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Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

wsj.com

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Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#171

Post by NhanH »

spankalee wrote: post #143
WoahNoun wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely dependent on the team and hiring manager. And the technical requirements of the role you want to move into versus your prior role. If you want to move from working on gmail to working on the android kernel, I imagine there's gonna be some whiteboarding. (Not that gmail is simple software, but just picked two examples that came to mind with different domain expertise).

@ericd, what programming roles don't deal with trees or recursion? I've dealt with trees in every single domain I've been in, frontend or backend, whether doing "real" programming or building with no-code tools like FileMaker. I've seen admins and accountants build trees and recursion with spreadsheets. I don't think these things are as "gatekeeping" as you imagine.

Since all programming jobs deal with trees and recursion, and if you are already at Google working on another team, wouldn't it mean you already know about those (since our assumption being all jobs deal with those)? Why not just check directly if you were actually useful instead?

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#172

Post by scarface74 »

joshuamorton wrote: post #170
scarface74 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn’t work out very well seeing they are still paying Apple a reported $8 - $12 billion a year to be the default search engine and it came out in the Oracle trial that they only made $23 billion in profit off of Android from its inception until the beginning of the trial. Apple makes more from Google in mobile than Google makes from Android.

The beginning of the trial was 2010 or so, so if Android earned Google 23B in 5 years, I imagine it's earned multiples of that in the 10 years since.

This came out in 2016....

https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...

Google's Android operating system has generated revenue of about $31 billion and profit of $22 billion since its release, an Oracle Corp lawyer told a U.S. court hearing the software company's copyright lawsuit against Google.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#173

Post by d1zzy »

petilon wrote: post #76
onion2k wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it costs $10bn a year to run that would mean it represents a $1.1bn loss, and it should be killed if Google can't turn it around. Revenue is a terrible metric to judge something on.

I was pointing to growth, not revenue. A business that doubled its revenue in two years is great to have, even if it is not currently profitable.

Investing (at a loss) many years to grow a business where you are starting behind others seems sensible. Let's not forget that Amazon had reported almost no profit or just loss for more than a decade. So as long as the business grows it seems like things are moving in the right direction.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#174

Post by ericd »

spankalee wrote: post #143
WoahNoun wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely dependent on the team and hiring manager. And the technical requirements of the role you want to move into versus your prior role. If you want to move from working on gmail to working on the android kernel, I imagine there's gonna be some whiteboarding. (Not that gmail is simple software, but just picked two examples that came to mind with different domain expertise).

@ericd, what programming roles don't deal with trees or recursion? I've dealt with trees in every single domain I've been in, frontend or backend, whether doing "real" programming or building with no-code tools like FileMaker. I've seen admins and accountants build trees and recursion with spreadsheets. I don't think these things are as "gatekeeping" as you imagine.

They're both occasionally the best tool for the job, but I think they're hugely overrepresented in that type of interview. I haven't found that they come up very often in most web development, as an example, but they definitely come up in interviews for web developers.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#175

Post by joejerryronnie »

K0SM0S wrote: post #124
formercoder wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind this is going to screw your performance rating / bonus / promotion situation. You’re incentivized to love fast.

Yes, love fast and make things. An engineer's ethos.

Google engineers - single-handedly increasing the bay area's birth rates

Edit: Wow, just realized that could be a veiled reference to artificial insemination

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#176

Post by joejerryronnie »

bobsil1 wrote: post #163
manigandham wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a 9 stage pipeline, it's 9 separate single stage pipelines.

Massively parallel Baby Processing Units (BPUs)

If you implement QBPUs (Quantum Baby Processing Units), you could theoretically produce infinite babies. Of course, we're perpetually 10 years away from working QBPUs.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#178

Post by joejerryronnie »

scarface74 wrote: post #37
downerending wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a couple: 1. Google's tech staffers are supposed to be some of the top people in the world, and Google spends a considerable amount of resources hiring them. It seems foolish not to keep them on the bench a bit, unless Google foresees that it will be shrinking soon. 2. The people not laid off will very much notice their colleagues being zapped the moment they're not needed. They will rationally tilt towards le…

You haven’t heard about Netflix’s policy.... https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664 “We’re a team, not a family.” They “hire, develop, and cut smartly”. It doesn’t seem to have hurt their recruitment.

My brother-in-law works with various Netflix managers. One of them got a negative mark on her performance review for not firing enough of her team members over the previous 12 months. Netflix pays about 20% over market value, but it's like Lord of the Flies over there.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#179

Post by Anka33 »

paxys wrote: post #20
sjg007 wrote: post #15

Can someone with an MBA or a business understanding explain why they would even make this announcement if it is a small number of roles in the company? Why not just reorganize? I don’t get it unless it’s a signal to the market that the execs are looking at cloud compute.

It's not an announcement as much as a legal obligation to disclose, and news sources just pick up on it.

[dead]

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#180

Post by joejerryronnie »

onion2k wrote: post #59
petilon wrote: post #55

Google generated $8.9 billion in cloud sales last year, up 52.7% from $5.8 billion in 2018 and $4.1 billion the year prior. Doesn't sound like Google's cloud business is in trouble.

If it costs $10bn a year to run that would mean it represents a $1.1bn loss, and it should be killed if Google can't turn it around. Revenue is a terrible metric to judge something on.

We lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume.
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