DailyDirt: Airing Out Dirty Corporate Laundry
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Big companies often pride themselves on the corporate cultures they’ve developed. But over time, maintaining the same culture can become difficult as industries change and when shareholders aren’t so happy with a company’s performance. When employees leave a big firm, the culture can quickly bleed away. Here are just some examples of employees publicly pointing out some corporate culture shifts.
- Greg Smith resigned from Goldman Sachs, and he had a lot to say about how the company changed on his way out. “People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm…” [url]
- Stephen Elop’s “burning platform” memo was published a little over a year ago in 2011. Has Nokia hit the water yet? [url]
- Brad Garlinghouse wrote Yahoo’s “Peanut Butter Manifesto” back in 2006. It looks like that peanut butter is being spread thick on patent trolling now. We should all hate peanut butter, indeed. [url]
- James Whittaker says there’s a big difference between the Google culture and the newer Google+ culture. Guess which one he thinks is double plus ungood. [url]
- To discover more interesting business-related content, check out what the deal is on StumbleUpon. [url]
By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.
Filed Under: brad garlinghouse, corporate cultures, greg smith, james whittaker, manifestos, memos, stephen elop
Companies: goldman sachs, google, nokia, yahoo
Comments on “DailyDirt: Airing Out Dirty Corporate Laundry”
Google vs Microsoft Corporate Culture
I don?t doubt things are not all wine and roses at Google. But I can?t help thinking the guy would have a lot more credibility if he had left to work at some interesting new startup, instead of going to Microsoft.
Re: Google vs Microsoft Corporate Culture
Innovation happens at big companies, so I don’t question Whittaker’s credibility — he wanted to work on innovative projects with the plentiful resources of a fortune500 firm, and Google+ seemed to be funneling projects into a more narrow direction than Microsoft (according to Whittaker, at least).
Google is still funding “X projects” like autonomous vehicles and its fiber project in Kansas City, so it’s not all G+ at the Googleplex….
Re: Re: Google vs Microsoft Corporate Culture
Still, Microsoft is not the place to go if you want to criticize any corporate culture for being dysfunctional. Read that piece by an ex-Microsoftie, to see what it?s like to be in the midst of competing rival empires, each trying to control the most code because that way they get the most budget. And look at your typical Microsoft software products, and you might get a better understanding of why they have the bizarre design that they do.