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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#881

Post by andromeduck »

lazide wrote: post #801
tootie wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Didn’t work that way for the chip companies. Those highly paid jobs pretty much just ceased to exist.

Seems like it just changed companies - Google/Apple/Nvidia saw an opportunity and poached a lot of them to death.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#882

Post by vishnugupta »

charles_f wrote: post #656

> 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 Euro…

Just about everyone understands that "full responsibility" is meaningless.

One thing I've come to internalise is in a public (maybe most of private too) company CEO's fiduciary responsibility is to maximise shareholder value. From what I've learnt the switch from "profit" to "share holder value" occurred sometime in the 80s. So they'd do whatever it takes to reduce cost; outsourcing to 3rd world countries, financial engineering, wage suppression, hiring contractors and what not to ensure stock prices keep going up.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#883

Post by Moissanite »

pm90 wrote: post #280
Moissanite wrote: post #243

I wonder how much major tech companies are taking into account "revenge" when doing their firing. For example, if I was a GCP Solutions Architect and got laid off, my skills would be well suited to jumping to a customer who is using GCP - but would I be inclined to support this activity, giving the employer who fired me more revenue? Depends on the availability of roles of course, but I would certainly be giving stro…

Nobody behaves this way. A GCP solutions architect has spent years acquiring valuable skills and experience. They aren’t gonna throw it away out of spite. The only thing laid off employees will generally do is never, ever work for the employer that laid them off ever again.

> A GCP solutions architect has spent years acquiring valuable skills and experience

Citation needed :-)

Joking aside, I think you're right for the vast majority of cases, but "nobody" feeling this way seems highly unlikely. Also, mid-level technical people having a grudge next year aren't a problem - but that might not be the case in 10 years, when the laid-off person is CTO of a big potential customer - at that point, the technical skills are irrelevant, but the impact being laid off had on that person emotionally/financially won't be.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#884

Post by hintymad »

charles_f wrote: post #656

> 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 Euro…

> Focus business

People simply have different incentives during booming years. Companies want growth in marketshare, so they throw initiatives on the wall to see which ones stick. So, more hiring. Managers want more scope, and size of their teams is a good indicator. So, they hire more. Of course, I don't doubt their motives. They may genuinely believe the causes of their teams and diligently come up with initiatives. It's just that their initiatives may not get the same level of scrutiny when almost-free investment dries up. Again, more hiring.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#885

Post by vishnugupta »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #699

> 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…

> Does he really believe this?

This is also a signal to the stock markets that Google is getting onto the AI bandwagon, to milk the current hype around AI.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#886

Post by xiphias2 »

stickfigure wrote: post #785
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…

> 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. We're in the middle of rewriting our auth system because Google Sign In is being replaced with Sign In With Google . Incredibly, I didn't just make that up: https://developers.googleblog.com/2021/08/gsi-jsweb-deprecat...

I tried Google APIs as well, and also gave up at authentication, even though I just wanted something super simple and small (push messages to mobile phone).

Nowdays I'm just using nostr for storing simple data, as it's super simple with no vendor lockin (I can encrypt messages if needed).

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#887

Post by gowld »

leesec wrote: post #879

Maybe a hot take but 6 months severence is extremely generous, they don't have to give anything. This is basically being spoiled compared to how the rest of the world is treated. I'm sure these talented engineers can find new gigs within 6 months

> I'm sure these talented engineers can find new gigs within 6 months

Not everyone laid off is an engineer, and even among engineers, how likey is that is all these companies are shedding staff at the same time?

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#889

Post by MrDresden »

edgyquant wrote: post #865
dzonga wrote: post #30

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…

You’re not wrong but at the same time I was hiring for a senior engineer a year ago and the market was ridiculous. Seniors only wanted to work if they could do part time for six figures and the consensus was they should be allowed to work 2-3 companies at once. This is just the way the market works, whoever has the greater demand will always use that fact to their demand. So while it may suck to be an engineer compar…

To a European this kind of description always boggles the mind.

Having been in the field for 12 years, with a degree in CS, worked as a senior IC and been personally responsible for critical projects at financial institutions and startups alike, the highest wage I have ever had was 75k. And this is in western Europe.

In a way I hope that in the near future more US firms start looking outside their boarders when hiring.

Because there is plenty of hungry talent here just waiting for a chance.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#890

Post by Barrin92 »

bobinux wrote: post #840
michaelgrosner2 wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally only hear that Google search is bad from HN. No one else in my daily life - my family, friends, people out at my gym or grocery store - ever complain that Google search is bad. In fact, Google is still the default for looking up information anywhere. It's sentiments like this that make you realize how much of a bubble HN exists in. OTOH, people have trouble using GMail, google home, or ban YouTube in thei…

Haven't you noticed how search results quality has changed let us say from 2007-2013 and comparing recent time period? I used to get the best information, websites, media material that I was looking from the rarest sources on the web, even probably rare to find given my geo location. Today I usually get information not by the quality, but from "the biggest brands" on the web. I was surprised that I didn't find one sp…

because the rarest sources of the web were relatively speaking much more popular back then when the internet had about 20 pages in total. The entire scale of the web has been growing x-fold every year.

So what was relatively relevant back then is now irrelevant to a general audience and as a result has been pushed back. You could argue Google should bias search much more towards individual history but that has its own pitfalls, both in terms of results and privacy wise.

Basically blame your fellow searchers for clicking and wanting big brand stuff, Google just gives you what the internet considers relevant.

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