The culture and environment has become a joke. Google was once the most sought after company for employment, but it has lost it's unique charm from over a decade ago. Now it's a corporate monster that has grown far too big. We were once the #1 company on Forbes' 100 best companies to work for and it hurt us deeply when we dropped to #2 after many years at the top. Fast forward to 2020 and we don't even make the top 100.
There is a serious lack of coherence and communication anymore. Motivation to succeed is not based on making great products, but instead on what you can do for promotion. This is clearly evident in the products we develop - or develop then abandon. It's also why we once had nine discrete messaging apps while many other products included messaging functions.
The world would be a better place if great ideas like Google Fiber, Stadia, and Voice were better executed. However, we're left with products that are not only made fun of by the public, but given countdown clocks to when they'll be discontinued. What remains are disjointed products like Gmail - including a UI so butchered and bloated, they needed to add a loading screen so you didn't think long loads times means the service is down.
We once did great work and were on the top of the tech world. This is no longer the case and I doubt we could ever get there again. We're too large, too slow, too disparate, and have so many competing visions, that there is no return to our former glory days.
