[HappyTypist]

Any large corporation needs to eliminate the bus factor of individual contributors (those who don't pay the management and politics game). You can't have an universally respected engineering legend contradict the board of directors; and the CEO it installs and influences.

Thus, you could argue that faceless, kafkaesque, "out of anyone's control" systems for talent management are a feature with trade-offs, not a bug.

While I have not worked at Google, simply being a user of its products for the past two decades has taught me that so much of its company culture and values have changed; and rarely for the better.

[ghaff]

Of course, you don't want a bus factor with executives either although it generally becomes more complicated as you get higher up at a company. You're not going to casually replace a CEO though you're not going to just shut down the company if they get hit with a bus either.