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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#31

Post by xbmcuser »

shmde wrote: post #3

(Question): Are all major tech companies doing this when everyone else is so that they face less backlash for it ? Also what about the news of companies having record profits during pandemi. Were they false/fake too ?

This is about growth they kept hiring as they expected growth if they are not expecting to grow then then need to cut expenses. A lot of people in silicon valley are not realising the pain that is about to come. In the last decade a lot of startups have cropped with the main target instead of a profitable business was getting sold to 1 of the big companies.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#32

Post by knorker »

guerrilla wrote: post #20
afandian wrote: post #9

> Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago That seems like a weird thing to throw in there. Does anyone else read it as a hasty "we were doing AI before ChatGPT was cool"?

Hopefully someone can inform us as to whether they did announce such a pivot (I have no memory of that) but it wouldn't surprise me. ChatGPT feels a lot like search-without-citations to me, and the closest existing thing in production to it is the blurb at the top of Google results, which I suppose will soon be replaced by this kind of thing (if they can ever get it to stop lying.)

“Computing is evolving again. We spoke last year about this important shift in computing from a mobile-first to an AI-first approach. … In an AI-first world, we are rethinking all our products and applying machine learning and AI to solve user problems.” —Sundar Pichai, 2017

https://techbeacon.com/enterprise-it/google-goes-ai-first-io...

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#33

Post by throwawaybbq1 »

robbiet480 wrote: post #6

This week: Amazon 18,000 Microsoft 10,000 Alphabet/Google 12,000

People saying it is deferred PIPs or house cleaning are deluded. At Meta and Amazon I know some senior people who were laid off. People got decent severance so not too much negative comments, but I think it is a blood bath. 10% is not a small number and these are not boot camp employees who will switch out to different careers. It is a bonanza for smaller tech firms, but I think this is going to feel like the dot com bubble :(

I went to grad school during those days and have to say, it really sets you back. It will also depress wages in tech for the next 2-3 years.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#34

Post by gnfargbl »

afandian wrote: post #9

> Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago That seems like a weird thing to throw in there. Does anyone else read it as a hasty "we were doing AI before ChatGPT was cool"?

I would guess he means that they use AI algorithms to perform some of the tasks that are performed manually at most companies. If so, most of Google's customers wouldn't really consider this to be a win.

ML-driven account suspensions etc are universally hated and seem to have damaged Google's image, at least in the tech community.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#35

Post by [deleted] »

shmde wrote: post #3

(Question): Are all major tech companies doing this when everyone else is so that they face less backlash for it ? Also what about the news of companies having record profits during pandemi. Were they false/fake too ?

[deleted]

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#38

Post by machiaweliczny »

shmde wrote: post #3

(Question): Are all major tech companies doing this when everyone else is so that they face less backlash for it ? Also what about the news of companies having record profits during pandemi. Were they false/fake too ?

Hiring managers have attention span of 1 year max. So if some departments were doing good due to pandemic and now are flop cause times changed and you need to align costs with revenue.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#39

Post by avip »

bearmode wrote: post #5
ak_111 wrote: post #4

Question for those who got laid-off from tech recently (say since Aug last year): how hard did you find it to get another tech job? Would be interesting to get some anecdotal evidence to shed light on the following WSJ article which claims laid-off tech workers are finding it easy to get re-recruited: https://www.wsj.com/articles/laid-off-tech-workers-quickly-f... If the phenomena described in the WSJ article is true…

Not been laid off myself, but I'm still being absolutely hounded by recruiters. There are still a ton of tech jobs out there, at least in the UK.

The correlation between how much you're being "hounded by recruiters" and how many open positions are out there, is either 0 or negative.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#40

Post by Ensorceled »

rk06 wrote: post #18
robbiet480 wrote: post #6

This week: Amazon 18,000 Microsoft 10,000 Alphabet/Google 12,000

Microsoft mentioned 10,000. Where did you get 11000 from?

Lots of sources were predicting 11K before the actual announcement.

I thought it was 11K too, had to look it up.

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