An interesting insight into the business arc of Google from a long-time (but now former) employee. There's lots that could be gleaned about a company that infamously removed a motto of "don't be evil", though I don't fully buy the narrative presented about early Google genuinely putting users over profit (and, given the level of candour later in the article, if you're going to make those kinds of claims, you need to bring receipts). But the more interesting point here is that redundancies and layoffs are hard to walk back from. Once a company shows that version of itself to the employees, trust is shattered and company culture is destroyed. If we can learn anything from Google's attempts at "disrupting" the concept of running a company, that should be the key takeaway.
The deterioration of Google's culture will eventually become irreversible, because the kinds of people whom you need to act as moral compass are the same kinds of people who don't join an organisation without a moral compass.
