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Tell HN: Google-Wide Layoffs

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81–90 of 141 posts

Re: Tell HN: Google-Wide Layoffs

#81

As I have been saying for a while Google, Amazon, Facebook, all these companies are on the decline. We have allowed them to become so big that they don't fall fast but it's very apparent that they would have been disrupted if they were normal sized like companies were in the past.

For FB/Meta the decline is very obvious on the technological side as well. Nothing really works properly on their platform. And I'm not talking about their basic user features - I'm talking about the features that make them money.

Ad setup doesn't work, you are hitting random errors on setting up API calls, basic UX and non-functional pixel setups, some weird limits or even plain unresponsive pages.

Just few days ago, talking to their support about ficitonal ad account limit after hitting 5 ad accoutns, they responded to me randomly with system messages in vietnamese - my acc has never had association with vietnamese.

Re: Tell HN: Google-Wide Layoffs

#84

Their revenue growth is still good. Stock price increased. We are in a bad economy for one or two more years, but it already started a year ago. So what could the the reason for this time mass layoff? Section 174?

bad economy? the economy is shit for tech, everywhere else, it's booming. there is a shortage of labor in education, hospitals, government, hospitality, retail

the reason it's shit for tech is the greed of wall street. they want more short term gains

Re: Tell HN: Google-Wide Layoffs

#85
post #20

Google stock is up 56% compared to a year go. And yet Sundar is happy to destroy morale by keeping to fire people. after saying "Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, Says Laying Off 12,000 Workers Was the Worst Moment in the Company's 25-Year History" https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/googles-ceo-sundar-pichai-say...

he's not going to appease rank and file. he's in the pockets of his wall street, private equity bros

Re: Tell HN: Google-Wide Layoffs

#86
post #70
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft did decline. Windows, office MSFT mobile and Xbox have either stagnated at the top or declined. Now, stagnation at a few dozen billions in revenue is still good. But very much legacy company stuff. Microsoft built a whole another company called Azure. Smartly acquired 2 other companies called LinkedIn and Github. Then invested early in the biggest phenomenon of the post covid world - Openai. Google ended th…

Office has stagnated? It's the first thing orgs require third-party apps to integrate SSO for. Office 365 + Sharepoint is a major, major business.

There is no other earth to sell copies of Office to. Very hard to have growth there.

Re: Tell HN: Google-Wide Layoffs

#87
post #86
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office has stagnated? It's the first thing orgs require third-party apps to integrate SSO for. Office 365 + Sharepoint is a major, major business.

There is no other earth to sell copies of Office to. Very hard to have growth there.

By that metric, Slack, Jira etc are finished because they don't sell to alien civilizations.

The number of employees that need Office 365 accounts is always going to be more than the number that need a Figma, Salesforce or chatGPT account.

Re: Tell HN: Google-Wide Layoffs

#88
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this a decent gesture ? Any employer with visibility and cash flow wants to hire engineers. Do you think employers are doing workers a favor and being so nice and humane when they go out of their way and give us poor peons a chance at a job ?

I don’t see how it’s anything that’s not at least a positive gesture. You can have problems with the capitalist system as a whole but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what he wrote. It’s better than nothing. I lost my job when my company closed a few years ago in the middle of the pandemic and I am very appreciative of those who reached out. That limbo of uncertainty even if I could survive for years with wh…

Positive gesture to whom? It looks sadistic to the ones they got laid off from Microsoft

Re: Tell HN: Google-Wide Layoffs

#89

Their revenue growth is still good. Stock price increased. We are in a bad economy for one or two more years, but it already started a year ago. So what could the the reason for this time mass layoff? Section 174?

Unlikely to be section 174

> Google: the tax change was minimal, because Google was voluntarily amortizing software development expenses for most staff, already. This was for all projects that reached “technological feasibility,” which is a milestone products pass before public release.

Source: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/

Re: Tell HN: Google-Wide Layoffs

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that "BigHead" kind of devs are doomed? And why does Google keep laying off people? You would think that they would do the relevant calculations and fire everyone they need to keep the costs down. The multiple rounds speaks of incompetency at Google. Given their unssuccessful attempts at besting OpenAi, it is not surprising. But still it is kind of scary to see how Google has become the old Microsoft a…

Hard to say if BigHead style devs are being affected here. Annual review ratings aren't quite yet finalized, so it is hard to know whether they could be used as input to a layoff system.

What is "BigHead style devs"?
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