Friday, November 09, 2018

Google CEO odd reaction to the walkout

It struck me as very odd to see how supportive the CEO of Google was of  the recent worker walkout. I believe most of the left/right world just sees it as caving in to snowflake pressure, or the workers bringing about positive change through collective action.... but I have a different theory.

Normally, the hands of management are bound by lots of rules, shareholder pressure, the SEC, etc... I'm sure the CEO was aware of the issues, but too bound up by the rules and social pressures from above (shareholders, the 0.001%, etc) to effectively deal with it.

If the workers happen to "organize" a strike demanding something that the CEO would like to do, but can't.... you get the aforementioned weird reaction. Moral dilemma on the part of the CEO is solved, workers are happy that they have some power, and shareholder blame gets deflected safely away from management.

I expect this to happen more, as it might be the beginning of a new corporate cultural norm.  What remains to be seen is how management signals they don't approve of changes, I suspect it will be quite simply ignoring the changes they don't want to make.