An Ex-Google Engineer Says He Left The Company Because It Can't Innovate Anymore
27 January, 2018
As great a place as it is to work, it seems not everyone is happy with how Google carries on these days.
A veteran engineer who exited the company this Wednesday has published a scathing blogpost against the tech giant, saying it’s fallen far below the standards of the great innovator it once was.
Steve Yegge has been an engineer with Google for the past 13 years. Now, he’s finally upped and left the company for Singapore-based Uber competitor Grab. In a Medium post, he goes on to list all the many reasons why he finally left the nest, all of which he says lead to the fact that the company “can no longer innovate.”
For one, Yegge believes Google has become to conservative. “They are so focused on protecting what they’ve got, that they fear risk-taking and real innovation. Gatekeeping and risk aversion at Google are the norm rather the exception.” He also blames internal politics for some of the problems at Google, though he does believe that’s inevitable in large organisations.
Yegge also goes on to call Google arrogant. He believes that though individual employees may be humble, the company has been so successful over the years it’s inherited a sense of invincibility. Coupled with that is his main point, that Google is more focused on competitors rather than its customers. “The problem is that their incentive structure isn’t aligned for focusing on their customers, so they wind up being too busy and it always gets deprioritised.”
“You can look at Google’s entire portfolio of launches over the past decade, and trace nearly all of them to copying a competitor: Google+ (Facebook), Google Cloud (AWS), Google Home (Amazon Echo), Allo (WhatsApp), Android Instant Apps (Facebook, WeChat), Google Assistant (Apple/Siri), and on and on and on.”
Yegge does concede that, despite 20 years in action, he believes Google may still be one of the best places to work, period. It just wasn’t pushing him to greater heights. “Google just isn’t a very inspiring place to work anymore. I love being fired up by my work, but Google had gradually beaten it out of me.”
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