I imagine that killedbygoogle will soon be adding Fitbit and Assistant to the graveyard.
Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant
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Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant
#62Google lays off 0.05% in a restructuring. Is that really "the scoop" and newsworthy?
It's a much larger layoff. My friend's three VPs (heh) were all laid off in Fitbit. Entire orgs were wiped there.
Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
High interest rates. If Fed dropped them to 0 overnight, everyone on the list would have happily hired everyone back. But then the grocery prices would start growing faster than SPX.
The timing is surprising if this was the main motivation. Rates have been flat for nearly a half year and are projected to come down later in 2024 -- https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch...
Loans and bonds are typically at fixed rates and have months or years-long terms. As you reissue bonds and take out new loans, your overall interest rate on debt approaches the much higher market rate. It doesn't happen immediately.
Expecting interest rates to drop later this year is big for the stock market, which runs on expectations, but doesn't matter to people borrowing money and issuing debt before then, since you cannot attract lenders at rates below the US treasury yield.
Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant
#64It was much more broad than the Assistant org.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/10/24033994/google-reorganiz...
Fitbit and AR too.
Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant
#65Doesn't Google do that thing where if your team becomes redundant, they don't lay you off, they give you some time to find another team if you choose to transfer?
Technically yes, but when there's no open roles it doesn't matter
Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant
#66Wow... What is going on it tech? We are just 10 days in the new year and every day there has been surprise layoffs! Unity Twitch Several startups And now.. Google! This is at the same time when stocks are almost all time high :).
About twelve months ago professional tax doing people advised me to wait and see what would happen with section 941 long term with the expectation there was a good chance Congress would revise the rules again in 2023. That didn’t happen, and if anyone was waiting to gauge the long term impact of the r&d credit rule changes they may be making cuts accordingly now.
Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant
#67Wow... What is going on it tech? We are just 10 days in the new year and every day there has been surprise layoffs! Unity Twitch Several startups And now.. Google! This is at the same time when stocks are almost all time high :).
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Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant
#68It's not like that team has achieved a single thing in 6+ years. I'm shocked to hear anyone at all is still working there.
Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant
#69Why lay-off instead of repurpose? Will we consider smartphones as "Personal Assistants" anytime soon? AI has advanced considerably in terms of what can be processed locally but the restructure seems a bit over the top considering it's still the same concept in a broader sense. It's like laying off a team of developers simply because you changed branding.
I seem to recall Google saying that they don't hire for a specific position; they hire good developers and then find the right position for them. This idea is directly countered by the act of firing developers in a specific position because that position is no longer viable.
out of good positions
Re: Google lays off hundreds working on its voice-activated assistant
#70I don't use any feature of Google Assistant that wasn't present in the original Android voice search feature over a decade ago. And the few features I do use haven't improved in any way that I've noticed. In fact I feel like reliability has regressed. Google could have fired almost the whole team years ago and my user experience would not be different today. I consider voice assistants to be a failed experiment. It's…
I mean, without those rudimentary building blocks they wouldn't have a lot of data and talent ready to investigate LLM's (and ofc, lots of polish on the NLP framework. Not as flashy, but very important for the UX). I don't see it as a failed experiment so much as a raw prototype if we believe LLM's can realize the true potential. Heck, for all we know, we were actually just training the model for this past decade.
What are you talking about? What "rudimentary building blocks" came as a result of voice assistants? They have nothing at all in common with LLMs. Your post is pure non-sequitur.