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Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs

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Re: Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs

#31
post #25

Can anyone name one thing of value this dude has actually done in his time in charge. Feel in a few years he's gonna have a worse reputation than Ballmer in terms of squandering potential.

growing chrome from nothing to monopoly-level browser?

He pitched the creation of Chrome, but that was before he was "in charge" of Google

Re: Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs

#32

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-... Nearly $20B in profit in a quarter? Good time for layoffs.

that's irrelevant they overhired and now they are fixing it, and that profit margin will rise with the reduction in compensation they're firing because they can

There shouldn't be much controversy over fixing pandemic-era over hiring. But that's just the public-facing rationale. Betting more heavily on AI tech might be the real reason.

Re: Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs

#33

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-... Nearly $20B in profit in a quarter? Good time for layoffs.

Profit doesn't mean you invested in hiring for the right things in the right departments, especially with as much shift in the overall market as we've seen in the last year.

Neither does random layoffs.

Nor does sitting on thumbs for years and missing the AI revolution, right after inventing it.

Re: Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs

#35

Sundar should have been let go years ago, but I guess the pandemic money explosion made it easy for him to show big returns. But look between the margins and it's clear google is rotting on the inside. Search sucks. Gemini a year behind (despite google inventing transformers). Canceling products left and right leaving no consumer faith in new offerings. Cloud platform being an absolute terrible experience, even if yo…

Ruth Porat IMHO is a worse offender. After the layoffs last year she was like "I was head of Morgan Stanley during the Global Financial Crisis" and Memegen was all "That is not the flex you think it is." Go from ruining the American economy to ruining Google...

Most of the dysfunction within Google comes from management trying to manipulate a finance department that is not-very-bright to loosen their purse strings for their pet projects. There's a lot of "That Slides presentation seems pretty promising, here's another $250M for you" and not a whole lot of understanding of how to build an enduring product.

Re: Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs

#36

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-... Nearly $20B in profit in a quarter? Good time for layoffs.

Maybe he's just optimizing the short-term stock market value so he can sell all his shares.

He has rolling multi year vests and annual trading plans.

Re: Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs

#37

Sundar should have been let go years ago, but I guess the pandemic money explosion made it easy for him to show big returns. But look between the margins and it's clear google is rotting on the inside. Search sucks. Gemini a year behind (despite google inventing transformers). Canceling products left and right leaving no consumer faith in new offerings. Cloud platform being an absolute terrible experience, even if yo…

Idk man Bard has been better than ChatGPT imho.

It has reduced my time spent on Google Search or watching long youtube videos (which is where most of their Ad revenue comes from). Not sure if thats already showing up in quarterly results but it's a hard job keeping those numbers up while this big transition is happening. Doesn't matter who the CEO is.

Re: Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs

#38
post #25

Can anyone name one thing of value this dude has actually done in his time in charge. Feel in a few years he's gonna have a worse reputation than Ballmer in terms of squandering potential.

growing chrome from nothing to monopoly-level browser?

I think that's a rather low bar. Coming off of IE6, any browser that is advertised on the front page of Google just needs to not suck to be successful.

Re: Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs

#39
post #14

I think this is just expected. Google hired way too many people during the pandemic. Really a question of why they thought that was a good idea. They added like 70k employees in about 4 years. For what?

They aren't firing the people they allegedly wrongly hired.

Google is still valued as a growth company. They need to hire everyone they can to build new profitable things.

Re: Google cites 'durable cost savings' as CEO Sundar Pichai warns of more layoffs

#40

Google is still a juggernaut BUT... I don't think anyone here would claim competitor's "AI" isn't going to take a chunk of their search market, would they? Search quality was diminishing for the past few years as it is, but there was no real alternative. Now I'm using ChatGPT as much (or more) than Google. Almost everything about Google Search is mediocre.

Search quality is diminishing because "the web" as a graph of hyperlinked text documents where any domain name is a priori equally likely to contain a gem of information you're looking for, doesn't really exist anymore.
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