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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

#181

Post by vineyardmike »

modeless wrote: post #87
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many parts of the architecture can be reused - in Alexa terms, all of the “skills” that integrate the assistant with various other services. IMO one of the main problems with assistants is that I don’t know what skills are available or how to invoke them. It’s like I’m a wizard who has to memorize all the spells I could be casting. It never happens because I don’t care enough. I think LLM’s could potentially…

"Skills" will be obsolete very soon. AI agents will use the same software tools and services that humans do. They won't need special separate AI-only interfaces. I'm not excited about the Rabbit R1 as a hardware device but their software vision is exactly right and there are new startups coming out of stealth seemingly every day now attacking this problem.

Skills are just APIs that conform to a similar look. We'll definitely continue to have AI-only or developed-for-AI APIs for future "agents" to act against. They probably won't spend much effort formatting text to sound good to a person, but the infrastructure is here.

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

#182

Post by sulam »

StableAlkyne wrote: post #139
kaashif wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then that country would become an extremely unattractive place to hire employees. Massive incentive to do whatever you can to only use contractors or whatever. Somehow classify your employees as self employed, something like that. Maybe it wouldn't even be a loophole: everyone would just have to actually go freelance and have no employee protections. I wonder if any country has anything close to layoffs being illegal…

> Then that country would become an extremely unattractive place to hire employees Works fine for France, it's very hard to do layoffs there, to the point that a common myth is that they're illegal there. 7th largest GDP. Unemployment rate is at 7% (about 2x the USA), but it's also not the existential risk it is in the US - you are given 75% of whatever your pay was for up to 2-3 years. > Massive incentive to do what…

I have a close friend who works for a largish French company and runs their engineering team. They are expanding their engineering team and are considering anywhere but France. The statistic I was told is that the non-salary costs for an engineer in France are so much higher that the equivalent person in NYC would be 40% cheaper. London is even better and is likely where they are going to land their new tech hub.

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

#183

Post by pests »

vineyardmike wrote: post #178
hulitu wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do agree that the set of actions I use Google assistant for is pretty static and are the same ones everyone else uses it for: What's the weather? Set my alarm? What's the first item on my calendar? Play XYZ on Spotify... But I don't see this at all as a "failed experiment" So since 10 years, all it can do is play some music and tell the weather, all of this only online, so it is not a failed experiment. /s

Yea! A product that has become pervasive in most households in America, that does it's one task, and tries to do it well. The problem is that companies built out these organizations and marketed these products as the next step of computing after mobile, and it's just not that easy to monetize. My washer/drier, "all it can do" is spin clothes around and apply heat. I paid a lot more money for that "failed experiment".…

Why involve voice at all? Sounds like it needs about 4 buttons.

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

#184

Post by pests »

sokoloff wrote: post #154
modeless wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess where we disagree is "very useful". If Google Assistant stopped working tomorrow I would hardly care at all. There are a couple of scenarios where it's slightly more convenient than using my phone (assuming I don't encounter one of its many failure modes) and that's about it. I'm sure the hands free aspect is important for certain people in certain situations but I think the vast majority of people just don't…

Amazon alone has sold over half-a-billion Alexa-enabled units (around 10 of them to me). I think people see more than $30 of value in them, at least as their revealed preferences suggest.

Yeah, my crock pot and ceiling fan are "Alexa-enabled". That's two.

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

#186

Post by Leherenn »

StableAlkyne wrote: post #139
kaashif wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then that country would become an extremely unattractive place to hire employees. Massive incentive to do whatever you can to only use contractors or whatever. Somehow classify your employees as self employed, something like that. Maybe it wouldn't even be a loophole: everyone would just have to actually go freelance and have no employee protections. I wonder if any country has anything close to layoffs being illegal…

> Then that country would become an extremely unattractive place to hire employees Works fine for France, it's very hard to do layoffs there, to the point that a common myth is that they're illegal there. 7th largest GDP. Unemployment rate is at 7% (about 2x the USA), but it's also not the existential risk it is in the US - you are given 75% of whatever your pay was for up to 2-3 years. > Massive incentive to do what…

I think you have a bit of a rosy view here. It works, but there are serious downsides.

Salaries are low, unemployment was high for a long time (and still is, especially for the youth), companies make massive use of contractors (via big consulting companies) and getting a permanent contract is very difficult (without which getting a mortgage is pretty much impossible).

Once you have your permanent contract, it's fine, but for newcomers to the job market, it's hell.

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

#187

Post by mmcallister »

happyopossum wrote: post #84
necheffa wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TCP/IP is so well defined because the engineers on these small teams are the ones publishing the standards. It isn't like they are simply reading a spec out of an existing document and coding up a conformant program.

> standards. It isn't like they are simply reading a spec out of an existing document and coding up a conformant program. Err, yes - that’s what 98% of modern TCP/IP development work is. There aren’t frequent new RFCs for TCP - it is established, standardized, and stable.

The other 2% keeps engineers fairly busy, I imagine. Custom congestion control algorithms come to mind

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

#188

Post by fnord123 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #178
hulitu wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do agree that the set of actions I use Google assistant for is pretty static and are the same ones everyone else uses it for: What's the weather? Set my alarm? What's the first item on my calendar? Play XYZ on Spotify... But I don't see this at all as a "failed experiment" So since 10 years, all it can do is play some music and tell the weather, all of this only online, so it is not a failed experiment. /s

Yea! A product that has become pervasive in most households in America, that does it's one task, and tries to do it well. The problem is that companies built out these organizations and marketed these products as the next step of computing after mobile, and it's just not that easy to monetize. My washer/drier, "all it can do" is spin clothes around and apply heat. I paid a lot more money for that "failed experiment".…

> A product that has become pervasive in most households in America

You think Google home has over 50% penetration?

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

#189

Post by rockskon »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #25
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.)

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/

Federal government is mostly a miserable place to work if you enjoy up-to-date tech and flat organizational structures with high autonomy to get your work done. Also a miserable place to work if you enjoy earning money.

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

#190

Post by jiqiren »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #74
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.)

I retired from Apple a few years ago but still follow the company. I am not aware of any layoffs at Apple. Others have pointed out that Apple didn't go on the same hiring boom that other companies did during Covid.

Also retired from Apple (FIRE). I never worked so hard or got paid so much in my life. Would recommend AAAAAaaa+++++ would do again
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