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Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’

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Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’

#41

Post by Judgmentality »

correlator wrote: post #35
IceMetalPunk wrote: post #2

Can someone explain how burning out your employees, freezing hirings, possibly laying off a large number of your employees, in a market where people are actively quitting en masse... is supposed to increase productivity? Or are company execs just under the impression that "the beatings will continue until morale improves" was seriously good leadership advice?

Yes, Team of 5 and 1 person is coasting. Get rid of the 1 and you just reduced burn by 20%. You lose the output of the coasting team member, but that's small to begin with by the scenario's setup. If you believe coasting is contagious (why am I working so hard when clearly I don't have to like this other person), you could potentially see a boost in output. Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of ever…

> Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of everyone being upset and leaving after such a decision, but in this market, that risk may be mitigated.

The market where people are already quitting?

Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’

#43

Post by silvestrov »

correlator wrote: post #35
IceMetalPunk wrote: post #2

Can someone explain how burning out your employees, freezing hirings, possibly laying off a large number of your employees, in a market where people are actively quitting en masse... is supposed to increase productivity? Or are company execs just under the impression that "the beatings will continue until morale improves" was seriously good leadership advice?

Yes, Team of 5 and 1 person is coasting. Get rid of the 1 and you just reduced burn by 20%. You lose the output of the coasting team member, but that's small to begin with by the scenario's setup. If you believe coasting is contagious (why am I working so hard when clearly I don't have to like this other person), you could potentially see a boost in output. Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of ever…

All of this requires the coasting person to be identified correctly every single time.

Some of the team leaders will fire a non-coasting person because that person looked like coasting, while the real coaster looked busy.

And then morale crashes even more, and you start looking over your shoulder, especially if you have a boss that does not understand who really carries the load.

So much management theory supposes all managers are super competent. In reality they are the people version of bad php developers.

Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’

#44

Post by pschuegr »

calrueb wrote: post #19

This threat seems to be specifically about sales not meeting quota, and therefore the Google Cloud org not meeting its revenue goals. I suppose one interpretation is that the sales compensation structure is flawed, and not incentivizing sellers to do their best work. If so, sales leadership should be held partly accountable. However, I suspect sales is likely the scapegoat here for deeper issues with the product and…

Or possibly deeper cultural issues within the company and the lack of faith that consumers have that their products will be supported without sunsetting or major API changes. Seriously, Google engineering is excellent for the most part, but the company does not have a support culture.

Whenever I have to choose a technology for a new product and the leading candidate is Google stuff, I think very long and hard about how likely they are to continue to support it - open source tools like Angular are one thing, but with GCP you are really tightly integrated with the vendor and if they decide to do something wild, you could be absolutely hooped.

Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’

#45

Post by jdoliner »

The fact that Google's execs only care about this now that the economy is turning indicates that the execs have been coasting too. This isn't a problem you want to solve once it hits the breaking point due to external factors. You want to constantly solving it at a cultural level.

Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’

#46

Post by correlator »

Judgmentality wrote: post #41
correlator wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Team of 5 and 1 person is coasting. Get rid of the 1 and you just reduced burn by 20%. You lose the output of the coasting team member, but that's small to begin with by the scenario's setup. If you believe coasting is contagious (why am I working so hard when clearly I don't have to like this other person), you could potentially see a boost in output. Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of ever…

> Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of everyone being upset and leaving after such a decision, but in this market, that risk may be mitigated. The market where people are already quitting?

The market is really hot right now, and yes, a lot of people may be quitting. There are also a lot of hiring freezes and layoffs happening at the same time.

If a lot of people continue to quit while available jobs continue to decline, the result is fewer people feeling comfortable quitting.

Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’

#47

Post by correlator »

silvestrov wrote: post #43
correlator wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Team of 5 and 1 person is coasting. Get rid of the 1 and you just reduced burn by 20%. You lose the output of the coasting team member, but that's small to begin with by the scenario's setup. If you believe coasting is contagious (why am I working so hard when clearly I don't have to like this other person), you could potentially see a boost in output. Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of ever…

All of this requires the coasting person to be identified correctly every single time. Some of the team leaders will fire a non-coasting person because that person looked like coasting, while the real coaster looked busy. And then morale crashes even more, and you start looking over your shoulder, especially if you have a boss that does not understand who really carries the load. So much management theory supposes al…

You're right, but to reason about a hypothetical scenario, we've got to make assumptions. Identifying under-performers with perfect precision is my assumption of a spherical cow! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow

Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’

#48

Post by tablespoon »

silvestrov wrote: post #43
correlator wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Team of 5 and 1 person is coasting. Get rid of the 1 and you just reduced burn by 20%. You lose the output of the coasting team member, but that's small to begin with by the scenario's setup. If you believe coasting is contagious (why am I working so hard when clearly I don't have to like this other person), you could potentially see a boost in output. Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of ever…

All of this requires the coasting person to be identified correctly every single time. Some of the team leaders will fire a non-coasting person because that person looked like coasting, while the real coaster looked busy. And then morale crashes even more, and you start looking over your shoulder, especially if you have a boss that does not understand who really carries the load. So much management theory supposes al…

> All of this requires the coasting person to be identified correctly every single time.

Isn't there a famous story about Bell Labs, where there was this guy who made others signficantly more productive because he asked good questions?

Obvious coaster who should be terminated forthwith!

Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’

#49

Post by IceMetalPunk »

correlator wrote: post #35
IceMetalPunk wrote: post #2

Can someone explain how burning out your employees, freezing hirings, possibly laying off a large number of your employees, in a market where people are actively quitting en masse... is supposed to increase productivity? Or are company execs just under the impression that "the beatings will continue until morale improves" was seriously good leadership advice?

Yes, Team of 5 and 1 person is coasting. Get rid of the 1 and you just reduced burn by 20%. You lose the output of the coasting team member, but that's small to begin with by the scenario's setup. If you believe coasting is contagious (why am I working so hard when clearly I don't have to like this other person), you could potentially see a boost in output. Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of ever…

You don't lose the output of the coasting team member (even if you get rid of the right person); that workload just gets transferred to the other 4 people. So let's say you have 5 people, 4 of which each are doing 22% of the work, leaving the one "coaster" to be doing only 12%. You fire the coaster, and now you've got 4 people doing 25% of the work each. An already burned-out team is now filled with people who have a larger workload.

And this of course is a simplification that assumes workload is a continuous rather than discrete measure. If the fired guy had two or three Jira tickets he wasn't making progress on, now you've got two or three of the remaining workers getting another entire feature dumped on their pile of work. The burn-out is higher than 3%. Until they quit, of course, transferring their workload to the remaining 3 people, increasing their burn-out, etc... it's a dangerous chain reaction.

Re: Google execs threaten workers with layoffs: ‘There will be blood on the streets’

#50

Post by IceMetalPunk »

correlator wrote: post #46
Judgmentality wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, this needs to be weighed against the risk of everyone being upset and leaving after such a decision, but in this market, that risk may be mitigated. The market where people are already quitting?

The market is really hot right now, and yes, a lot of people may be quitting. There are also a lot of hiring freezes and layoffs happening at the same time. If a lot of people continue to quit while available jobs continue to decline, the result is fewer people feeling comfortable quitting.

So... people are quitting, and in response, companies are enacting hiring freezes, effectively refusing to compete with each other, to make people more afraid of quitting?

Does... does that not sound very collision-y to anyone else?

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