[QuercusMax]

The GRAD system has been in the works for a LONG time. Verily and X (and possibly Waymo and others) have been using a similar system since before the pandemic. I don't think it's an excuse for stealth layoffs, it's just a mess. Everybody hated the perf / promo system which took tons of time for everyone, and Sundar and co have wanted to build a streamlined system for ages.

The rollout of GRAD has been badly mishandled - universally, every manager I've talked to, including directors and VPs, had no idea what was going on, no clue what to do. There was basically no training, the tools were slow buggy third garbage, and they've been making last minute changes all thru the process. The tools are so bad that they're going to start building in-house ones like we used to use under the old Perf system. The new system is much quicker for non-managers but a giant burden for managers, which means that lots of folks will probably slip thru the cracks and not get rated as well as they may have with the old system where you were responsible for much more of your packet, and feedback from peers was a much larger component. Now they've replaced the peer feedback with nonsensical surveys and a single short answer to a question that usually doesn't make sense.

[joshuamorton]

Agreed! I have lots of complaints about grad (as well as some things I think are improvements, at least hypothetically), but "it'll be used to do more layoffs" and the wilder "it was designed to make it easier to lay people off" are both nonsense.