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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#651

Post by throwaway894345 »

cloutchaser wrote: post #620
nvarsj wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny to me because this has been happening in tech a long time and is happening to the current giants. The old giants like IBM, GE, Motorola, etc. all suffered similar fates. And it's been discussed ad nauseum by disgruntled engineers who then go and make new companies/start ups to get away from the "suits". It's called "Takeover by MBA". You know it's happened when you start hearing phrases like "Cut costs", "…

It’s an anecdote but it’s also what I heard from my doctor dad working in the NHS. There was a time when the UK health system was actually run by doctors or people with medical knowledge. Now it’s MBAs and generalist managers. It doesn’t work, all it does is increase overhead, both in staff and bureaucracy. In his opinion that’s what ruined the NHS not underfunding. Business and management courses are not necessarily…

> Business and management courses are not necessarily good.

I suspect it's a sort of "penny wise and pound foolish" thing. You end up optimizing the small stuff (cost cutting, etc) and you lose the ability to drive big innovations.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#652

Post by [deleted] »

rco8786 wrote: post #232
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.

He said responsibility, not consequences. I am still not sure what people expect CEOs to do in these situations to "punish" themselves. Google is not going bankrupt, they are still wildly profitable, they overhired and are adjusting headcount by a few percent. It sucks for the people affected, I don't want to downplay that. But I'm genuinely curious what is supposed to happen to the leader in these situations.

[deleted]

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#653

Post by cvhashim04 »

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.

Maybe but likely not. Lots of devs overseas who work for these tech giants have also been cut. The 12k cuts is global.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#654

Post by yamtaddle »

xiphias2 wrote: post #584
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…

Google of 2008 didn't do this, I was there. The difference is that current Google is full of non-tech non-sales people who fight with eachother to reorganize tech people who are trying to build things. Other tech people change the API for no reason and give work to 1000 more people to ,,upgrade to the newer system'' and stop maintaining the old system. Also the new CEO is not a software engineer, so he doesn't unders…

Around '08 or '09 is when IMO it became visible from the outside that Google's culture had shifted radically.

I've read comments before claiming that when Google acquired DoubleClick, Google became more DoubleClick than the other way around. Basically, that the Google we liked was destroyed by that acquisition, and something new emerged. That certainly squares with the timeline.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#655

Post by KMag »

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…

Though, note that both Android and Google Maps were acquisitions. Someone needed the vision to acquire those companies, for sure, but their initial incarnations aren't great examples of Google innovation.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#656

Post by charles_f »

> I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here

When an incident occurs in prod and it affects the livelihood of 12.000 people (or more if you include family), you'd expect at the very least a post-mortem. I've never seen a company produce one after that.

What was the root cause? crazy hiring, massive wage war

Could the current situation be anticipated? hell yeah, out of a pandemic, war raging in Europe, petrol production going down, supply chain problems all over the world, resulting in inflation going massively up... Don't need an MBA to anticipate the economy was par for a correction.

what could you have done to prevent this? realize it was too good to be true. Don't enter the rat race, be cautious about hiring. Focus business.

what steps will you take in the future to prevent this from happening again? "I take responsibility" is a beautiful thing to say but it's completely empty if you don't take the consequences as well, and don't learn anything in the process. I bet you that if/when we recover from this dip, the same hiring practices as before will re-submerge so that resiliency doesn't move and we see the same move in another 5/10y. So I guess the answer to this question is "none, loyalty goes only one way and trust me when I tell you that no-one is safe"

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#657

Post by hbarka »

A significant percentage of Google’s workforce are temps, vendors, and contractors (what they call TVC). They are approximately more than FTE. I believe the stats are 150,000 TVC versus 144,000 full-time employees.

How is Google juggling this reduction in force? Are we talking TVC or FTE?

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#658

Post by BurningFrog »

marvin wrote: post #609
xiphias2 wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google of 2008 didn't do this, I was there. The difference is that current Google is full of non-tech non-sales people who fight with eachother to reorganize tech people who are trying to build things. Other tech people change the API for no reason and give work to 1000 more people to ,,upgrade to the newer system'' and stop maintaining the old system. Also the new CEO is not a software engineer, so he doesn't unders…

> The difference is that current Google is full of non-tech non-sales people who fight with eachother to reorganize tech people who are trying to build things. Is this true? If so, how can a historically disruptive and innovtive tech company like Google make that kind of blatant mistake?

Large organizations are pulled very strongly toward mediocrity.

What's unique about Google is not that they ended up there. It's how they avoided it for so long.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#659

Post by ineedasername »

elektrontamer wrote: post #428
jensensbutton wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>blue haired

I don't understand this reference. What does blue hair (assuming metaphorical and not literal?) mean in this context?

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#660

Post by UncleMeat »

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…

So like, lay people off when there is actually a global recession then. Jesus Christ. Revenues and profit are still up, especially at Google.
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