Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep in mind this is going to screw your performance rating / bonus / promotion situation. You’re incentivized to love fast.
Yes, love fast and make things. An engineer's ethos.
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Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group
141–150 of 335 posts
Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not an announcement as much as a legal obligation to disclose, and news sources just pick up on it.
This is correct. In many jurisdictions, when a certain number of employees are laid off in a given amount of time, they are required to disclose this to the government. For example, California has the WARN act: https://www.shouselaw.com/employment/warn-act.html
Note there's also a federal WARN act (link above mentions California's WARN is modeled after federal, with additional protections for workers):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...
Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do they have you whiteboard asinine college CS algo problems in the internal version?
Entirely dependent on the team and hiring manager. And the technical requirements of the role you want to move into versus your prior role. If you want to move from working on gmail to working on the android kernel, I imagine there's gonna be some whiteboarding. (Not that gmail is simple software, but just picked two examples that came to mind with different domain expertise).
@ericd, what programming roles don't deal with trees or recursion?
I've dealt with trees in every single domain I've been in, frontend or backend, whether doing "real" programming or building with no-code tools like FileMaker. I've seen admins and accountants build trees and recursion with spreadsheets. I don't think these things are as "gatekeeping" as you imagine.
Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate to be that guy, but I want to point out that more people not always equate to more output. E.g. if you create a "controller" role, they would try to justify their existence and create more work/overhead for others. And you would be surprised how many roles in big bureaucracies are "controller" roles by nature.
It's good to point it out. In the third world, if you hire 100 people for a 5-man project, people end up doing nothing but their own things. It's bad but it's obvious that something is going wrong. In the first world, if you hire 100 people for a 5-man project, people end up to invent and justify 100-man's job. Everyone's role would become their identity, everyone is busy and hardworking. The output is high, they wou…
This is so true man! I've seen this first hand both ways.
Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a very smart tactic that also, as a side effect, brings the average quality across all engineers at the company up. Smart people with desirable skills would have no problem finding another team within Google to transfer to, while bottom tier performers won’t, thus leaving Google.
It'd be interesting to study. My intuition is that over the long term it'd cut in the opposite direction--smart people will move on while bottom tier will linger as long as possible.
Bottom tier can't linger long if they have 90 days to find a new job or get fired.
Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just that. Google simply doesn't have it in their DNA to deliver the kind of high-touch support required of remaining #1 in this business. They've been hiring the pushy sales types to deliver one end of it but not the delivery people required on the other.
Not to mention that Google is so full of “smart people” (tm) that their sales force is made up of people who probably would never stoop low enough to do lift and shifts as phase 1. They would probably want you to move everything to k8s and rewrite your entire stack. As opposed to MS. If a business has a legacy app that requires a 10 year old version of Sql Server running on a 12 year old version of Windows, they will…
They've recently brought in a bunch of Oracle people to run GCP so, I'm pretty sure anything is on the table at this point.
Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've personally been through this twice at Google. The company definitely provides a very attentive set of resources to help you find a new position within the company, but I've always been able to find a new project on my own. That said, the more flexibility you have the easier it is to find a new position. This naturally favors some people over others. In my most recent case, it ended up being a bit more challengin…
So... Like... What do you do in the interim? Not work, look for teams, and still get paid a shit ton of money? Do you do some training on the side? Work on a side project? How long does it take to find the new team?
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Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's a couple: 1. Google's tech staffers are supposed to be some of the top people in the world, and Google spends a considerable amount of resources hiring them. It seems foolish not to keep them on the bench a bit, unless Google foresees that it will be shrinking soon. 2. The people not laid off will very much notice their colleagues being zapped the moment they're not needed. They will rationally tilt towards le…
The thing is, if they bench too many workers, they will also be ridiculed: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2920903/google-really-k... In fact, this action is probably part of a conscious effort to move away from "benching".
The article is about VPs getting a forced sabbatical after a reorg. No one changes their business tactics due to jokes on a TV show. It's totally normal and nothing anyone is moving a way from.
It has nothing to do with rank and file people getting laid off.
Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention that Google is so full of “smart people” (tm) that their sales force is made up of people who probably would never stoop low enough to do lift and shifts as phase 1. They would probably want you to move everything to k8s and rewrite your entire stack. As opposed to MS. If a business has a legacy app that requires a 10 year old version of Sql Server running on a 12 year old version of Windows, they will…
They've recently brought in a bunch of Oracle people to run GCP so, I'm pretty sure anything is on the table at this point.
Bringing in people from Oracle as your sales guys. With the great reputation that Oracle has in most organizations what could possibly go wrong?