What ‘hidden force’ makes Google increasingly slow?

As Google has scaled up to more than 186,000 workers, many employees and even CEOs have complained that the company has become too slow, too bureaucratic, and not efficient enough. They are common symptoms of any company growing too big.

An internal Google document — written by a longtime former employee and still circulating among employees today — explains why the Alphabet-owned company is facing “severe challenges.” the headwind of coordination”.

Alex Komoroske, former Google Product Manager, wrote: “ Google has always prided itself on quickly solving problems of a global scale. But lately, this company has started a lot slower. Even accomplishing the simplest things takes a lot of time .”

Komoroske’s post was titled ” Why is everything so difficult at Google? “Gives the reason that Google’s size and bottom-up organizational structure has slowed the company down significantly in recent years. He believes that the root of the problem lies in a “hidden force”.

Komoroske compared Google’s bottom-up organizational structure to a mold: a single-celled organism that can function independently but can also combine to create a larger network. “ Google is basically like slime mold ,” Komoroske wrote.

“ Thrives in ambiguity, rewarding independence and initiative. This is a fundamental part of our culture and is underpinned by the hiring and promotion process ,” said Komoroske.

According to Komoroske, this slime mold ” can do amazing things ” by creating more value than the sum of its parts. At the same time, the larger this type of organization grows, the more processes slow down because many departments operate independently, leading to “mess” that is difficult to predict and control.

The time when this document was completed is not mentioned, but Komoroske officially went to work at Google in 2018 and quit from July 2021. This internal document was last updated in 2019.

Certainly companies will grow slower as they scale up. So Komoroske gave an explanation that applies to many large development corporations. “ I believe they are not specific to any particular context, but emerge inherently whenever there are individuals who are deeply interested in the subject matter,” says Komoroske. Rather than ignoring these motivations, I think it’s more important to acknowledge and accept them with an open mind .”

There’s no easy solution to this problem, Komoroske says, but it’s something companies shouldn’t ignore.

According to the New York Times, in 2018, more than 10 Google vice presidents emailed CEO Sundar Pichai to warn that the company was facing growing difficulties, including problems in coordinating decisions. Skill.

Like Meta and Amazon, Google has been mass hiring over the past few years. In just the first 9 months of 2022, Google added 30,000 employees and brought the total number of employees to nearly 187,000 people. Currently, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is implementing a policy of cutting costs, BI said. The company can cut expensive projects and even lay off employees at subsidiaries.

Reference: Business Insider