711–720 of 1001 posts
I blame companies for blaming with people's lives like this: not market dynamics. companies are the ones that decided to overhire, overpay - based on covid demand, cheap money that was floating around. companies not the market, resulted in a war over talent. now it's a war on talent. and of course everyone and their grandma will want to work at these tech companies where life is laid back and you get all the benefits…
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?
This post refers to full-time employees. You don't really need to fire TVCs; they're generally on shorter term contracts, which you can choose not to renew.
The idea was that TVCs are the buffer headcount during recessions and would be the first to go when rebalancing. If they are truly laying off only FTE, it’s worth asking what Google is doing to TVC headcount. It’s unspoken so far.
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…
I would be surprised if they let go Senior Staff/Principal engineers.
> Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago led to groundbreaking advances across our businesses and the whole industry. > Thanks to those early investments, Google’s products are better than ever. Does he really believe this? Maybe I'm just biased towards the parts that are annoying and I end up missing the good parts, but search seems worse every day. I worry about using google products for anything essential d…
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…
I worked on Sundars team at Google in 2006. He is highly technical and understands the nuance of software.
If you've ever wondered, this is not about immediate money concerns. In 2021 Google made $257 billion aka $257 000 000 000. And a profit of $76 bn aka $78 000 000 000. It had 187 000 employees. That works out to $1.3 million income per employee. And a net profit of $406 000 per employee. They don't need to lay off anyone. They just want to. I've seen smaller companies where they first shift employees around, offer ev…
They went from $18.9B profit in Q3 2021 to $13.9B in Q3 2022. That's a 36% YOY drop and given todays news, it's fair to assume Q4 was even worse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Back when I was in school Google was the company that had an aura where it's reserved for geniuses and next to impossible to get into. That was a number of years ago, I can't help but notice this perception changed among the people I know. I don't think it was entirely because I graduated and start having experience (disclaimer: did not work for Google).
I work for a company about twice as big as Google. Getting permission to hire anyone is very difficult, and everyone is always 100% busy just to meet customer deadlines(which we often don't). I guess Google and other FAANG-type companies must work in a different way that I can't comprehend if they can just randomly decide to fire 10% of their workforce. If 10% of the people on my project were fired, our customers wou…
If you've ever wondered, this is not about immediate money concerns. In 2021 Google made $257 billion aka $257 000 000 000. And a profit of $76 bn aka $78 000 000 000. It had 187 000 employees. That works out to $1.3 million income per employee. And a net profit of $406 000 per employee. They don't need to lay off anyone. They just want to. I've seen smaller companies where they first shift employees around, offer ev…
Google is a company with a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder profits. The average employee laid off is going to have 2 months of work - paid - to find a new job, plus an additional close to ~$80k or so to hold them over til they find a new job. If Google hires people they don't need anymore - regardless of how good they are - are they supposed to just keep them on payroll indefinitely? Why? Why are we feel…
Google's board can be sued by its investors if it decides to do something like make a pile of $50b and light it on fire. "We don't think you are maximally leveraging your payroll" is not actually a real concern.