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Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

wsj.com

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Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#151

Post by dbcurtis »

filoleg wrote: post #36
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In "defrags" like this, Google does not lay off people outright, it just tells them their job is going away and they have X months to find a new one within Google -- and they usually do.

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.

On the other side, the company can create a nice "market" by tuning it correctly. When I was at Intel, it was relatively easy to get an internal hiring req, and relatively difficult to get an external one. And... the total number of internal hiring reqs was allowed to over-subscribe the total authorized head count. Coupled with a rule that no manager could block an internal transfer for more than a couple of weeks of clean-up, the net effect was that there was a certain amount of "hole flow", and you could always identify a bad manager by the vacuum that surrounded them. Overall, I thought that was brilliant.

As to people on re-deployment, it did happen that poor performers had a hard time landing a new role -- but then again, they would have had a hard time staying in the company in their old role, so that kind of fits your point. But Intel didn't use redeployment as a "shadow RIF". Intel was not shy about moving people out of the company -- they didn't need to nor bother to hide it.

Back to redeployment -- I can remember occasions of fairly large redeployments (business unit shutting down) where those of us in parts of the company considered more strategic would find ourselves suddenly rich in hiring reqs. Again, the company created the right market conditions and let the hiring managers and employees sort it out.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#152

Post by lonelappde »

ec109685 wrote: post #140
neil_s wrote: post #86

Nothing is happening to Google Cloud overall. This is just a small org where two teams were doing similar stuff, so they got merged. This made a few roles redundant, so those folks will be looking for new roles within Google (Cloud). How this made for a WSJ headline, IDK. I couldn't read the whole article because paywall, but the first few lines do mention that it's a tiny number of employees affected and they can lo…

It still seems strange they don’t need more of this person’s role and would instead eliminate it: https://twitter.com/whyhiannabelle/status/122810842950535168... It isn’t a good look. “This morning I learned that my role at Google has been eliminated. If you've got an opening for someone who's in Kubernetes and containers security, focuses on content, advocacy, and communication, and has an OSS background, holler!”

They cut a marketing/outreach team. Maybe they want to focus more on product development or different marketing and that person wants their same marketing/outreach gig.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#153

Post by lonelappde »

szermer wrote: post #138

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but perhaps this 'leak' to WSJ was calculated to remind some folks thinking of unionizing that layoffs are a real thing in this world.

You are saying that someone in management orchestrated a layoff to motivate employees to unionize faster to negotiate better layoff compensation?

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#155

Post by outworlder »

CydeWeys wrote: post #150
peteretep wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you think you can get the costs down.

It's software as a service. Of course you can.

> It's software as a service. Of course you can.

Which is directly tied to the underlying hardware. That they already optimize to death.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#156

Post by kortilla »

downerending wrote: post #24
goatherders wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a for profit company with a fiduciary responsibility to share holders. There is zero reason to find jobs for people regardless of the cash position.

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…

> Google's tech staffers are supposed to be some of the top people in the world

That ended about 7 years ago when Google decided to expand as rapidly as possible. Alphabet employees over 100k people now. It’s just a younger IBM at this point. There will be thousands of people that will suck and should be laid off rather than kept.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#157

Post by busterarm »

scarface74 wrote: post #149
tmpz22 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Worked at a company that signed a contract with Dyn. Oracle asked to try to sell us additional services so we said sure why not.

Oracle flew 23 people across the entire country, all in expensive suits, to sit in a conference room for a full 10 hour pitch meeting where only 2 people talked.

We didn't buy anything.

Rip Dyn. :(

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#158

Post by kortilla »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #73
scarface74 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven’t heard about Netflix’s policy.... https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664 “We’re a team, not a family.” They “hire, develop, and cut smartly”. It doesn’t seem to have hurt their recruitment.

"People who have been stars for us, and hit a bad patch, get a near term pass because we think they are likely to become stars for us again". Source: your link.

The difference is the timescale. Netflix won’t let you cruise doing nothing for 3 months while you troll an internal job board begging people to take you.

Re: Google cuts jobs at cloud-computing group

#160

Post by kortilla »

chrisseaton wrote: post #26
goatherders wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a for profit company with a fiduciary responsibility to share holders. There is zero reason to find jobs for people regardless of the cash position.

How much does it cost to find and hire a Google-tier worker? Many hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you're talking about financial duty surely their duty is to retain the elite workers they've already got.

Given the market’s performance over the last 4 years, it’s most certainly cheaper to fire people who aren’t actively involved in any projects so Google gets the unvested stock back and then hire fresh at current stock price.

Someone who was hired 2 years ago with 500k of stock vesting over 4 years could have enough unvested stock leftover to fund two employees RSU grants...

Hiring google employees is still cheaper than keeping the senior ones.

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