I am all-in on Google.

From using a Chromebook exclusively to hosting chats on Google Meet.

I even use YouTube Music.

I know, wild.

You see, I am rooting for Google.

Even though they rejected me.

I interviewed there once back in the day.

Somehow I got through the HR algorithm and was picked for an opening phone interview.

I was thrilled, prepped, and ready.

And just like that, with one 20-minute call, my move from Google user to Google employee was over.

A Googler told me I was lucky to have just gotten a phone interview.

He wasn't totally wrong.

Word on the street is that Google receives two million applications yearly.

Whole keynotes have been hatched by telling audiences that it is ten times harder to get a job at Google than it is to get into Harvard.

After reading an insightful post from Praveen Seshadri on what is happening in Google today, I understand why I wasn't made a Googler.

Google looks for peacetime generals.

But when a company has too many peacetime generals, well, the company becomes too peaceful.

When a company becomes too peaceful, everyone works only for their colleagues and what managers think of their work.

Not what the outside, messy, complex, and warring consumers think of your work.

I am no peacetime general.

Seshadri's post is worth a read. You can access it here.

Here are insights I found compelling:

+ Google has 175,000+ capable and well-compensated employees who get very little done quarter over quarter, year over year. Like mice, they are trapped in a maze of approvals, launch processes, legal reviews, performance reviews, exec reviews, documents, meetings, bug reports, triage, OKRs, H1 plans followed by H2 plans, all-hands summits, and inevitable reorgs.

+ Google has four core cultural problems: (1) no mission, (2) no urgency, (3) delusions of exceptionalism, (4) mismanagement.

+ Does anyone at Google come into work actually thinking about “organizing the world’s information”? They have lost track of who they serve and why.

+ Overall, it is a soft peacetime culture where nothing is worth fighting for.

+ Within Google, there is a collective delusion that the company is exceptional.

+ Google can no longer seek success by avoiding risk. The path forward has to start with culture change, and that has to start at the very top.

+ Google’s executives should look at what Satya Nadella did at Microsoft: (1) lead with a commitment to a mission, (2) set aside the peacetime generals who underpromise and underdeliver, (3) winnow the layers of middle management that have accumulated over time, many promoted gradually beyond their capability, and now incapable of change.

I am still rooting for Google.

I trust they can bring on some wartime generals.

If you feel it's too peaceful at your company, Caracal is here to help.

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

ITK Daily is geopolitical business intelligence for senior executives with global ambition.

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