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Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

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Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#31

Post by toomuchtodo »

danpalmer wrote: post #27
toomuchtodo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federal government. No equity, but stability. Best place to take shelter during economic uncertainty or bearish conditions imho. Rode out the 2008 GFC at a DOE lab. https://www.usajobs.gov/

And you get bonus days off any time congress needs to raise the debt ceiling!

Sometimes better than random layoffs because someone needed to juice the stock price.

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-layoffs-cut-jobs-exce... (“A major Alphabet investor said the company should cut even more jobs and address 'excessive' pay in the wake of mass layoffs”)

(Edit: retracted an unnecessarily snarky statement)

(I admit Congress needs to get its shit together)

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#32

Post by CrimsonChapulin »

lgleason wrote: post #17
sytelus wrote: post #13

Wow... What is going on it tech? We are just 10 days in the new year and every day there has been surprise layoffs! Unity Twitch Several startups And now.. Google! This is at the same time when stocks are almost all time high :).

Employees are a companies most valuable assets. All that a company has to do is to lay off a bunch of them and it realizes that value with a higher stock price :). Edit: in case anybody missed the nuance, this comment is meant as satire.

By that logic monetary value is a company’s most valuable asset.

Edit: I understand it was satire.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#33

Post by modeless »

aspectmin wrote: post #29
modeless wrote: post #21

I don't use any feature of Google Assistant that wasn't present in the original Android voice search feature over a decade ago. And the few features I do use haven't improved in any way that I've noticed. In fact I feel like reliability has regressed. Google could have fired almost the whole team years ago and my user experience would not be different today. I consider voice assistants to be a failed experiment. It's…

I would counter that voice assistants are not a failed experiment. I would suggest that Amazon and Google’s execution of said experiments have failed. I am extremely excited about the potential of projects like the Rabbit R1 and Humane.

I agree, I just think these new projects based on LLMs should be considered a different category, AI agents or something. The traditional grammar-based voice assistant architecture used by Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, Bixby, etc is an abject failure, and not for lack of trying.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#34

Post by rwc »

aspectmin wrote: post #29
modeless wrote: post #21

I don't use any feature of Google Assistant that wasn't present in the original Android voice search feature over a decade ago. And the few features I do use haven't improved in any way that I've noticed. In fact I feel like reliability has regressed. Google could have fired almost the whole team years ago and my user experience would not be different today. I consider voice assistants to be a failed experiment. It's…

I would counter that voice assistants are not a failed experiment. I would suggest that Amazon and Google’s execution of said experiments have failed. I am extremely excited about the potential of projects like the Rabbit R1 and Humane.

Things don't seem to be going well at Humane, either: https://www.fastcompany.com/91008117/ai-pin-humane-layoffs

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#35

Post by Shank »

netdebugg wrote: post #16
schaefer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps write it up as an open letter/blog article and link it here??

I prefer just getting those bugs addressed. A lot of times writing these blogs and open letters just brings some attention to the blog/article and the real issue never gets addressed. Plus at least 2 of these would involve me sharing internal details which I prefer doing only through the official bug reporting channels.

If you file something through FA, the advice in the community lately has been to re-file the bug against every beta of the OS and every new version of the OS until it's resolved. If you have any new information at all, re-file the bug with the new version. Apple's bug triage team doesn't route things that are old/ancient/sitting in the system forever. Your bugs probably haven't reached the team yet.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#36

Post by anifru »

Ivoirians wrote: post #9

Doesn't Google do that thing where if your team becomes redundant, they don't lay you off, they give you some time to find another team if you choose to transfer?

Are you referring to the 60 days (from WARN act) to find another team before getting removed from the company? If so, yes, but imagine the difficulty of finding another team to take you while the company is actively shedding roles.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#37

Post by razodactyl »

Why lay-off instead of repurpose?

Will we consider smartphones as "Personal Assistants" anytime soon? AI has advanced considerably in terms of what can be processed locally but the restructure seems a bit over the top considering it's still the same concept in a broader sense.

It's like laying off a team of developers simply because you changed branding.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#38

Post by wilg »

neilv wrote: post #22

So what's a good employer now, now that Google has been losing the reputation for treating employees well? (Multiple rounds of laying off people isn't treating only those people poorly, but also increasing stress for the people who remain, knowing they can suddenly be laid off as well.)

In your opinion what is the proper way to do a layoff? Or if any layoff is a problem, how do you prevent companies from hiring too quickly or whatever?

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#39

Post by cvhashim04 »

razodactyl wrote: post #37

Why lay-off instead of repurpose? Will we consider smartphones as "Personal Assistants" anytime soon? AI has advanced considerably in terms of what can be processed locally but the restructure seems a bit over the top considering it's still the same concept in a broader sense. It's like laying off a team of developers simply because you changed branding.

> Why lay-off instead of repurpose?

Appease investors probably

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#40

Post by danpalmer »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #31
danpalmer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you get bonus days off any time congress needs to raise the debt ceiling!

Sometimes better than random layoffs because someone needed to juice the stock price. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-layoffs-cut-jobs-exce... (“A major Alphabet investor said the company should cut even more jobs and address 'excessive' pay in the wake of mass layoffs”) (Edit: retracted an unnecessarily snarky statement) (I admit Congress needs to get its shit together)

Hey both of these suck for everyone involved, I was just trying to point out that government work is not without its own issues. You may be right about government jobs being more stable, you're certainly less likely to just lose your job. They do tend to pay significantly less though from what I've seen.

I'm from the UK so while we do have layoffs, like much of Europe we have relatively good employment protections. The government here don't tend to do layoffs, but do tend to use contractors significantly more than most businesses and do flex their contractor base up and down.

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