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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#261

Post by [deleted] »

belugacat wrote: post #213
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 & regulatio…

[deleted]

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#262

Post by pm90 »

shapefrog wrote: post #164
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…

> Firstly, attrition, simply don't replace those that leave Nobody is retiring - why would you, you get a fat pay cheque and once you get out of the meat grinder Jr levels life is pretty good. Oh and if they fire you rather than you retiring, they have to pay you another stack of cash and keep those options that vest in a few years. "Seeing people posting about being laid off after 30 years of employment at Microsoft…

I would be surprised if they let go Senior Staff/Principal engineers.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#263

Post by IshKebab »

W4ldi wrote: post #253
oblio wrote: post #247

If you've ever wondered, this is not about immediate money concerns. In 2021 Google made $257 billion aka $257 000 000 000. And a profit of $76 bn aka $78 000 000 000. It had 187 000 employees. That works out to $1.3 million income per employee. And a net profit of $406 000 per employee. They don't need to lay off anyone. They just want to. I've seen smaller companies where they first shift employees around, offer ev…

> They don't need to fire anyone. They just want to. Why would they want to? If they make so much money, why fire a few people for a massive amount of bad PR? So seem to know the reasoning. Enlighten us please.

Because Google employees are really really expensive, and this won't generate a massive amount of bad PR because everyone is doing it. It's the ideal time to sack of employees you don't want.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#264

Post by [deleted] »

malteof wrote: post #196
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…

They need to explain themselves to shareholders (why did they hire so many people in the first place, expensive) and employees (so that people want to keep working there also in the future).

[deleted]

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#265

Post by oxfordmale »

ergonaught wrote: post #234

I need to see these "I take full responsibility" people actually punished. At the very least, this sentence needs to be removed from their mouths. Alphabet had 116 billion USD "cash on hand" at the end of September 2022. Even if the full cost of each of those 12K employees is 500K per year, that's "only" 6 billion dollars to keep those "great" people that they "love" working with around. Net income for that quarter w…

"I take full responsibility for punching you in the nether regions. I hope you have a lovely day."

Taking full responsibility typically implies a negative impact on the person offering this. However, this has yet to be the case in tech layoffs.

I would prefer they were honest. CEOs simply overhired to take maximum financial advantage of COVID, and now they no longer need the people who helped them achieve record profits. However, it doesn't read as well in a corporate PR announcement to claim you milked COVID as much as you could.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#266

Post by netheril96 »

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.

> despite it having no effect on your life.

How could it have no effect on our lives? It has effect when you compete against a diversity hire, it has effect when you have to work with a diversity hire, it has effect when your manager has to decide who to lay off when your coworker is a diversity hire.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#267

Post by Mandatum »

ergonaught wrote: post #234

I need to see these "I take full responsibility" people actually punished. At the very least, this sentence needs to be removed from their mouths. Alphabet had 116 billion USD "cash on hand" at the end of September 2022. Even if the full cost of each of those 12K employees is 500K per year, that's "only" 6 billion dollars to keep those "great" people that they "love" working with around. Net income for that quarter w…

This is what happens when you work for a public company.

You're working for shareholders. You're working for MBA's. You're working for data analysts and economists.

Your colleagues aren't these people, but the person who decides whether or not you have a job? That's not your colleagues.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#268

Post by simmerup »

prakhar897 wrote: post #176
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…

A few years ago, I built an exact replica of a Saas product I saw online and priced it 1/3 theirs. The actual founder went mad and started a smear campaign. Lucky for him, Workload at my regular job picked up and I abandoned the project, but this highlighted the weak moats of most of these products. and this is the main reason most companies overhire. It's so that engineers are less inclined to go home and build thei…

The other way to view is that even though you could undercut that business by two thirds, you didn’t make enough profit to make it worth pursuing over your day job.

So maybe you were selling it far too cheap after all.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#269

Post by kkoncevicius »

Draiken wrote: post #244
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…

Comments like these tell me how ingrained capitalism is on people's minds now. We seem to forget that without the people that make up the company, it simply does not exist. Companies are imaginary entities chasing profits for its owners. There's nothing sacred about it and they shouldn't EVER be more important than people. I don't understand how we can lose sight of that.

> Companies are imaginary entities chasing profits for its owners. There's nothing sacred about it and they shouldn't EVER be more important than people.

A company of 50,000 operating at a loss will eventually fire 50,000 people. If it can turn things around by firing 10,000 - why not?

Further, in a company there might be temporary teams that implement a project and then are laid off. Surely it's better to have these positions than to not hire any people at all.

Even further, life is not static and things change. Not adapting to changes eventually would lead to stagnant and disfunctional situations, where a product would be made more expensive for everyone, just so a some company has the capital to continue hiring 10,000 or so people who are not longer doing any work. But, perhaps more importantly, those 10,000 people are stuck in meaningless positions doing empty "work" for the sake of numbers on some accounting sheet.

And even further futher, if these no longer useful jobs are in manufacturing then continuing them would mean wasting natural resources and polluting the environment.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#270

Post by przemelek »

ergonaught wrote: post #234

I need to see these "I take full responsibility" people actually punished. At the very least, this sentence needs to be removed from their mouths. Alphabet had 116 billion USD "cash on hand" at the end of September 2022. Even if the full cost of each of those 12K employees is 500K per year, that's "only" 6 billion dollars to keep those "great" people that they "love" working with around. Net income for that quarter w…

But it sounds better than "Sorry for terminating your positions but we need to keep our finances in check not to loose share values, and we are accountable for shareholders" (edited from "Sorry for terminating your positions but we need to keep our finances in check not to loose share values, and according to law it is only thing we are force to do")
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