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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#641

Post by AYBABTME »

giantg2 wrote: post #502
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…

"I can't believe that Google, Shopify, Coinbase, everyone, really believed that this was the new reality going forward." They didn't. They knew it wouldn't last. But what they had to do was stay competitive and/or meet demand by scaling up while they could. Now they have a larger pool of talent and can cut people/programs who are too expensive or are under performing.

Yup. And I'm annoyed that they pretend it was all a mistake, and try to pass me the reader for a fool by writing this sentence. That's all.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#642

Post by pjc50 »

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…

> I got the inside perspective on cellular carriers reactions. Google was this a dinosaur ending asteroid to them and their wall gardens. They saw signs, then sky darkened and in their hearts they knew Google would build something 100X better than what they could ever build even if they wanted to give up their walled gardens which was a cognitive improbability

This - and also the iPhone. The two of those were just so much better for the user than Symbian, and also short-circuited all the egregious billing of mobile carriers. It once used to cost £1 to send a message with a picture attached (MMS).

But a lot of anticompetitive hurdles had to be overcome to let that happen. The worst possible outcome for users is where the old company has enough energy to squash competition, usually by cheating, but not enough to actually do so by improving its products - because "improving" to the user would mean cutting into their revenue stream.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#643

Post by dcolkitt »

unholiness wrote: post #629

Possibly naive question: Everyone's talking about how these companies are preparing for a global recession. But it's striking how specific to large tech companies. Is it possible these companies are just seeing the new remote-first paradigm as an opportunity to replace US devs with cheaper, foreign developers? Obvious this is absurdly difficult, but it's likely more realistic now than it's ever been before.

It more has to do with tech companies having expanded headcount way more than other industries in the past few years.

The reality is that tech cos overbites since market conditions were extremely ebullient in the tech sector circa 2021. A large fraction of those new hires never had anything productive to even do.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#644

Post by jimbob45 »

gcr wrote: post #604
kypro wrote: post #146

Are 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…

This guy! Imagine thinking “diversity programs” are a significant cost center, as if their spend were comparable to real estate or employee compensation

It's not really about the cost though, is it? If they were donating to the KKK or literally setting cash on fire, I doubt you'd have the same outlook. Wasted or misspent money is never something to overlook, particularly when you could have justified keeping a few more employees on if you'd just stopped setting money on fire.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#645

Post by shapefrog »

vineyardmike wrote: post #623
shapefrog wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firstly, attrition, simply don't replace those that leave Nobody is retiring - why would you, you get a fat pay cheque and once you get out of the meat grinder Jr levels life is pretty good. Oh and if they fire you rather than you retiring, they have to pay you another stack of cash and keep those options that vest in a few years. "Seeing people posting about being laid off after 30 years of employment at Microsoft…

> Is it last in first out or first in first out? I have seen almost no one actually talk about who was impacted on these threads. I was in Nest, and 7yrs tenure, except me, and many were staff.

Sorry to hear, I hope you find your feet (if you are even a little off balance) again quickly!

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#646

Post by anonymouswacker »

It's a shame that Google is so good at hiring top talent, and even better at under utilizing them. The company had a hypomanic vision of greatness by throwing everything to see what stuck, and still can't get a new idea that is profitable besides marketing & advertising due to their virtual monopoly. I'm very curious what the breakdown of positions will be. This is a failure of leadership and Sundar should resign.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#647

Post by ineedasername »

deanmoriarty wrote: post #462

For what is worth, I am employed at the company and I think this is a good thing, the amount of “fat” around here is just astonishing and, quite honestly, demoralizing. I truly believe that the company could function well, and continue its mission, even with a 30% reduction or more. The number of people who do completely nothing all day, in SWE roles, is just unbelievable. And this without even counting the incredibl…

It depends a lot on which jobs they cut though. Do they know which departments & work groups are the least necessary? Or are most of them needed, but with fewer people so they cut X% of each team?

Cutting the fat at any company is worthless or even catastrophic if the strategy for implementing those cuts is crap.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#648

Post by whiplash451 »

DrBazza wrote: post #419
whiplash451 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The cost saving is much (much) faster with layoffs 2. You don't lose (or get rid of, for that matter) the same people when you do layoffs vs organic attrition On (2), I don't only mean "good" vs "not good" people, but also distribution per department.

No, but you can give zero bonus, zero payrise, and negative annual review as a clear indication that you're not wanted. In fact, don't many of the Megacorp companies have a 'cull the bottom 10% annually' policy anyway?

Cull the bottom 10% takes a very long time (and effort) in a big company.

You still have to put the "candidate" on PIP, wait 6 months for the PIP to fail, then run the ejection process (ranging from 0-2 weeks in the US to a few months in EU).

and you have to sacrifice a senior eng to mentor the PIP'ed (else they can sue you for not giving them a fair shot).

The whole thing is much more expensive and slow than a company-wide layoff.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#649

Post by marcosdumay »

7ewis wrote: post #621
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…

I suspect they aren't getting rid of the talent. It's more likely to be a fat trimming exercise. The market has reacted in the way you'd expect, share price is currently up 4.3% today. It's easy to use the recession to restructure and leave room for new potential talent to come in.

> I suspect they aren't getting rid of the talent.

If you just announce a layoff, you are already getting rid of talent.

> It's more likely to be a fat trimming exercise.

Large companies can't lose fat in large strokes. There is simply no way to organize a mass layoff that results in "fat trimming".

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#650

Post by siliconviking »

lostmsu wrote: post #614
siliconviking wrote: post #600

I'm surprised people aren't connecting all these layoffs with their root cause: the increasing cost of capital. Naturally, projects that were economically profitable only at a very low cost of capital could turn unprofitable at a higher cost of capital, destroying value instead of creating value. Shifting resources away from such projects is the logical thing to do, but if you end up with a surplus of resources, the…

While this is a cause, it is definitely not the root cause.

What is the root cause in your view?
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