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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#211

Post by kypro »

jensensbutton wrote: post #161
kypro wrote: post #146

Are we about to enter a new era of ultra-profitable tech companies? While companies like GOOG and MSFT have had ridiculously healthy margins compared to traditional industries for some time now, it's also been clear in recent years that these companies have become very loose with spending. Take GOOG for example, they spend so much unnecessary money on fancy offices, free lunches, diversity programs, highly speculativ…

> diversity programs... Not even remotely comparable to the other things you listed. People such as yourself seemingly can't stop talking about it though, despite it having no effect on your life.

Well I don't know about GOOG specifically, but I know there has been relatively large diversity teams at every tech company I've worked for in recent years. Again, not GOOG specifically, but it's not uncommon for companies like this to have employees whose job it is to email people informing them to do things like rename their project's master branch to main. There have also been efforts within companies like GOOG to bring in employees who are less qualified simply because they're female or are of a certain racial group. My point about diversity programs is not that the team itself is expensive, but that when these companies push politically-motivative policies within an organisation they often cause larger inefficiencies and disruption. We've seen this in several companies in recent years such as Coinbase and Netflix.

Whether you believe diversity and inclusion is important isn't really relevant to the profitability point my comment was focusing on.

I also don't think it's necessarily comparable to the other things I listed and was actually considering not including it because I know there's always someone like yourself who will just focus solely on the politics and not my point. For example you didn't take issue with my point about their over hiring of kitchen staff? That's probably a much smaller expense and arguably doesn't have the larger productivity costs of diversity programs - it may in fact boost productivity.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#212

Post by progbits »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #186

I don't understand some of the comments here, maybe someone can explain. Does a company need to have an excuse to let people go? Is there a right to stay employed? As far as I am aware working for a company is not a life-long situation. And further - why don't we invert it and praise these companies for supplying thousands of six figure jobs for years. Surely being employed for several years is better than never bein…

> Does a company need to have an excuse to let people go? Is there a right to stay employed

Not in late-stage capitalism, but elsewhere yes. For example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Redundancies_Dire...

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#213

Post by belugacat »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #186

I don't understand some of the comments here, maybe someone can explain. Does a company need to have an excuse to let people go? Is there a right to stay employed? As far as I am aware working for a company is not a life-long situation. And further - why don't we invert it and praise these companies for supplying thousands of six figure jobs for years. Surely being employed for several years is better than never bein…

In some cultures the prevalent view is that employees should be grateful to their employer for providing them with a job and a paycheck, and that the needs of the business comes first and therefore the business should be free to layoff employees when it deems it necessary.

In other cultures, the view is more that the business benefits from various social contracts (governments providing various structures & regulations so that businesses can flourish, the cost of healthcare/education that leads to a productive workforce being taken on in part or whole by the state, etc), that the employer/employee relationship is fundamentally asymmetrical, and therefore that an employer has a social responsibility to provide stability and not do reckless things like hire 20k people to layoff 10k the following year.

US work culture, and tech particularly, lean more towards the first side of the spectrum in my experience, but that doesn’t mean everyone is aligned with it or that it is the One Truth.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#214

Post by l2silver »

londons_explore wrote: post #171
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.

Over-hiring and then firing in big rounds once a decade can sometimes be better... It can be a good way to get the low performers out without fostering a culture of 'must make the metrics look good or I'll be fired'.

Uh, if by get rid of the low performers you mean get rid of a lot of people, some of which happen to be low performers...

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#215

Post by jacquesm »

ritzaco wrote: post #190
jacquesm wrote: post #99

This 'I take full responsibility' thing is getting really tiresome. Of course you take full responsibility, you're the f'ing CEO, and in case on account of this someone loses their house I'm sure you'll make good on it, because it's your responsibility, right?

It's an over-compensation for the earlier responses that blamed things on "unforeseeable market conditions" or something in a "we did everything perfectly and this is just the way the world is" kind of excuse. It doesn't really help the people who are out of a job, but I think it's a nice gesture at least to say "this one is on us, we'll reflect on what went wrong and try to do things differently next time" even thou…

It's a two sided street: Google is super profitable and could easily support their workforce through an economic downturn. But they feel their shareholders are more important than their employees. And so the employees, whose loyalty is demanded in good times, receive none of that loyalty in return in bad times.

Also, pretty weird to see 'careers.google.com' up and running and apparently hiring for all kinds of roles while at the same time letting go of all these people.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#216

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

wheels wrote: post #197
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 think calling them cockups is a stretch. A few points: - Flexibility of the US labor market is one of the things that makes it attractive relative to labor markets of other rich countries: it's easy to hire more people when demand goes up, and fire them when it goes down. - Demand just went down, all over the interwebs, since people miss doing things in real life. - It's an easy time to fire a bunch of people witho…

>- Demand just went down, all over the interwebs, since people miss doing things in real life.

More like people have less disposable income for frivolities now due to the rising CoL (especially in the EU) than during the pandemic when CoL was the same and everyone was stuck at home looking for ways to spend their extra covid money.

How companies thought the pandemic boom would last is beyond me.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#218

Post by Draiken »

mi_lk wrote: post #193
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.

This is the right attitude. Other higher-voted threads trying to shame the company/CEO etc. are only depressing to see.

I'd argue these aren't mutually exclusive.

The email/comms might be okay, but this is still their fault and will ruin people's lives. Most (if not all) companies are shit and don't give a shit about you. We're just a necessary cost.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#219

Post by coredog64 »

joshvm wrote: post #108
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.

The notice period might be longer than 60 days, which is pretty generous for the US. In Switzerland, 3 months from either party is not uncommon.

60 days is the US minimum for a large company doing a layoff (WARN Act). Some states have stricter standards, which is why Amazon had to pay a minimum of 90 days severance in NY state.
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