It's very analogous to Microsoft's situation earlier this decade: the hiring process, power structure, and rewards have been optimized for years around a certain kind of person with certain skills. Now, other people with different skills are just as important -- but the people in power have blind spots about what will motivate or attract that kind of person, or make them effective once they're there.
Dennis Crowley has to be one of the single best examples of jdp23's point. Google bought 4square v1 nee Dodgeball, and had one of the people with what seems to be the best insights into social / gamification / local in house. That he left so pissed at Google really understates how hostile Google is to people who aren't amazing technologists. Social seems to require a different type of person / knowledge / skills, and Google seems incapable of hiring, promoting, and supporting anything but technologists.
Letting dodgeball languish and pushing Crowley out of Google really ought to be the subject of a bunch of management self reflection and probably even some firings, all the way up to the CEO level.
If the problem was a company-wide cultural mismatch, it strikes me as somewhat absurd to declare that the answer is to fire the people who happened to be posted near the border of that mismatch. That doesn't fix anything.
Social is apparently so important that one of the founders of Google has concluded their lack of it is an existential threat. What should the punishment then be for execs of Google fucking up one of their best shots at social? Setting and/or changing the culture is one of an executive's jobs.
Punishment is overrated. The blame game is a game with no winners.
The new CEO is setting a new tone, new structure and new priorities. Getting rid of people who fail to adopt the new vision is fine and reasonable. Firing people for pre-pivot problems isn't.
Frankly, I think your suggested action would have one major effect: killing innovation.
After all, who would dare to innovate if they knew that if the project failed (no matter if the cause was them, or if it was a company-wide cultural issue) that you might capriciously fire them, long after the fact?
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It's very analogous to Microsoft's situation earlier this decade: the hiring process, power structure, and rewards have been optimized for years around a certain kind of person with certain skills. Now, other people with different skills are just as important -- but the people in power have blind spots about what will motivate or attract that kind of person, or make them effective once they're there.
Dennis Crowley has to be one of the single best examples of jdp23's point. Google bought 4square v1 nee Dodgeball, and had one of the people with what seems to be the best insights into social / gamification / local in house. That he left so pissed at Google really understates how hostile Google is to people who aren't amazing technologists. Social seems to require a different type of person / knowledge / skills, and Google seems incapable of hiring, promoting, and supporting anything but technologists.
Letting dodgeball languish and pushing Crowley out of Google really ought to be the subject of a bunch of management self reflection and probably even some firings, all the way up to the CEO level.
> and probably even some firings
I was with you until you said this.
If the problem was a company-wide cultural mismatch, it strikes me as somewhat absurd to declare that the answer is to fire the people who happened to be posted near the border of that mismatch. That doesn't fix anything.
Social is apparently so important that one of the founders of Google has concluded their lack of it is an existential threat. What should the punishment then be for execs of Google fucking up one of their best shots at social? Setting and/or changing the culture is one of an executive's jobs.
> What should the punishment then be
Punishment is overrated. The blame game is a game with no winners.
The new CEO is setting a new tone, new structure and new priorities. Getting rid of people who fail to adopt the new vision is fine and reasonable. Firing people for pre-pivot problems isn't.
Frankly, I think your suggested action would have one major effect: killing innovation.
After all, who would dare to innovate if they knew that if the project failed (no matter if the cause was them, or if it was a company-wide cultural issue) that you might capriciously fire them, long after the fact?
great example. and the net result is they know have an ex-Microsoft person running social.