Google to reduce workforce by 12k • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#151

Post by Jagerbizzle » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:13 AM UTC

makach wrote: post #104

Not a bad email, and a decent follow up on the ones that are affected. It is also a reminder that killing yourself slowly at the workplace is meaningless. Management has no responsibility to you, and no promise is certain. It’s your responsibility to take care of yourself. My take, don’t be bitter. Take the severance as soon as possible and get back on your feet. Having Google on your resume is a very good thing.

Significantly better than the tone-deaf email Satya sent Microsoft employees, which continues to cause undue anxiety for employees who have no clue if or when they'll be laid off over the next 90 days.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#152

Post by cmrdporcupine » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:13 AM UTC

jonp888 wrote: post #140

I work for a company about twice as big as Google. Getting permission to hire anyone is very difficult, and everyone is always 100% busy just to meet customer deadlines(which we often don't). I guess Google and other FAANG-type companies must work in a different way that I can't comprehend if they can just randomly decide to fire 10% of their workforce. If 10% of the people on my project were fired, our customers wou…

Google has been over-hiring for years. While there are definitely projects that felt understaffed, there are just as many where you'd join a team and look around and really have no idea what you should be doing with yourself because all the work seemed spoken for.

Honestly, 90-ish% of Google's revenue comes from ads. Almost every other product area there is just a financial loss unless it's supporting search&ads. They keep making "bets" to try to diversify the revenue stream, but it never works. Hence why I don't think this will be the last round of layoffs.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out and what parts of the org and what roles this affected.

(Worked there for 10 years, so find this all... sad and interesting)

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#153

Post by glenngillen » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:14 AM UTC

MonkeyClub wrote: post #92

eCa wrote: post #51

I guess someone has to write this comment: > I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here As usual, he says nothing more what the consequences for him are. It seems like all of the FAANGs have made severe strategic cockups when it comes to hiring lately. I wonder if it will affect their longterm attraction as employers.

> It seems like all of the FAANGs have made severe strategic cockups I’m becoming more and more convinced that they’re preparing for a global recession. I posed such an Ask HN a while ago, before the Microsoft layoffs, where the general takeaway was that there’s no indication for a recession. However, after the 10+12K layoffs by the giants, and constant news about smaller layoffs by smaller companies (in the 100s per…

I’m with you, though with a fraction less pessimism.

I’m not buying into the collusion to compress wages or unchecked hiring that is becoming exposed theories. These a companies with globe spanning businesses the touch much of the world every single day (I’d put Stripe in this bucket too). They’ve got much greater and earlier visibility into the state of the broader economy long before governments do. Why don’t we assume they’re a leading indicator of things to come? Why do these moves apparently only make sense when everyone else has finally come to the same conclusion?

The silver linings for me so far has been that a) for many of the bigger companies the reduction is only bringing them back to their pre-pandemic levels of still very huge companies and b) the open lists of laid off people some of these companies have produced at first glance seem to skew very heavy towards recruiters/HR and marketing. Which makes sense if you’re not expecting much growth over the next year.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#154

Post by eggie5 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:14 AM UTC

sai_c wrote: post #48

Does anyone know what "Outside the US, we’ll support employees in line with local practices." exactly means? In Germany I could imagine it to be "You're fired. Go to the Arbeitsagentur and find a new job". Of course within the legal forewarning period.

in netherlands, for example, they (Goog) has to negotiate w/ the local-employee-backed Works Council. If they didn't bother setting one up, like Meta NL failed to, it will take about 3 months to do that. Then another 1-2 months for negotiations w/ the council. Then if they come to an agreement (they don't have to) w/ the redundancies and severance the affected can _then_ be notified.

for example, technically the meta layoffs back in November have not even happened here in NL and the affected won't even know until at least March-April!!

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#155

Post by jwhiles » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:15 AM UTC

DrBazza wrote: post #110

Another multi-billion dollar company making billions of dollars of profit dumps thousands of staff on the streets. There are two approaches here. Firstly, attrition, simply don't replace those that leave. Given the sheer size of the company, a hiring freeze and attrition would gradually reduce the size of the workforce. I'd be astonished if a company with a market cap of $1.2 trillion would be likely to collapse if i…

I think that your best employees are the people who are most likely to leave a company of their own accord, and so if you rely on attrition to reduce headcount you will also reduce the average quality of your workers.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#156

Post by rsynnott » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:15 AM UTC

jonp888 wrote: post #140

I work for a company about twice as big as Google. Getting permission to hire anyone is very difficult, and everyone is always 100% busy just to meet customer deadlines(which we often don't). I guess Google and other FAANG-type companies must work in a different way that I can't comprehend if they can just randomly decide to fire 10% of their workforce. If 10% of the people on my project were fired, our customers wou…

A lot of these companies are building stuff now which might deliver revenue in X years, so by firing people now they're effectively borrowing money from the future; they cut costs now and revenue later. They're more sacrificing future growth than ability to deliver on current contracts, in general.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#157

Post by bsaul » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:15 AM UTC

eCa wrote: post #51

I guess someone has to write this comment: > I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here As usual, he says nothing more what the consequences for him are. It seems like all of the FAANGs have made severe strategic cockups when it comes to hiring lately. I wonder if it will affect their longterm attraction as employers.

I agree with others here pointing that firing people isn't necessary a sign of having mismanaged the company.

However, i think a good gesture as a CEO when acknowledging your company is going through rough times would be things like postponing your bonus, or diminishing your payroll. That would be classy.

Note that the same could be said for politicians in charge. You want people in the country to make sacrifice and endure tough reforms ? Ok, start with your own payroll and various benefits. Lead through example.

Unfortunately greed is going too strong those days.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#158

Post by cmrdporcupine » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:19 AM UTC

shapefrog wrote: post #148

Google had 156,500 full-time employees in 2021, an increase of nearly 16% year-over-year as compared to the 135,301 full-time employees in 2020. Google's pace of hiring was also torrid in the second quarter of 2022 as the company added 10,000 new employees to its 163,906 workforce - that is only through to July 2022. These "Layoffs" are awful for individuals, but they are simply a sign that they went on a hiring spre…

It's best to split 2022 in two. The first half was quite different from the latter.

I saw it in practice as I left Google at the end of 2021 and job hunted on and off through the year. The pace of hiring everywhere significantly dropped mid-2022.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#159

Post by testplzignore » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:19 AM UTC

Silverback_VII wrote: post #13

Well, developing AI systems which are able to replace you and your abilities was not the best idea I guess.

The repeated mentions of AI comes across as him being completely tone deaf. Does he not realize that people fear AI will cause jobs to be lost? Talking about AI and layoffs at the same time is going to earn him some heat for quite a while.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#160

Post by 88 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 11:19 AM UTC

pembrook wrote: post #58

A lot of people seem to be chalking this one up in the “memetic imitation among tech execs” column. However, in the case of Google, I’m not so sure. Google is an advertising business. And advertising revenue is extremely sensitive to changes in the economy (Companies cut ad spending when there isn’t as much demand to soak up). In the last recession Google was still rapidly stealing ad share from old media, but now th…

Just a theory but in a downturn I could see a lot of companies increasing their ad spend as they lose existing customers and find they need to work harder to acquire new ones.

Obviously this doesn’t apply to advertising which is just gratuitous brand building.