the payments in case media leaks led to the public finding out. That's a strange attitude for an organisation in receipt of public money.

This is an effective advertisement by the UAW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhyMwNQRczA

I love this video of Cory Doctorow explaining how the dreams of tech workers have changed over the past 15 years.

https://youtu.be/XwvqecNDHF0

This topic also appeared in his speech that he gave to Defcon earlier this year.

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

We deserve better than this. We can get it.

An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw It Into Reverse

If tech workers needed an example of the power they possess at this point in time, they need look no further than what happened at OpenAI when Sam Altman was fired by the board. He would not be the CEO today if the workers had not threatened to leave.

It's a small example and it will be interesting to see how Altman and OpenAI will react to try and break that solidarity in the future.

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Cory Doctorow. I do like Mike Masnick and the work he does on Techdirt. I don't always agree with them but they can make compelling arguments. I appreciate hearing an alternative viewpoint that is smart rather than just contrarian for the sake of it.

Cory appeared on the Techdirt podcast this week to talk about his most recent book "Red Team Blues". A lot of the conversation covers ground that has been dealt with in other interviews.

What stuck out from this conversation comes towards the end of the episode. Doctorow talks about the using the infrastructure that unions and organised labour had built in the preceding decades to participate in protests. He speaks of his experience as those structures were degraded and eventually dismantled.

Once those structures are gone then everything gets so much harder. There isn't a solid foundation to build on. It takes time to build something solid. Digital tools have helped to regain some of the ground lost over the past 40 years.

Mike Masnick has an undergraduate degree labour relations. He suggests that the internal corruption of the unions meant that they needed to be burnt to the ground before they could be rebuilt.

I'd agree with Doctorow's retort the the labour movement should be improved instead of jettisoned.

Once that ground has been taken or that institution destroyed, it is so difficult to get back to where you once were. The opportunity cost can be extremely high.