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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#931

Post by chihuahua »

Aperocky wrote: post #601
kyrra wrote: post #557

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 could tell their hiring standards are much lower when I finally passed the interview bar last year. But then, hiring freeze, and now layoffs.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#932

Post by jcadam »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #588
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 dug up the original story* and read it for the first time just now, it was a great read. I particularly like the imagery of Apple and Google dealing the deathblow to that idiotic app-rental scam the carriers had been running It seems like we've pretty much come full circle in the 10-15 years since then. I wonder who'll be the ones to put old Google to sleep.. * A PDF of it popped right up in search results

> I wonder who'll be the ones to put old Google to sleep..

Hopefully soon, I make a concerted effort to avoid using Google services wherever possible. Even in cases where the alternatives are inferior.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#933

Post by snotrockets »

KerrAvon wrote: post #927
snotrockets wrote: post #922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Nothing could have been done, because nothing needed to be done. Is there a recession? Probably. Was valuation and market expectation inflated? Obviously. Did Google overhire? looks like it. But is that the cause for the firing? Of course not. Last quarter revenue was alm…

Yes, but I would add that we're not in a recession currently. Really. There may be one coming, but it hasn't happened yet.

That's just makes this decision more harmful, both to the people Pichai and Alphabet management just wrecked their lives, and to the long term prospects of Alphabet the company.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#934

Post by theGnuMe »

tuan wrote: post #616
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…

In my orientation (2017) an executive was there giving a speech about how great the company is. I still remember he said something to the effect of we never layoff people because we’re family. Oh well.

Executives lie left and right. Stay at a company long enough and you will see their stories shift. They are essentially politicians.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#935

Post by lrem »

shapefrog wrote: post #164
DrBazza wrote: post #110

Another multi-billion dollar company making billions of dollars of profit dumps thousands of staff on the streets. There are two approaches here. Firstly, attrition, simply don't replace those that leave. Given the sheer size of the company, a hiring freeze and attrition would gradually reduce the size of the workforce. I'd be astonished if a company with a market cap of $1.2 trillion would be likely to collapse if i…

> 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…

> once you get out of the meat grinder Jr levels life is pretty good

Life is good, but I don't look back at the Jr levels as a meat grinder. In many aspects, obviously excluding money, life was way better back then.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#936

Post by theGnuMe »

shapefrog wrote: post #164
DrBazza wrote: post #110

Another multi-billion dollar company making billions of dollars of profit dumps thousands of staff on the streets. There are two approaches here. Firstly, attrition, simply don't replace those that leave. Given the sheer size of the company, a hiring freeze and attrition would gradually reduce the size of the workforce. I'd be astonished if a company with a market cap of $1.2 trillion would be likely to collapse if i…

> 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…

IBM did this and got in trouble. I imagine Xoogler lawyers will review this. There is always a paper trail.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#937

Post by uvesten »

nomel wrote: post #750
clint wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say you are an extreme outlier. Most people use all these Google products with no problems nor do they seem to share your fears.

At this point, I much prefer the results of bing. For the top few results, I don't have to guess what will be on the page, based solely on the pages title. Compare: "how do mems absolute air pressure sensor work" bing: https://www.bing.com/search?q=how+do+mems+absolute+air+press... google: https://www.google.com/search?q=how+do+mems+pressure+sensors... I've also seen many cases of "unfavorable" news articles being de…

Wow. For me the difference is night and day. On my phone, google gives me first two screenfuls of ads, then about the same amount of homepages of companies apparently selling mems sensors, and then some kind of wiki that seems to answer the question, maybe… Bing, otoh, has an explanation of what a mems sensor is and how it works as the first thing on the page. I guess I’ll try switching default search engine now. (For me, google results have definitely been getting way, way worse for a couple of years. At the moment, google search plainly _does not work_ for me probably 5-10% of the time, i.e. I _only_ get ads and unrelated results.)

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#938

Post by kaczordon »

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…

Hindsight is 20/20(pun). Did you sell all your stocks at the top in Jan 2022? No one can predict a recession otherwise they’d be billionaires.

How would you expect other people to predict that there would be a recession? IMO google tried to stave off layoffs for as long as possible.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#939

Post by eitally »

londons_explore wrote: post #171
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.

Over-hiring and then firing in big rounds once a decade can sometimes be better... It can be a good way to get the low performers out without fostering a culture of 'must make the metrics look good or I'll be fired'.

This wasn't that. This was a case of 1) over-hiring during covid, and 2) Google has expanded amoeba-like for the past decade (outside of Ads) and the result is that there are thousands of people, hundreds of projects and dozens of product areas that are staffed with people who A) were excellent hires at the time, but B) due to organizational drift over time, are no longer in roles that play to their strengths or allow them & Google to bring expansive new features & products to the market. I'm sure there are some low performers, but the vast majority of affected employees here (including a lot of the ones who are/were low performers) are that way because of management decisions over time, not because they are individually "bad" employees. Fwiw, getting into this state is partly due to over-exuberant hiring and investment in new things over the past several years, where free money and huge profits made it relatively low risk to do so.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#940

Post by spacemadness »

softwaredoug wrote: post #509

The last recession - if you were a software developer, or in tech, you had a great deal of immunity. I remember having spending power when everyone else was unfortunately suffering and taking time to find jobs, etc. Now it feels like the same is true of machine learning. And to some degree other specialist roles within software engineering. If you're a generalist software developer, you're in a vulnerable position. I…

I’d be interested what the etc. is in “AI, etc.” AI seems safe perhaps but so far that seems to be mostly gut feel.
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