Google Employees Internally Share Memes About How Its AI Sucks

(ex-Googler, spent 18 yrs there)

Memegen is a key part of the culture. Its default mode is over-the-top mocking, of course, with a grain of truth. Nobody and nothing is spared. C-level execs, products, the perf process.

So this by itself is not quite the scoop 404 media thinks it is. You could take the front page of memegen on any given day and construct twenty scandalous headlines of it.

Excel users complain about using Excel still [1]. They even make memes about it! Some of them work at Microsoft!

404media, please, take a deep breath. Your jobs are safe, your trauma is valid. Your corruption coverage is so good, but this 'employees make memes' editorial decision-making is exposing some deep insecurity I can't quite triangulate.

[1]: https://www.demilked.com/excel-humor-memes/

404media are great:

> After this story was published Google's spokesperson reached out and asked us to publish a slightly different version of that statement. The new statement no longer stated that "it's critical that we maintain humans in the loop."

> After this story was published Google's spokesperson reached out and asked us to publish a slightly different version of that statement. The new statement no longer stated that "it's critical that we maintain humans in the loop."

I'll let that stand on it's own.

“We encourage our engineers to vigorously test and critique our internal tools; that candid feedback loop, even via our internal meme generator, is vital to how we build technology," Google said. "We continue to refine our internal tools based on employee feedback to ensure we are delivering the best experience that maximizes daily productivity.”

Can anybody comment on whether that statement is an accurate reflection of how management at google treats these memes? On surface level it seems like they don't mind the memes and even use them as feedback but I wonder if that's how it really plays out

Breaking: Googlers use self-deprecating humor as a pressure release valve. More shocking revelations at 11.

Mocking it instead of being apathetic may spur someone to try and address its problems. It's worse when management tells people not to complain because it's bad for morale.

I've used and hated other internal tools - stuff like JIRA and Workday - that were just accepted as terrible and never going to improve.

I work on a commonly used piece of software, I also make jokes to my colleagues about the software that I work on, many of us do. If I had infinite time and infinite money and infinite power, and there was no downstream risk to any of my updates, then I'd fix every single thing that I don't like about the software... things that I know other engineers don't like about it. But insofar as I am not god (... yet?), all I have is my good humor and congeniality.

Glad to know the struggle seems to be universal. Im happy that this really cool and sophisticated tool got invented. But everywhere im seeing it be used is making me sad and frustrated. This software renaissance feels more like the coming dark ages.

I do wonder why Gemini/Antigravity is so behind Codex and Claude. They have it all, TPUs, the model is okay, but then its scattered across a dozen product plans, names, limits. I feel like they are spread thin.

Gemini CLI was atrocious. It's now being shuttered to AG but its very hard to use due to the limiting usage constraints

Claude is better and Codex remains king of actual usage you can get.

Opened the page excited to read a bunch of fun memes, was very disappointed, now I need a proper fix.

Being willing and able to criticize the company's products is really important.

Have you ever worked at an employer where everyone is pressured to only say good things about the product? You have to drink the kool-aid, or at least pretend to, and always talk about how great the product is? It's not good and it doesn't help the product. Being able to admit when things are bad is really important, even if it comes in the form of memes and humor.

Flash 3.5 (Fast) is very fast for many things, just don't throw complicated issues with it, it just doesn't do it as well as 5.5 High.

The low light of the show is the Anti-gravity app. The updates are few, and the updates does background bugs that no one really cares about. They add no features. The non-customizable "Open IDE" is classic greedy Google, they want you to stick to their tools. Vs Codex, they allow it.

I mean, it's an engineering company, so that's expected

All AI sucks, it's not a Google problem.