IT#20 The Company Loyalty and The Corporate Anti-natural Selection
March 29, 2024
Yesterday, I've got a warning that unless I use my Google Voice account for outgoing calls, my Google Voice number will be taken away. For outgoing calls. And so I won't be able to receive calls and SMSs… Please, hold with me for a moment to see what It really says about modern Google as a company.
12 years ago, when I joined Google, it was very hard to get into the company. In fact, it was harder than to get admitted into Harvard. The company employed the smartest people in the world and it was very proud of that. And so were googlers. With that came trust and loyalty. Tens of thousands engineers were watching confidential TGIFs worldwide with nearly no leaks. And there was enough confidential stuff there, but… no leaks.The company trusted employees. The employees trusted the company. The company was loyal to the employees. The employees were loyal to the company.
Did I mention, it was 12 years ago?
A quick Universal Evolution 101 Reminder
A friend of mine was trying to breed very beautiful aquarium fishes. He was buying the best and very expensive ones. But they were dying. The environment, he set up, was not on par with such a beauty.
Evolution is not about the survival of the most beautiful. Evolution is not about the survival of the strongest. Evolution is not about the survival of the smartest. Evolution is about the survival of the fittest.
And as I wrote in IT#5 Corporate Parasites, corporate environment is an evolutionary environment. And an evolutionary environment has its laws, which you can not overcome. You can get a law that Pi=4, but it won't be really 4. You can hire the best people in the world, but it won't matter unless they survive in your environment and get advanced in it. If not, your Goldfish will float in your aquarium belly up.
Back to phone numbers
Now, back to Google Voice phone numbers. Fast backward 100+ years, when the phone numbers were invented. What did they use it for? You have three guesses…
Right! Bingo! You've got it! They used them to call people! Surprise. People needed them to be reached, that is for ingoing calls. If you don't have a number, you could not be reached! Not for outgoing calls, like Google experts believe. For outgoing call you don't need your own phone number, you only need the phone number of the person you call. Phone numbers are needed to reach the people, you want. It's their 19th Century IDs. Your own phone number is not needed to make outgoing calls.
Effects of Anti-natural Office Evolution
So, what have we got here? From the smartest people in the world to the people who cannot distinguish incoming and outcoming call? And in mere 12 years?
Don't make any mistake: there are still tons of smart people in Google. But like when I was joining Microsoft 23 years ago, a friend of mine sighed and said: "Yes, they hire smart people. But what are they doing to them?" Indeed. Smart and fittest are not the same in Google anymore for many years.
Really smart people are not promoted anymore. The management ranks are filled with "fittest". And decimation efforts of 2023 and 2024 reduced the number of smart people in the company even more. Which also decimated the leftovers of company loyalty between ranks.
Aristotle Curve
I'm far from criticizing Google or Microsoft or IBM or any company which went through the lifecycle of a community-polis described by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.
In his teaching any polis comes from a nearly empty space by the will of its founders and falls under unruly management of their successors. Nothing new. Universal evolution already rules such processes for millions of years.
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