Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

andzwa.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 292 posts

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

#211

Post by borroka »

ryandrake wrote: post #190
borroka wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To paraphrase, it is not that most leadership/high management is poorer than expected, it appears poorer even when it is expected to be poorer than expected. At some point between the ages of 20 and 30, you begin to believe that, although it is difficult to point out what they are better at than you or your peers, in order to be in the position they are in, "leaders" must be better in some way--say, in the technical…

Im convinced that a lot of leaders, especially in tech, are leaders not because they are smart or skilled, but simply because they were there early.

This is empirically verifiable and, dare I say it, quite visible.

It is also a virtuous circle: you come in early, you are promoted because there is virtually no one else around, or you are chosen as the best among a group of fairly mediocre people--maybe they use a die to choose who will become the new "leader" of the group--and in a couple of months you go from being just another IC to a rising star.

You are quickly recognized as such and, in an environment with very loose feedback cycles such as management in the technology sector, you are free to fake your way up to the top. As soon as you are exposed, if ever, you can recycle yourself elsewhere as a true and proven leader of vast experience.

Or, assuming you are not very good at leadership in absolute terms, you do a good job anyway because most management is skirting responsibilities, taking advantage, in a good way, of colleagues and the machinery that makes the company work, and, most of all, going with the flow.

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

#212

Post by ismokedoinks »

gretch wrote: post #107
mediaman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given median comp at Google, working at Google is quite privileged. Going to Stanford is likewise privileged. Being privileged isn't an insult, just a recognition of fact.

> just a recognition of fact It's literally not a fact, it's an opinion. Hey what's your job? You don't need to tell me. But I'm gonna go ahead and say you're privileged compared to a rural chinese farmer that has never held a phone.

Welcome to Maoism-Third Worldism comrade

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

#213

Post by prewett »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #153
gretch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just a recognition of fact It's literally not a fact, it's an opinion. Hey what's your job? You don't need to tell me. But I'm gonna go ahead and say you're privileged compared to a rural chinese farmer that has never held a phone.

That farmer might be happier though.

Given how many of them leave their kids with the grandparents and move to Guangdong, etc. to work in the factories and live in bunk houses and send money back home, only seeing their kids once a year during Spring Festival, I think they might not be content. (On the other hand, I guess the ones still farming would be happier, by virtue of self-selection.)

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

#214

Post by Gibbon1 »

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…

> I understand that layoffs are a blunt instrument and it is unlikely that all of the “right” people were affected

Layoffs in this case are merely done to manipulate the metrics used by wall street analysts. That's the only reason they are being done.

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

#215

Post by Gibbon1 »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #153
gretch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just a recognition of fact It's literally not a fact, it's an opinion. Hey what's your job? You don't need to tell me. But I'm gonna go ahead and say you're privileged compared to a rural chinese farmer that has never held a phone.

That farmer might be happier though.

Chinese farmer probably has higher data rates on his phone for less per month.

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

#216

Post by whateveracct »

andsoitis wrote: post #204
metadat wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that management can and does differentiate between the two and only fires the sitters. Life experience tells me this is highly unlikely.

If that is true (managers cannot filter for sitters), then I know which wins: random layoffs vs. surgical firings at scale

I think neither? Or rather, it's a function of 1) the accuracy of managers knowing who is a sitter and 2) the percentage of your company is sitters. If the percentage is, say, 20% and the manager hit rate is, say, 20%..I'd say both moves end up firing more useful people than sitters.

Even if you take it to say managers cannot figure it out and always get it wrong (0% hit rate). Random layoffs are still a net negative even if they outperform managers picking the firings.

It's pretty funny how even without unions, companies have no recourse to me barely working and collecting a quarter mil a year.

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

#217

Post by netheril96 »

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…

Google itself benefited from that image. Many people chose an offer from Google with total comp X instead of another company with total comp Y when X is lesser than Y by a significant amount. In the future, seldom any one will make any such decision. Google has to pay more for the same caliber of people.

Of course, I am assuming that the market will turn around some time in the future. If the market remains this bleak forever, tech candidates no longer have any choices so Google doesn't have to care.

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

#218

Post by nerdponx »

WalterBright wrote: post #208
nerdponx wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many Robinhood users have made more than pocket change without losing it all in a subsequent gamble? And of those who did, how many are not already at an upper income bracket?

Obviously you realize that investing in stocks is risky. Risk is the flip side of making investment gains. Anyone who invests in stocks takes a risk that it tanks. No risk => no gains

You asserted that Robinhood is evidence that "labor" in general has access to "rich-get-richer" mechanisms. My assertion is that this assertion is not valid.

The rich-get-richer mechanism in question is investing pre-existing large amounts of money in investments that are more or less zero risk, specifically from the perspective of the investor's personal livelihood and well-being. This is simply not available to most people, even if they do have access to zero-commission fractional-share trading on Robinhood.

Also, "labor" covers a large amount of people, of whom a very small subset are Robinhood users, and of whom an even smaller subset are legitimately successful traders, as opposed to one-off financial market lottery winners (who are themselves a small subset of all users).

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

#219

Post by nerdponx »

WalterBright wrote: post #209
nerdponx wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it any more in error than equating market price with value?

Nobody has ever found a better way. What you're willing to pay for something determines its value to you.

The assumption that price paid == utility is only valid in the economic equivalent of "assume no friction" from intro-level physics. The equivalence isn't guaranteed to hold once you bring individuals' budget sets and various market distortions into play (information problems, sticky prices, et alia). You see the same thing on the supply side, with the assumption that price sold == marginal cost breaking down in general, except under very specific conditions.

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

#220

Post by hintymad »

> I’ve seen people promoted to VP based on a set or vague promises they haven’t delivered, mass hiring and vanity metrics

So basically Google has become like any big company. If this were true, then it was the a failure of the leadership chain. At some level some leader should be able to call bullshit of this. After all, Pichai should not care about vanity metrics but how Google really grows, right? It's just sad that at certain point that a leader high above simply can't understand every aspect of a business and therefore won't be able to tell if his reports are doing real jobs or chasing vanity metrics.

Post reply on HN