[Mathnerd314]

Back in 2007 Google was apparently a decent place to work, not much going on politically and mostly developer-led: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75470. In 2009 it was about the same, but managers started complaining: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552976. In 2010 a lot more managers were hired. In 2011 Google started killing products and developers lost a lot of credibility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2557672. Managers suddenly gained the upper hand and started pushing revenue as the bottom line. The smarter or well-connected developers started leaving: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3700277. By 2013, 20% time was "dead": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6223466.

I didn't follow Google workplace standards much after that, but my general impression is it continued declining, more management pressure and relatively lower pay/benefits for new workers. Then we started getting leaks from inside Google in 2017 and life at Google has been "miserable" since then. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684463)

The only obvious solution is to start firing people; Google has been in growth mode for a long time and managers perform their jobs a lot better when they're worried about themselves. This could happen naturally as a reaction to ad revenue flattening out or maybe Google will shift to a high-turnover culture like Amazon.