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Google lays off its Python team

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Re: Google lays off its Python team

#261

Post by Sleepful »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #7
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.

How do you "protect" a job?

Look up "protectionism", the USA has historically frowned upon other less-developed countries when they implement protectionist policies, they go as far as censoring them from the international market. So it would be very incongruent if they suddenly did that for their own workforce.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#262

Post by CydeWeys »

bsimpson wrote: post #40
Rapzid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Seattle is actually in the tier below SF and NYC, which makes its pay around 10% less. However, it's mostly a wash when you consider that Seattle doesn't have state income tax, so your net is roughly the same in both places.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#263

Post by zem »

CydeWeys wrote: post #258
zem wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i reckon we simply got offshored, since they're now building a whole new python team in munich, though i don't know whether for cost reasons or to expand the languages presence in the munich office or both.

Why would they lay off the existing team first, rather than spin up the new team, have the old team train the new team, and give old team members a chance to move countries if they wanted?

i honestly don't know, except perhaps to say "this is what google is now". your "rather than" is definitely how it used to be done in the past.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#264

Post by twobitshifter »

nytecode wrote: post #81
mihai_maruseac wrote: post #66

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

Python is only used for prototyping within google. All production ai code is run on c++

Even still, the need to prototype does not go away.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#265

Post by CydeWeys »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #157
bndr wrote: post #149

Why not just retrain the python team to another language? I mean, software engineers are not really language specific, they can learn other languages if needed.

They were maintaining Python itself, likely very well (as one would expect) compensated. It’d be a waste to have these devs do product development.

All SWEs at the same level at Google are making the same compensation (with some exceptions for high-flying AI researchers). They Python SWEs certainly weren't making more than anyone else.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#266

Post by CydeWeys »

vineyardmike wrote: post #23
peppertree wrote: post #19

I 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…

I would support the AWU if they were actually monomaniacally focused on worker issues like they're supposed to be (specifically I'd love to see a main focus on preventing offshoring). But instead it seems like they spend most of their time fighting the same kind of culture wars you see on college campuses, most recently Palestine. I don't agree with their views on that issue, and thus they've turned me off completely. They just overall strike me as young, immature, overly idealistic, and not actually suited to run a broad union that should be able to appeal to most of the employees (which is what is required for the union to actually be useful).

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#267

Post by twobitshifter »

I can see a team doing python migrations being less needed once the hard work is done. The warning sign here is not that work was shifted, but that Google didn’t have another python project here that they needed people for. Google should be full of potential AI applications using python and existing employees would be the most cost effective way to build teams for those projects. This seems to indicate that Google has given up on investing in R&D.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#268

Post by bbrake »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #52

This is standard recent Google. A year or so ago, they laid off GCP upper tier support to replace them with cheaper workers. PS: I won't say which MAAN_, but the recruiters are half based in India now. Coincidentally, it's a MAAN_ that laid me off previously in a relatively recent timeframe rather than attempt to find me another home internally. Brain explodes. Perhaps MAANGs need to focus more on long-term sustainab…

Moving things to india sounds like a great idea, except the 13-15 hour difference in communication. it's all well and good until you're in Cupertino and taking an 11:30 pm call because they have 0 hours of overlap... guess you can force them to work US hours, but that goes to culture as well.

Are they trying to show that India's workplace is more compliant and they'll just do what corp types will tell them?

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#269

Post by Sleepful »

alkibiades wrote: post #154

lol so this guys takeaway is “capitalism bad”. even though capitalism is what got him his cushy google job to start with

Cushy or not, everyone likes to feel that they can trust the people that they work for. Everyone is equally upset when their job is off-shored, especially if they were sold the idea of pouring themselves on the job. This feels equally harsh for the Personal Assistants with a 60k salary that get off-shored for half the price.

I agree that just shouting "capitalism" is really poor commentary though, now everything that involves money is called "capitalism" for some reason, even though every single place that organizes around money has this basic incentive of cheaper labor. "Capitalism" or "not so capitalism". :shrug:

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#270

Post by kortex »

realyashnag wrote: post #104

Curious. Are other corps funding open-source python dev?

Microsoft actually funds a lot of cpython work and 3rd party libs, IIRC they have played a big hand in the recent speed improvements, JIT work, the pyright type checker, and a bunch in the AI/GPGPU space like ONNX.

Dropbox has historically done a lot for python, idk how current that is. Netflix has a huge python codebase but I'm not sure what they contribute.

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