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The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

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Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#11

Post by logicalmonster »

Is there any publicly available commentary on what kinds of roles these big tech companies such as Google were chopping, and in what percentages?

Were these layoffs mostly recruiting/HR types, various managers, marketers, etc, or programmers?

Did they chop 70% of their recruiting/HR types, but closer to 1% of their techies, or vice versa?

Analyzing these layoffs IMO might be best done through the lens of what kind of roles were cut. If they didn't truly hit the real talent (the best programmers) there's a much different analysis that could be made.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#12

Post by fnfjfk »

I understand that layoffs are a blunt instrument and it is unlikely that all of the “right” people were affected, but Google has long been known as the FAANG to go to if you want to chill, coast, and vest. No Facebook PSC, no Amazon stack ranking, no Netflix “sports team”. Obviously it is team dependent, but it really has that reputation. The well-known tradeoff is that getting a promo to a post-senior level is borderline impossible.

I dunno, something had to give at some point? Leadership sent the message last year but it wasn’t well received: https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/google-ceo-faced-intense-push...

Like, blame definitely falls on leadership here, ICs didn’t come up with the ten chat apps or streaming gaming failure, but the chilling couldn’t last forever.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#13

Post by pinewurst »

epicureanideal wrote: post #9
fatih-erikli wrote: post #5

Who wants to work in Google anyway?

No kidding. When I see FAANG on a resume I read: grinds leetcode, comfortable jumping through mindless hoops, comfortable with extreme amounts of bureaucracy as long as they’re being paid, etc. I’d generally prefer someone from a technically sound venture funded startup.

Don’t forget choosing projects purely for the promotion folder and ignoring existing work if at all possible.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#14

Post by tschellenbach »

The market for talent is quite competitive. Companies need to pay market rates and have a staff that's large enough to compete. In a market where capital is cheap they will bid up rates and hire more people. If you don't do this you give your competitors a chance to beat you. Companies might be able to slow it down a little bit, but not entirely. Similarly in a market where capital is expensive they need to reduce the spend and team size.

Google is a public company. If part of the team is costing them more than the value they create for shareholders, there will be immense pressure to down size. This is actually healthy in a way since talent frees up for other companies. The bigger problem is that in the USA healthcare is tied to employment. That's messed up

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#15

Post by zaphar »

vsskanth wrote: post #2

> The Dodge brothers owned 10% of Ford and opposed this and took Ford to court because they wanted the payments to be able to start their own company. They won and Ford was not allowed to lower prices or raise salaries at the company thus enshrining maximising shareholder value into law. Is maximizing shareholder value really law now ? Just trying to understand if CEOs are legally responsible to return maximum share…

Law in the sense that there is legal precedence from court cases, yes. Law in the sense that there are literal statutes saying so, no. Sadly, both matter.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#16

Post by berkle4455 »

nxm wrote: post #8
berkle4455 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the past decade, Google paid massive salaries to people building one failed bet after another, while Search and Youtube Ad revenue continued to grow and literally nothing else matters.

+ Google Maps

Fair, it’s close or higher than YouTube revenues right? I’ve always mentally included it as part of “Search”.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#17

Post by jacquesm »

tschellenbach wrote: post #6
jurassic wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether it's law or not, the board will fire them if they don't make shareholders the top priority.

happened to a friend of mine. he didn't want to fire people fast enough and was sacked.

I'd say good for him.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#18

Post by themitigating »

fnfjfk wrote: post #12

I understand that layoffs are a blunt instrument and it is unlikely that all of the “right” people were affected, but Google has long been known as the FAANG to go to if you want to chill, coast, and vest. No Facebook PSC, no Amazon stack ranking, no Netflix “sports team”. Obviously it is team dependent, but it really has that reputation. The well-known tradeoff is that getting a promo to a post-senior level is borde…

"but Google has long been known as the FAANG to go to if you want to chill, coast, and ves"

Is that a fact or just your perception?

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#19

Post by mindcrime »

vsskanth wrote: post #2

> The Dodge brothers owned 10% of Ford and opposed this and took Ford to court because they wanted the payments to be able to start their own company. They won and Ford was not allowed to lower prices or raise salaries at the company thus enshrining maximising shareholder value into law. Is maximizing shareholder value really law now ? Just trying to understand if CEOs are legally responsible to return maximum share…

Is maximizing shareholder value really law now ? Just trying to understand if CEOs are legally responsible to return maximum share of profits to shareholders.

Well... that's a slightly complicated question. It's definitely not quite as simple as "companies must maximize profit to the exclusion of all other concerns". But while directors and executives are given wide latitude to run the company according to their judgment, they don't have carte blanche to do "whatever they want" either.

More to the point, while a company as a whole can do more than simply "maximize profit to the exclusion of all else", the caveat seems to be that they can do so if the owners (eg the shareholders) agree.

From the SCOTUS decision in the Hobby Lobby case:

While it is certainly true that a central objective of for-profit corporations is to make money, modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so. For-profit corporations, with ownership approval, support a wide variety of charitable causes, and it is not at all uncommon for such corporations to further humanitarian and other altruistic objectives. Many examples come readily to mind. So long as its owners agree, a for-profit corporation may take costly pollution-control and energy-conservation measures that go beyond what the law requires. A for-profit corporation that operates facilities in other countries may exceed the requirements of local law regarding working conditions and benefits. If for-profit corporations may pursue such worthy objectives, there is no apparent reason why they may not further religious objectives as well.

The question I see then, is how much influence a single shareholder can truly yield based on this principle. That is, of course, assuming they don't single-handedly hold a controlling share of the company to the point that they can simply replace the board with whoever they want and enforce any arbitrary edict. Given a publicly traded company, it seems clear that some shareholders are going to want the "maximize my stock value at any expense" while others are going to go for more of a "do the humanitarian thing and treat (employees|the environment|whatever) well" or such-like.

See:

https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3943559

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2021/12/01/dodge-v-ford-what...

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/13-354.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20130603013056/https://www.brook...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_primacy

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#20

Post by kerblang »

You work for google because you make insane money and have cachet you can take anywhere and get hired instantly. Hell, you can pull in 10 million funding for your startup idea if you like. Or just retire, get a boat, go sailing.

Of course all of this had to go bad. Come on now. Stop whining already.

I work in the IT sewer fighting rats. I will always have work. I'm filthy and I smell bad, but I'm doing fine, and no, I don't sit around wringing my hands and thinking, but what will become of our beloved and sacred google? I could not possibly give a shit about google. But maybe someday I'll get a fucking boat.

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