Calls grow for Sundar Pichai to step down from Google CEO position | Hacker News Reader

Calls grow for Sundar Pichai to step down from Google CEO position

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17 pointsmethuselah_in15 comments

I think Pichai was a terrible CEO, but IMHO, changing the CEO is not going to fix anything. Google has serious culture issues and structural management problems.

To turn the ship around they should restructure hard and get rid of the cancer. Re-focus on merit and clear goals.

I seriously doubt they have the guts to do restructure. On one hand, Page and Brin probably don't want to risk rocking the boat (having dominant voting shares) and are often at each other's throat. On the other hand, advertisers and government agencies have a lot of leverage for Google to stay the course.

Who else would do that besides the ceo?

Changed things by a country mile with MS.

Yup. They generated quite a bit of lift from the Gemini launch, and then stepped into this. Strong leadership at some levels on one hand, Achille's blind spot on the other.

Teams can't really thrive with this kind of morale whiplash either.

> they should restructure and get rid of the cancer

I think Getting rid of Sundar would be exactly that

> Page and Brin […] and are often at each other's throat.

Citation needed.

The restructuring and refocusing you described is absolutely necessary, but it's not going to happen under Pichai. All of Google's cultural problems festered under his watch. He should have addressed these things years ago.

Getting rid of Pichai is only half the battle. After they get rid of him, the board of directors then needs to hire someone who can actually lead the company forward. More competent than Pichai may seem like a low bar to clear, but leading a multi-billion dollar company like Google is not an easy task. Developing new market strategies at that scale takes vision and a real tolerance for risk.

So firing Pichai is necessary, but not sufficient, for Google to fulfill its potential.

> Re-focus on merit and clear goals.

Googler here. We've structured the company to extract rent rather than innovate. We hire outsiders who are supposed to help us "grow up". That means processes and staying in your lane. Managers actively discourage work on 20% projects, because we "have a business to run."

Leadership needs to allow us to build things again. And they need to also recognize that innovative ideas can originate outside of SV and NYC.

I think that the biggest problem is that Google is ashamed of what it is: an advertising company. Until they start embracing their own brand and meaning, there will be a constant stream of toxicity flowing between middle managers who don’t clear see and align with the company goals.

Doubling down on advertising is one possible path forward, but I don't think it's the only option. Google really does has the engineering talent to pivot to something different. Or maybe split out non-advertising parts of the company into semi-independent entities like Waymo, and actually charge for services.

The Gemini fiasco shows that there's still some amazing engineering talent under Google, and that this talent is completely wasted under Pichai's leadership.

It's not just a advertising company. I happily pay them for YT premium, YT TV, and Google Drive.

Just because Google has a couple of decent services that you're willing to pay for doesn't detract from the fact that most of their products have a worse life expectancy than a victorian child in the 1800s. https://killedbygoogle.com

They ruined every single opportunity to be more than an advertising company since Orkut. With scrapped attempts, starts and lack of intention for most of the 2010s to even during the early half of the Pixel Era, they seemingly haven't learnt to stick to something and iterate on it well.

And the fact that over 50% of their revenues come from search and by extension, advertising.

The fact' that til this day, they still haven't evolved from the "throwing shit at the wall then at the fan" strat which explains how they have fumbled so much so quickly.

Enormous cognitive dissonance. Employees believing they are "organising information" or some other lofty, idealistic goal, when they are actually preparing _bait_ to lure in ad targets. The end goal is not organised info or some other benign purpose, it's surveillance, data collection and sales of advertising services, exactly what people expressly dislike. People do not pay for the organised info; the info is public, it does not belong to Google. Maybe employees think, "I am not working on advertising so I'm not contributing to the problem". If an employee at the advertising company is told by their manager to support the surveillance, data collection or advertising effort in some way, directly or indrectly, the employee does not say, "Sorry, I cannot do that because I am opposed to advertising." Today, Google literally takes money from people in return for not harassing them with ads. They call these "subscriptions". Create the problem and then sell the solution. Incredible,

I think its needed now as Google is falling down and it will stop innovation for Android. And it's bad if there won't be money. Google plus and hangouts. Google is getting horrible

My prediction is that Bret Taylor is the next CEO of Google

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