“Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.”
Hixie spent nine years on HTML standards and nine on Flutter, then quit. He blames Sundar Pichai’s lack of vision and calls the layoffs an unforced error to keep the stock climbing quarter to quarter. After the cuts, engineers hoard knowledge because being irreplaceable is the only job security left. Google laid people off to protect the share price and got a company built to protect itself from Google.