Former Google+ UI Designer Suggests Inept Management Played Role In Demise

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Morgan Knutson, a UI designer who seven years ago, spent eight months at Google working on its recently shuttered social networking product Google+ and who, in light of the shutdown, decided to share on Twitter his personal experience with how 'awful the project and exec team was.' It's a fairly long read, but among his most notable complaints is that former Google SVP Vic Gundotra, who oversaw Google+, ruled by fear and never bothered to talk with Knutson, whose desk was 'directly next to Vic's glass-walled office. He would walk by my desk dozens of times during the day. He could see my screen from his desk. During the 8 months I was there, culminating in me leading the redesign of his product, Vic didn't say a word to me. No hello. No goodbye, or thanks for staying late. No handshake. No eye contact.'

He also says Gundotra essentially bribed other teams within Google to incorporate Google+'s features into their products by promising them handsome financial rewards for doing so atop their yearly bonuses. 'You read that correctly, 'tweeted Knutson. 'A f*ck ton of money to ruin the product you were building with bloated garbage that no one wanted.' Gundotra is today the cofounder and CEO of AliveCor, maker of a device that captures a 'medical grade' E.K.G. within 30 seconds; AliveCor has gone on to raise $30 million from investors, including the Mayo Clinic. Asked about Knutson's characterization of him, Gundotra suggested the rant was 'absurd' but otherwise declined to comment. Knutson goes on to paint 'a picture of a political, haphazard, wasteful and ultimately disappointing division where it was never quite clear who should be working on what or why,' reports TechCrunch.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.