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Googler... ex-Googler

nerdy.dev

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Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#361

Post by pjmlp »

apexalpha wrote: post #149
abdj8 wrote: post #110

Layoffs are a difficult thing for employees and their managers. I have seen people (one was a VP of Engineering) escorted out of the building, sent in a cab to home along with a security guard (this was in India), not allowed access to computer or talk with other employees. But, recently have had a very different experience. The current company I work for announced 30% layoffs. The list was made public within one hou…

Weird, as someone from Europe I've never experience anything else. Layoffs here are always done in conjunction with the unions. People are moved to different jobs, helped with training etc... Only in very critical jobs they'd walk you out immediately but then you still get the pay.

That is mostly in Central and Nothern Europe, unfortunely in the south even with unions, things not always go as they should be.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#362

Post by wiether »

yodsanklai wrote: post #318
Scandiravian wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having experienced layoffs in both US and EU companies, the difference is massive. In my experience there is very little respect for "the human" being laid off in US companies People literally would just disappear day to day. I've had several instances where I only found out a colleague had been fired because I tried to write them on Slack only to find that their account had been deactivated Personally I felt constan…

> I don't want to work for another US company again if I can help it You can work for a US company in the UE. They have to follow the local rules like anybody else.

There are rules, but one can decide to not follow them.

One thing that I saw (but never experienced myself) happen with North American companies wanted to leave EU is just doing their usual things (thus not following local rules), and then people have to sue and wait many years to be compensated.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#363

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

lapcat wrote: post #333

This article was actually posted 3 days ago. I saw it back then and read the comments. You can see the old timestamp here: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fnerdy.dev%2Fex-googl... I think this is what HN calls the "second chance pool". I absolutely hate when HN reposts an article and alters/falsifies the timestamps. It's so incredibly misleading.

In other occasions, time seems to pass very slowly for the aging of first-page items. Probably relativistic effects of large amounts of hidden mass ...

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#364

Post by mmkos »

windward wrote: post #297
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #126

Yep, it sucks. Speaking from experience - I was laid off a few years ago. I was sad my time ended, but my path forward was to leave SF with money and time to visit countries I'd always wanted to see. It's a trend away from the post-WW2 "promise of lifetime employment". Over the decades, companies have crept toward "human autoscaling" so slow no one noticed. You're far from alone - every other company is doing it. Go…

That is potentially the least convincing website I've ever seen. I feel like I'm being sold a timeshare.

I had the same feeling. The underlying message has merit, but the format felt very similar to a lot of the get-rich-quick landing pages. I had to edit some of the CSS to get through the page at all.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#365

Post by ur-whale »

dailykoder wrote: post #237

> Just like that. These statements always catch me a bit off-guard. Is there no such thing as a cancelation period in the US? When my employer wants to kick me out, he needs a good reason for that and I'd still be paid for 3 months. Which is often even longer, depending on how long you belong to a company. Edit: I'm in germany

> Edit: I'm in germany

Yeah, Germany is quite (in)famous for this.

I have seen quite a few times in my career large US tech corporations specifically choosing not to open a satellite EU sales office or a dev office in DE because of the horrendous labor laws.

Sure, very nice for the workers. But foreign money chooses to skip DE because of this.

Warm and comfy in a sinking ship, great!

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#366

Post by wiether »

azangru wrote: post #324

I've skimmed through the comments; and seen that most people have commented on the cog in the machine thing, or on layoffs in general and how they suck. To me, the shock from this blog post was about seeing a Chrome developer relations engineer whom I have grown to admire and who has been doing a stellar job educating web developers on new html and css features, get the sack. He was one of the best remaining speakers…

> for me personally, this is also a huge disillusionment in Google

This feels like "I installed Chrome before Google went evil".

https://fortune.com/2025/03/19/tesla-owners-elon-crazy-bumpe...

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#367

Post by Scandiravian »

apwell23 wrote: post #346
tempfile wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but that is just ideology, not based on any facts.

low eu salaries implies finding job is hard. fact.

There's a higher monthly salary in the US, sure. However, you're expected to work very long hours (60-80 hours per week) and get basically no time off

In my current position I'm hired for an expected 37 hours per week. This can be more if I'm asked to work overtime, but my weekly hours cannot exceed 45 hours per week on average in a 3 month window without additional compensation

Additionally I have six weeks of paid time off every year plus public holidays

If I calculate my hourly salary it's better than what I was paid by US companies

That's not to mention the security of having a legally mandated termination period of minimum 3 months (in which you're, in most cases, not expected to work)

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#368

Post by mehulashah »

I’m sorry that this happened to him. There are innumerable ways to let go of people with dignity. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this treatment from Google. It will not be the last. Google is a great company with great people. Google is incompetent at handling layoffs. They could learn from banks on Wall Street. The banks do layoffs routinely and have a process that’s more empathetic than Google, and that’s not a high bar.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#369

Post by pjmlp »

knorker wrote: post #208
AndyKelley wrote: post #131

> I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp. Yes, you were. Next time, please choose a company that contributes to society rather than shoving ads in everyone's faces.

Ironically you're statistically very likely to be writing this comment in a browser based on chrome. And Chrome really helped save us from an Internet "embraced and extended" by Microsoft. We were heading for Microsoft succeeding in their (not first) attempt at owning the Internet.

How is Internet being "embraced and extended" by Google feeling like as society contribution?

It has literally turned into ChromeOS, with exception of Safari, and Firefox meagre 3% hardly matter.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#370

Post by scarface_74 »

oblio wrote: post #314
apwell23 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my experience there is very little respect for "the human" being laid off in US companies its much easier to find another job in US because of this though.

Is it, really? Aren't US tech interview notoriously difficult? Many rounds of interviews, background checks, etc.? Most purely European companies don't do that. Actually, unfortunately, some of them do, because of American influence. But for sure they didn't use to.

There are 2.8 million developers in the US. Most of them don’t work for “tech” companies. Most of them work for boring enterprise companies without multiple rounds of enterprise companies and many let you just do behavioral questions and techno trivia on the stack they care about.

I personally have interviewed for 7 enterprise dev jobs and I have had 2 coding interviews and those were simple.

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