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Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

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Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#81

Post by VirusNewbie »

hiddencost wrote: post #59
tibbydudeza wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thomas Kurian is awesome - trained by Larry Ellison no doubt :).

The most consistent thing I hear in the hallways is "I really hope they don't make TK the CEO." People in cloud are profoundly unhappy. It's scary.

I work in GCP, I don't get the sense that people are unhappy here. I think it's more likely that GCP, unlike the rest of google, is more of an amalgamation of many corporate cultures, (both good and bad).

A little bit more Amazon/Oracle, a little less traditional 'Google'. I think most people work 45 hours a week. I don't see anyone slacking off. But it's not a death march, it pays well, there are tons of perks still.

shrug It's not some magical fantasy land that some people make google out to be, but it's a nice job with interesting problems, smart coworkers, and it pays well.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#82

Post by rogerbinns »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #27
disillusioned wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo _might_ be the sole survivor here... they are ABSOLUTELY trying their damndest with it. It's remarkable to not go a single day without seeing a driverless Waymo doing its thing. (I live in Central Phoenix, they're _everywhere_.) The core concept is being proven pretty well, in markets with good weather and good roads at least... whether they can achieve some sort of critical mass that allows them to recoup any…

I always imagined Google licensing the tech as opposed to spinning up a fully fledged national taxi service.

The most valuable owner in this space is whoever you communicate with to tell them where you want to go. They get to offer you a price, they get to offer you alternative destinations, and they get to offer you "deals". For example that means that a different supermarket can make an offer you come to them instead, or you can be offered a different price should a different route be taken, a ride share happen, a journey delayed or brought forward, and numerous other possibilities. It isn't too dissimilar to typing what you are interested in to a search engine. That will be extremely lucrative.

But for it to work, that entity will have to have ultimate control over where the vehicle goes. Everybody is going to want to have that ultimate control, and not cede it to someone else. That would make licensing not really work out since Google would retain control.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#84

Post by ra7 »

jeffbee wrote: post #72
ra7 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard each Jag costs ~$250k fully loaded They said it costs as much as a “moderately equipped S-Class” 3-4 years ago. At the time, that would be ~$140k. That includes the base car cost, sensor hardware, compute, redundant vehicle systems and their integration. So not quite $250k, but still steep. I think the Waymo-Geely robotaxis coming next year will be interesting cost-wise. > That being said, it's not gener…

There's a significant amount of cope involved when someone steps up to say that Waymo only works on rails, doesn't work in conditions where they have operated for years, etc. It is necessary to continue believing that Tesla is still in this race.

Yeah, there’s a mind boggling amount of misinformation about Waymo. I’m sure it’s driven by financial and emotional interest in Tesla. It’s strange.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#85

Post by KeplerBoy »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #78
KeplerBoy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck finding useful projects for 180k people. That's just a ridiculous amount of people and projects.

I don't think you realize how many products Google has. Cruise had ~ 4k employees at its peak. Waymo is just one tiny project in Google. Splunk had 8000 employees, GCP has a competitor to it. Bigquery is a competitor to Snowflake, who has around 5,000 employees. Databricks had 4k employees, which GCP also has a competitor to. This is just a fraction of the software just in cloud .

I do realize Google has a lot going on. They have to, to keep all these people even remotely busy.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#86

Post by quatrefoil »

tra3 wrote: post #4

This caught my eye, total employees - 2022: 190,234 - 2023: 182,502 Total increase in revenue of 10 billion. Not sure what conclusion to draw from this, but being a software engineer I found employment count interesting. Though 5% change in head count seems hardly major.

Revenue increase of 10 billion is about 3%, essentially tracking inflation.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#87

Post by rdsubhas »

jeffbee wrote: post #8
resolutebat wrote: post #5

Google Cloud made $864M in profit in a single quarter, more than ever before. Google Bets lost $86 3 M in the same period, much less than ever before.

I wonder if that is good news. You can look at it either as they slowed how much money they pour into the moonshots incinerator, or they stopped investing in potential unicorn lines of business.

I guess the point being made by that comment is, it could be an accounting / book-shifting trick.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#89

Post by epolanski »

QuercusMax wrote: post #75
ehsankia wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't that just bad management / prioritization? Isn't the solution to just shuffle people to more useful projects instead of firing them? Especially at a company that hires general engineers who can work on any project, and also at a company that has a lot of internal tooling which makes ramping up new engineers slow and tedious. They'll probably grow back to 190k within a few months, but those 8k new hires will…

In my org at the Goog, we didn't have any layoffs, but we also aren't expecting any new headcount any time soon. Projects that need more staff are expected to cannibalize it from other projects under the same VP. I feel like this is actually a good way of doing things, and wish Google did this more broadly. Just think if everyone who would have been laid off was instead transferred to a project that needs their skill…

Google used to be exactly like that up to a decade ago. Talent was considered core for the org so you would be relocated rather than cut off.

Values shifted with the focus on earnings and growth getting less impressive.

Re: Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2023 Results [pdf]

#90

Post by hypothesis »

ojbyrne wrote: post #66
username135 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more than just SWE's employed at google. Custodial, food service, administration, operations, HR, etc...

A lot of those are going to be contractors employed by agencies.

Just wait, they will outsource to “AI agencies”.
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