Google achieved market dominance in large part due to its decision to hire and compensate very talented people very well. I'm not sure how a salary contraction would even work, but that would risk Google losing its lustre for talented programmers.
Today that seems to have been highly neutered. It's a giant corp with an old money printing machine and not a lot of future direction, IMO.
I'm not sure it's fair to blame them, I think it's just the nature of companies growing too large.
From what I've heard talking to people who work at Google, most employees generate zero business value. The same as any other large enterprise.
So, cut back on RSU grants.
However, with stacked refreshers etc… the math might get kind of fuzzy. But I’m just saying that it isn’t an obvious choice to think a pay cut won’t lose some of your better talent. And replacing them isn’t guaranteed to be cheaper. Not to mention the ramp up time and how it will take a lot of time to operate at the same productivity as someone who has been doing the job for years.
I suspect that ship has already sailed, any of the postdocs or senior software engineers I know wouldn't touch Google with a 10-foot pole these days. There's a feeling I suspect that they've become too corporate, and that they could fire you pretty much anytime and the first thing you'd know about it would be your access card suddendly not working.
They built an advertising empire. They have gmail. And android had no real competition.
But over hiring and throwing mud at a wall to see what sticks hasn’t worked out to very much in the last 10 years…
They built an advertising empire, yes? By compensating people very well.
Windows is still the dominant player when it comes to consumer desktop. End of the day it’s the consumers who make Google spin by visiting google.com from whatever browser they use.
If MSFT can knee cap them on search result quality that actually gives you an answer instead of a link… I mean think about it. Why would you use google to be linked to SO when bing can just tell you the answer and also provide source.. and don’t get me started on atrocious recipe websites.
Personally? I like GCP. It’s way better to use than AWS imo. I’d rather google focus on empowering developers and technology. Ads were cool and can still remain a solid part of their revenue. But if they can grow GCP and various dx things like Go, workspace, and firebase as well.
Google can provide summary answers but you often want to dive in and get details on an actual site.
Right now google search takes you to a site (that pays for ad) that MIGHT have your answer.
I don’t want to cycle through five useless SO posts. I just want the answer.
Other than the elephant in the room which Google has to pay billions once in a while to be the default search engine on non-android phones. Certainly something Google would be doing if Android had no real competition.
Additionally, they’ve definitely met wall street’s expectations, with profit and stock price growing steadily for many of the last 10 years, which is what these jokers care about.
All of this is, of course, on top of the part we take for granted: they still completely dominate search and defended their total control over many parts of the Display ads industry.
My point isn’t that they’re necessarily geniuses, but I think your bias against giant evil multinational corporations (which I share!) is clouding your judgement. I’d say they control the internet more than any other company, and the internet is the home of the modern economy.
I just think that we are giving them more credit than they deserve. Doesn't mean there aren't exceptionally talented people there. Can imagine some of the guys working on stadia would have been incredibly talented. But they killed it off, never even got to try it as it wasn't available in SG/TW.
How much is a Junior Google Software Engineer earning these days, assuming that they're hired straight off college?
A Junior Google Software Engineer is earning a lot more these days than they were during Google's ascent to market dominance, but not because Google decided to pay more.
I had a fairly harsh paragraph describing how I feel that we (the employees of the tech industry) are behaving in these times of opulence-for-us, recession-for-everyone-else. I removed it because it was certainly phrased too aggressively (against us collectively) and because I don't want to enter a flamewar.
Feel free to imagine what I would have written :)
> but that would risk Google losing its lustre for talented programmers
Already has. Google is not "hot" anymore. Probably hasn't been for a while now.