How Google Blew Up Its Open Culture and Compromised Its Product

A seven-year Google veteran shares the inside story of how Google shut down its open culture, and the costs of its absence.

Today at Big Technology, we’re debuting a new Big Tech Insider columnist, adding to our series where experts with unique insights about the tech giants— and experience within them — tell the story behind the headlines. David Kiferbaum held various roles within Google from 2015 - 2023. And today, he writes of its open culture’s demise, and its impact on the product.

The entire series is available to paid Big Technology subscribers, and this is a preview for everyone. You can sign up here:

How Google Blew Up Its Open Culture and Compromised Its Product

By David Kiferbaum

In my seven years at Google, one of the most shocking moments came after I questioned our fixation with the word “guys.”

It was 2017, and Google had been facing gender pay gap allegations when I attended an unconscious bias training. Rather than directly discuss the issue, the instructors were obsessed with word choice, focusing on replacing “guys.”

“You should be aware that the term ‘guys’ is gendered and could be alienating for some Googlers, so instead you should be referring to groups of people you work with as ‘team’ or ‘folks’,” one session leader said.

When I challenged the instructor, raising skepticism that this language change would address the real issue, I got shouted down.

“How dare you!” a colleague said from the other side of the room. Other participants, and the instructor, began to scold me. I nearly got shouted out of the session.

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Google used to be a place to ask questions. “You must make it safe to ask the tough questions and to tell the truth at all times, even when the truth hurts,” wrote Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg in their 2014 book How Google Works. “When you learn of something going off the rails, and the news is delivered in a timely, forthright fashion, this means — in its own, screwed-up way — that the process is working.” 

Inside Google today, the process is not working. Previously accessible Google executives have disappeared, once acceptable questions can’t be asked, and a dispassionate arrogance has taken hold. Unsurprisingly, the company’s deficient culture is showing up in the product, most vividly in its recent Gemini debacle. As a user and shareholder, I’m concerned. 

Let me give you my best explanation for how we got here. When I joined Google in 2015, the company’s culture of openness was in full swing. It was a universal practice to attend its weekly TGIF meetings and listen to Larry Page and Sergei Brin (or their lieutenants) offer candid, direct answers to probing employee questions, asked in-person or via ranked online submissions. 

At these meetings, there were a few brave, recurring characters who asked confrontational in-person questions every week.