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Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

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Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#141

Post by neilv »

kaashif wrote: post #109
JKCalhoun wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an interesting thought: what if hiring were like bringing a child into your family. No, no layoffs ever. It's the equivalent of disowning your own child. If the company begins to sink, so be it, the whole family goes down together (or flee as they see fit). It would make a company hesitant to hire — they would have to think very long term making a decision like that. Perhaps companies would train (re-train) the…

Then that country would become an extremely unattractive place to hire employees. Massive incentive to do whatever you can to only use contractors or whatever. Somehow classify your employees as self employed, something like that. Maybe it wouldn't even be a loophole: everyone would just have to actually go freelance and have no employee protections. I wonder if any country has anything close to layoffs being illegal…

If it's not government-mandated, but a choice of the company, then I don't see how "unattractive place to hire" would apply.

If it were mandated, but somehow nothing else changed, then it would be unattractive to hire. If other things also changed, not necessarily.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#142

Post by sjhdjshdjskhds »

neilv wrote: post #22

So what's a good employer now, now that Google has been losing the reputation for treating employees well? (Multiple rounds of laying off people isn't treating only those people poorly, but also increasing stress for the people who remain, knowing they can suddenly be laid off as well.)

Join a monastery.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#143

Post by sjhdjshdjskhds »

karmasimida wrote: post #136
neilv wrote: post #22

So what's a good employer now, now that Google has been losing the reputation for treating employees well? (Multiple rounds of laying off people isn't treating only those people poorly, but also increasing stress for the people who remain, knowing they can suddenly be laid off as well.)

None There is no job security in this market right now. Even if you have a job, you can be replaced quickly. Might as well just don't think about it, and prepare for the worst if you are anxious about the future.

If you are anxious about future job market, just remind yourself that you would be dead one day anyway.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#144

Post by modeless »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #137
modeless wrote: post #21

I don't use any feature of Google Assistant that wasn't present in the original Android voice search feature over a decade ago. And the few features I do use haven't improved in any way that I've noticed. In fact I feel like reliability has regressed. Google could have fired almost the whole team years ago and my user experience would not be different today. I consider voice assistants to be a failed experiment. It's…

I pretty strongly disagree. First, from an accuracy perspective, Google Assistant has gotten much better. It almost never misunderstands me, even when I'm mumbling and I'm surprised it can understand me. I do agree that the set of actions I use Google assistant for is pretty static and are the same ones everyone else uses it for: What's the weather? Set my alarm? What's the first item on my calendar? Play XYZ on Spot…

I agree that its transcribing accuracy is better (largely thanks to general progress in neural nets rather than anything Assistant did as a product). However transcription accuracy was already surprisingly good many years ago, and in my experience any improvement since has been swamped by actually reduced reliability in understanding intent and performing actions. Ultimately it doesn't matter if it misheard me or got the words correct but misinterpreted the meaning or simply failed due to internal errors. The user experience is similarly bad in all these cases.

Also I don't feel that hotword detection has improved much, and hotword issues continue to be a big pain point for me. I'm sure the team has a dashboard somewhere that shows consistent gains in their hotword metrics, but as a user I don't feel it at all.

The reason I say it's a failed experiment is that the original ambition was to build the Star Trek computer (explicitly, in Google's case: the project was code named "Majel"), and it hasn't worked out. There may be a couple of features that are somewhat convenient (which, again, largely worked fine already a decade ago) but they don't come close to justifying the level of resources spent on these projects over the last decade.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#145

Post by dietr1ch »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #55
anifru wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to the 60 days (from WARN act) to find another team before getting removed from the company? If so, yes, but imagine the difficulty of finding another team to take you while the company is actively shedding roles.

No, Google did not give people that chance last Jan. Even if it had been on the table, imagine 12,000 ppl looking for an internal move at once.

Right, there's few roles for everyone, and tbh I've been looking to switch teams since August and not too many really interesting positions were open.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#146

Post by modeless »

sokoloff wrote: post #134
modeless wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Voice Search used internal codename "Majel" in reference to Majel Barrett, who played the voice of the Star Trek computer. That was explicitly the ambition. It just didn't work out.

OK. I believe you. They accidentally created something else that was very useful but different from what they set out to do. Is that a story of failure or of success? Starbucks launched to sell beans and espresso machines. YouTube launched as a video dating site. Are they also failures?

I guess where we disagree is "very useful". If Google Assistant stopped working tomorrow I would hardly care at all. There are a couple of scenarios where it's slightly more convenient than using my phone (assuming I don't encounter one of its many failure modes) and that's about it. I'm sure the hands free aspect is important for certain people in certain situations but I think the vast majority of people just don't see a lot of value from it.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#147

Post by danjac »

ycdxvjp wrote: post #118
chefandy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking up and moving to the “it” tech city assuming you’ll get hired sounds like a great solution… that is, if you don’t have family obligations, or, really… a family, long-term responsibilities of any kind, a chronic health condition, or lack money to support an expensive interstate/city/country move probably with an increased cost of living while unemployed… and all to assume that your employer is going to cast yo…

It's feasible. I have done it. Moved to Singapore and now in South Korea with family. I think experienced people have lot of interesting options. Many don't look.

And suppose you have a spouse with a career that isn't so mobile? Language barriers? Work visas? Elderly parents?

Tons of reasons people can't just up and migrate at the drop of a hat.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#149

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

sokoloff wrote: post #104
modeless wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I just think these new projects based on LLMs should be considered a different category, AI agents or something. The traditional grammar-based voice assistant architecture used by Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, Bixby, etc is an abject failure, and not for lack of trying.

If the Alexa/Echo-category of devices are meant to be some widely flexible and pervasively useful device from Star Trek, they're a failure. If they're meant to be a usable $30 kitchen timer and music player, they're pretty great.

I think way too much money has been sunk into those projects if their ambition is just to be a $30 kitchen timer and music player.

Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant

#150

Post by danjac »

sytelus wrote: post #13

Wow... What is going on it tech? We are just 10 days in the new year and every day there has been surprise layoffs! Unity Twitch Several startups And now.. Google! This is at the same time when stocks are almost all time high :).

It's the end of an industry as we knew it.

There will be demand for developers in some very specific sectors and specialities, and some legacy code support for a while, but likely most of us will be out of work within the next few years.

Some people are claiming "things will pick up again Real Soon Now, you'll see" but they are whistling in the dark.

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