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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#281

Post by dwighttk »

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 when it comes to hiring lately.

Fwiw Cook took a pay cut and Apple seems to have only slowed hiring. (So far as I’ve heard)

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#282

Post by oblio »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #276
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…

Google is a company with a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder profits. The average employee laid off is going to have 2 months of work - paid - to find a new job, plus an additional close to ~$80k or so to hold them over til they find a new job. If Google hires people they don't need anymore - regardless of how good they are - are they supposed to just keep them on payroll indefinitely? Why? Why are we feel…

They could shuffle them around for 6-9-12 months first...

Now they're just saying "you're bad for our company, period", which is demonstrably false. Some people lost motivation for their current project, current team, current manager, current org, etc, they just need a jolt.

> Google is a company with a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder profits.

Yes, both true and also a cop out. We should freaking put it in the legal description of a corporation that they also have social responsibility.

Otherwise if you follow your definition to its logical conclusion you end up with the East India Company starving 25% of Bengalis to death because that "maximized shareholder profits" (-.-)

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#284

Post by eunos »

Moissanite wrote: post #243

I wonder how much major tech companies are taking into account "revenge" when doing their firing. For example, if I was a GCP Solutions Architect and got laid off, my skills would be well suited to jumping to a customer who is using GCP - but would I be inclined to support this activity, giving the employer who fired me more revenue? Depends on the availability of roles of course, but I would certainly be giving stro…

I think for most people 'revenge' either doesnt exist or dissipated quickly. If GCP skills bring money to the account then most people will leverage it regardless of their personal feeling to Google

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#285

Post by NewEntryHN »

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…

It's not a charity you know. If they fire those many people, it's because they're confident they can go on without them. There are countries in which the law is more protective of employees, and you can't fire them unless you have serious economic reasons, which is a good thing. But in a country like the US where this isn't the case, I wouldn't shift the moral responsibility to the company itself. Its goal is to make money.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#286

Post by AuthorizedCust »

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…

So basically, if a company has enough in the piggy bank, its main purpose is to become a mass supplier of make-work jobs? Sounds like communism to me.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#287

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

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 becoming more and more convinced that they’re preparing for a global recession.

Large publicly traded companies don't really prepare for large recessions. They are fickle beasts. They mostly react to the market feelings and are in a lot of way quaterly focused. What we are seeing now is the combination of WallStreet feeling gloomy after the rate hikes and tech companies 2022 results being under target. They are taking actions to try to protect their stock price.

From my point of view, the issue tech companies are facing right now is not so much the possibility of an upcoming recession than them having finally reached the point where their impressive growth is slowing down with little chance of ever coming back to the insane rate of the 2000s and 2010s. It means their P/E ratio which has always been extremely high might slowly come back down to the economy average. That would be a very significant share price drop.

If you look at the economy as a whole, signs of a major recession are not there yet. SMEs are still the heart of the economy and the bankruptcies rate remains historically low. Unemployement is also really low. Manufacturing is doing great. Energy prices are far from bad in the USA. Inflation is high but rate hikes seem to be working.

I'm not an oracle. I can't predict the future. I won't tell you there won't be a recession especially in a particularly volatile international context. What I can tell you is that currently the signs don't point to us being doomed.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#288

Post by lvl102 »

Layoff very much due to investors' push. GOOGL, the stock, has been lagging the other big tech companies by a wide margin in the past year or so.

Big picture though, you have to start wondering if WFH trends have largely exposed "unproductive" jobs in these big corporations. It was very hard to identify them in the past but now it's become so evident. You don't really need these gap-filling-there-for-the-optics people. Companies are going to be run that much more efficient.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#289

Post by LaGrange »

jstx1 wrote: post #278
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 need to see these "I take full responsibility" people actually punished. At the very least, this sentence needs to be removed from their mouths. There's some infantile obsession with this phrase in every layoff thread. "I take full responsibility" is partly a polite way to say that they aren't blaming anyone else for what's happening, it partly means "I'm the one making this decision" and it's partly ceremony for…

> There's some infantile obsession with this phrase in every layoff thread. "I take full responsibility" is partly a polite way to say that they aren't blaming anyone else for what's happening, it partly means "I'm the one making this decision" and it's partly ceremony for the sake of appearances

Yes, we know, on the left we have a word for doing that, it's called "lying."

> if you're outraged that the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company is using this language, that's a problem with you, not with them.

The point of the comment is that we _should_ make it a _them_ problem.

> It's like being indignant when a friend or a colleague replies with "I'm fine, thanks" when they aren't fine, or when they say "I can't complain" when they're in fact capable of complaining - it's perfectly normal language for the situation and it's understandable to anyone who has developed the skill of not taking every word literally.

Yeah, sorry, but if someone does white lies and can't communicate, they ain't a friend.

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