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Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#11

Layoffs are always counter-productive as going forward employees take fewer risks, to evade being the one laid off. Layoffs kill innovation.

Intel is only around today because the leadership was decisive enough to lay off most of the company early in its history, and they then proceeded to release a whack of innovative microprocessor products after these massive layoffs.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#12

Layoffs are always counter-productive as going forward employees take fewer risks, to evade being the one laid off. Layoffs kill innovation.

Intel is only around today because the leadership was decisive enough to lay off most of the company early in its history, and they then proceeded to release a whack of innovative microprocessor products after these massive layoffs.

Is that sarcasm?

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#13

Layoffs are always counter-productive as going forward employees take fewer risks, to evade being the one laid off. Layoffs kill innovation.

Intel is only around today because the leadership was decisive enough to lay off most of the company early in its history, and they then proceeded to release a whack of innovative microprocessor products after these massive layoffs.

I don't know whether your comment is true, but the way to do layoffs while keeping innovation as high as possible is to do one round that is big enough that you can and do give guarantees to the employees that are left behind that they have jobs for life. Multiple rounds of layoffs is what really takes your innovation to zero.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#14
post #10

>“Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our co-workers while making billions every quarter,” the [union] group said in a post on the social media site X. I mean no disrespect, but fundamentally a company is only able to do one of the two things: either hire, or fire people. Nobody is taking this away from them, and why would they?…

A company can do a whole lot more than hire or fire people

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is only around today because the leadership was decisive enough to lay off most of the company early in its history, and they then proceeded to release a whack of innovative microprocessor products after these massive layoffs.

Is that sarcasm?

It's what happened. Intel was primarily a manufacturer of DRAM memory chips in the early 1980s. They pivoted hard to CPUs instead when it started looking like the IBM PC clone platform is a winner and their 386 chip could define the industry.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is only around today because the leadership was decisive enough to lay off most of the company early in its history, and they then proceeded to release a whack of innovative microprocessor products after these massive layoffs.

Is that sarcasm?

What do you mean?

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#17

> laid off employees who worked on ... the Pixel phone. That sounds weird to me. Pixel phones has grown very fast in the last years and I don't se how it can be seen as anything but a great success.

Google has been cooperating with Samsung very closely lately. Maybe there's a pressure on Google from Samsung and the other big Android vendors to scale down the Pixel effort.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#18
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel is only around today because the leadership was decisive enough to lay off most of the company early in its history, and they then proceeded to release a whack of innovative microprocessor products after these massive layoffs.

I don't know whether your comment is true, but the way to do layoffs while keeping innovation as high as possible is to do one round that is big enough that you can and do give guarantees to the employees that are left behind that they have jobs for life. Multiple rounds of layoffs is what really takes your innovation to zero.

Well it is true and there's a book which goes into the details, Andy Grove's "Only the Paranoid Survive", and it's a fantastic page turner.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/66863

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#20

Layoffs are always counter-productive as going forward employees take fewer risks, to evade being the one laid off. Layoffs kill innovation.

Intel is only around today because the leadership was decisive enough to lay off most of the company early in its history, and they then proceeded to release a whack of innovative microprocessor products after these massive layoffs.

How is this comparable to Intel? Is Google struggling financially ?
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