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Google lays off its Python team

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Re: Google lays off its Python team

#281

Post by emodendroket »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #245
emodendroket wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 luxu…

I'm not in a position to tell anyone what to value in life, but I don't personally feel that insecure about my access to healthcare or workplace conditions, and I also feel that a lot of Americans have an unrealistic idea of what life in other countries is like or how their political situation is. For instance, does Norway take climate change more seriously than the US? In some sense they may, but on the other hand they're the world's third-largest exporter of natural gas in the world, after Russia and Qatar. Europe has its own spate of nationalistic far-right politicians, anti-immigrant politics, austerity, and other social ills we don't much think about when using them as a counterpoint to ourselves. We're all participants in a global system, after all.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#282

Post by jck »

emodendroket wrote: post #279
jck wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm grew up in India and went to grad school in the US and worked there. Eventually, I transferred to the UK cause I didn't get through the US work visa lottery. I'm much happier here because of the reasons you mentioned. I feel like my friends in America have are basically amassing wealth to insulate their liberal bubble in a conservative land. However, they might not be able to outweath the recent success of right…

I don't feel like the UK is in an especially strong position to look down at the US for being too conservative or doing too little for its poorer citizens but I'm glad you've found a place that suits you regardless.

I agree that UK isn't as left wing as I'd like, but there is really a huge difference between what's considered right wing between the UK and the US. For instance, the NHS. Poor or unemployed people get the same access to healthcare as I do.

In my personal experience, there is also less stratification and less overt racism or bigotry. However, they're pioneering new and clever bigotry against trans people now and that concerns me.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#283

Post by kgwgk »

UncleMeat wrote: post #116
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…

People who work at Google are indeed very fortunate. We are paid large sums of money. I feel like I've found a pot of gold and give significant portions of my income away to the less fortunate directly because I feel that so much of my pay is based on luck. However, Google employees only capture a fraction of Google's profits. Google made twenty five billion dollars in profit in Q1. Annualized that is 100b. Google ha…

> If Google was really existing in service of its employees rather than its investors, as it would be in a socialist system

What socialist system is that where a company is run from the benefit of its employees?

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#284

Post by dongping »

allarm wrote: post #277
throwaway345435 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely hard to lay off in Germany, so existing Google employees in Germany are, on the margin, nearly free, and so can be reassigned (with something else being done with their current project).

How hard is it? As in - they have to let you work for the duration of the notice period hard? Honest question.

Aside from the mandatory negotiation with the employee co-determination (works council), the layoffs "must be determined according to the principles of social selection [...] (t)his is often perceived as a major obstacle [...] it would be disastrous to have to dismiss top performers simply because they are younger than other employees or have been recently hired."

[Source] Random link from the Internet so that I don't need to translate: https://www.emplawyers-muenchen.de/wp-content/uploads/files/...

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#285

Post by emodendroket »

jck wrote: post #282
emodendroket wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like the UK is in an especially strong position to look down at the US for being too conservative or doing too little for its poorer citizens but I'm glad you've found a place that suits you regardless.

I agree that UK isn't as left wing as I'd like, but there is really a huge difference between what's considered right wing between the UK and the US. For instance, the NHS. Poor or unemployed people get the same access to healthcare as I do. In my personal experience, there is also less stratification and less overt racism or bigotry. However, they're pioneering new and clever bigotry against trans people now and tha…

> For instance, the NHS. Poor or unemployed people get the same access to healthcare as I do.

Sure, and the Conservative Party, who has enjoyed a very long period of uninterrupted rule, has been gradually sabotaging it with the obvious hope that is falls apart and market reforms can be implemented. Most of these differences have more to do with the legacy of the post-War period than anything about the current political situation.

The UK is also significantly whiter than the US is, which is something of a counterpoint to the idea that they're less bigoted, in my view.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#286

Post by sulam »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #225
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then why not MAAANG?. Much better acronym, but then I just say big N.

We can still call Alphabet Google, just like everyone calls X Twitter. Clunky rebrands don't have to be accepted by everyone. Edit: Personally I'm in favor of sorting by present market cap, so it's MANGAM.

Is this a reverse sort?

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#287

Post by nvgrw »

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.

Getting a python readability review seems downright impossible in my org.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#288

Post by twic »

willseth wrote: post #247
twic wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's what i'm saying. The frequency with which the site just loses the plot and fails to load, or fails to carry out some action or other, is orders of magnitude higher than anything else i use.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#289

Post by socksy »

allarm wrote: post #277
throwaway345435 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's extremely hard to lay off in Germany, so existing Google employees in Germany are, on the margin, nearly free, and so can be reassigned (with something else being done with their current project).

How hard is it? As in - they have to let you work for the duration of the notice period hard? Honest question.

As in, they would have to prove, potentially in court, that the layoff was absolutely necessary to actually be about to do it, plus pay an undefined fair severance amount (that people mostly seem to accept as 0.5 * monthly salary * years of tenure at the company), on top of the on-average 3 month notice period, which most companies will give as garden leave in order to not reduce morale even further.

If you can't prove that you need to cut the person for "operational" reasons (e.g. because you're not really getting rid of python tooling engineers), then your best bet is to dangle large cash offers to people in order to entice them to quit.

If they do manage to prove they need to do layoffs, for example when the company is literally running out of money, then they're not allowed to just lay off employees as they like (and definitely not in relation to performance). Instead they have to follow the "Sozialauswahl" which means that factors like whether the employee is supporting a family, is older, etc need to be taken into account.

Then on top of all that, they won't be able to hire people even for completely unrelated roles, for some amount of time afterwards.

So all in all there's a few disincentives for layoffs to be considered as a first action (it's not stopped it from happening at a bunch of companies lately though, Bosch, SoundCloud, Ableton, Native Instruments, Personio, Pitch etc).

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