> It's almost like capitalism isn't actually good and you shouldn't want to live in the US Strong words from a FAANG employee. Does he think there's another economic system which would give him the same extraordinary compensation package?
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Google lays off its Python team
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Re: Google lays off its Python team
#32I believe this is just a product of US corporate tax laws and high interest rate but I would like to hear other takes on it. Corporations don't want to bring overseas profit home and be double taxed, so they borrow domestically using oversea cash as collateral. High interest rate and strong USD make it less attractive to hire in US.
This is definitely true, but Google pays US employees very well. Layoffs dramatically increase profits. That’s been a meaningful driver of their growth and margin in recent earnings reports lately. There are, of course, many benefits to US hiring - a strong talent pool, maintaining a team in the same region/timezone, etc. Google can easily hire back Americans in a few quarters if they need to. Join the alphabet worke…
> Join the alphabet workers union if you’re a Googler who cares.
I was considering, but after seeing how they operate, I am certain I will be ok without doing so. I am yet to see them accomplish anything meaningful, and behavior of some of their members tripped my “this seems unethical” meter really bad.
I might’ve mentioned that story on HN before, but the rundown of it was that one of my friends was interviewing at Google. He called me the day after one of his interviews, saying that he had a really weird experience, and he wasn’t sure what to think of it.
TLDR: his interviewer was a member of AWU and spent every single second of the interview (that wasn’t spent on working on the coding problem) on trying to sell AWU to my friend (as a candidate/interviewee). All that time that would normally be reserved for the candidate to talk about their experience/projects, ask questions, etc., it was all taken up by the interviewer shilling AWU. My friend was shocked enough by this to warrant calling me, which he never did before with any work-related things.
Had a neutral-positive opinion on AWU until then, and had a neutral-negative opinion since then. And it has only been very slowly going down as the time passes.
P.S. The following part is definitely biased on my end, but the vibe I got from a bunch of interactions with a number of AWU members over the years was the same vibe I get from reddit slacktivists coming from certain subreddits (antiwork and atheism ones specifically). And while I have nothing against the stated goals/purposes of those subreddits, I have plenty against the actual reality of the behaviors of their members. I don’t care about it much, because a lot of them are actual teenagers. But it isn’t good optics for an actual workplace union, when your union members behave like they forgot they aren’t on reddit anymore.
Re: Google lays off its Python team
#33Outside of the ML groups, Google really doesn't like Python and there's very little of it in the codebase. This move isn't surprising in that light. Also, Google is IBM at this point, so I would expect a lot of IBM-like moves.
Correction, outside of the ML groups and anything related to CI/infra. Especially if you remember that Starlark[0] is a dialect of Python. And that’s without going into all the outside-of-g3 code (of which there is a metric ton, especially if you worked with any teams that deal with hardware or third-party/acquisition stuff). 0. https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark
Starlark is not Python. It feels like Python when you write it, but it's very different in a lot of ways that really matter.
A lot of people don't realize that the issues that python haters (myself included) have aren't generally about the look and feel of the language, but about how many sharp edges the language has for maintenance and scaling. Python 4 could fix all of these things if they ever did it.
Re: Google lays off its Python team
#34Outside of the ML groups, Google really doesn't like Python and there's very little of it in the codebase. This move isn't surprising in that light. Also, Google is IBM at this point, so I would expect a lot of IBM-like moves.
>Outside of the ML groups
Google is also going all in on ML (or AI if you prefer).
Re: Google lays off its Python team
#35The post suggests their jobs were offshored. Is this a common practice versus just closing the roles? I feel like US legislators should do more to protect domestic jobs from domestic companies, or else they’ll face the same eventual collapse as in manufacturing.
I believe the replacements were already Google employees. Just not python-team employees. So it's sort of offshoring but not exactly. This really doesn't make any sense to me. When I was there python was a pretty big part of the google internal ecosystem. Each major language there had a team supporting it. Not sure why you would be gutting those teams.
I get what you're saying about them already being Google employees, but this feels like a loophole and not a material difference. I could see this being exploited if there ever were offshoring rules. Just hire your offshores a month or two ahead of time.
That said, I find that most sensitive managerial decisions aren't fully explained right away, if ever. I don't expect someone in this position, especially upset by the change, to know the full story. There's possible extenuating circumstances, such as team performance (even the manager was RIF'd).
Re: Google lays off its Python team
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correction, outside of the ML groups and anything related to CI/infra. Especially if you remember that Starlark[0] is a dialect of Python. And that’s without going into all the outside-of-g3 code (of which there is a metric ton, especially if you worked with any teams that deal with hardware or third-party/acquisition stuff). 0. https://github.com/bazelbuild/starlark
Starlark is not Python. It feels like Python when you write it, but it's very different in a lot of ways that really matter. A lot of people don't realize that the issues that python haters (myself included) have aren't generally about the look and feel of the language, but about how many sharp edges the language has for maintenance and scaling. Python 4 could fix all of these things if they ever did it.
I agree with you on this, but just saying, there is plenty of actual python (not starlark) at Google, all over the most crucial places (which a lot of people who haven’t touched those don’t even realize exist).
Personal example - the fleet of hardware prototypes (that I used to work on) used for hardware-in-the-loop testing (basically the hardware version of CI/CD) was pretty much reliant on python. Anything that was compact enough to be accomplished by a script and generic enough (open this serial connection, write to that memory address, etc.), the de-facto default choice was almost always python.
But I fully agree with you otherwise, in a sense that I haven’t seen much of a gigantic python codebase consisting of a bunch of interconnected python modules, like you would see with other popular languages at Google (e.g., C++/Java/JS).
Re: Google lays off its Python team
#37> It's almost like capitalism isn't actually good and you shouldn't want to live in the US Strong words from a FAANG employee. Does he think there's another economic system which would give him the same extraordinary compensation package?
agree. i can tell it was a bad day for the author and it sucks. but it's irritating to sit there and blame the exact system and company that gave him the exceptional job and pay in the first place. everyone who works in FAANG, if you are drawing an enormous salary and bonus, compared to the average guy, i hope you realize the how fortunate you are. i hope you are putting away, saving, investing, at least 1/3 or 1/2 o…
some of us are on work visas, so "take some time off" would also mean "wind up your current life and leave the country"
Re: Google lays off its Python team
#38I wonder if he blames his exorbitant salary on capitalism too?
Re: Google lays off its Python team
#39Outside of the ML groups, Google really doesn't like Python and there's very little of it in the codebase. This move isn't surprising in that light. Also, Google is IBM at this point, so I would expect a lot of IBM-like moves.
Which languages would you say google prefers these days? But also in light of what an early SWE might want to focus on to maximize career options?
Re: Google lays off its Python team
#40The post suggests their jobs were offshored. Is this a common practice versus just closing the roles? I feel like US legislators should do more to protect domestic jobs from domestic companies, or else they’ll face the same eventual collapse as in manufacturing.
This isn't the greatest submission and lacks any semblance of context. The poster is in Netherlands apparently and the new team in Germany? I have no idea what to make of this.
Google pays people by region. As I recall, SF, NYC, and Seattle get full wages, and other geos get discounted by a certain percentage. If you live in the US but not in one of those metros, your pay could be ~15% lower.
Yesterday's layoffs seem to have been framed as reorgs. Some teams have been wholly dismissed. Some have been consolidated (two teams -> one team).
There does seem to be a pattern that favors people in lower cost regions. For instance, two teams get combined and the higher cost manager is laid off. Or a whole team is laid off, but those duties are being restaffed by people in a lower wage office.