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Google lays off its Python team

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Re: Google lays off its Python team

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a MAAN_

I'm guessing "Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google" but with a "_" for some reason

Why is Netflix still included? They should be kicked out, I haven’t heard anything tech about the, for years now.

Then we can go with Meta Apple Google Amazon, or MAGA for short. Ok, not a good look that one.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can call me bigoted or racist, I don't care. The fact is with moving technical roles to India quality plummets. But I can totally see how in some beancounter's narrow mind this makes perfect sense.

In this case its Munich I think based on previous comments. Also, in India things depend on who you hire and how much you're willing to pay (like everywhere else). If you pay a salary you expect in rural Alabama in the Bay Area for a tech job you'll attract shitty devs as well.

You comment isn't wrong. I've observed the same thing but only when things get outsourced to low cost consulting shops. If Google pays decently in India (which I think they do), they'll get much better devs. There's a pretty strong start-up ecosystem and dev culture but as with everything you need to pay good $$ - as in not 10% of bay area pay but closer to 60-70% of it to attract top talent.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you "protect" a job?

Tax breaks for hiring citizens. Tariffs for hiring non citizens. Force companies to follow all the same employment laws for employees and contractors in other countries.

The problem is that companies will simply change the countries they incorporate in. Will SAP be tariffed for hiring Germans (where the company is based) rather than Americans? If not, you are giving SAP an unfair advantage over its American competitor.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#244

Google is an AI first company Google's future is strictly tied to its AI products All AI is written with Python. Google lays off all Python team. Segmentation fault

Okay, let's debug this logic. Google is AI-focused, true, but they're not a one-trick pony. Python's great for Al, but it's not the ONLY language. And mass-firing your Python team seems...counterproductive. Segmentation fault indeed!

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, it makes me wonder how hard it would be to use this divide to actually move to the EU and get residency. Then again, with so many countries having to beef up military spending and facing economic headwinds you really have to question whether all the social / quality of life programs that make europe more livable than the US would be sustainable long term either. Who knows maybe in 30 years Americans ultimat…

If you work a white-collar job the US standard of living is substantially higher. If you're a laborer the opposite is true but you also probably have a harder time getting in to Europe in the first place.

I really do wonder if our material standard of living really contributes to happiness though? I don't want more 'stuff' I want guaranteed access to healthcare. I want worker and consumer rights. I want a country that recognizes climate change is a real problem and is doing something about it. I want a more fair and representative government actually beholden to the will of the people. I don't need a McMansion, a luxury car, I want a better society. I feel like Europe, or at least the Nordics, have that, and if my parents were not here in the US, I think I'd happily move.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing "Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google" but with a "_" for some reason

Why is Netflix still included? They should be kicked out, I haven’t heard anything tech about the, for years now. Then we can go with Meta Apple Google Amazon, or MAGA for short. Ok, not a good look that one.

Because they still pay $500k cash.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#247
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess Instagram, Threads, Reddit, Uber, and Spotify aren’t serious long term applications.

I'm not sure i'd cite Reddit as a positive example of such a thing.

You wouldn’t cite Reddit as a positive example of successfully using Python to run a large scale, high traffic application?

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#248
post #27

i got caught up in this :( really sad about the whole thing; this was by far the best job i've had in my 20-year career (including other teams at google), and i do not know if i will ever have another one as good. we were a chronically understaffed team supporting a large part of the python ecosystem at google, and we did some amazing work over the years.

Seriously, what is the reason for this move? The language is so good and well known that they don't need a dedicated team to do these activites you talked about? Or are they hiring cheaper workers? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40171125#40176438 I don't understand such a move, because all AI is developed in pytorch. I think that google uses JAX and pytorch.

In my mind it would make sense if there are some laws to which they want to adhere, perhaps something EU-related (GDPR? IDK), and moving to Munich might be a good way of prioritizing. Perhaps something US-related they don't like, see for example that TikTok is an AI company and yeah, or the KYC-related stuff [1]. However, I am talking out of my ass, I don't really keep up with laws, upcoming bills or anything like that. :shrug:

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40158752

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#249
post #224

Google is an AI first company Google's future is strictly tied to its AI products All AI is written with Python. Google lays off all Python team. Segmentation fault

People are focusing on verbage and precision, but are missing the point. Having a well-maintained Python tooling is essential for _any_ company who does AI. While smaller companies can get away with open source solutions, for bigger companies it is unavoidable to have teams dedicated to maintaining and supporting Python tooling. This announcement is troubling, and may indicate one of the two: 1) Google is in dire sit…

I suspect it’s 2. Local organizational optimizations to garner promotions for middle-managers and without regard for systemic impact.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#250

Google is an AI first company Google's future is strictly tied to its AI products All AI is written with Python. Google lays off all Python team. Segmentation fault

> All AI is written with Python. Only high-level is written in python, low level is Cuda that is a form of C. Also, you would think the first to replace workers with AI would be the AI companies like Google.

CUDA is not C, it is a polyglot stack for GPGPU, using C++ memory semantics, with C, C++ and Fortran compilers, and anything else able to target PTX bytecode, including Julia, .NET, Haskell, Python JIT, Java,...
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