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Google lays off its Python team

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Re: Google lays off its Python team

#221

Post by kaashif »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #69
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax breaks for hiring citizens. Tariffs for hiring non citizens. Force companies to follow all the same employment laws for employees and contractors in other countries.

Yeah, and really enforce anti-dumping laws. The cost of living of an Indian developer is way less than that of a US one, especially if the US one is in a high cost of living area such as SF or NYC. How can the US worker complete when they have US housing and college costs, not Indian ones, that need to be paid for? Offshoring like this is allowing dumping of below-cost labor into US markets. Great for US C-suite folk…

> How can the US worker complete when they have US housing and college costs, not Indian ones, that need to be paid for?

In my experience, US workers, even with much higher wages, are simply better than Indian workers being paid much lower wages. Note that Indians being paid US wages, in the US, are fine - you just can't expect much if you're paying peanuts.

I have had experiences where entire offshore teams have contributed significant negative value. This false economy is as false as they come.

I think a bigger danger to US wages is European offshoring.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#222

Post by Capricorn2481 »

kamaal wrote: post #163
pclmulqdq wrote: post #3

Outside of the ML groups, Google really doesn't like Python and there's very little of it in the codebase. This move isn't surprising in that light. Also, Google is IBM at this point, so I would expect a lot of IBM-like moves.

Python is mostly the Perl of the current day. And it attracts tons of beginners, that also means nearly equivalent amount of bad code(Just like in the Perl days). These days if you are doing serious work, you simply use Java. Especially if you want something running for years. Java is really the only option you have. A decade back I interviewed at a major telecommunications firm. Python was the new fashion then, they…

> Its just not meant to be a serious alternative for long term, stable applications which are typically written in Java/C++

The what, now?

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#223

Post by [deleted] »

UncleMeat wrote: post #116
fargle wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree. i can tell it was a bad day for the author and it sucks. but it's irritating to sit there and blame the exact system and company that gave him the exceptional job and pay in the first place. everyone who works in FAANG, if you are drawing an enormous salary and bonus, compared to the average guy, i hope you realize the how fortunate you are. i hope you are putting away, saving, investing, at least 1/3 or 1/2 o…

People who work at Google are indeed very fortunate. We are paid large sums of money. I feel like I've found a pot of gold and give significant portions of my income away to the less fortunate directly because I feel that so much of my pay is based on luck. However, Google employees only capture a fraction of Google's profits. Google made twenty five billion dollars in profit in Q1. Annualized that is 100b. Google ha…

[deleted]

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#224

Post by 4WIW »

mihai_maruseac wrote: post #66

Google is an AI first company Google's future is strictly tied to its AI products All AI is written with Python. Google lays off all Python team. Segmentation fault

People are focusing on verbage and precision, but are missing the point.

Having a well-maintained Python tooling is essential for _any_ company who does AI. While smaller companies can get away with open source solutions, for bigger companies it is unavoidable to have teams dedicated to maintaining and supporting Python tooling.

This announcement is troubling, and may indicate one of the two: 1) Google is in dire situation, and there is no more fat to cut, so they are starting to cut muscle. 2) Google management is clueless and cannot discriminate between fat and muscle.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#225

Post by phendrenad2 »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #210
longemen3000 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

_ is for Alphabet

then why not MAAANG?. Much better acronym, but then I just say big N.

We can still call Alphabet Google, just like everyone calls X Twitter. Clunky rebrands don't have to be accepted by everyone.

Edit: Personally I'm in favor of sorting by present market cap, so it's MANGAM.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#226

Post by tdudzik »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #52

This is standard recent Google. A year or so ago, they laid off GCP upper tier support to replace them with cheaper workers. PS: I won't say which MAAN_, but the recruiters are half based in India now. Coincidentally, it's a MAAN_ that laid me off previously in a relatively recent timeframe rather than attempt to find me another home internally. Brain explodes. Perhaps MAANGs need to focus more on long-term sustainab…

Top talent is based outside of USA too

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#227

Post by phendrenad2 »

bitcharmer wrote: post #190
vineyardmike wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it’s common. At Google and across America. When Google did its massive 12k person layoff they moved a lot of those roles to places like India. They had another tranche of layoffs that were “delayed exit” to train those Indian employees.

You can call me bigoted or racist, I don't care. The fact is with moving technical roles to India quality plummets. But I can totally see how in some beancounter's narrow mind this makes perfect sense.

Every company thinks that they're going to hack the system. They think that they'll be the first American company to ever outsource and get the best developers. But all of the best developers are happily working for local companies, and they don't want to have to deal with an American boss.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#228

Post by phendrenad2 »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #219
emodendroket wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might think twice if you looked at the figures; the numbers in this article comparing US and UK wages are astounding: https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/britain-white-collar-j... (and this article goes into the rationale too. Basically the idea is you're paying more than you would in a developing economy, but you can trust the team with more autonomy and fewer cultural misunderstandings, so it's an option for…

You know, it makes me wonder how hard it would be to use this divide to actually move to the EU and get residency. Then again, with so many countries having to beef up military spending and facing economic headwinds you really have to question whether all the social / quality of life programs that make europe more livable than the US would be sustainable long term either. Who knows maybe in 30 years Americans ultimat…

Military spending is a good point. If the middle class all moves to Germany, the US tax base will suffer, and probably Germany will have to raise taxes for their military to compensate. But that would take decades.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#229

Post by phendrenad2 »

emodendroket wrote: post #130
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you "protect" a job?

Is this a genuine question? You can go for a strict, legalistic approach, like requiring cause to dismiss workers, or you can tweak incentives, like tax breaks or tax penalties encouraging desired behaviors and discouraging undesired ones. You can make arguments for why it shouldn’t be done but it is not hard to imagine things an interested government could do.

It's not that simple, long-term. Companies will just be founded elsewhere, because a hard-to-fire worker is worse than no worker. However, you could add additional layers like "if you do business in the US you must have x% of your employees here". But it's getting messy.
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