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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

#161

Post by csomar »

tschellenbach wrote: post #14

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 th…

Yet, everyone here is ignoring this. In reality, every company (whether Silicon, Oil or Rocks) is just a businesses; and at the end of the day they are in the business of arbitrage: They buy something with $xx and sell it for $yy. Interest rates affect that.

This over-hiring and over-firing is being instigated by the Fed. Tech (or otherwise) companies are reacting to that.

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

#162

Post by [deleted] »

komali2 wrote: post #91
idlewords wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a good HL Mencken quote about the likelihood of people getting collectively smarter: "No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. "

I feel quite strongly about this. Aligning society along a hierarchy of "intelligence" is really just aligning it on a hierarchy of access to education, which is just a function of economic class privilege (or racial class privilege really, these are tightly integrated even today in many societies for historical or otherwise reasons). Therefore I believe that as our society reaches for further egalitarianism, this hi…

[deleted]

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

#163

Post by csomar »

komali2 wrote: post #100
WalterBright wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> larger shareholders who contribute nothing They contributed investment capital to the company.

But what labor did they contribute? Follow the chain and at most what they did was buy someone else's labor and attach it to the Google brand (through having more cash for hiring), there's other ways to do that though, like loans, or structuring as a co-op so all employees are simply the only shareholders.

There is a dangerous path in this rationalization that will lead you to Marxism. The theory is cute and some people in Europe thought it would work. It didn't and that's how we ended up with capitalism. Humans are capitalist traders by instinct. Marxism makes logical sense, however.

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

#164

Post by ClumsyPilot »

dvsdvasvvsavas wrote: post #117
girvo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that really disagrees with the commenters point though. They might indeed be privileged and out of touch (nearly guaranteed in fact), but that does not mean Googlers aren’t even more so. Not that I particularly mind either way: we are all a privileged lot in the tech world. Myself absolutely included!

What is with this thread? Why is a job being called a privilege? Are we completely discounting hard work and merit. Its not like people are inheriting jobs at Google. If working at Google such a privilege and is the goal, work towards it. Like so many other people did, take up a student loans and put yourself through school, build your resume, take up projects, internships, work experience etc. Prep for interviews, w…

> One can't just decide not to put in the work and then look at the guy who did and say... privileged.

Being a President of Unites States is a privilidge, surely you dont dispute that?

Are you putting in the work to become President? If not, you are not allowed to call him priviliged.

> If working at Google such a privilege and is the goal, work towards it.

Being the Pope is a privilidge too, do you even want to be the Pope?

If I don't want to be the Pope, should I be unable to recognise that it's a position of power, privilidge and prestige?

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

#165

Post by tw98521358 »

WalterBright wrote: post #83
abadger9 wrote: post #44

I'll say something I wish someone told me in my 20's: most leadership/upper management is poor. I've worked at FAANGs, a unicorn, and currently @ a company that recently IPO'd. Most people in product leadership neither really understand how to make original ideas that effect the product at a high level or the technical details of the product, their responsibility is to be good stewards of a certain revenue stream and…

> most leadership/upper management is poor Most everyone who is not in leadership/upper management has endless complaints about what idiots they are.

It’s because they are using the wrong metrics. The technical ability is not a strong contributor to success in leadership roles.

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

#166

Post by buffington »

menzoic wrote: post #36
tschellenbach wrote: post #14

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 th…

> The bigger problem is that in the USA healthcare is tied to employment. That's messed up True but COBRA coverage lets you pay to stay on your job-based health insurance (cheaper) for a limited time after your job ends (usually 18 months). https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ebsa/about-ebsa/our-a...

In my experience, COBRA ends up costing about 2.5x for employees who've left a company that subsidizes their insurance premiums.

Perhaps it's more reasonable if it's for a single young person with a high deductible. The last time I was on COBRA, the cost was unbelievable. For a family of 4, it was over $3k per month, and that was 5 years ago.

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

#167

Post by paxys »

mc32 wrote: post #158
paxys wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing "privileged" about working at Google. It's a job, like anything else in tech.

If you ask the people who were gentrified out of the mission when FAANGers decideed the Peninsula wasn't cool and would move into the Mission, if FAANGers are privileged or just a regular joes and janes, I'm pretty sure I can predict their answer.

Ask the rest of the planet and they'll call these mission hipsters equally privileged.

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

#168

Post by mrelectric »

renewiltord wrote: post #132
themitigating wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Everyone in the Bay knows that Google is the retirement home. I knew people who worked there who left because no one on their team would write anything. Show up at 11, lunch at 1, leave at 4 after meetings. And you know that when people call it "best WLB" they're talking about something specific.

I heard the same about Ericsson in Europe. Any other known retirement places?

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

#169

Post by tw98521358 »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #151
abadger9 wrote: post #44

I'll say something I wish someone told me in my 20's: most leadership/upper management is poor. I've worked at FAANGs, a unicorn, and currently @ a company that recently IPO'd. Most people in product leadership neither really understand how to make original ideas that effect the product at a high level or the technical details of the product, their responsibility is to be good stewards of a certain revenue stream and…

The other thing that would probably help engineers is that business and management is extremely difficult, in a way more than engineering, and that whether or not a particular person or decision is good or bad is often times not something that many engineers have the information or capability to evaluate. I'm a cynic about business and management, not a manager and will not be one, am an engineer, also partake in the…

The product suffers when resource priority shifts in the wrong direction. Often times management infighting and empire building becomes the business priority and the actual product is a secondary evil that needs to limp along to fund the empires.

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

#170

Post by metadat »

riknos314 wrote: post #129
CydeWeys wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay attention to the upcoming earnings call on Feb 2. I bet they'll talk about some of these details. Until then, saying anything would be, I suspect, materially significant non-public information.

The company can make an official statement making it public at any time. Releasing information to the public is not restricted to earnings calls, but they generally don't have incentive to do otherwise.

Regardless, the lawyers will never sign off on it.
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