Members of the search giant�s site reliability group say managers fostered
a toxic environment. Google says a �safe, inclusive workplace� is a top
priority.

ByNico Grant
January 20, 2022, 7:00 AM PST
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When Chewy Shaw left Google�s site reliability group in April, he told
colleagues in a memo that interactions with his managers had made him
depressed and suicidal.

�I no longer feel psychological safety on this team,� wrote Shaw, who is
Black and had accused his leaders of racism. �I no longer have a manager
focused on treating me in a �Googley� manner,� he added, using his own
shorthand to describe respect and fairness. �And so, with many tears, I am
now looking for a Googley manager at the company who will take me.�

Shaw, who is 29, worked at Borg SRE, which plays an essential role for
Google, and the broader internet, by keeping the tech giant�s global
network online, allowing billions of people to use the company�s websites,
such as YouTube and Gmail. He acknowledges that the job is hard and can be
stressful. Site reliability engineers like him�whether at Google, Amazon
or Microsoft�are expected to solve thorny problems that can pop up at any
moment, from outages to shoring up complex digital infrastructure.

But Shaw and several other employees say their bosses made working at Borg
SRE that much harder. They say managers, including the team�s leader
Pierre Aubert, fostered a work culture where discrimination and
termination threats were tolerated, if not encouraged. Several members of
the 100-person group, they say, took leaves to preserve their well-being.
An internal �Googlegeist� survey that tracks employee sentiment found in
January 2021 that just 49% of the 76 Borg team members who responded had a
favorable view of what their work group was doing to help their well-
being, 12 percentage points lower than employees companywide, according to
documents reviewed by Bloomberg.

In November, �team temperature� surveys found dissatisfaction among Borg
employees. Out of a top score of 10, Borg�s three sub-teams scored 5.07,
6.5 and 6.73�all short of the 7.5 rating Google considers satisfactory. In
meetings with human-resources officials, some Borg employees described a
toxic and overwhelming work environment, according to notes HR shared with
the team that were reviewed by Bloomberg, but Google left the management
team in place and promoted Aubert.

The atmosphere at Borg SRE reflects a broader erosion of what was once
attractive about Google, according to three current and four former
employees. For many of the Generation Xers who joined the search giant in
the last 20 years, a Google gig was akin to being recruited for the U.S.
space program in the 1960s. They toiled away on world-changing technology,
freely exchanged ideas with some of techdom�s brightest minds and believed
in the righteousness of their mission. While Google has always been a
hard-charging, Type-A kind of place, most of the rank-and-file commanded a
level of respect that was uncommon in less egalitarian workplaces.

But the culture was changing. In 2017, engineer James Damore fired off a
manifesto dismissing Google�s efforts to close the gender gap and arguing
that women were less able technologists than men. He was fired, but a
significant minority of Googlers agreed with his views, according to
several current and former employees. A year later, staff were disturbed
to learn that, in an effort to find new growth opportunities, Google
parent Alphabet Inc. was bidding on U.S. military contracts and secretly
working on a censored search engine for the Chinese market. Employees were
also dismayed that executives accused of sexual misconduct received
generous exit packages, a controversy that prompted a shareholder lawsuit
and, ultimately, a $310 million settlement.

Like employees at other tech companies, Googlers began speaking
out�creating a quandary for executives. Should they honor Google�s open
culture or crack down on what some viewed as damaging dissent? They chose
the latter approach, according to several current and former employees,
preventing staff from asking unfiltered questions at all-hands meetings,
policing virtual spaces where workers convene, monitoring and enforcing
content rules for email lists and taking down posts on internal boards. In
the process, the employees say, Google�s leadership ushered in a culture
where bosses felt empowered to put results ahead of comity.

David W. Baker, a former Google engineering director, said the company�s
attempt to impose order has had �a lot of negative consequences� for
employees. �Since the Damore memo, Google has tried to tamp down on
outrage and to get individuals less preoccupied to address societal
issues,� said Baker, who left Google to protest the treatment of Timnit
Gebru, a prominent Black artificial intelligence researcher who said the
company fired her for criticizing its technology and diversity practices.
�Google unfortunately tends to want to be wishy-washy and avoid
controversy,� he said.

Google declined to comment on specific employee complaints. In an emailed
statement, a spokesperson said: �At Google, creating a respectful, safe
and inclusive workplace is our top priority. We recognize we will not
always get it right, and there will be situations where disagreements may
arise. While we can�t speak to individual circumstances, we thoroughly
investigate employee concerns and take appropriate action when our
policies are violated. We also have programs and resources in place to
support employees and managers with coaching, culture building, career
development, conflict resolution and more.� The spokesperson also said
Googlegeist surveys highlight both managers� strengths and areas needing
improvement.

Borg SRE chief Aubert declined to comment, but in a Nov. 16 presentation
to his team reviewed by Bloomberg he acknowledged workplace challenges.
�You all have seen the note from Chewy which was a trigger point for me
realizing that our culture has to change,� Aubert wrote. He pledged to
promote racial equity, listen to team members and accept their feedback.

Shortly before publication, Google provided three members of Borg SRE to
discuss their experiences on the team. Two requested anonymity. All three
occupy more senior roles on their subteams than rank-and-file site
reliability engineers. The employees said that they and many of their
colleagues had positive experiences on the team and with Aubert. When
asked about HR�s efforts to improve the team�s culture last year, Nejc
Trdin, who is based in Zurich, said, �The culture is not perfect. I think
it's fairly good, by the standard of what we want to strive for, but it
not being perfect, I guess there is room for improvement.� A Zurich-based
technical lead who declined to be named said efforts to improve the
culture and team happiness happen �continuously,� and that he had only
heard of �minor� complaints from team members before and after Shaw�s
memo. The third employee, a U.S.-based senior site reliability engineer,
says he introduced team temperature surveys on Borg SRE, after finding
them a useful way to get feedback when he was a manager on his last Google
team.

On Jan. 18, after Bloomberg had requested comment, Google sent employees
an email announcing a Black executive named Felicia Guity had been named
chief of staff chief to Ben Treynor Sloss, the executive who oversees SRE.
Guity said she has a passion for understanding emotional intelligence in
the workplace and helping people meet their full potential, according to
the email, which was reviewed by Bloomberg.

The �Terminator�
Before Google�s search engine, few companies had attempted to keep such
hugely popular and essential websites up and running around the clock. The
gargantuan task fell to the site reliability department, including the
Borg group named after the hive-mind cybernetic organisms in Star Trek.
The department won respect for inventing many of the tools required to get
the job done. It also had a reputation as a boys club. In the early days,
engineers �cultivated this reputation as whisky-drinking badasses,� said
Mike Knell, who joined SRE in 2008.

The drinking gradually subsided, but Knell said more aggressive managers
began to change what had been a largely collegial operation. Firings
became more frequent, he said, and one manager was nicknamed the
�Terminator� for behavior employees considered random and cruel. One day,
Knell said a senior engineer relayed a message from his boss: Knell would
be fired if he didn�t �get his life together.� When Knell eventually
reported the conversation to human resources, he was told the incident was
inappropriate but that no action would be taken.

Knell later won approval for a transfer to Google�s privacy team, only to
learn it wouldn�t take place after all. About a week later, Knell said he
contacted the company-provided psychiatrist he had been seeing. �I said,
�I can�t do this anymore,� and I took two months off for mental health.�
Knell said there was so much demand for counseling from engineers in
Zurich, the company was forced to add extra sessions.