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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#551

Post by kloch »

AYBABTME wrote: post #422

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. I can't believe that Google, Shopify, C…

> Every damn body knew that the last 2 years were not representative of the future.

Don't humans almost always extrapolate their present situation far out in the future?

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#552

Post by allochthon »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #135
makach wrote: post #104

Not 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…

The kind of company I'm on the lookout for has definitely shifted over the years. When I was younger, the thought of working at Google and Amazon was very enticing. Then Amazon adopted some fairly regressive HR and business strategies and lost its luster in my eyes; or maybe my view of their existing practices just shifted as I grew older. Now Google is trending in the same direction. At this point in my career I'm on the lookout for smaller companies that are oases and have somehow managed to avoid the HR and business trends that have been adopted by the tech industry on the model of people like Jack Welch, the consulting firms and private equity.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#553

Post by bumby »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #543

The Google of 2005 wouldn't do this. The Google of 2005 would use this as opportunity to monopolize all the talent and move into some new space and eat everything with fantastic software. * I had a good seat to watch google obliterate mapquest and yahoomaps with amazing javascript maps. It was day and night. Yahoo was penny pinching their mapping engineers while Google was buying geographic satellite companies and in…

Are your examples also examples of survivorship bias?

I was reading in the WSJ how all tech seems to be paring back their moonshot programs. I think the Google example was a program cut that had $1B in revenue but $6B in costs. (forgive me if the exact numbers are wrong). It seems like prioritizing and cutting back on programs that lose money (despite being innovative or inspiring) is a natural consequence of economic downturns.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#555

Post by remote_phone »

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 was in the “global recession” camp all last year but I’ve started to doubt that.

I don’t see any real economic impact to companies except Meta but that was them losing market share. Otherwise all these layoffs feel like hangover recovery from over hiring the last 3 years.

I think we will be fine. Hiring won’t be like the last 3 years but I also don’t think we are going to go through the Bust 2.0.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#556

Post by [deleted] »

rvz wrote: post #495
AYBABTME wrote: post #422

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. I can't believe that Google, Shopify, C…

Well at the height of the market euphoria, nobody listened to my warnings a year ago: From [0] November 2021 Me: 'Finally' The start of the market crash is under way... >> Stock market up 1% today on both this news and decades-high inflation. [0] Then more concerns for preparing for the recession months later after I said we were already in a recession. [1]. >> No. That is completely false. We are most certainly not…

[deleted]

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#557

Post by kyrra »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #543

The Google of 2005 wouldn't do this. The Google of 2005 would use this as opportunity to monopolize all the talent and move into some new space and eat everything with fantastic software. * I had a good seat to watch google obliterate mapquest and yahoomaps with amazing javascript maps. It was day and night. Yahoo was penny pinching their mapping engineers while Google was buying geographic satellite companies and in…

It's worth stating that Google has been hiring like crazy for years. In their Q3 earnings[0], their year-over-year number of employees increased by 36,751.

[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204422...

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#558

Post by gcr »

oaiey wrote: post #133
makach wrote: post #104

Not 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.

Agree with that. The wording is very human and focus on the bad parts of it. I hate the term "let people go".

It feels a little crass to me to judge the wording and character of layoff emails, as if some of them are satisfying artistically and others are unsatisfying to consume somehow.

At the end of the day, a layoff email is a layoff email. Sugarcoating it is just PR.

“It’s only a layoff email if it came from the layoff region of France, otherwise, it’s just a sparkling pink slip”

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#559

Post by boplicity »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #543

The Google of 2005 wouldn't do this. The Google of 2005 would use this as opportunity to monopolize all the talent and move into some new space and eat everything with fantastic software. * I had a good seat to watch google obliterate mapquest and yahoomaps with amazing javascript maps. It was day and night. Yahoo was penny pinching their mapping engineers while Google was buying geographic satellite companies and in…

That also explains why carriers are obsessed with buying media companies; they just can't let go of their dreams of a walled garden.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#560

Post by RajT88 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #510
AYBABTME wrote: post #422

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. I can't believe that Google, Shopify, C…

They needed the increased labor at the time, they got it, utilized it, juiced profits and now don't need it so are getting rid of it. They used the increased labor to increase profits by 41% in 2021. If they did not have the increased labor in that period would their profits have increased by that much? I see this comment in much the same way I see a bear in a bull market. Stock X is $100 and Bob buys it. Carl tells…

Is this the "scalability of the cloud" I keep hearing about?
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