<story><title>Google CEO tells employees not to ‘equate fun with money’ in heated meeting</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/23/google-ceo-pichai-fields-questions-on-cost-cuts-at-all-hands-meeting-.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>neilv</author><text>I wonder whether the mention of swag in the reporting was a red herring.&lt;p&gt;I would&amp;#x27;ve liked to see the full question, and all the other questions, and whatever could be learned from their absolute and relative votings.&lt;p&gt;Questions on my mind:&lt;p&gt;1. How many people are concerned about loss of swag, and if so, why? (Is it because they want the swag, or see it as a canary, or because they simply don&amp;#x27;t understand the belt-tightening when they think the company is doing well, or something else?)&lt;p&gt;2. If some people are concerned about travel, is it because the travel was fun, or effective for project success, or effective for personal advancement, or something else?&lt;p&gt;3. How concerned are people about possible layoffs, possible declining TC, and&amp;#x2F;or possible changing nature of the work lifestyle?&lt;p&gt;4. Are there any pre-existing concerns that talks of belt-tightening are adding to? (For example, were some people already feeling like they were overextending themselves, or stressed over pursuing a promotion, and now they&amp;#x27;re wondering whether changes will make make that situation harder?)&lt;p&gt;(I&amp;#x27;d like to understand how different organizations are feeling, and how that changes with circumstances, and the news article&amp;#x27;s mention of swag might be confusing things. And also, I&amp;#x27;ve always had a soft spot for Google, and I want it to be its best self.)</text></item><item><author>bko</author><text>&amp;gt; Pichai was asked, in a question that was highly rated by staffers on Google’s internal Dory system, why the company is “nickel-and-diming employees” by slashing travel and swag budgets at a time when “Google has record profits and huge cash reserves,” as it did coming out of the pandemic.&lt;p&gt;What you focus on can also help you attract a certain type of employee. The best engineers I know want to work on interesting problems. I know plenty of people (myself included) that took pretty drastic pay cuts to work in a more interesting space. To be fair, we were all making above our needs at the time, but the point remains, good engineers care a lot about the things they working on.&lt;p&gt;As a company becomes successful, they should share the gains with those that helped get them there. But no firm is completely closed, it has to attract new people. And the sell to new employees often overly focuses on money and perks.&lt;p&gt;The other problem I see is that companies can fall into the trap of focusing too much on inner reflection and feedback. This leads to a lot of heavy handed happiness initiatives that end up just being chores (e.g. forced team bonding, endless happiness surveys, feedback, etc). I can&amp;#x27;t speak for non-technical employees, but in my experience the best engineers care most about an interesting product space, autonomy and respect. And colleagues matter as well. So even if you have all this, if your values aren&amp;#x27;t shared by your peers, its a big negative. For instance, if your peers are more interested in advancing politics at work or exploiting perks, it will create tension with those that just want to do meaningful work.&lt;p&gt;So I think Google&amp;#x27;s shift is a net positive. Sure it&amp;#x27;ll upset some employees that care more about catering, travel and perks than their actual work, but that&amp;#x27;s fine.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>batmaniam</author><text>It sounds like a gas lighting attempt to paint employees as selfish and entitled children worried about losing their toys. Most people don&amp;#x27;t care about that stuff, it&amp;#x27;s all superficial anyway. Things like this usually means employees asking about why benefits are cut for them and not for executives.&lt;p&gt;Further down in in the article, if readers made it that far, it implies just that:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Pichai dodged employee questions asking about cost-cutting executive compensation. Pichai brought in total pay last year of $6.3 million, while other top executives made more than $28 million.&lt;p&gt;The later on:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Bret Hill, Google&amp;#x27;s vice president of &amp;quot;total rewards,&amp;quot; fielded a question about raises, equity and bonuses and how they will be affected by the changes. He said the company doesn&amp;#x27;t plan to deviate from paying workers “at the top end of the market so we can be competitive.”&lt;p&gt;Which leads me to believe employees know what they&amp;#x27;re talking about, and the swag question near the top is just clickbait. Employees actually want real answers, and they got none.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google CEO tells employees not to ‘equate fun with money’ in heated meeting</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/23/google-ceo-pichai-fields-questions-on-cost-cuts-at-all-hands-meeting-.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>neilv</author><text>I wonder whether the mention of swag in the reporting was a red herring.&lt;p&gt;I would&amp;#x27;ve liked to see the full question, and all the other questions, and whatever could be learned from their absolute and relative votings.&lt;p&gt;Questions on my mind:&lt;p&gt;1. How many people are concerned about loss of swag, and if so, why? (Is it because they want the swag, or see it as a canary, or because they simply don&amp;#x27;t understand the belt-tightening when they think the company is doing well, or something else?)&lt;p&gt;2. If some people are concerned about travel, is it because the travel was fun, or effective for project success, or effective for personal advancement, or something else?&lt;p&gt;3. How concerned are people about possible layoffs, possible declining TC, and&amp;#x2F;or possible changing nature of the work lifestyle?&lt;p&gt;4. Are there any pre-existing concerns that talks of belt-tightening are adding to? (For example, were some people already feeling like they were overextending themselves, or stressed over pursuing a promotion, and now they&amp;#x27;re wondering whether changes will make make that situation harder?)&lt;p&gt;(I&amp;#x27;d like to understand how different organizations are feeling, and how that changes with circumstances, and the news article&amp;#x27;s mention of swag might be confusing things. And also, I&amp;#x27;ve always had a soft spot for Google, and I want it to be its best self.)</text></item><item><author>bko</author><text>&amp;gt; Pichai was asked, in a question that was highly rated by staffers on Google’s internal Dory system, why the company is “nickel-and-diming employees” by slashing travel and swag budgets at a time when “Google has record profits and huge cash reserves,” as it did coming out of the pandemic.&lt;p&gt;What you focus on can also help you attract a certain type of employee. The best engineers I know want to work on interesting problems. I know plenty of people (myself included) that took pretty drastic pay cuts to work in a more interesting space. To be fair, we were all making above our needs at the time, but the point remains, good engineers care a lot about the things they working on.&lt;p&gt;As a company becomes successful, they should share the gains with those that helped get them there. But no firm is completely closed, it has to attract new people. And the sell to new employees often overly focuses on money and perks.&lt;p&gt;The other problem I see is that companies can fall into the trap of focusing too much on inner reflection and feedback. This leads to a lot of heavy handed happiness initiatives that end up just being chores (e.g. forced team bonding, endless happiness surveys, feedback, etc). I can&amp;#x27;t speak for non-technical employees, but in my experience the best engineers care most about an interesting product space, autonomy and respect. And colleagues matter as well. So even if you have all this, if your values aren&amp;#x27;t shared by your peers, its a big negative. For instance, if your peers are more interested in advancing politics at work or exploiting perks, it will create tension with those that just want to do meaningful work.&lt;p&gt;So I think Google&amp;#x27;s shift is a net positive. Sure it&amp;#x27;ll upset some employees that care more about catering, travel and perks than their actual work, but that&amp;#x27;s fine.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vineyardmike</author><text>can&amp;#x27;t speak for everyone else, but it seems like a canary. They grew really fast the last few years, so many people joined google recently, with all their reputation for tons of perks. Their new perks are going away, that they just joined for. That&amp;#x27;s probably a bit of a shock as well.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; they simply don&amp;#x27;t understand the belt-tightening when they think the company is doing well, or something else?&lt;p&gt;When you make a median of $300k, being told you need to cut a $50 sweatshirt this year out of the budget, its pretty confusing and concerning.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;  is it because the travel was fun, or effective for project success, or effective for personal advancement, or something else?&lt;p&gt;Probably all of the above. With COVID, lots of teams (at lots of companies) became more distributed, and meeting in person is important occasionally (IMO). Travel is fun, and google tends to be in the fun cities with fun offices (SF, NYC, etc) so traveling to those cities is probably an enjoyable trip compared to flying to eg. Milwaukee. With a &amp;quot;fun budget&amp;quot; even if you have to work, you&amp;#x27;ll probably enjoy those trips beyond the work.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; How concerned are people about possible layoffs, possible declining TC, and&amp;#x2F;or possible changing nature of the work lifestyle?&lt;p&gt;I imagine considering the the earlier claims of &amp;quot;20% productivity increase&amp;quot;, product cuts and stalled hiring, layoffs probably feel around the corner for many people. Having to output 20% more is no easy feat unless you really weren&amp;#x27;t working very hard.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Are there any pre-existing concerns that talks of belt-tightening are adding to?&lt;p&gt;I think its just that lots of people are new to this lucrative perk-filled rich company and its an affront to their expectations and potentially reason for joining.</text></comment>