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The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

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Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#131

Post by bawolff »

kerblang wrote: post #20

You work for google because you make insane money and have cachet you can take anywhere and get hired instantly. Hell, you can pull in 10 million funding for your startup idea if you like. Or just retire, get a boat, go sailing. Of course all of this had to go bad. Come on now. Stop whining already. I work in the IT sewer fighting rats. I will always have work. I'm filthy and I smell bad, but I'm doing fine, and no,…

> I work in the IT sewer fighting rats. I will always have work.

So umm you are claiming that you are part of a class that will always have work and stability unlike the people who work at faang. (Debatable but lets take the claim at face value). You are literally saying that we should not care about the plight of googlers because they are in a different class, which is subject to drawbacks which people like you don't face because of your class. And that that makes them privliged. Did i get that right?

That is an interesting definition of privlidge you have there.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#132

Post by renewiltord »

themitigating wrote: post #18
fnfjfk wrote: post #12

I understand that layoffs are a blunt instrument and it is unlikely that all of the “right” people were affected, but Google has long been known as the FAANG to go to if you want to chill, coast, and vest. No Facebook PSC, no Amazon stack ranking, no Netflix “sports team”. Obviously it is team dependent, but it really has that reputation. The well-known tradeoff is that getting a promo to a post-senior level is borde…

"but Google has long been known as the FAANG to go to if you want to chill, coast, and ves" Is that a fact or just your perception?

Everyone in the Bay knows that Google is the retirement home. I knew people who worked there who left because no one on their team would write anything. Show up at 11, lunch at 1, leave at 4 after meetings.

And you know that when people call it "best WLB" they're talking about something specific.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#133

Post by lolinder »

themitigating wrote: post #125
dchftcs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fact that it is the collective perception. Whether people actually get to chill is team dependent but from my understanding you can't really do 30 hour weeks at Facebook, Amazon or Netflix, but it's more possible at Google.

"Collective perception" is not meaningful evidence

The statement you challenged was "Google has long been known as the FAANG to go to if you want to chill, coast, and vest". Additional people chiming in saying they, too had this perception is evidence that that is something Google is known for, and not just by OP.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#134

Post by blastonico »

mc32 wrote: post #102
themitigating wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but Google has long been known as the FAANG to go to if you want to chill, coast, and ves" Is that a fact or just your perception?

That's what people there tell me. I'm sure it depends a lot on what part of Google people work for, but yeah, come in late, leave early, long lunches, work-outs, meetings to discuss meetings... I don't know how they got things done. In plenty of companies things that took a team of seven with a manager could be accomplished by two. So, yeah, the reputation has some known basis but may not reflect all of Google.

They don't get things done. They buy companies that got those things done: YouTube, Google Docs, Android, etc.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#135

Post by borroka »

abadger9 wrote: post #44

I'll say something I wish someone told me in my 20's: most leadership/upper management is poor. I've worked at FAANGs, a unicorn, and currently @ a company that recently IPO'd. Most people in product leadership neither really understand how to make original ideas that effect the product at a high level or the technical details of the product, their responsibility is to be good stewards of a certain revenue stream and…

To paraphrase, it is not that most leadership/high management is poorer than expected, it appears poorer even when it is expected to be poorer than expected.

At some point between the ages of 20 and 30, you begin to believe that, although it is difficult to point out what they are better at than you or your peers, in order to be in the position they are in, "leaders" must be better in some way--say, in the technical skills, the strategies and tactics used to achieve a goal, the personality that inspires subordinates--than you and your colleagues.

Then, perhaps slowly, perhaps suddenly, thanks to age, experience, and new, maybe more jaded, eyes, you realize that the words, strategies, and perspectives communicated or elaborated by those "leaders," which you thought were nonsense but had decided to consider something you simply did not have the tools to understand, were, in fact, nonsense, delusional thinking, intellectual garbage.

And, at that point, you may try to understand how it is possible for such important companies to have such incompetent leaders. But that is another story.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#136

Post by datalus »

wilg wrote: post #71
tschellenbach wrote: post #14

The market for talent is quite competitive. Companies need to pay market rates and have a staff that's large enough to compete. In a market where capital is cheap they will bid up rates and hire more people. If you don't do this you give your competitors a chance to beat you. Companies might be able to slow it down a little bit, but not entirely. Similarly in a market where capital is expensive they need to reduce th…

> The bigger problem is that in the USA healthcare is tied to employment. That's messed up You can certainly get health insurance without being tied to employment. Without COBRA or any other workarounds. Has everone forgotten Obamacare? (Single payer would be nicer though.)

Not sure about your state's Obamacare, but all the plans offered in my state only cover in network providers. Whereas my employer's plan also covers out of network which I used for therapy. Now I'm stuck paying full price and unemployed for therapy as COBRA was way too expensive to keep going, even with my severance, because who knows how long it's going to take to get a job. It's been pretty slow so far and I've spent everyday sending my resume around and shaking down my network.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#137

Post by ClumsyPilot »

fnfjfk wrote: post #47
paxys wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google had that reputation when compared to Amazon and Facebook, but that is hardly a bad thing considering the culture at those companies (and it's not like they are doing too hot right now either despite all that stack ranking and overwork). There are plenty of large tech companies with real "retirement home" reputations – Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Oracle, VMware, Adobe, Intel, HP, Dell... There's no comparison betwee…

Are places like HP and Dell really comparable to Google on TC? You can also chill out working at a quiet local bookstore or other “BaristaFIRE” jobs that people like, but you’re not getting paid $500k to do it… (Microsoft definitely competes now)

Sp what is your metric, amount of chill per unit compensation?

Seems like you are putting quite subjective segmentation of the market there.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#138

Post by renewiltord »

CydeWeys wrote: post #42
logicalmonster wrote: post #11

Is there any publicly available commentary on what kinds of roles these big tech companies such as Google were chopping, and in what percentages? Were these layoffs mostly recruiting/HR types, various managers, marketers, etc, or programmers? Did they chop 70% of their recruiting/HR types, but closer to 1% of their techies, or vice versa? Analyzing these layoffs IMO might be best done through the lens of what kind of…

Pay attention to the upcoming earnings call on Feb 2. I bet they'll talk about some of these details. Until then, saying anything would be, I suspect, materially significant non-public information.

To make stuff not MNPI the company just has to release it. Then it just becomes public information. They can release literally everything if they want to.

Just clarifying the MNPI thing.

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#139

Post by fatih-erikli »

komali2 wrote: post #94
fatih-erikli wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like employed by google means being unemployed if they are going to be laid off whenever the managers want. So I don't want to work in Google

Wait, how is that different from any other s Corp in a country without layoff protections?

So maybe their h-1b has just expired

Re: The Google layoffs are about personal ambition and poor leadership

#140

Post by ClumsyPilot »

mc32 wrote: post #102
themitigating wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but Google has long been known as the FAANG to go to if you want to chill, coast, and ves" Is that a fact or just your perception?

That's what people there tell me. I'm sure it depends a lot on what part of Google people work for, but yeah, come in late, leave early, long lunches, work-outs, meetings to discuss meetings... I don't know how they got things done. In plenty of companies things that took a team of seven with a manager could be accomplished by two. So, yeah, the reputation has some known basis but may not reflect all of Google.

> meetings to discuss meetings

Thats not chill, that's exhausting and common at many dorectionless organisations with poor leadership. As an IC its not something yoy can fix

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