It's a hangover from the days when Googlers were largely adults, and capable of being treated as such. After growing so huge, it's obviously not sustainable to keep hiring at this bar, so they're putting in stricter rules around employee behavior just like almost every other company does.

I remember fairly early on someone complaining about not having the right cereal in the lunchroom.

Ha, I never came across the entitlement-to-perks attitude, though I do believe that it existed even during my tenure. That being said, this is a wildly different problem from the one we're discussing.

This is the level of discourse you get from people who reverse binary trees all day.

People are downvoting this comment because they are missing the clever jab at the hiring process.

How can you be so sure?

Mocking an exec in the open that is a really cool culture. Well, it was while it lasted. At our BigCo we celebrate, venerate, suck up in every possible and impossible way to our beloved execs. Granted our revenue on per head basis is hardly tenth that of Google.