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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

#51

Post by candiodari »

lupire wrote: post #33
Matticus_Rex wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Random, or any kind of large-scale layoffs make everyone in the company each other's enemy. It destroys cooperation to the point that most people actively start trying to sabotage each other (because climbing the ladder is no longer the primary concern: you must make sure there's people above you on the firing list)

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

#52

Post by logicchains »

racl101 wrote: post #19
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #8

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.

At least Ballmer was funny and charismatic.

Developers, developers, developers!

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

#53

Post by candiodari »

ben7799 wrote: 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?

Judging by what's happening to Google's search results, perhaps adding another 70k employees would have been the better tactic.

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

#54

Post by aaomidi »

quadcore wrote: post #43
Workaccount2 wrote: post #17

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…

Unless you look at things with the money lense. Seems to me Search must be yielding like crazy. Android is too. User trust is high. Youtube is booming even though tiktok. I think the man is doing great. At least he is printing real money.

Momentum is hard to slow down though. All the new products absolutely have sucked.

At this point though, I don't think layoffs are going to do anything. His approach has fundamentally, and pretty permanently changed Google. It is very easy to ruin the culture of a company top-down, it is nearly impossible to fix it once its been broken.

Google isn't going anywhere anytime soon, it will create strong returns for years to come, but it will no longer be a front-runner in innovation and technology. Although, Google's momentum is no where near as what IBM, Oracle, etc were since they don't have any large-company dependency on them that can't be disrupted.

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

#56

Post by candiodari »

seydor wrote: post #48
gnarlouse wrote: post #16

Google search has gotten so bad I’m genuinely considering trying bing

google still controls the search bars in android and ios. At most, openAI+apple could conspire to take their chunk away

There's people that use those bars? It could be Baidu, those search bars, and in 10+ years of using ios and android (ipad + android phone), I'd never have noticed.

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

#57

Post by belter »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #17

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…

Wait a minute!

Hire thousands of half genius from the best Universities in the World.Torture them with algorithmic party tricks, give them infinite budget and time for years... And....When they are unable to create competitive products outside of the usual cash cow, blame the CEO?

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

#58

Post by hnaccount_rng »

candiodari wrote: post #46
ycdxvjp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not working for me. And, I'd like to add, "Hey Google" has also effectively stopped working, despite me having a Pixel phone (I used to use it to dial hands-free. That's no longer possible). And it's literally every feature, even the "hey, Google" recognition has become a crapshoot.

I have seen a similar degradation with my AirPods Pro. However I was thinking that to be an artifact of them aging and the mics to just be degraded…

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

#59

Post by khazhoux »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #17

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…

> Search sucks.

Subjective, but rings true.

> Canceling products left and right leaving no consumer faith in new offerings.

I don't think vast majority of Google users see it this way. The canceled products might be popular in HN, but have comparatively few actual users.

> Cloud platform being an absolute terrible experience, even if you have a rep inside too.

This seems to be consensus, yes.

> Internal power groups crippling anything that isn't deemed sufficiently DEI compliant.

Is this actually true? Seems meme-ish.

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