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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3718 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 24, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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This is completely unfounded, but I suspect internal passive sabotage, by Google engineers who don't like the dominant internal politics, but who don't feel safe saying anything about it. Not precisely "quiet quitting", but more like a subtle "Amelia Bedelia rebellion", where they do what is required, but their actual goal is to make the people running the place look like fools.

I was part of the 2023 Google layoff, and still have a lot of friends at the company. Everyone is nervous and stressed as the layoffs continue. Remember (or discover) that 2023 was the first time Google laid anybody off; prior to that, if your job disappeared you'd get 6-12 months to find a new one within the company. The Google engineers I know are all trying to keep their heads down and just do their job right now.

So I don't think its likely that any coordinated group of Googlers are purposefully allowing these fuckups. Instead, what I think has happened is that Google grew up with teams of rockstar nerds who cared about the company, and a culture that allowed them to call out shit when they saw it. This was the culture that made Damore feel like he could and should write that memo, and that you can read about in Schmidt's book How Google Works. That culture stopped, and Google shifted from being mostly rockstar nerds into being mostly rockstar PMC nerd-managers. All the safeguards and procedures and culture that would catch these fuckups before they're released is immature/absent, because 5 years ago the nerds would fix these sorts of things without having to be told.

Quiet quitting/just not giving a shit is imo much more common & relevant. If you make your boss look like a fool, it is trivial for him to make it fall back on you. But if everyone tries to do slightly less than everyone else, bc doing more is plainly not rewarded, then you enter a race to the bottom that deteriorates everything.

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