>They lose touch with people who are not like them. Monoculture develops; groupthink flourishes.
This is, I think, Google's biggest weakness. All the people I know at google think that google is a good company that has good intentions; not just that google is a good company to work for, but that google, an advertising company, makes the world a better place.
This leads to things like the google buzz problem. People at google genuinely don't see how the rest of us might assign less than honourable motives to Google's actions.
Every other company I know has a bunch of people (especially technical people) that may disagree with or take a cynical view of the company as a whole, employees that stick around because the work is interesting or the pay is good or what have you.
But that's the thing; everyone I know at google genuinely seems to love google. The two people I know that didn't, well, they quickly left. (Incidentally, both of those people were female. My impression, and I emphasise that I'm an outsider and that my impression may not reflect reality, is that google takes technical women less seriously than other valley tech companies.)
Part of this is that google tends to hire from the top 50%, and the top 50% have more options, and thus they are more likely to switch jobs to find a company they really like.
I believe it's more than that, though; I know plenty of people good enough to be google that have positions they like in companies that they don't like. Go look at any of the local defence contractors, and you will find plenty of people that are up to the google standard, doing interesting work for an end-goal that many of them find repugnant.
This is, I think, Google's biggest weakness. All the people I know at google think that google is a good company that has good intentions; not just that google is a good company to work for, but that google, an advertising company, makes the world a better place.
This leads to things like the google buzz problem. People at google genuinely don't see how the rest of us might assign less than honourable motives to Google's actions.
Every other company I know has a bunch of people (especially technical people) that may disagree with or take a cynical view of the company as a whole, employees that stick around because the work is interesting or the pay is good or what have you.
But that's the thing; everyone I know at google genuinely seems to love google. The two people I know that didn't, well, they quickly left. (Incidentally, both of those people were female. My impression, and I emphasise that I'm an outsider and that my impression may not reflect reality, is that google takes technical women less seriously than other valley tech companies.)
Part of this is that google tends to hire from the top 50%, and the top 50% have more options, and thus they are more likely to switch jobs to find a company they really like.
I believe it's more than that, though; I know plenty of people good enough to be google that have positions they like in companies that they don't like. Go look at any of the local defence contractors, and you will find plenty of people that are up to the google standard, doing interesting work for an end-goal that many of them find repugnant.