Google to reduce workforce by 12k • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#331

Post by achow » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 12:32 PM UTC

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…

Also to add to your point, this "I" is very specific as opposed to "we leadership", it is out there in public. Board and/or shareholder can use this to cut Sundar's salary/bonus or whatever that is personal to him. Theoretically, this statement can also be used to fire or demote him, or sue him and not Google.

All hypothetical I know, but he easily could have used some other non-committal words.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#332

Post by est » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 12:33 PM UTC

Could there some kind of labor law that if you fire big chunks of workforce then the hiring should be frozen for some years or so?

It's so unfair seeing companies mass firing ppl then instantly aggressively hiring when markets recovers.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#333

Post by rvnx » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 12:33 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #248

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…

Punished for what? This is all going to plan. Big tech gambled that the pandemic would create huge opportunities and it hasn’t totally panned out. They always planned to lay people off in that situation.

This, punished for what ? In many big US companies, people are chilling as the revenue per employee is very high. Additionally, the low interest rates situation pushed tech valuations higher, and these employees benefited from the situation by getting a higher salary and relaxing job (see videos from Twitter or Meta employees). A lot profited from the scheme and are just sad that paradise is not forever with free wine, massages, sports and buffets at work and that downturns occasionally happens.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#334

Post by 4764764 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 12:33 PM UTC

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…

[flagged]

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#335

Post by Ralfp » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 12:33 PM UTC

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…

It’s because guy „taking full responsibility” will still be able to carry on whith his life like nothing happened, having financial security for him and everybody in his family to live off the interest of his bank for generations, and people he just laid off will now need to wonder how many weeks or months will their savings last them before they can find a next gig letting them maintain their living. Or maybe thats impossible and they’ll have to relocate somewhere cheaper, potentially uprooting all their and their partnere and kids life and trying elsewhere?

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#336

Post by roncesvalles » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 12:33 PM 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'd be astonished if a company with a market cap of $1.2 trillion would be likely to collapse if it didn't immediately get rid of 12,000 people right now.

They need to do a layoff to show that they did a layoff, even if they secretly hired a "buffer" of 12k people in the months leading up to it, or will secretly fill back 12k headcounts in the months to come.

Google in particular needs to make intense investments in GCP so that they don't miss the train for capturing the cloud market. It's probably the only credible challenger to the AWS-Azure duopoly. This layoff is probably painful to their business.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#337

Post by qaq » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 12:33 PM UTC

NewEntryHN wrote: post #285

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…

I have no beef with that as long as BS about values and one family and the like is dropped. I think the only company that handles this +/- honestly is Netflix.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#338

Post by m00dy » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 12:33 PM UTC

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…

Fed wants to shed some blood and companies now play by the book. That's it.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#339

Post by shric » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 12:34 PM UTC

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.

Do you have an example of a successful company that puts people above profits?

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#340

Post by Neil44 » Fri, Jan 20, 2023, 12:34 PM UTC

lonelyasacloud wrote: post #317

Seen enough cycles of laying off about 10% [1] of your workforce to try and halt a share price slide and make investors happier to realise it's in the Howto CEO & Keep Your Job manual. QED, this announcement is almost entirely about share prices sliding in the tech sector since about the beginning of 2022. ChatGPT's impact on Google is unknown, but it is a fair bet that it will be larger [2]. [1] It's always around 1…

Despite the hype ChatGPT is not ready to replace search engines yet - no referencing and it literally makes up gibberish if it's not sure. At this point I don't see any advantage to Google rolling that out. GPT4, GPT5... different story maybe!