> Google confirmed the Assistant cuts, earlier reported by Semafor, and the hardware layoffs, earlier reported by the blog 9to5Google. Nice. So one can reasonably expect the Google Home device et all to get even worse at all the basic functionality it used to be quite good at as far as 2017.
Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
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Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
#592Companies are hiring right now (it has picked up) but it's very competitive as well. A recruiter friend of mine told me that they are getting more good candidates into the final interview stages and that it's definitely a buyers market right now.
So it makes sense in some ways for companies to cut out a percentage of the more expensive staff and reallocate to other teams and hire new people at better rates.
Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
#593Someone should start an massive incubator that takes in top laid off employees and gives them resources to build a competing product. They will be motivated as hell and have a ton of domain knowledge and generally have a good idea on how to do things in way more efficient way than what their former employer did. For kicks and to save money replace most of mngmnt roles with AI model.
Or having only ever worked at FAANG(s), many of them completely lack the skills that would make them effective as an entrepreneurs and it would be nigh useless to try to incubate new businesses out of them. Maybe. Not all. I am thinking of traits and skills such as actually talking to your users, selling product to customers, doing things small scale, being able to work without huge back office support, not having KPIs to game, and such.
Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
#594I feel like layoffs are like a lot of bad habits. Once you break the seal, it becomes easier and easier to give yourself permission to do it again and with more frequency.
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Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
#595I'm surprised to see so many comments here taking layoffs personally, or talking about how layoffs are stupid. Layoffs are not personal, and the corollary to that is that you should never treat your company as a friend. It's a company trying to maximize value. Also, layoffs do work. Almost every large, successful company has done them at some stage. They are an expected, and necessary, part of operating a company and…
It is not the individual layoff which is the issue for the people. It is the general feeling that the little man get squeezed under the argument of cost savings and the rich man takes out even more than the year before, independent of the market and company performance. In the past the entrepreneur took the yearly risks and was rewarded or not for it. The variation / risk on the (unrealistic) return is now managed on…
By any reasonable metric, Google SWEs are "the rich man" in American society.
Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
#596Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s still macro. The media has been peddling the idea that things are rosy economically but that’s not people are seeing and experiencing. December’s CPI is through the roof. The economy has been soft and with ZIRP gone, things are adjusting accordingly. We’re now paying the piper —a little.
Inflation ticked up to 3.4%, it's not through the roof. Real wages are up. The economy is absolutely doing very well for some people.
Are you guys and gals checking your grocery receipts? Eggs have doubled over the last two years. Milk, meats, fruits and veggies... I can't think of much that hasn't gone up at a higher rate than before the pandemic.
I applaud the Fed for hiking interest rates, free money can't go on forever if you want to avoid the fate of Argentina, but c'mon, the economy is not good. It's not bad, but it's not good.
Laid off people and those fired are finding it harder to find equivalent employment like they did before.
I would bet a good roll or money that if the opposition were in the whitehouse, we'd be hearing about how shitty the economy is right now. It may not be shitty but it's not rosy like they pretend it is.
Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
#597Google is overrated. It's been obvious for over a decade after they built an interview process that is heavily biased towards those who recently took an algorithms class. You had talking heads yammering about how hard it was to get into Google, which to be honest, made the company even less appealing. Is this a software engineering company or some kind of hyped up nightclub? Yeah, maybe it's a hard interview if you'v…
I did over 400 interviews working there, and many hundreds more serving on hiring committees. I never gave a leetcode interview, and saw only a modest amount of them in committee. “It’s all leetcode BS” makes a great offhand d complaint but was not the actual truth.
Then I'm super unlucky because my last phone interview there 3 weeks ago was definitely Leetcode.
Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
#598My firm made billions last year too and just laid off hundreds of engineers (a decent %) Some of the best engineers, those that I respected the most, went. People who make no sense. After last year's layoffs they told us they were "done" and it was "all behind us". Last year then turned out to a better year financially than 2022 (we have access to the top line numbers) You can't trust anything anyone above you in the…
> Never get invested emotionally.
And yet, like in love, the trick is to love again.
Sure, be wise and have high standards about money. But there are some good entrepreneurs here. I was employee #250, it went IPO, became a millionaire. And now that I’ve created a startup, I try to pay it forward.
Large corporations, of course no.
Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
#599Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Your job is not safe" does not mean you should do everything possible to keep your job -- allowing yourself to be unfairly exploited and abused. It means that you need to be responsible for yourself, and not allow thoughts like "I'm a valuable employee", or "I have too much seniority", or "my manager and I get along great" to convince you management won't lay you off or fire you or that they owe you anything. As oth…
This is good and realistic advice. Companies exist to make profit and returns for their investors/shareholders and ultimately they will do what this necessary to make that happen. Layoffs are just another (unfortunate) business transaction. I was once in a meeting with an SVP who was going over what he was going to say in an upcoming all-hands meeting. He kept referring to employees as “resources” and I told him he s…
> Companies exist to make profit and returns for their investors/shareholders
Companies pay taxes, operate in a community, and employ people. Shareholders may not care about such trifles... until the race to rot is complete.
Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions
#600Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Layoffs do work" will require a little bit of proper evidence. With long-term effects if possible.
Well, it worked for the Telecom's industry. yup.
I think what your parent meant was that, instead of just asserting that something is true, you provide some peer reviewed research or something like that which supports your assertion. For example, you might want to include a link to some article pointing to research which supports your assertion. For example, you can add something like
https://hbr.org/2022/12/what-companies-still-get-wrong-about...
to your comment. Of course, this link points to two decades of research showing that your assertion is wrong, so you probably don't want to include this specific link in your comment, but you get the idea I hope.