I got accepted at Google back in October for New Grad and my job was to start in May 2023. I am still in “Team Matching” and they told me that I should hear from them by January. I have yet to hear from them, so I take that this is not very ideal.
Google to reduce workforce by 12k
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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#422Every time I read stuff like:
> "Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today."
I feel taken for a fool. Every damn body knew that the last 2 years were not representative of the future. Everybody knew that free-money, COVID and related phenomenons were a phase. I can't believe that Google, Shopify, Coinbase, everyone, really believed that this was the new reality going forward. It was written in the sky since April 2020. Anyone with a semblance of understanding could guess that the COVID-fueled situation and artificial economic prop up would come due in the medium term.
Really either the folks writing this crap take us for fools, or they're really shortsighted fools themselves.
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#423Another 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…
> simply don't replace those that leave. You need to have control over which roles / projects you're gonna downsize.
Management have control over that already. They can just disband a team and move the team members elsewhere at any time. That is often more than enough for people to voluntarily leave.
Imagine if google disbanded the golang team and moved them to 'maps'. I imagine those team members would quit the company almost immediately.
And that's cheaper as the company doesn't have to pay statutory redundancy pay-offs.
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#424I 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'm reading these comments and feel the need to speak some truths. Come on everyone, have we not stopped drinking that koolaid yet ? Are we still that naive ? The ONLY loyalty of a company is to its shareholders. The SOLE PURPOSE of a company is to increase profits for its shareholders. And you know it. Yes they sit on plenty of money. It's not your money, it's not the employees money, it's the shareholders money. An…
Let’s have different point of view. Google has probably cost shareholder billions of dollars through over comp, through employee benefits (pampering). Their profits have consistently shrunk. So does google really care about shareholders? Or has it been lucky decade for all tech giants due to low interest rates. This decade will tell.
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#425Every time I read stuff like: > "Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." I feel taken for a fool. Every damn body knew that the last 2 years were not representative of the future. Everybody knew that free-money, COVID and related phenomenons were a phase. I can't believe that Google, Shopify, C…
sure, but the problems back then were immediate for google et al: "we need more people to deal with the increased flow". they hoped those covid patterns will remain after covid. they didn't.
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#426I 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.
"Full responsibility" is just humblebragging. Superficially, it's humility about making strategic mistakes that led to the need for the layoffs. But really, it's bragging to Wall Street. "I am tough, confident CEO. I know what takes to make shareholder value and line go up. Praise me!"
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#427A 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.
This is opposite. Marketing budget is second to be cut first being building (space expansion). The R&D budget however goes up mid recession.
Here is how the cuts work
R&D, space expansion, marketing, parties, raises, new product building, warehouses,
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#428Are 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.
It does have an effect on his life if the group he belongs to isn't a "diverse" one. I say this as someone who would probably be considered "diverse", I'd like to be judged based on my merits not by diversity quotas the blue haired gestapo has dictated.
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#429Which areas of the business are likely to be impacted? I assume it'd be primarily ads, but any other obvious areas I'm not aware of?
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#43012K? What is that 5 to 7% of the total employment. Just don't hire for 120 days. Accomplish the same results and you don't even need to make a press release.
Layoffs make it easier to get rid of underperforming people without having to file too much paperwork, so it probably has a better effect on the median employee quality to do layoffs instead of a hiring freeze.
Easier but not better.
If you have a performance problem, there is a process in place to to deal with it. Not easy, but it gives the employee notice and the opportunity to improve. Vs. Gone.