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Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

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Re: Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

#71

Post by ecosystem »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #26
ecosystem wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relative company stock performance dominates executive compensation (iirc, 80% of Alphabet CEO pay is relative outperformance of S&P500), so copying other large public tech companies is an outcome of the incentives.

A compensation scheme like this encourage companies to take unnecessary risk to outperform the market.

That would be true if new products could make appreciable top line impact/growth during the horizon for CEO comp packages, which is typically 3 years, and if it was easier to make new revenue than slash headcount.

Re: Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

#72

Post by sokoloff »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #66

Google is no longer on Glassdoor's best places to work list. Best Places to Work 2023: 1. Gainsight 2. Box 3. Bain & Company 4. McKinsey & Company 5. NVIDIA 6. MathWorks 7. Boston Consulting Group 8. Google 9. ServiceNow 10. In-N-Out Burger Best Places to Work 2024: 1. Bain & Company 2. NVIDIA 3. ServiceNow NOW 4. MathWorks 5. Procore Technologies 6. In-N-Out Burger 7. VMware VMW 8. Deltek 9. 2020 Companies 10. Fidel…

I predict that VMWare as a "best place to work" is not going to age well given the Broadcom takeout of VMWare.

Re: Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

#73

Post by hatenberg »

Look. When your execs summarily execute the morale of the entire sales org to position investor narrative, you know the company is in deep shit.

Gemini Pro (future) beats GPt4 (today) by single digit percent when you use COT 32x - aka spend insane amounts of money. It’s bullshit.

The layoffs will continue until growth can be achieved. Which in AI is a long time away for them.

Re: Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

#74

Post by [deleted] »

sidcool wrote: post #47

I always had a special place for Google in my heart, since 2008. And never thought they would lay people off. It's sad really, despite I never having worked with them. I feel pretty gloomy about tech career overall. Is it even worth continuing to learn fundamentals and stuff?

[deleted]

Re: Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

#75

Post by Agingcoder »

arnaudsm wrote: post #69
Agingcoder wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see their massive investments in AI as some kind of vision. However, I don’t think they’ve been able to turn said money spending into more than research/demos ( deep mind included ) even pre-openAI ? Edit : I understand they use it extensively internally, I meant for regular user facing products ( like openAI did with ChatGPT )

Paying brilliant researchers then refusing to ship their work happened at Kodak, Xerox, and now Google. History repeats itself

Well I understand they use it internally ( job scheduling, data center optimization, code analyzers, etc ) which to some extent is shipping and does provide you with an advantage ( basically you reduce your operating costs).

Re: Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

#76

Post by sokoloff »

pkos98 wrote: post #43
ertian wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it ever really have vision? Honestly, Google kinda seems like it suffers from ADHD: it bounces from one shiny new project to another, quickly losing interest in anything that doesn't immediately take off. In the old days, that was enough: their little experiments really _did_ take off. Now, in a more crowded field, it takes more discipline and focus to get things off the ground...and discipline and focus are two…

Which of their own projects took off? E.g. Android and Maps were acquisitions IIRC. Maybe Google+?

Search sure took off. Gmail also.

Re: Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

#77

Post by foogazi »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #66

Google is no longer on Glassdoor's best places to work list. Best Places to Work 2023: 1. Gainsight 2. Box 3. Bain & Company 4. McKinsey & Company 5. NVIDIA 6. MathWorks 7. Boston Consulting Group 8. Google 9. ServiceNow 10. In-N-Out Burger Best Places to Work 2024: 1. Bain & Company 2. NVIDIA 3. ServiceNow NOW 4. MathWorks 5. Procore Technologies 6. In-N-Out Burger 7. VMware VMW 8. Deltek 9. 2020 Companies 10. Fidel…

What do we do with this info?

Is In-N-Out hiring SWEs ?

Re: Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

#78

Post by tommiegannert »

pkos98 wrote: post #43
ertian wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it ever really have vision? Honestly, Google kinda seems like it suffers from ADHD: it bounces from one shiny new project to another, quickly losing interest in anything that doesn't immediately take off. In the old days, that was enough: their little experiments really _did_ take off. Now, in a more crowded field, it takes more discipline and focus to get things off the ground...and discipline and focus are two…

Which of their own projects took off? E.g. Android and Maps were acquisitions IIRC. Maybe Google+?

Chromebook?

Their cloud?

However, you need vision to know which company to acquire, too.

Re: Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

#79

Post by gandalfgreybeer »

jzombie wrote: post #68
guiriduro wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G disruption already arrived, with ChatGPT and Bing copilot, search now has a superior challenger/disruptor it has lacked for over a decade of G incumbency.

Yep. I personally use ChatGPT far more than Google search these days.

I’ve started to do this more often recently as well. Do you employ any specific approach for prompting to get what you want more consistently?

Re: Google lays off hundreds in hardware, voice assistant teams

#80

Post by yonisto »

I admit that I never understood what was going on with Google's voice assistant. As a user for the past 4-5 years or so (mainly using smart home devices), it hasn't shown improvement in quality; at times, it even seems to regress. What were all those people doing day to day??? This is a serious question.

I remember thinking the same thing about Twitter: Why do they have all those employees? And, with an 80% reduction in workforce, they are still operating. Yes, the new management is ruining the business side of things, but the service is still functional in the same way as it was 3 years ago.

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