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Google lays off its Python team

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Re: Google lays off its Python team

#41

Post by bsimpson »

vineyardmike wrote: post #24
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #2

The 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.

Yes it’s common. At Google and across America. When Google did its massive 12k person layoff they moved a lot of those roles to places like India. They had another tranche of layoffs that were “delayed exit” to train those Indian employees.

Disney famously did this, I think it was tech support for their Florida parks.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#42

Post by jsiepkes »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #17
nineplay wrote: post #13

> 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?

The poster lives in NL so not sure what to make of these statements.

The name may be Dutch but are you sure he lives there? Apparently (according to one of his own comments) the new team is located in Munich.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#43

Post by algaeselect »

filoleg wrote: post #32
vineyardmike wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On the internal memegen site, where people post and vote on memes, the AWU folks (they have a red logo around their profile picture, so easy to identify) are basically Debbie Downers. Constantly posting comments or memes shitting on the company. Whatever it is, see red logo around profile picture, you know it's going to be a "this company sucks" comment.

They very much give me the vibe of the "late stage capitalism" 23 year old reddit type. I remember one post from a guy complaining about how the company abuses its employees because in the EU everyone gets so much more vacation. I guess he didn't compare his US salary to EU salaries. Checked profile, tenure: been at company 6 months, and already complaining.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#45

Post by karolist »

elintknower wrote: post #39
pclmulqdq wrote: post #3

Outside 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?

Honest answer, only C++.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#46

Post by yadaeno »

darth_avocado wrote: post #5
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #2

The 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.

Looks like the new roles in Munich, if I’m reading the thread right? Could be more than just offshoring? Why not do India or some other cheaper place instead of Munich which isn’t cheap and has relatively strong labor protections?

Just for this specific team. They are “defragging their global footprint” and moving roles to Mexico City, Bangalore, and Germany (probably to to go after gov contracts).

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#47

Post by compiler-guy »

vinni2 wrote: post #44

Just curious what does a Python team do? It doesn’t make sense to dedicate a team to a programming language.

Of course it does. Pretty much every FAANG, and many smaller ones, have teams for every programming language they consider important. Google has C++, Rust, Python, Java, JavaScript, and others (although I've heard that several of these teams were hard it in this round.)

To take a basic example: Google has a team that works inside LLVM and Clang to improve the code it produces for Google's specific workloads. (Often these help all of LLVM's clients.) But if this team is able to make a search query faster by even 0.01% a year, at Google scale that saves literally millions of hours in compute across Google's fleet. And millions of hours of compute is millions of dollars in power, space, and need to expand.

This is true of all the other language teams at Google too.

The Python team builds a better python by fixing upstream bugs, reducing the memory it consumes and so on. It upgrades the internal installation of Python to the newest versions, ensuring that the upgrade is smooth and doesn' break the using teams.

It contributes proposals for language features to upstream, ensuring that Google's use cases are at least considered.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#49

Post by LeafItAlone »

jsiepkes wrote: post #42
LeafItAlone wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poster lives in NL so not sure what to make of these statements.

The name may be Dutch but are you sure he lives there? Apparently (according to one of his own comments) the new team is located in Munich.

One of the posts has

> as do I, in .nl

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#50

Post by fuzzfactor »

zem wrote: post #37
fargle wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

>"wind up your current life and leave the country"

Isn't that what so many people do in their own country in order to come to the US on a work visa to begin with?

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