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Google lays off its Python team

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Re: Google lays off its Python team

#51

Post by throwaway345435 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #8
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #2

The post suggests their jobs were offshored. Is this a common practice versus just closing the roles? I feel like US legislators should do more to protect domestic jobs from domestic companies, or else they’ll face the same eventual collapse as in manufacturing.

This might be my prejudice but when someone talks about offshoring a role, moving it to Munich isn't the first thing that comes to mind. It may be slightly cheaper than California but not by so much that if expect it to be the main reason for doing so.

It's extremely hard to lay off in Germany, so existing Google employees in Germany are, on the margin, nearly free, and so can be reassigned (with something else being done with their current project).

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#52

Post by hi-v-rocknroll »

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 sustainability if they intend to retain top talent because morale is non-uniformly, moderately miserable due to the actions of multiple rounds of layoffs creating unbounded uncertainty, vague bizword slogans, and cheap perk cutbacks.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#53

Post by pclmulqdq »

karolist wrote: post #45
elintknower wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which languages would you say google prefers these days? But also in light of what an early SWE might want to focus on to maximize career options?

Honest answer, only C++.

C++, Java, and Go are the languages for backends IIRC. I think Typescript is the frontend language of choice.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#54

Post by zem »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #50
zem wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some of us are on work visas, so "take some time off" would also mean "wind up your current life and leave the country"

>"wind up your current life and leave the country" Isn't that what so many people do in their own country in order to come to the US on a work visa to begin with?

yes, and trust me, it makes a big difference when it's voluntary and you are in full control the time frame.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#56

Post by gpshead »

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.

Well over 100m lines of Python as has been publicly stated several times over the years is not "very little".

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#57

Post by soganess »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #31
nineplay wrote: post #13

> It's almost like capitalism isn't actually good and you shouldn't want to live in the US Strong words from a FAANG employee. Does he think there's another economic system which would give him the same extraordinary compensation package?

[flagged]

Ad hominem with just a tinge of that sweet sweet latent homophobia? Why?

And that hypo... what exactly is the fear bringing all this on so viscerally... is a long defunct soviet union still the starring Freddy of folk's dreams?

Disclaimer: I grew up in the USSR, it stank big ups. I live in the USA, it also stinks big ups. Sometimes for similar and sometimes for different reasons. Let's hope Fukuyama was wrong and we'll eventually come up with something better.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#58

Post by toomuchtodo »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #7
blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #2

The post suggests their jobs were offshored. Is this a common practice versus just closing the roles? I feel like US legislators should do more to protect domestic jobs from domestic companies, or else they’ll face the same eventual collapse as in manufacturing.

How do you "protect" a job?

Laws and regulation.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#59

Post by zem »

compiler-guy wrote: post #47
vinni2 wrote: post #44

Just curious what does a Python team do? It doesn’t make sense to dedicate a team to a programming language.

Of course it does. Pretty much every FAANG, and many smaller ones, have teams for every programming language they consider important. Google has C++, Rust, Python, Java, JavaScript, and others (although I've heard that several of these teams were hard it in this round.) To take a basic example: Google has a team that works inside LLVM and Clang to improve the code it produces for Google's specific workloads. (Often t…

in addition to contributing to upstream python, we

* maintained a stable version of python within google, and made sure that everything in the monorepo worked with it. in my time on the team we moved from 2.7 to 3.6, then incrementally to 3.11, each update taking months to over a year because the rule at google is if you check any code in, you are responsible for every single breakage it causes

* maintained tools to keep thousands of third party packages constantly updated from their open source versions, with patch queues for the ones that needed google-specific changes

* had highly customised versions of tools like pylint and black, targeted to google's style guide and overall codebase

* contributed to pybind11, and maintained tools for c++ integration

* developed and maintained build system rules for python, including a large effort to move python rules to pure starlark code rather than having them entangled in the blaze/bazel core engine

* developed and maintained a typechecker (pytype) that would do inference on code without type annotations, and work over very large projects with a one-file-at-a-time architecture (this was my primary job at google, ama)

* performed automated refactorings across hundreds of millions of lines of code

and that was just the dev portion of our jobs. we also acted as a help desk of sorts for python users at google, helping troubleshoot tricky issues, and point newcomers in the right direction. plus we worked with a lot of other teams, including the machine learning and AI teams, the colaboratory and IDE teams, teams like protobuf that integrated with and generated python bindings, teams like google cloud who wanted to offer python runtimes to their customers, teams like youtube who had an unusually large system built in python and needed to do extraordinary things to keep it performant and maintainable.

and we did all this for years with fewer than 10 people, most of whom loved the work and the team so much that we just stayed on it for years. also, despite the understaffing, we had managers who were extremely good about maintaining work/life balance and the "marathon, not sprint" approach to work. as i said in another comment, it's the best job i've ever had, and i'll miss it deeply.

Re: Google lays off its Python team

#60

Post by fargle »

zem wrote: post #37
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…

some of us are on work visas, so "take some time off" would also mean "wind up your current life and leave the country"

while i'm sympathetic, it still means you had a great deal going. if/when it ends you shouldn't get pissed off you got the opportunity in the first place - a visa isn't permanent.

to be clear - what i was reacting to was the author's idea that he should reject capitalism and/or start a trade union, after having been a very, very, lucky player of the capitalism game indeed. it pisses me off when people making N multiples of 6 figure incomes start forgetting how lucky they are and how much they personally benefited from that exact system. a laid off googler's worst day is many, many times better than the average guys daily life. in this country, let alone somewhere else.

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