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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

#21

Post by zaphar »

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.

I worked at Google for 7 years, admittedly a decade ago. We didn't grind leetcode, We didn't jump through mindless hoops, and we had almost 0 bureaucracy. So for at least that letter in the acronym it was nothing like you describe.

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

#23

Post by devwastaken »

>Before getting into that it’s worth noting that all publicly listed companies operate under a fiduciary duty to maximise profits for their shareholders.

Not in that context. They have a duty to their shareholders, not absolute maximum profits. Plenty of further unethical methods that could be used if that was the goal.

Iron law of organizations states that any org over time will put the perpetuation of the org first, not the orgs mission that it was founded with. Those with that vision leave for better places, leaving voids filled by those whom cannot genuinely replace it. Purpose is lost, things slow down, and every solution is a myriad of bandaids and placebos to keep it afloat. A cow to milk. This was obvious when all these projects were born to fail and hiring practices started filtering hiring for binary search trees.

Same story across the board. They've lived past their expiration date, and rely upon the law and vertical integration to prevent anyone else from competing.

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

#24

Post by yehNaw »

My two cents; by picking a CEO who only knew Google, an environment full of self delusion that Google itself was responsible for Google’s success.

A general social trend to value tech in our lives seems lost on the genius CEOs. They really seem to think billions care they specifically exist, when really if they did not someone else would have been CEO. Some other company that came before Google would be Google big if not Google quality in search (which has gone to shit under the management of their current genius CEO).

Hubris, lack of social awareness, lack of career experience outside the Google RDF created a hyper-normalized world view.

Paraphrasing PG, who wrote somewhere, I forget where, don’t underestimate the power of money to motivate. We’re not picking good companies, just playing simple arithmetic games with fiat money.

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

#25

Post by Scubabear68 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #10

This ruling [Dodge vs Ford Motor Company (1919)] stands at the heart of the current situations being faced by companies like Google today. —- It really doesn’t. First, that’s a Michigan case interpreting Michigan law. Almost every non trivial US company is incorporated in Delaware and subject to Delaware law. Delaware law does have somewhat similar cases, eBay v. Newmark is a good one to read but … Second, in both th…

Yep. The article is just flat wrong here. Companies have wide discretion on how they are run.

Investors who want to change that have to get enough members on the board or attempt some variety of takeover or buy out.

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

#26

Post by gautamdivgi »

berkle4455 wrote: post #7
fatih-erikli wrote: post #5

Who wants to work in Google anyway?

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.

Maps, android and its ecosystem (play store, etc.), cloud, nest, gmail & google docs. All those have a significant market.

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

#27

Post by mr_00ff00 »

themitigating wrote: post #18
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?

Certainly is public opinion.

I remember people trying to make the claim that Google paying smart people to not work was a good strategy because it prevented those workers from creating start-ups that would compete with Google.

The Blind app is an interesting place.

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

#28

Post by fsckboy »

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…

civil law, you've heard that you can sue anybody for anything? You can...

...but the thing that makes such a "tort" lawsuit matter is damages, what damage did I do to you that you are now suing me. Like, if you're a pedestrian and I hit you with my car, your lawsuit against me depends on showing a monetary value for how I damaged you, for example, days of lost work. If you weren't injured, and went on about your day, week, month and life, you weren't damaged and there's no grounds for the lawsuit, even though my gross negligence could have damaged you 9 times out of 10. (This is an example to make a different point, we are going to ignore "emotional distress", etc.)

if you're a shareholder and I am the CEO and I have the company pursue goals that don't maximize the value of your shares, that cost resources and don't have a chance of maximizing shareholder value, when I could have, I have monetarily damaged you.

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

#29

Post by brailsafe »

kerblang wrote: post #20

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,…

Never say always

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

#30

Post by whateveracct »

themitigating wrote: post #18
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?

When I was in college years ago, I knew a guy whose plan was to turn his Amazon internship into a FTE offer, work there a couple years, and then go to Google and quote "sit."

It worked. Not a bad plan in the early/mid 2010s ;)

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