I might add we're also all capable of assessing the responses of Googlers to his reports for ourselves, and those responses don't always speak well of Google.

Gmail: I can't think of anything negative that's happened to Gmail in recent times (unless you didn't like the UI redesign - there are certainly mixed opinions on that), and certainly the performance and uptake of Gmail has only improved.

Google Reader: Not much new happening, but it's still running. Are you referring to the changes in the sharing model? Whichever sharing model was better, surely you can agree that having one unified sharing experience across Google produces results in a more streamlined product, and at least this was a step in the right direction.

Google Labs: Was closed down, yes. I still don't understand how this relates to the parent post. My thoughts on closing down labs: Labs was supposed to be a way to get ideas out there in the wild before turning them into a fully-supported core product. This was great for the engineers who had built these things (they got to see them used), and the early-adopters who tried Labs products. However, as time goes on and nobody's doing any development work on a particular thing in Labs anymore, there is still an operational cost to other engineers at the company who have to keep the thing up and running. Since it's a 'Google' product, the brand image is at stake, so we can't just let them wither. So I think it's reasonable to decide to have each labs product either shut down or integrated into a core (supported) product. Perhaps it would have been better to chuck all the old labs and start again, with a published policy that things in labs will either be fully supported or completely gone 1 year after launch (or something). The removal of labs is a signal that there's more red tape around launching new products than there used to be, but I think that's inevitable as a company grows, and more than some engineer's weekend is on the line if a lunch goes badly.

20% Time: Still as strong as ever, from what I can tell. About half the engineers I know have a 20% project, and there's nobody who doesn't have one who wishes they could have one. Most of the time if people don't have a 20% project it's only because they find their core job interesting and diverting enough that they don't have a desire to split their time with a side-project. Despite what some people have claimed on HN, your manager can't deny you from having a 20% project if you want one.

(I work for Google, but not on any of the products mentioned above, and I (willfully) don't have a 20% project. These are my opinions and not necessarily those of my employer.)

Theoretically, managers can't block you from having 20% time, and there's no official permission process you need to go through to take it, but if your manager says, "I'll fuck you over in Perf if you do a 20% project", then you don't have 20%-time.

What I'm told is that, before 2007 or so, Google actively worked to avoid manager-as-SPOF, and that this is what made Google great. But then they hired a bunch of executives from mainstream large companies and didn't tell them to wipe their fucking feet off before coming inside.

I find it hard to imagine a manager could get away with saying that, but even if they did, I think it would be an empty threat. Perf is designed so that the manager is not a SPOF, your peers' reviews are considered at least as important as your manager's review. It would be pretty obvious if there was a big discrepancy between what your manager says and what your peers say, which would call your manager's review into question. The only way this would be a problem would be if your peers give you bad reviews too (and if that's the case, then maybe, just maybe, you need to take a look at yourself).

What I find ridiculous is that any time I say something about Google, people leap into ad hominem attacks without even reading what I have to say.

You know what I did to piss these people off? Absolutely nothing. I've never met most of them. I'm surprised they even give a shit about me or what I have to say.

It's never the powerful people getting indicted who crush whistleblowers most with the most fervor. It's other peons who want to stick their fingers in their ears and say, "nanananan-I-can't-hear-youuuuu!" in the face of depressing news.

I was in New York, which is generally considered to be slightly above other satellites on the project-allocation heap but far below Mountain View, because that's where all the players are. Most people I knew were on uninspiring work, although there were exceptions, but you generally had to be Senior SWE or higher before you were even considered eligible for the good projects (and even some people at Sr. got shafted).

Google has a palpable "Real Googler Line". Above it, you're free to transfer and work as you wish. If you want to change teams, just decide to do it. Hell, Steve Yegge quit his project in public. Below it, you have manager-as-SPOF and one-assigned-project... banking without the upside. When I was there, the RGL was moving upward to somewhere between Senior and Staff.

I don't know why you have a chip on your shoulder against me. I never did anything to you.

You could not figure out how things worked at Google, and expected people to start following the new guy who had only been there a few months and hadn't actually accomplished anything yet, and when people didn't drop the 100,000 engineering years of accumulated wisdom to listen to you, you started believing that it must be the system that was broken and not you.

And that was fine; you can believe whatever you need to believe. But when you start spreading this delusion outside of Google, you are hurting Google.

Most nooglers get a legacy job to start out. When you prove yourself, and people like your ideas, you will be asked to join other projects. You were only there for a very short time. In order for you to transfer to another project, that project has to want you. Without any accomplishments...

And you quickly developed a reputation as the new guy who was publicly lecturing everyone about how things should be. You told them that their languages of choice were all crap, when they were the ones actually getting work done. Despite how talented you think you are, can you see how that might be a turn-off for any team thinking of taking you in?

All these things you claim are you projecting: 1) Most work is shitty legacy maintenance. (You didn't like your first assignment.) 2) Google doesn't listen to reason. (Google does not give carte blanche to nooglers.) 3) There is no way out of a shitty first job. (You couldn't hack your first assignment.) 4) There is a glass ceiling. (You were alienating people.)

When you present your paranoid beliefs as objective facts, people who don't know any better might believe them. That is why I have a problem with what you post.

You are maligning my company.

YOUR company? You're telling me you get your pick of the best projects, and that you have at least one of triumvirate on speed dial any time you want to hash out an idea? You think those SVPs and VPs and managers-of-managers-of-managers you're putting yourself out there to defend give a shit about you? Ha!

But when you start spreading this delusion outside of Google, you are hurting Google.

Google is chock-full of high-ranking people making bad decisions. They are hurting Google. I want Google to succeed. It had a great run and a really great culture... for a while. It would be good for the world if it went back to such a state.

Without any accomplishments...

Google's problem is that there are a lot of influential but underqualified people who think that if you didn't do it At Google, it doesn't count; you didn't do it at all, and you don't know what you're talking about. Now that is the epitome of corporate arrogance. And it led to some absolutely stupid product decisions, which I won't name but they're relevant to this discussion.

You told them that their languages of choice were all crap

Google's limited language white-list (C++ and Java only, with Python deprecated in production) is a bad decision. C and C++ are the right tool for the job in some cases. I like Go, but I haven't done much with it. My problem is more with the short white-list and the bad justification for it than with the languages themselves. (Although there is no justification for Java over Scala in 2012.)

I disliked C++ then more than I do now. The quality of C++ code I fell into was pretty bad (object-oriented spaghetti) but that kind of code can be written in any language, and so can good code.

You couldn't hack your first assignment.

Wrong. I didn't get into what happened or why I left, but it wasn't a performance issue. My manager was unethical and lied to me and it caused a lot of hardship. Among other things, he promised a 3.4 rating to prevent me from seeking transfer (I agreed to stay on his project in exchange for a decent number) and then gave me something lower (making transfer impossible). If he had been a decent person and kept his word, I'd have stayed on the project for 18 months and things would have been fine. But I lost all faith in him after he openly lied to me in order to keep me on his project. (He also bait-and-switched me into joining his project, promising work on the new system but putting me on the old one. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on that one. Priorities shift unpredictably and it's often not the manager's fault. Lying about the Perf number was unforgivable.)

There is a glass ceiling.

I never made that claim.

That is why I have a problem with what you post.

I doubt that's all of it.

Please don't let your personal relationships spoil an informative (if sometimes heated) discussion. That kind of kills the "hacker" spirit.

At Google, Michael Church is infamous. Practically everyone has heard of him. He is known primarily for having posted many insane rants to a company-wide mailing list. These threads literally consisted of Michael Church writing a wall-of-text rants followed by leagues of coworkers replying to say, in effect, "For the love of God would you shut up already?". He had few, if any, defenders, yet he pretty much ignored everyone and would keep posting unapologetic follow-ups. He would say the same things internally that he now says externally. He is the best proof there ever was that Google employees can say anything they want and not get fired.

To this day, Michael Church is still a popular meme. As in, literally, we have a meme template that is a church with an M on it, and we (his former peers) use it to mock him. He is that crazy.