461–470 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't realize the Raleigh, NC metro was in the middle of nowhere. ;)
He was likely referring to HQ in Verona, Wisconsin. I've been there, can confirm it sure looks like the middle of nowhere :)
I truly believe that the company could function well, and continue its mission, even with a 30% reduction or more. The number of people who do completely nothing all day, in SWE roles, is just unbelievable.
And this without even counting the incredible severance benefits. 16 weeks of salary + GSU? Wild. I’d sign in a heartbeat if I were offered that.
Every time I read stuff like: > "Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." I feel taken for a fool. Every damn body knew that the last 2 years were not representative of the future. Everybody knew that free-money, COVID and related phenomenons were a phase. I can't believe that Google, Shopify, C…
How are they taking you as a fool? The point of a company is not to maximize employment, it’s to maximize profit.
That means hiring up in growth periods, and downsizing in contractions.
That’s exactly what they said they have done.
Every time I read stuff like: > "Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." I feel taken for a fool. Every damn body knew that the last 2 years were not representative of the future. Everybody knew that free-money, COVID and related phenomenons were a phase. I can't believe that Google, Shopify, C…
I blame companies for blaming with people's lives like this: not market dynamics. companies are the ones that decided to overhire, overpay - based on covid demand, cheap money that was floating around. companies not the market, resulted in a war over talent. now it's a war on talent. and of course everyone and their grandma will want to work at these tech companies where life is laid back and you get all the benefits…
This comment from a NYT opinion piece by former Slack CPO added some clarity as to one reason why tech companies are doing this: pressure from investors to keep the share price up. Public companies lose that freedom to do whatever they want even if they have tons of money in the bank. > Meta and Salesforce combined lost more than $700 billion in market cap last year. Both companies are now dealing with activist inves…
Every time I read stuff like: > "Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." I feel taken for a fool. Every damn body knew that the last 2 years were not representative of the future. Everybody knew that free-money, COVID and related phenomenons were a phase. I can't believe that Google, Shopify, C…
Companies don’t need to be right, they need to maximise the chance of succeeding. Yes, it was obvious that the raining-money period wasn’t going to last… but what if it had? What if Google had decided to ignore it, and then by some ridiculous twist of fate, it did continue and a competitor did leverage it to beat Google? Firing a bunch of people and killing some projects is a tiny price to pay for the potential upsid…
They're not saying: "Hey, we knew this wouldn't last, but we hired a bunch of people in order to milk the situation for everything we could, knowing we'd have to fire you today. So, sorry we willingly and knowingly did this. But you're fired."
I could respect the honesty in that, but that's not what they're trying to say. They're trying to act surprised by the economic shift. "Oops, sorry we have to let you go."
Of course it was rational for them to all do this. Lying is often a rational thing to do.
It's not "wrong" per se. It's just that these companies are no longer what they were. Investors and Employees should know what they are engaging with: out is the growth machine where you will have a team hired under you and revenue can be expected to 10x in a decade. In is "every year we get to 5% more revenue and pay 5% less in expenses".
Such is the company life cycle.
Google have done very well to be fair to keep the growth phase going so long...
I guess someone has to write this comment: > I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here As usual, he says nothing more what the consequences for him are. It seems like all of the FAANGs have made severe strategic cockups when it comes to hiring lately. I wonder if it will affect their longterm attraction as employers.
"Full responsibility" is just humblebragging. Superficially, it's humility about making strategic mistakes that led to the need for the layoffs. But really, it's bragging to Wall Street. "I am tough, confident CEO. I know what takes to make shareholder value and line go up. Praise me!"