‘Don’t equate fun with money’; Google CEO advises employees

For the bulk of this quarter, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has been speaking in front of his staff about cost-cutting, efficiency, and macroeconomics. Now, Pichai warned staff members not to ‘equate joy with money’ at a company-wide meeting this week. An employee reportedly asked Pichai why the firm, despite generating profits and having large financial reserves, was cutting travel budgets, allowances, and other benefits during the discussion, which, according Google insiders, became heated at points.

‘I recall the days when Google was a fledgling company. We shouldn’t always connect having fun with having money because enjoyment didn’t always go hand in hand’. In response, Pichai stated, ‘I don’t think it should always be about money. You might come into a hard-working company and people may be having fun’.

The Google executive said, ‘How do I put it? Look, I’m hoping that everyone is keeping up with foreign news. I believe it’s critical that we work together as a firm to get through times like these because, as you may know, we are being a little more responsible during one of the most challenging macroeconomic situations now ongoing in the previous decade’.

It is important to note that Pichai’s comments were made against the backdrop of Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, posting weaker-than-expected earnings and sales for the second consecutive quarter in July. As WION noted earlier this month, Pichai also discussed the company’s decision to adopt a more cautious recruiting strategy while also boosting staff productivity as the macroeconomic outlook remained unclear.

When a firm has fewer resources than previously, ‘we want to make sure that we are prioritising all the correct things to be working on and our employees are very productive so they can actually have an impact on the things they’re working on so that’s what we are spending our time on’.

The Google CEO went on to say that the business was aiming for a 20% increase in productivity, saying, ‘Across everything we do, we may be slower to make judgments. You examine the entire process and determine how to increase productivity at the firm by 20%’.