Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who has since moved on to greener and perhaps more dangerous pastures, told an audience of Stanford students recently that “Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning.” Evidently this hot take was not for wider consumption, as Stanford — which posted the video this week on YouTube — today made the video of the event private.

  • psvrh@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    Because Google was so focused and strategic before the pandemic rollseyes.

    The issue is Google’s broken governance and incentive system, which gives product owners and executives incentives for new products and actively disincentivizes maintaining and improving existing products…and that was a thing from well before the pandemic hit.

    It’s why Google launched three pay systems and had five messaging systems at the same time.

    And, finally, this is all because of the strategy set by senior leaders.

    • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Yeah and they make ad revenue hand over fist. So anything else is just “experimental” to them aka a cost center. Since they don’t commit to these side products they don’t become profitable and inevitably get cancelled.

      • kalleboo@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Also the ads are just so obscenely profitable that anything else will always just be a small side project. Google ad revenue is $200 billion/year.

        If a new product has revenue of $500 million/year it’s still peanuts that are just a distraction and can be canceled with zero impact.

    • mPony@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      a) you’re right. Everyone who says this is right

      b) If the senior leaders have designed their own ivory towers to force obsequious behaviour from their own people, they sure as shit won’t listen to totally reasonable analysis from people who don’t work for them. As such, they have engineered their own demise. I wish them well with it.

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    It honestly took me a while to figure out why people were criticizing him. I read his remarks as a positive and didn’t realize he thinks having a work-life balance is a bad thing. Odd coming from someone who is fucking retired. “You work, I live. Things are balanced.”

    • isles@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Odd coming from someone who is fucking retired.

      I’d suspect he sacrificed work-life balance his whole career (yes, CEOs are known for golfing and vacations, but I bet they still think of work 24/7). So just like people complaining about student loan forgiveness, some people get so angry if they perceive someone might have an easier experience than they did.

      • 6gybf@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        CEOs sometimes think like this, but they seem to forget how much more they are paid when it comes up.

      • paf0@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Personally I don’t like student loan forgiveness because I think a free public university system is a better investment.

        • exanime@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Yeah, same reason I don’t like insulin, I want a permanent cure for diabetes… In the meantime fuck diabetic people, am I right?

          /S in case people are confused

          • paf0@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Free education will make the world a better place in the future for everyone. Debt forgiveness is just for people who don’t want to pay their bills because they studied something that doesn’t pay.

            • ameancow@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Free education will make the world a better place in the future for everyone.

              This is true.

              Debt forgiveness is just for people who don’t want to pay their bills because they studied something that doesn’t pay.

              This is utter garbage. Judgemental much? Maybe your own experiences and feelings aren’t the same for everyone.

              • paf0@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                I do not have a degree. Still here and happy. Make better choices.

            • ProxyZeus@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              I’m genuinely confused by this? I know CompSci and engineering majors that are having trouble with loans and are you saying that they should have tried a more profitable degree… What?

                • ProxyZeus@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  And I’m saying they were coerced into it because of the poor handling of public funding for universities thus making it the governments fault that sometimes people got fucked by loans no matter what degree they got.

                  To advocate for fixing a systemic problem and not also advocate for fixing what the systemic problem has caused is weird. Fixing these issues aren’t exclusive like you seem to think they are.

                • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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                  1 month ago

                  I’m saying people made choices.

                  Normally we call that ‘victim blaming’; even when the victimization is financial by the univer$ity.

                  I get you have this “do the crime, do the time” thing for people choosing to spend on education; but aside from multi-decade reform plan that isn’t even as marketable to voters as “let’s just consolidate healthcare and save money”, what do we have that’ll help people avoid the looming debt trap that has such a chilling effect on others entering post-secondary education?

                • ameancow@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  You do NOT get a choice about getting an education in a vast, vast majority of life paths in the developed world.

                  I know a lot of people and exactly two of them are working in the field they got degrees in. You cannot always control the direction of your life, anything from medical issues to family emergencies to economics in your region can profoundly impact your chances of landing a career in your chosen study field, or even just getting a simple job that can pay back tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars as the interest snowballs.

            • exanime@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Curing diabetes will make the world a better place in the future for everyone. Insuline is just for people who want to eat candy all day because they hate themselves

              /S

              Ps: it’s hilarious how quickly you showed the true colours you pretended to hide in your first post

        • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          ¿Por qué no los dos?

          I too prefer free tertiary education. But that also does not relieve the millions saddled with predatory loans.

          • paf0@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Not all loans were predatory, some people just made dumb choices all on their own. If anything there should be a reasonable limit on the interest rates and the loans should be refinanced.

            And, as for why not both, we actually can’t afford either. Investing for the future is a better deal for society than fixing people’s personal mistakes.

            • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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              1 month ago

              What do you mean we can’t afford either? Are you telling me that somehow all other developed countries are able to afford free or cheap higher education but somehow the US cannot? We could also slowly start to cancel current student debt. Sure, it is at $1.77 trillion right now but that does not have to be wiped away all at once. Prioritize getting rid of predatory loans, then those those with financial hardship, then go from there.

              • paf0@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                Yes, we can’t afford it, because we chose to spend all of our money on the military.

                • wavebeam@lemmy.world
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                  1 month ago

                  This sounds like we could afford it, we just need to take that money back from the military…