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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#991

Post by ma2rten »

gilbetron wrote: post #985
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #406

Are all of these layoffs essentially collusion to reduce wages? If they all end up with the same headcount but with a reduced wage in the next year, there should be a class action. Not that those help anyone but lawyers, but it's nice to have an official punishment on record.

While I don't know if it is the sole reason, it certainly is a nice side benefit. I think all the major tech firms figure they can all do a layoff and then hire each other's talent as needed at reduced compensation.

This makes no sense, you benefit from the low prices if you are not buying.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#992

Post by edanm »

ok_dad wrote: post #863
outworlder wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here That's a meaningless statement. They never face any consequences. A CEO taking responsibility for layoffs should add their name to the list too.

No shit, this guy took ~$250mm in stock in each of the last few years from what I can find, and even if that is worth half of what it was before this year he could give each outgoing employee about $10k of that stock (to sell maybe) to make their lives easier. Instead he gave them a few words written by some PR manager. Taking responsibility must mean something different to a CEO than it does to me, a common dude.

> "[...] he could give each outgoing employee about $10k of that stock (to sell maybe) to make their lives easier."

To be fair, I think the package they are actually offering is way, way more valuable than 10k: "We’ll also offer a severance package starting at 16 weeks salary plus two weeks for every additional year at Google, and accelerate at least 16 weeks of GSU vesting."

Plus healthcare, 2022 bonuses being paid out, and some other items on there.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#993

Post by okhobb »

ak_111 wrote: post #4

Question for those who got laid-off from tech recently (say since Aug last year): how hard did you find it to get another tech job? Would be interesting to get some anecdotal evidence to shed light on the following WSJ article which claims laid-off tech workers are finding it easy to get re-recruited: https://www.wsj.com/articles/laid-off-tech-workers-quickly-f... If the phenomena described in the WSJ article is true…

Pretty sure the Fed "wants" to bring up unemployment. I.e. make wage inflation decrease. To put it another way, they want everyone to feel more poor so they spend less frivolously.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#994

Post by majani »

FearlessNebula wrote: post #956
pembrook wrote: post #58

A lot of people seem to be chalking this one up in the “memetic imitation among tech execs” column. However, in the case of Google, I’m not so sure. Google is an advertising business. And advertising revenue is extremely sensitive to changes in the economy (Companies cut ad spending when there isn’t as much demand to soak up). In the last recession Google was still rapidly stealing ad share from old media, but now th…

> they actually employ A TON of ad sales people Why? Don’t customers submit their own ads to Google?

Yes, but there are a lot of ad agencies that try to do Google ads on behalf of clients for huge fees. I'm sure part of Google sales people's jobs is to try and either drive such agencies out of business or get the agencies to spend more on Google.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#995

Post by barfingclouds »

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…

Uhhhh, Google didn’t make Android, Google bought Android…

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#996

Post by briandear »

UncleMeat wrote: post #847
maximinus_thrax wrote: post #833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and it affects the livelihood of 12.000 people I'll stop you right there. Why would they do a post-mortem for this? They're not accountable to the employees. This should be a reminder for everyone as to who SLT actually works for.

Corporations should be accountable to their employees. The system we have today is harmful.

Why? Employees are paid to do a job. Unless they're actual owners, why should a company be accountable to the employees? I'm not sure where a corporation owes anything to employees beyond payment for agreed-upon services. If the company goes out of business, should employees also share in the debt and obligations?

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#998

Post by plnii »

int0x2e wrote: post #697
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…

I love your thinking, but sadly most large corporates seem to suffer from very slow and very bad deciding making processes. Some examples from the tech giant I called home for 5+ years until I recently quit: 1. When the pandemic hit, mangement froze all hiring and emphatically urged us to optimize costs so we wouldn't have to lose anyone. 2. When the pandemic concerned turned into the hype of 2021, we tried to hire a…

I suspect there is a strong element of “it depends”. If your company needs to grow rapidly to capitalize on an opportunity, having a process that makes hiring this slow doesn’t work. If on the other hand playing the long game is viable, like maybe with a lifestyle type company, this approach is far better. The problem with the pandemic was that it suggested there was a new and big opportunity that made it hard for companies to distinguish the right approach.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#999

Post by aksx »

michaelgrosner2 wrote: post #792
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…

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…

Maybe because other people search in different places. Events/Businesses: Google Maps, Instagram Trend/Tutorials: Tiktok, IG Reels News: Twitter/Social Media/News Outlet of choice

Google is for searching new sources of information and either it’s instant (google info box) or takes too long which makes a lasting memory about it being painful.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#1000

Post by PaulHoule »

jstx1 wrote: post #278
ergonaught wrote: post #234

I need to see these "I take full responsibility" people actually punished. At the very least, this sentence needs to be removed from their mouths. Alphabet had 116 billion USD "cash on hand" at the end of September 2022. Even if the full cost of each of those 12K employees is 500K per year, that's "only" 6 billion dollars to keep those "great" people that they "love" working with around. Net income for that quarter w…

> I need to see these "I take full responsibility" people actually punished. At the very least, this sentence needs to be removed from their mouths. There's some infantile obsession with this phrase in every layoff thread. "I take full responsibility" is partly a polite way to say that they aren't blaming anyone else for what's happening, it partly means "I'm the one making this decision" and it's partly ceremony for…

I would like to see him take responsibility for the Google Pay fiasco.

Here you have a perfectly good payments system, but between some combination of FOMO and reverse imperialism (writers like E.F. Schumacher have talked about inappropriate developed world technologies failing in the developing world, here is an example of the opposite) they wrecked it for themselves and their users.

I'd like to see some responsibility taken for this.

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