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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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.
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