In my opinion, the biggest problem Sundar has is that he is too much of a chicken to shake things up, and his underlings know it. They do something dumb, he gets questioned about it, he says the word "thoughtful," everyone at G gets a little bit angry, and then the whole thing blows over. That does not incentivize responsibility among the managers underneath him. Sundar tries to keep peace between managers and departments, but in doing so, he loses control.
There was an "exit only doors" fiasco a year ago, and the man couldn't say either:
* "yes, VPs get special permissions to access the buildings" or
* "that is a security risk and everyone needs to go in through the same lobbies"
He just said "thoughtful" and the VPs lost their exit-only door access for a while until it blew over.
This was such a small, petty thing that I pretty much lost all respect for Sundar over the fact that he couldn't take a stand on it. He absolutely refuses to provide an opinion about anything to the wider group of Googlers. His underlings know that, and they know they can do stupid shit and work against each other without accountability.
There was an "exit only doors" fiasco a year ago, and the man couldn't say either:
* "yes, VPs get special permissions to access the buildings" or
* "that is a security risk and everyone needs to go in through the same lobbies"
He just said "thoughtful" and the VPs lost their exit-only door access for a while until it blew over.
This was such a small, petty thing that I pretty much lost all respect for Sundar over the fact that he couldn't take a stand on it. He absolutely refuses to provide an opinion about anything to the wider group of Googlers. His underlings know that, and they know they can do stupid shit and work against each other without accountability.