“The maze is in the mouse” says former Google eng Praveen Seshadri. Praveen worked for Google for a mandatory 3 year period until Google successful ingested AppSheet.
“I joined Google just before the pandemic when the company I had co-founded, AppSheet, was acquired by Google Cloud. The acquiring team and executives welcomed us and treated us well. We joined with great enthusiasm and commitment to integrate AppSheet into Google and make it a success. Yet, now at the expiry of my three year mandatory retention period, I have left Google understanding how a once-great company has slowly ceased to function.” … “Within Google, there is a collective delusion that the company is exceptional. And as is the case in all such delusions, the deluded ones are just mortals standing on the shoulders of the truly exceptional people who went before them and created an environment of wild success. ” … “At the junior levels, Google has a challenging interview process and the general caliber of hires is good. Most of this raw talent is wasted and their skills gradually atrophy” … “Never mind if most people quietly complain about the overall inefficiency and incompetence.”
Soumen Sarkar, was it an agile maze? “Like mice, they are trapped in a maze of approvals, launch processes, legal reviews, performance reviews, exec reviews, documents, meetings, bug reports, triage, OKRs, H1 plans followed by H2 plans, all-hands summits, and inevitable reorgs.”
@greg wilson, very poignant!