Do you have some kind of script set up to alert you any time a story mentioning Google makes the front page?
I have an important job to do, which is to try to save Google (although I will probably fail) from the people who are trying to destroy it. Even though I left that place and will almost certainly never go back, it's too important a company to let it fall to ashes.
The heart of science is running experiments, and if Google can't run experiments or pilots, it will fail to the innovators dilemma. Our democracy is similarly unable to run experiments to test out policy, which was another thing Larry talked about, as a result, we argue over the effects of policy without doing anything. States were supposed to be the laboratories of democracy, but even on the state level, hardly any experiments are conducted.
The idea that you should only launch services you plan to run forever is a plan for stagnation and death.
Calibration scores (secret performance reviews that happen in the Perf Room-- yes, Google has a physical place for "calibration" that is actually called "The Perf Room") are not experimental technology or product. They're an experiment (and a failed one) on people. Different rules together.
I realize you worked there for a few months a few years ago, but I think someone might have been pulling your leg if they told you that phrase. (But you're right, like most meetings at Google, calibration meetings do happen in rooms. They're just normal conference rooms, though. Nothing special.)
For everyone else: calibration is a process where other managers at Google cross-check the performance scores given to employees across different teams and parts of the company. We do this so that an individual manager can't introduce undue bias or play favorites, and so an engineer at a given level in one part of the company is more or less the equal of an engineer at the same level in another part.
Calibration is one part of the system I think works really well, much better than any other place I've worked. In fact, I think more companies might want to emulate it.
If people actually get together in conference rooms to conspire against their employees and wreck peoples' careers, as you've admitted they do, that's not only wrong but a sign that lots of time is being wasted.
From the description, calibration seems to address the issue of consistent assessment across the company. Open allocation, whatever else it might have going for it, doesn't seem to do that (and for open allocation to work effectively in a large organization, consistent assessment would seem to be, if not essential, highly desirable; even without headcount concerns, churn between projects and getting new people up to speed is a cost that needs to be justified by expected value.)
> If people actually get together in conference rooms to conspire against their employees and wreck peoples' careers, as you've admitted they do
That's actually not what the poster above you said, and I really think that if you can't read anything about Google without being distracted from what is actually said by the white-hot heat of your pre-existing hatred (however justified that hatred moght be), you probably should just avoid participating in any discussions about Google, because you aren't going to be able to contribute productively.
Its probably not healthy to delude yourself into thinking you have an "important job" that centers around your -- clearly quite bad -- relationship with Google.
If you want to show the error of Google's ways, the approach you've been taking on HN simply isn't it; if you could manage the emotional distance to try rational analysis and argumentation I'd suggest that, but it doesn't seem like that is likely. Perhaps try doing something unconnected with Google that demonstrates a better way, and point to that.