Alphabet(GOOGL) 36氪·2024-04-05 00:03Core Insights - The article discusses the prevalence of "bullshit jobs" and "bullshit projects" in tech companies like Google, attributing this phenomenon to flawed internal incentive mechanisms and a profit model similar to Wall Street banks [1][3][4] - The core issue of the technological innovation crisis is not that technical work is becoming meaningless, but that these tech companies themselves are fundamentally flawed [1][4] Group 1: Employee Productivity and Work Culture - Tech employees are often portrayed as highly productive, yet many report spending minimal time on actual work, with 71% of surveyed software engineers claiming they work 6 hours or less daily [2][3] - The culture of "rest and vest" is prevalent, where employees wait for stock options to vest while performing the bare minimum [2][3] - The LPA cycle (Launch, Promo, Abandon) incentivizes employees to launch projects for promotions, leading to a proliferation of unnecessary projects [3][4] Group 2: Project Management and Organizational Structure - Google has shut down nearly 300 projects, indicating a high rate of failure and inefficiency in project management [2][3] - The company’s management structure has become bloated, with about 15% of employees being middle managers, which is significantly higher than the industry average [3][4] - Frequent organizational restructuring disrupts project continuity, leading to further inefficiencies and wasted resources [3][4] Group 3: Financial Performance and Market Position - Despite the stagnation in innovation, Google's advertising revenue has grown from 224 billion today, maintaining a dominant market position [4] - The company’s reliance on a few successful products has created a false sense of security, as it struggles to diversify its revenue streams beyond advertising [4] - The ongoing antitrust lawsuits against Google highlight the potential risks to its monopolistic practices, which could threaten its advertising empire [4] Group 4: Broader Implications for the Tech Industry - The article suggests that the issues of "bullshit jobs" are symptomatic of a broader problem within the platform economy, where profits are derived from rent-seeking rather than productive labor [4] - The tech industry's business model, which relies on extracting value rather than creating it, mirrors the practices of Wall Street banks, raising questions about the sustainability of this approach [4] - As the industry faces a slowdown, the prevalence of meaningless work may become a justification for management to cut costs and exert more control over employees [4]