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Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

nytimes.com

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Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#701

Post by kagakuninja »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #696
nly wrote: post #35

My 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…

>> You can't trust anything anyone above you in the management chain tells you. Not one thing. Not ever. This seems like a really negative and self-damaging perspective. I'm the direct manager for 14 people with whom I have hard-won relationships, built on trust and caring over long periods of time. We're not friends or family, but I honestly care about them. I share as much as I can, and try to include my confidence…

I've had great relationships with managers like you. And yet had that sudden 1-1 meeting where I was told "your services are no longer needed". In one case, there wasn't even a face-to-face meeting, or any explanation for termination. I got a call from my recruiter, and my corporate access was cut off precisely at 5pm.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#702

Post by qaq »

rixrax wrote: post #593
qaq wrote: post #107

Someone 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 KP…

Sales part can be the value add incubator brings. I also specifically mentioned "top".

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#703

Post by rezistik »

anthonypasq wrote: post #695
roncesvalles wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're arguing against a strawman. Nobody says layoffs are stupid because they're not a very "nice" thing to do. They say so because the statement "it's a company trying to maximize value" is contentious. The long term objective of a company is not to save as much money as possible. It's to spend money toward endeavors that generate more money. If the layoff is because of an efficiency improvement, that's jus…

a company can have multiple products that are at different stages in the business cycle. If Microsoft never did layoffs in their entire history they would still have a dev team working on Zunes, and 95% of the company would be working on desktop windows

Could they have moved the Zune team to the Xbox team or Surface team, the windows teams to azure or Xbox, etc?

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#704

Post by tomrod »

yreg wrote: post #333
mindwok wrote: post #98

I'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…

How does it make sense for Google to keep laying off people (many of them skilled overperformers) while continuing to hire? It seems they have alienated a large part of their workforce with these decisions. Plus they are running into legal fights in Europe where it's not so easy to randomly fire employees. I would truly like to understand this, but I haven't heard an explanation of why the actions make sense for the…

All big companies do this, even ones that have a supposed "freeze."

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#705

Post by tomrod »

killerstorm wrote: post #344
offices wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a company has embedded itself so deeply in public life - globally - it's reasonable to have strong feelings about its actions. When we say layoffs work, are we considering the way the same companies overhired just a few years ago, harming the rest of the employment market? Do we remember this in later discussions when we treat these companies as prescient hiveminds, in spite of them using overtuned bang-bang con…

I find it a bit hilarious that programmers feel entitled being employed for life in one company. Did you ever consider finishing the project? Getting it done and delivered? My first paid job as a programmer was like that. We made an exam software for university, a complete package covering the process from authoring test questions to making reports. We made it in 6 months and it was done. Finished. Working. There was…

> Shouldn't that be a norm?

When guilds/unions are stronger, then project only work is fine to organize around.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#706

Post by kwertyoowiyop »

spike021 wrote: post #576
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't characterize Leetcode interviewing as being biased towards those who recently took an algorithms class - it's biasing in favor of those (of any level of experience) who are willing to spend a few months practicing Leetcode. I thought that Google/etc had at least dialed this back a bit, or maybe just dialed back the "how many gas stations are in the US" type questions, after realizing this wasn't the best p…

Last year I went through a loop and a couple of the questions I got and mentioned to friends who are SWE's at Google thought they were too hard for an interview, especially after checking their proposed solutions in the internal problem bank. So it's definitely still happening. No I didn't get the job because they were too hard for me to even get a brute force solution.

It’s just sad, since of course those questions have nothing to do with the skills you actually need on the job: “the login authentication is failing once every 10,000 times, go fix it!” Oooh, shall I use a B-tree!?

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#707

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

anthonypasq wrote: post #695
roncesvalles wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're arguing against a strawman. Nobody says layoffs are stupid because they're not a very "nice" thing to do. They say so because the statement "it's a company trying to maximize value" is contentious. The long term objective of a company is not to save as much money as possible. It's to spend money toward endeavors that generate more money. If the layoff is because of an efficiency improvement, that's jus…

a company can have multiple products that are at different stages in the business cycle. If Microsoft never did layoffs in their entire history they would still have a dev team working on Zunes, and 95% of the company would be working on desktop windows

I would buy a Zune if they were still developing them. Zune and Windows Phone were excellent products.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#708

Post by jeffreyrogers »

roncesvalles wrote: post #671
mindwok wrote: post #98

I'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…

I think you're arguing against a strawman. Nobody says layoffs are stupid because they're not a very "nice" thing to do. They say so because the statement "it's a company trying to maximize value" is contentious. The long term objective of a company is not to save as much money as possible. It's to spend money toward endeavors that generate more money. If the layoff is because of an efficiency improvement, that's jus…

Most of the tech companies generate their revenue from their core businesses. For Google it's ~80% from ads, and probably even more of their profit comes from Ads. The history of companies being able to generate abnormal profits in other business lines is not favorable overall. I think experimenting and trying to find new sources of revenue makes sense, but the flip side of that is you have to kill those projects if they aren't going to pan out. It makes sense to shutdown even profitable businesses (or sell them) if you can make more by reinvesting in your core business.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#709

Post by cromulent »

dodiggity32 wrote: post #511
throwaway_iusa wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work remotely for a big US company and I have heard talk of similar plans within the company, offshoring entire products' engineering work to India. Luckily my work is very niche (vuln research). I can only imagine the subpar and vulnerability ridden code we'll be seeing over the next few years from all the offshoring + irresponsible overusage of AI tools.

Why would the code be subpar? Is a google employee in US somehow more competent than the one in India? What you are thinking about was outsourcing which is very different than Google hiring in India. Just because you are paid more you are not a ‘better’ programmer

I've worked with both brilliant and mediocre people from many countries, including India.

It's hard to criticise offshoring without seeming racist. The problem that I have seen is not the developers - it's that the people in charge are fixated on the hourly rate as the key metric, and the suppliers are then complicit in gaming that metric.

As soon as you make the lowest hourly rate the most important metric in software development, I guarantee you that quality will suffer.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#710

Post by kagakuninja »

kypro wrote: post #313
tagyro wrote: post #231

Just a day ago I was reading a comment from a - funnily, google - engineer gaslighting another engineer that had a hard time finding a job in this market.

I'm seeing so many people doing this at the moment. "Maybe you need to reskill". "You need to work on your interview skills". "You're not applying to the right positions". Etc... You can't know what the market is like until you're looking for work, and as someone who's been in this industry for 15 years and has been applying to roles recently, I know it's really rough out there regardless of what some are saying. It'…

I agree that job hunting is brutal. However, my experience in doing interviews recently is that half the guys who got through the screening interview with our manager were worthless. And he probably rejected 90% of the candidates sent by the recruiter. Of the 2 people hired, one is kind of mediocre, and we are not talking FAANG standards.
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