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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

#201

Post by BossingAround »

pests wrote: post #183
vineyardmike wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like all we needed were really fast horses too.

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

#202

Post by hashtag-til »

karmasimida wrote: post #136
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.)

None There is no job security in this market right now. Even if you have a job, you can be replaced quickly. Might as well just don't think about it, and prepare for the worst if you are anxious about the future.

Is that the US reality, I guess?

Based in Europe, I'm not seeing this here.

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

#203

Post by usrusr »

modeless wrote: post #131
sokoloff wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Alexa/Echo-category of devices are meant to be some widely flexible and pervasively useful device from Star Trek, they're a failure. If they're meant to be a usable $30 kitchen timer and music player, they're pretty great.

Google Voice Search used internal codename "Majel" in reference to Majel Barrett, who played the voice of the Star Trek computer. That was explicitly the ambition. It just didn't work out.

But how often did that computer voice-acted by her really do significantly more than "set timer to thirty minutes"? Outside of some broken plots on the original series ("we have insufficient data to know the truth, let's ask the computer who will tell us anyways!"), it really was mostly mundane voice assistant stuff.

(I'm deliberately excluding the "ten words to 'author' a holodeck scene" part, that had always been stretching my imagination a little too far, more "this can't work!" than space travel and transporter beams. Then stable diffusion happened)

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

#204

Post by KeplerBoy »

SenHeng wrote: post #167
danjac wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And suppose you have a spouse with a career that isn't so mobile? Language barriers? Work visas? Elderly parents? Tons of reasons people can't just up and migrate at the drop of a hat.

Millions of people leave their spouses, kids and parents to move to another country for work. Most don't even work anywhere adjacent to tech. We call them migrants. If you're ambitious/hungry enough, you'll do whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes to survive, not to make a few bucks more. There's no reason to chase that money once you are past a certain point. The truth is lambos aren't that practical anyways.

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

#205

Post by hashtag-til »

alphabot314 wrote: post #171
ehsankia wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that doesn't quite make sense. The previous layoff was all across the board and likely trimming lower rated engineers across the whole company. Wiping a specific team, with potentially top tier talent, makes no sense. Are we sure this is actually general engineers? The headline only says "working on". It could be people doing very specific work, like prompt validation, QA, etc.

> The previous layoff was all across the board and likely trimming lower rated engineers across the whole company. This is simply untrue for the Jan 2023 Alphabet layoffs. Entire orgs (>200 FTE) were let go regardless of individual performance.

That's mostly to reduce their legal liability, rather than anything else. Poor management, nonetheless.

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

#206

Post by mega-flop »

alephnan wrote: post #175

The finance industry expects people to work way harder then tech, but the E.V. is usually less. Yes, there are stories about quants making 7 figures, but that's exceedingly rare now compared to the early 2ks. The people who had this aptitude and skillset would have thrived in tech anyways. For example, Jeff Bezos used to be a trader. There was even a window of time where people in finance saw how the grass was greene…

Depends on what you mean by middle class job. Salaried employment in general is inextricably middle class in my opinion.

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

#207

Post by BossingAround »

EMM_386 wrote: post #193
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.)

> 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. How is this not just "business"? That's what Google is. Granted, they make billions of dollars a quarter and it won't hurt them to keep employees around. But every company I've ever worked for over the last decades has laid people off, mad…

I empathize with this POV, and I largely hold it myself. That said, there is something incredibly insulting about having a layoff when making billions of dollars.

Look, if a company is going under, everyone can understand they have to lay off huge number of folks (otherwise, they'll lay off everyone). But laying people off when you're profitable just because you want to be more profitable..?

We need some regulation for it, the problem is what regulation. But I don't think it's controversial to say that this behavior shouldn't be encouraged (despite the fact that it is not illegal, and very few would say that it should be illegal).

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

#208

Post by CWIZO »

aspectmin wrote: post #155
ramraj07 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if any comment that holds Humane in high regard can be taken seriously though.

It’s interesting. I had not heard the latest. Their initial videos looked promising. I ordered a rabbit r1. I can see it’s missing some key functionality (Bluetooth for headphones so everyone doesn’t have to hear?) But… I think it’s an example of a first, promising, step to the era of real voice assistants/agents.

> Bluetooth for headphones so everyone doesn’t have to hear?

This is a critical missing feature. I would never ever use this unless it's in my ear alone.

And I hope it doesn't become socially acceptable to be carrying these around forcing everyone else to listen to whatever this device has to tell the user. There is already far too many noise and inconsiderate people in this world.

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

#209

Post by theshackleford »

danjac wrote: post #169
ChatGTP wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any idea how much software there is in the world? What would you think it's just going to stop being produced and maintained tomorrow? Do you have any idea what the societal costs of such a change would be? Even if it was due to "AI", hundreds of thousands of AI augmented developers are going to be off launching new startups writing more and more software, hacking stuff, it's not just going to end tomorro…

Yep, like I said, whistling in the dark.

So basically you have nothing. Thanks for confirming I guess.

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

#210

Post by mega-flop »

MrDresden wrote: post #196
pm90 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think there are any left. The cycle repeats itself though. The leas desirable Google becomes, the more talent is freed up into startups, some of which eventually will offer something similar.

Problem being that capital is not free anymore, as it has been for close to two decades. As startups run on venture funding, I'm not so sure there will be a wellspring of new positions generated for those hit by the layoffs, this time around.

Which is probably why now is a safe time to release employees into the labour pool i.e. conduct layoffs. There’s a low risk those people will be absorbed into a competitor, until money gets cheap again.
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