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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

#71

Post by anizan »

belter wrote: post #57
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?

[dead]

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

#72

Post by com2kid »

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…

My hot take is any executive who cannot think up of meaningful projects for some of the world's top engineering and research talent should be let go for lack of imagination, if nothing else.

Hiring people is expensive, building infrastructure is expensive, large organizations should be able to make use of that talent.

Even if it means spinning teams off in to separate companies and then "acquiring" them back later (with huge handsome payouts for the team) Microsoft used to do that all the time! It works well, instant funding with startup energy, and everyone is motivated to succeed because you get rich if you pull it off!

Google should figure out their inefficiencies, violently work to solve them so that developer productivity is increased, and then make smaller independent teams that can build on existing infrastructure that empowers teams to get things done faster.

Instead they are just laying people off.

TBF very few large organizations (if any) have figured out how to maintain productivity as they grow. Communication and political overhead becomes so high that large organizations grind to a halt.

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

#73

Post by minwcnt5 »

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.

Sundar is just a poor fit for a top leadership role in an innovative and growing company. He comes across as a timid people pleaser, not a commander. It always felt like someone else was really in charge, like the company was actually being run by his reports managing up.

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

#74

Post by crowcroft »

This is a distraction from the real problem.

Yes, 'cost savings' in the form of layoffs is bad given the amount of money Google is making. But the real issue is that they hardly seem to be really narrowing their focus and pushing out something that captures people's imagination and gives them a reason to believe in the company.

I believe the technical folks have mostly done their job across the years. The product, marketing and comms folks seem to be MIA though. Not every technical feat Google accomplishes will be a home run, but between ChromeOS/Pixelbooks, Stadia, Bard (so far), Nest/Smarthome their should be at least one winner. IMO in every case I think you can trace the failure back to bad product launches, poor PR and comms, and poor marketing. Very rarely is the tech 'bad'.

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

#75

Post by hangonhn »

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.

I've actually met one of his high school friends once. He made a really interesting comment about Ballmer: He was the only guy who was on both the football team and the math club. In fact at Harvard, he was the manager of the football team and got a degree in applied mathematics. He was a nerd who was also really athletic or vice versa. Oh and he's a first generation college graduate. Maybe he wasn't the best CEO for Microsoft but he's still a really impressive guy on a personal level.

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

#76

Post by SauciestGNU »

electrosphere wrote: post #60
gnarlouse wrote: post #16

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

I've been using DuckDuckGo for more than a year now. It's OK, I did it because I do not like how powerful Google has become.

I've used it for nearly a decade now. I almost never use anything else or the !g command. I find that I manage to get great results but the migration from Google was tough. I think Google uses your profile to infer a lot about your search context, and ddg doesn't have all that data about me, so I've had to tune my queries to be more explicit as a result. I think it's a great product and I'm happy to be using it.

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

#77

Post by seydor »

candiodari wrote: post #56
seydor wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

i mean the omnibox

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

#78

Post by from-nibly »

belter wrote: post #57
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?

Yes. You can't just hire a bunch of smart people and be surprised when a product doesn't get made. That's not how building stuff works.

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

#79

Post by from-nibly »

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.

Just because a glacier is huge doesn't mean you would say it isn't melting.

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

#80

Post by spacemadness »

belter wrote: post #57
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?

You’re showing very little understanding for how the world works with this reply. Do you think developers have free rein in big companies?
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