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by tmotwu 1906 days ago
Again, the vast majority of the 150,000 are not R&D and don't really have anything to do with product development to even matter.

Yammer, Satyas QnA - which I'm glad you mentioned because organized groups send a representative every time to talk about government contracts - quarterly all hands, etc. Not to mention the Surface/Hololens org, the org responsible for the tech, holds all hands for their teams very frequently. Sometimes, your org head could be sharing your floor, they don't have special offices.

No one's voice is suppressed and no one is being meek, I don't even know how leadership would be able to control that anyway. The simple facts are - 1) there's a small coalition of employees who feel one way about it, 2) not all concerns raised are valid ones and has a need to be addressed - because frankly, it's really a good thing leadership can stand their ground and not sway on the voices of a few employees, no? The proactive action being taken here is the ability to stick with a common sense perspective, not proactively fire your employees for saying mean things about their employer.

1 comments

Yes and at Google each individual employee can raise concerns. Not some "org head" who may ask softball questions because his promotion is directly controlled by the CEO. I can't believe you're comparing this cherry picked gathering to a setting where literally anyone can go up and ask a question.

And then you justify leadership standing their ground. Ha. So Microsoft leadership is all benevelant, never wrong. There's a reason 99/100 make the move from Microsoft to G.

Sure thing mate. I'm not contesting on what available avenues are available for Googlers, perhaps you know more than I do. Just stating the factual observations, repeated cases of an individual employees getting fired for raising concerns. You briefly describe your anecdote, I'm describing my anecdote. I'm neutral on Google for most things, I use their products and I don't really care about their privacy issues.

No need to cherry pick my previous reply, I'll restate since some parts must have flew by :). Higher ups are very accessible to each individual employee because you really can just go up to them. Back then, the CVP always swung by our office to say hi pretty frequently. The message boards exist. And people group up for QnA because it's effective. Employees pranked their bosses without retaliation.

I don't even have a reason to justify leadership anymore. Just stating the clear facts, that the majority trust them to the right thing. Beats me why C-level is popular internally. They respond to employee concerns when it mattered, and stood their ground when it didn't. No need to make assumptions here about people being meek, lets use facts.

I think we're going in circles. I"ll let it rest. I appreciate that you engaged in a civil way. Are you still at Microsoft ? Is Azure the alpha org now ?