Google laid off 11,000 employees last month. Now, Googlers who escaped the bloodbath are stressing out about their bonuses.
In particular, the rank-and-file are griping that the search giant’s employee-review process appears to have been revamped with an eye toward shrinking their annual payouts.
In late December, a couple of weeks before Google unleashed the January firings, CNBC reported that the company’s GRAD system – which stands for Googler Reviews and Development — was recently tweaked so that it ranks 6% of employees as underperformers versus 2% previously.
Likewise, GRAD now ranks just 22% of employees as above average, compared to 27% before, according to the report which was confirmed by The Post.
At the time, employees reportedly were mainly worried the toughened-up GRAD system would be used to fire them.
According to documents cited by CNBC, Google will be looking at bonuses, pay and equity and expects to “spend more per capita on compensation overall.” One also states the company still plans on paying within the top 5% to 10% of market rates, the network reported.
This month, however, two remaining Googlers told The Post their annual bonuses shrank after they got the equivalent of an average rating in the five-tier system – despite the fact they got promotions last year. They reckon that the GRAD revamp is yet another cost-cutting move designed to push out even more workers.
“We used to have a very forgiving culture where you’d get time to rebound from mistakes,” one source told The Post. “Now they’re trying to ‘manage people out.’”
“Google is trying to improve our reputation to be more like that of Amazon where it’s more intense and productive,” the source added.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
