It has begun after E. Musk fired lot of people. He showed that TT can work with less people. Now that covid is far away, everyone is cutting.
Google to reduce workforce by 12k
521–530 of 1001 posts
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#522This comment from a NYT opinion piece by former Slack CPO added some clarity as to one reason why tech companies are doing this: pressure from investors to keep the share price up. Public companies lose that freedom to do whatever they want even if they have tons of money in the bank. > Meta and Salesforce combined lost more than $700 billion in market cap last year. Both companies are now dealing with activist inves…
Meh. Saying this is a new "era" and the old ways are over is nonsense. We're entering what is likely a mild recessionary period with less flowing capital. It's a market correction. The "era" will last maybe 2 years. Then the upward trajectory will hit again and tech workers will get drone shuttles to work or something by 2030.
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#523This comment from a NYT opinion piece by former Slack CPO added some clarity as to one reason why tech companies are doing this: pressure from investors to keep the share price up. Public companies lose that freedom to do whatever they want even if they have tons of money in the bank. > Meta and Salesforce combined lost more than $700 billion in market cap last year. Both companies are now dealing with activist inves…
Google don't have to worry about such activist shareholders in the same way that other companies do. Larry Page and Sergey Brin have the controlling share in Alphabet thanks to their Class B shares. They only have a fiduciary responsibility to the other shareholders.
Still there is pressure to bow to big money investors to continue having access to investment capital.
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#524Every 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…
>Every 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. How are they taking you as a fool? The p…
> The point of a company is not to maximize employment, it’s to maximize profit.
Rant: If most people in our society simply decided this wasn't true -- and that, no, the point of a company is not to maximize profit, we could solve so many harms.
And frankly, believing this is optional. It's like saying the point of a person is to live as long as possible. Sure, you can choose to think that, but if you do, it would be easy to paint you as a villain. And, of course, thinking that way is completely optional.
And...just because many people do think that way doesn't mean we have to. We can choose to apply a different meaning to the idea of a company.
As someone that helps run a company, I very much think our company exists to serve our customers in a very specific way. Most of our economic success, actually, comes from many of the choices that would seem to fly in the face of short-term monetary gain.
Companies don't exist to maximize profit. Villains do.
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#525 > As part of that, if you are just starting your work day, please feel free to work from home today.
This closing line is what stuck out most to me. Is there really such a strict WFO culture there that this needs to be said explicitly?
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#526Not 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.
Hear hear re: not letting work consume your life. Seeing someone else say that was very refreshing. It’s so true that when you’re gone, the company hardly notices. Being let go with no severance and zero days notice was the last straw for me to ever put my soul into a soulless company again. Luckily there are cool ones out there worth putting yourself into. I managed to find one. Weirdly I now seem to enjoy staying u…
> Lots of devs really believe that they have a duty to the company
I don't think it's just devs, it seems like a broader "tech culture" or "startup culture" thing, where everyone acting like they're in some weird cult, fully devoted to their company is their entire personality.
I did an internship at a place like that in university. It was generally a fine place but it was weird how I added some people I worked with on social media (something I rarely do now) and ALL of their posts were about the company. I don't know if it was ass-kissing for promotions or something but it always felt weird and alien to me. It wasn't even a particularly small company where everyone knew each other, it was like 300 people across multiple floors of a building.
I think it's probably runoff from everyone trying to be 2009 Google. Would you believe there was a foosball table, and an open work area? Wacky!
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#527A 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…
Advertising revenue is sensitive but number of engineer Google needs is not proportional to amount of ads they show. It's not like Amazon where if people order less they need less workers at fulfillment centers and less track drivers. And Google still profitable and can afford to keep headcount as an investment into future. Or they have no plans which spans more than a quarter?
Google can afford to spend many billions on any unprofitable cause they wish, instead of maximising profit.
I don't think they should. But if they did, I'd hope they'd focus on more worthy causes than paying US engineers $300k/year.
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#528Its all about greed. they could also keep those people and settle for a lower profit. How much do they need?
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#529Every 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…
>>Every damn body knew that the last 2 years were not representative of the future.
In hindsight, yes. But by that definition every decision is a coin flip, because no matter how good we get at predicting things, you are always and always making decisions based on past data, and that can't accomodate random 'act of god' sort of events COVID and Ukraine war was.
>>Everybody knew that free-money, COVID and related phenomenons were a phase.
There was no way to know COVID was a phase, we still can't say with confidence that COVID is over.
Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k
#530Is Apple the last major tech company standing without layoffs?
Yes, at least for FANG/MAGA. I wonder if they will avoid them or just be the last one to cut.
Related, with employee growth charts: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcou...