The Best Take on the Google Layoffs

Written by someone who's seen the inside. And sees it right.

I won’t add much. The post alone is great.

You can read the whole essay here.

These firings collapse the wave-function on how much senior leadership are principals vs. agents. Up to now, there was some uncertainty as to whether executive behavior was aligned with long-term value. Past actions could be interpreted in multiple ways. These layoffs remove some of that uncertainty, and are revealed to be far more agents than previously thought.

See also: studies show relatively small (6%) layoffs like this are bad for productivity. How that works is myriad. One of the ways is that people like me are forced to not be suckers: don’t plan longer term than your executives, because they are the foundation your plans have to rest on.