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Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

nytimes.com

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Re: Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

#71

Post by BoxFour »

reaperducer wrote: post #62
BoxFour wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful what you wish for: Many of those highly talented individuals will likely end up channeling their skills into areas that one could view as equally negative societally, such as hedge funds or defense contracting (like Palantir). This isn't to justify the current state of advertising, but rather to express skepticism that dismantling an industry will lead talented individuals to willingly accept a significant…

Many of those highly talented individuals will likely end up channeling their skills into areas that one could view as equally negative societally Or they could go the other way. Just like after previous bubbles. When the real estate bubble burst and took a good chunk of the financial industry with it, plenty of people went into healthcare, or the arts, or started their own small businesses without the goal of taking…

> When the real estate bubble burst and took a good chunk of the financial industry with it…

Didn’t a large amount of those finance people just end up at big tech or in crypto? Plenty of news to be found suggesting as such (that people who previously would’ve gone into finance are going into big tech or crypto instead).

Which, if true, sort of just proves my original point.

Further the list of successful startups from that era aren’t exactly a list of things that people universally consider good for society (lots of gig economy startups, for example).

Re: Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

#72

Post by laidoffamazon »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #38
laidoffamazon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual defense contracting (Boeing/Lockheed, not Palantir) are hugely societally positive in defending the homeland. Unfortunately, Google engineers likely think of these companies as employing lesser people, mostly because they genuinely do pay very poorly.

Which homeland? My view of society extends beyond american borders, and it is not improved by the US drone bombing teenagers a world away.

The United States is the sole superpower and the only bulwark against illiberalism and authoritarianism so that one

Re: Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

#73

Post by Jensson »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #68
verteu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess it's because Amazon doesn't have a reputation as a happy place to work.

Perhaps, but neither does Facebook and I’ve seen reporting about their layoffs that’s similar. I think it’s because Amazon engineers are seen as lesser/lower class. The people that write for the NYT know their classmates from Yale and Penn that work in non tech and tech roles at Google, but they don’t know any UTenn grads that work at Amazon as SDE3s. Thus, they’re seen as people that don’t matter.

Facebook copies Googles culture, except the hard to fire part. Facebook do fire people much more than Google does, so there everyone already lived under fear of getting fired. At Google very few feared getting fired, I remember the big outcry because a guy was fired after having stayed for 10 years at a level where Google expected him to get promoted, so it took a decade of being far below mediocre to get fired, not something to worry about for most people since most people will get promoted to the expected levels or leave on their own long before they would get fired.

But after that outcry they did reduce the expected level to where basically nobody would get fired unless they were absolutely incompetent, so there really never were any significant amount of people getting fired for being mediocre.

Re: Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

#74

Post by Jensson »

fullshark wrote: post #70
jplusequalt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why we as a society put up with this yoyo-ing economic model will never make sense to me. Nobody likes recessions, or layoffs, yet we're all complicit with them.

Economic shocks are simply unavoidable. Supposedly the goal is to avoid the yo-yo effect of them, e.g. try to control the rate of inflation and unemployment so it doesn't feel so chaotic. The COVID shutdown and money print to deal with it kind of worked on that front if you consider just how disruptive it all was and how people are still going about their lives, contributing to GDP.

The covid money injection caused this bubble though, these companies hired like crazy during that time and now did layoffs to a more normal level. It might have been a necessary stimulus for other sectors, but the tech sector really didn't need it so there it just caused a bubble.

Re: Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

#75

Post by saalweachter »

lapcat wrote: post #46
saalweachter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tricky part is that there's "living within your means" and there's "living within what your means could be if you made significantly less money than you do now". You can live just fine -- hell, still be in a top income percentile -- on half of what a well compensated big tech SWE gets in their total comp package. But just as software expands to fill the hardware available, so do lifestyles expand to fit the budge…

> it's still a whole thing, a stressful transformation that takes a large investment of time and energy to achieve. Unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, I wouldn't call it a "transformation". I would call it "normal". If there's a transformation, it's from a person who has to be concerned about budgets to a person who makes so much money that they don't need to care. I guess I'm just "lucky" that I'v…

What, you think having experienced the stress of having to work multiple jobs or barely getting paid enough to survive or having an employer who looks at you as a subhuman cog makes someone more willing to leave the comfort of being given enough money you don't have to care about it while having a decent work/life balance and an employer who at least pretends to care about you?

We're not playing "who has it worse" here; I'm not asking you to shed tears for the poor SWEs going from mid-six-figures to low-six-figures.

I'm telling you that changing jobs is already stressful, and very few people are going to chose even more stress by moving houses or cities, etc, over just getting another soulless corporate job that pays well enough to make everything go back to normal, if they're given the option.

Re: Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

#76

Post by fullshark »

Jensson wrote: post #74
fullshark wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic shocks are simply unavoidable. Supposedly the goal is to avoid the yo-yo effect of them, e.g. try to control the rate of inflation and unemployment so it doesn't feel so chaotic. The COVID shutdown and money print to deal with it kind of worked on that front if you consider just how disruptive it all was and how people are still going about their lives, contributing to GDP.

The covid money injection caused this bubble though, these companies hired like crazy during that time and now did layoffs to a more normal level. It might have been a necessary stimulus for other sectors, but the tech sector really didn't need it so there it just caused a bubble.

I'm aware, but the money injection didn't come from a desire to inflate the bubble, more a desire to avoid the calamity from shutting down the world economy for 3 months.

I do think there's an issue where the Fed is absolutely terrified of asset prices dropping and contagion spreading on all fronts, now that they have found this intervention works, but that's kind of tangential to my point, that the goal actually is to avoid the yo-yo, with the chief metrics of unemployment and inflation to guide them.

Re: Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

#77

Post by phreeza »

AbstractAirways wrote: post #43
phreeza wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Google becomes less of a target for barely-qualified people who want to rest and vest, I'm all for it. Why though, do you work there?

Not anymore. I left years ago. As an anecdote, right before I left I did my standard self-assessment for performance season. I to my horror I realized that I had accomplished nothing for an entire year. This was largely (I believe...) due to factors outside my control: I did lots of work, but nothing came of it due to delays, procedural slowdown, project cancellations, etc. Instead of reprimanding me for this lack of…

Right, I'm sure that happens, but what I wonder is why you hope for fewer coasters to apply at Google (and by corollary apply at other companies)?

Re: Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

#78

Post by scarface_74 »

reaperducer wrote: post #67
scarface_74 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I would still recommend any early career person to “grind leetcode and work for a FAANG”. The money is too good to give up. I would also tell them to live below their means and save like crazy while they were there and to immediately sell their stock once it is vested and diversify. FWIW: I didn’t get into BigTech until 46. It served its purpose and I have no desire to go back to any large company. But again, I’m…

The money is too good to give up. Not everyone is motivated by greed.

But surprisingly, as far as I know, no one has found a treatment for people’s addiction to food, clothes and shelter.

The reality is that there is a huge difference between what your average CRUD/enterprise developer makes - which describes the vast majority of the 2.7 million developers in the US - and what you can make working at BigTech.

Your average CRUD developer in most major cities in the US is going to top out at $160K - $170K. That’s about what I saw returning interns get as full time offers when I was working at Amazon. Amazon pays less than Google

Re: Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

#79

Post by BoxFour »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #29
BoxFour wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful what you wish for: Many of those highly talented individuals will likely end up channeling their skills into areas that one could view as equally negative societally, such as hedge funds or defense contracting (like Palantir). This isn't to justify the current state of advertising, but rather to express skepticism that dismantling an industry will lead talented individuals to willingly accept a significant…

Actual defense contracting (Boeing/Lockheed, not Palantir) are hugely societally positive in defending the homeland. Unfortunately, Google engineers likely think of these companies as employing lesser people, mostly because they genuinely do pay very poorly.

> Actual defense contracting (Boeing/Lockheed, not Palantir) are hugely societally positive in defending the homeland

I hope you recognize that many people view it as similar to advertising, a necessary evil of an industry gone too far.

Re: Google's once happy offices feel the chill of layoffs

#80

Post by BoxFour »

jebarker wrote: post #22
BoxFour wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful what you wish for: Many of those highly talented individuals will likely end up channeling their skills into areas that one could view as equally negative societally, such as hedge funds or defense contracting (like Palantir). This isn't to justify the current state of advertising, but rather to express skepticism that dismantling an industry will lead talented individuals to willingly accept a significant…

I don't think exciting is the right word here. What's being called for is careers that are deemed worthy/virtuous according to the OP.

I agree. By 'exciting,' I assume OP thinks people will go for roles that are socially beneficial but typically lower-paying, eg for NASA or similar.

My experience is that individuals with a passion and aptitude for such work are likely already engaged in those fields, rather than in adtech.

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