A leaked Google memo compared it to slime mold

Hiya, I'm deputy editor Jake Swearingen, on my last day filling in for Diamond Naga Siu. You've been a wonderful audience; please tip your email server.

It's like the start of a joke: What do Google and slime mold have in common? A lot, says a memo from an ex-Googler comparing the org to a "slime mold."

It's not exactly an insult: Both Google and slime molds solve complex problems sans brain or central coordination. (A key difference: Stanford grads aren't desperate to intern at a slime mold.)

But with ChatGPT setting off alarm bells inside and outside the org, Google should probably move faster and with more intention than slime mold.

Just before we jump in, Matt Turner, the editor in chief of business at Insider, is at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He will be posting notes and videos to his LinkedIn all week. You can follow along here — and read his latest post here.

Now, let's get started.

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1. Google "slime-mold" structure. Reporter Hugh Langley got his hands on "Why everything is so darn hard at Google," a memo penned by a former Google program manager during his long tenure at the company from 2008 to 2021.

The most memorable part of the memo compares Google's bottom-up organizational structure to a "slime mold," highlighting how both Google and a slime mold can work independently but still come together to solve complex problems. It's a strength and a weakness: A culture that prizes autonomy can accomplish big things, but the larger the organization grows, the slower things get. As each fiefdom within Google operates on its own, Google engages in "messy" behavior that can be "hard to predict."

• Per the memo, this all leads to a "coordination headwind," which is why at Google even "seemingly simple things seem to take forever."
• The version of the memo Insider obtained was last updated around 2019. Google added over 70,000 employees since then, up 57% to 186,779 in the first nine months of 2022.
• Concerns with Google's bureaucracy aren't new. In 2018, more than a dozen vice presidents at Google sent an email to Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, warning him that the company was experiencing growing pains.

Click here to read more on Google's mold problem.

In other news:

2. Disrupting Apple and Google. The two tech titans have been on cruise control for a decade plus, with Google owning search and Apple building moat after moat around its iPhone revenue. But this year Google faces a push from ChatGPT, and Apple is being forced to open up its App Store. Don't write their obits yet, but it's going to get interesting.

3. Radical salary transparency. Writer Aki Ito decided to tell everyone, from coworkers to first dates, her salary, broaching one of the taboo topics in modern life (outside of Blind posts, of course). She asked other people about their salary too. The result: For the first time in her career, she asked for a raise during her annual review.

4. Cheap Teslas won't save Elon. Tesla is cutting prices by up to 20% as it tries to juice demand for its cars. But bigger and better competition is coming, and discounts are a band-aid on the larger problem of how Elon Musk and Tesla fare when every manufacturer has its own Tesla competitors on the market.

5. Salesforce may cut deeper. The pain isn't over at Salesforce, with insiders telling reporters Ellen Thomas and Ashley Stewart that another round of layoffs will hit in February, after the end of its fiscal year. More worrying, leadership may be looking at cutting another 10% of staff on top of the 10% already on the chopping block.

6. Sex, art theft, and privacy: AI avatar creator Lensa exploded in popularity at the tail end of 2022. Now it's dealing with charges that it sexualizes women, steals from artists, and collects personal data.

7. Shopify sizes up. Shopify's brand has been a cute and cuddly e-comm platform for small businesses to get their start, with the average Shopify merchant making $35,000 in sales a year. But now it's ready to go big, rolling out a suite of new offerings for massive retailers and teaming up with brands like Mattel, which did nearly $5.5 billion in sales in 2021.

8. Ex-FTX.US president rips into SBF. Brett Harrison was, until recently, the president of FTX's US affiliate. He pulled back the curtain on problems at now-bankrupt FTX and "insecure" Sam Bankman-Fried in a long Twitter thread — here are the top 10 things we learned.

Odds and ends:

9. Twitter is literally buggy. Twitter staff at the company's New York offices have spotted cockroaches in employee areas including showers and a changing room at the Chelsea office, sources told Insider.

10. Podcast recs. We asked investors at JetBlue Ventures, Mighty Capital, and other VC firms to share their favorite listens for staying on top of tech, and they gave us the 11 best venture capital podcasts going right now.

Curated by Jake Swearingen in New York. (Feedback or tips? Email [email protected] or tweet @jakeswearingen.) Edited by Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.