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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#721

Post by kypro »

gcr wrote: post #604
kypro wrote: post #146

Are we about to enter a new era of ultra-profitable tech companies? While companies like GOOG and MSFT have had ridiculously healthy margins compared to traditional industries for some time now, it's also been clear in recent years that these companies have become very loose with spending. Take GOOG for example, they spend so much unnecessary money on fancy offices, free lunches, diversity programs, highly speculativ…

This guy! Imagine thinking “diversity programs” are a significant cost center, as if their spend were comparable to real estate or employee compensation

Feel free to disagree with me on this, but I hold the view that diversity programs erode productivity generally speaking.

And for the record here, I'm not even opposed to them as a worker. It bothers me about as much as companies providing me with free lunches (not at all). In my current place we spend around an hour each week either discussing diversity or in diversity & inclusion training, and it's always the easiest hour of my week.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#722

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #699

> Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago led to groundbreaking advances across our businesses and the whole industry. > Thanks to those early investments, Google’s products are better than ever. Does he really believe this? Maybe I'm just biased towards the parts that are annoying and I end up missing the good parts, but search seems worse every day. I worry about using google products for anything essential d…

> I worry about using google products for anything essential due to the risk of being locked out with no recourse

This is my big one as well. As Google refuses to segregate accounts, nebulously AI defined “bad” behavior on YouTube or GCP could lock me out of my digital life.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#723

Post by xyzzyz »

gcr wrote: post #604
kypro wrote: post #146

Are we about to enter a new era of ultra-profitable tech companies? While companies like GOOG and MSFT have had ridiculously healthy margins compared to traditional industries for some time now, it's also been clear in recent years that these companies have become very loose with spending. Take GOOG for example, they spend so much unnecessary money on fancy offices, free lunches, diversity programs, highly speculativ…

This guy! Imagine thinking “diversity programs” are a significant cost center, as if their spend were comparable to real estate or employee compensation

Google is bragging about spending hundreds of millions of dollars on diversity programs every year.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#724

Post by anon84873628 »

kypro wrote: post #211
jensensbutton wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> diversity programs... Not even remotely comparable to the other things you listed. People such as yourself seemingly can't stop talking about it though, despite it having no effect on your life.

Well I don't know about GOOG specifically, but I know there has been relatively large diversity teams at every tech company I've worked for in recent years. Again, not GOOG specifically, but it's not uncommon for companies like this to have employees whose job it is to email people informing them to do things like rename their project's master branch to main. There have also been efforts within companies like GOOG to…

Your complete mischaracterization of these programs and outright lies about "efforts within companies like GOOG" reveals that you are completely unqualified to assess their impact on profitability. And thus you are in fact the one mentioning it for political reasons.

You also didn't say "over hiring kitchen staff", you said "free lunches", which are two different things.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#725

Post by cutenewt »

ako wrote: post #115
dzonga wrote: post #30

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…

Is overhiring really a problem, would the world be better if companies didn’t overhire? Then many of the people now laid off wouldn’t have had a job in the first place. If you accept a job for what it is, a temporary need for your help, and plan for what’s next, a period of layoffs should become manageable.

Yes, there's an opportunity cost to society.

That overhired person who's not productive in Google could have done something better for society.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#727

Post by cutenewt »

kypro wrote: post #146

Are we about to enter a new era of ultra-profitable tech companies? While companies like GOOG and MSFT have had ridiculously healthy margins compared to traditional industries for some time now, it's also been clear in recent years that these companies have become very loose with spending. Take GOOG for example, they spend so much unnecessary money on fancy offices, free lunches, diversity programs, highly speculativ…

I doubt it. It feels more like the end of an era.

All the so called "cool" technologies from FAANG names in the last 15 years have lost its luster.

There's a new set of companies that are ready to take over. The most obvious ones to fall to the wayside are the ones threatened by ChatGPT and TikTok.

Who knew tech could be trendy?

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#728

Post by justin_oaks »

clint wrote: post #710
ifyoubuildit wrote: post #699

> Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago led to groundbreaking advances across our businesses and the whole industry. > Thanks to those early investments, Google’s products are better than ever. Does he really believe this? Maybe I'm just biased towards the parts that are annoying and I end up missing the good parts, but search seems worse every day. I worry about using google products for anything essential d…

I would say you are an extreme outlier. Most people use all these Google products with no problems nor do they seem to share your fears.

While "extreme outlier" is probably true, here on HN many of us are extreme outliers. So while true, at least he's in good company.

I am on the road to de-Google my life, or at least add some backups in case of Google locks me out of my account. On HN I've seen articles about people who have been locked out of their Google accounts based on 1) taking a picture of a boy's genitals intended medical purposes, 2) submitting a chargeback for a Pixel phone that never arrived, and 3) unknown reasons, likely Google's AI incorrectly flagging an account.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#729

Post by vt85 »

cloutchaser wrote: post #620
nvarsj wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny to me because this has been happening in tech a long time and is happening to the current giants. The old giants like IBM, GE, Motorola, etc. all suffered similar fates. And it's been discussed ad nauseum by disgruntled engineers who then go and make new companies/start ups to get away from the "suits". It's called "Takeover by MBA". You know it's happened when you start hearing phrases like "Cut costs", "…

It’s an anecdote but it’s also what I heard from my doctor dad working in the NHS. There was a time when the UK health system was actually run by doctors or people with medical knowledge. Now it’s MBAs and generalist managers. It doesn’t work, all it does is increase overhead, both in staff and bureaucracy. In his opinion that’s what ruined the NHS not underfunding. Business and management courses are not necessarily…

[dead]

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#730

Post by suddenexample »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #543

The Google of 2005 wouldn't do this. The Google of 2005 would use this as opportunity to monopolize all the talent and move into some new space and eat everything with fantastic software. * I had a good seat to watch google obliterate mapquest and yahoomaps with amazing javascript maps. It was day and night. Yahoo was penny pinching their mapping engineers while Google was buying geographic satellite companies and in…

Poetic but misguided. The Google of 2005 didn't have so much fat to trim. When you have 150k employees, there's no escaping it. Not everyone is going to be hungry, and certainly not interested or in a position to build things 100x better. Many are happy to collect their paycheck while doing 20 hours of unambitious work per week.
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