This is a rare glimpse at the enshitification process _actually_ happening.
I can almost read the above in David Attenborough’s voice. Feels like a documentary.
That's pure gold. When people start with "I don't want to / I am not ..." and then proceed to say or do exactly that.
- "I don't want to be the asshole here" /proceeds to be an asshole. - "To be perfectly honest" /starts making stuff up
Jerry is really pushing there and the goal is clear: "Long-term: It feels like through some deliberate efforts we can actually use entry points like Chrome to drive query growth... we should explore this aggressively."
None of this is surprising but it's interesting to have it right from the horses' mouths, so to speak.
They just don't want that to be the message that accompanies it.
Love this. For some reason I thought of those science experiments along the lines of "Our super powerful microscopes and cameras can now record chemical reactions in real time!" This is a case of "Yes, right there! 'If we don't make this shitty change we all miss our bonus' is exactly how enshittification happens!".
2. Our (*) raises are only very partially affected by company results, and probably not by the quarterly ones.
3. Our bonuses are affected by annual results, nor quarterly ones. Also, they're not so large as to corrupt professional-ethical motivation ("if we cripple the product then the company would make money and we'd get a larger bonus"). AFAICT of course, I'm not a mind reader and only know a small part of the thousands and thousands of employees.
4. There are no result targets with some kind of discontinuous effect on bonuses and raises. At least not that employees know about.
Of course, this could be very different at Google.
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(*) - I actually work for a subcontractor so I should probably not even use the first person plural, but let's not complicate the anecdote even further.
You don't say "I'm not racist, but this cheese tastes really good" just like you don't say "I don't want the message to be that we like hugging puppies". These words in any corporate environment are always a sign that someone knows that what they're doing is ethically wrong or will at the very least piss off customers.
Author clearly states in the email that the he’s not saying X. But every single word around “I’m not saying X” is clearly saying X.