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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

#751

Post by JaumeGreen »

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

> Is a google employee in US somehow more competent than the one in India?

It depends.

There are people in India that are brighter and more hard-working than most people in the USA, just by statistical chance. But there is something that can happen there that I don't know what it is and affects some.

In another job our company had a site in India and I remotely supported them. Most people I interacted with wanted step by step instructions and hand-holding. One day someone news enters, bright and full of energy, so we could give him the documentation, point him in the right direction and he did the job. Until he didn't and also wanted step by step directions and hand-holding.

To this day I don't know what prompted the change. My only guess is that there's something cultural going on that can make people tone themselves down and not be proactive.

Just my 2 cents.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#752

Post by sangnoir »

gretch wrote: post #666
rixrax wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Completely agree with this take. I worked in FAANG and before that I worked in various startups. Most of the people around me are very adapted to this very specific hyper-structured environment that we are in. This is not a criticism - they are thriving in this environment and everyone is happy. But no way would I want to take these people with me on a new venture. (the inverse is also true; I would not take a shoot-…

How do you reconcile your final paragraph/sentence with your own ability to succeed[1] in both environments?

My experience is that the ability to adopt to structured/unstructured environments are not mutually-exclusive: some people may thrive in one but not the other, and others can do well in both (or none!) My motto is to make the right trade-offs in any environment - which is a universal superpower for engineers in my book; especially when coupled with curiosity and a willingness to learn.

1. I'm taking the charitable presumption.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#753

Post by riffraff »

scoofy wrote: post #747
nojvek wrote: post #736

Google is almost a 2T company. The amount of wealth that big google shareholders hold in the 1T+ tech companies is mind boggling. Perhaps US should consider raising capital gains tax.

When it comes to large shareholders that wouldn't actually do anything. Nobody sells in these new blue chips; they just borrow against their positions. I've thought about this for a long time. If we wanted to actually tax this wealth, we should just make people pay capital gains on marked-to-market positions every 10 years. Now before everyone starts shouting "yea, but the valuations aren't value," you could easily t…

If you wanted to tax the wealth.. have a wealth tax? It's a thing in countries including Norway and Switzerland, and similar things exist in others (e.g. Italy taxes assets in some weird non linear way).

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#754

Post by letitbeirie »

lgleason wrote: post #453
throwaway13394 wrote: post #442

I work in Core Eng at google. Woke up this morning and saw my director - who we all loved and had been at Google for 20 years - is gone. One concerning thing that I haven't seen reported is that my leadership chain is almost entirely Indian, all the way up. And they've announced that they are starting to offshore entire core products to India, primarily in bangalore IIUC.

I think it's safe to say we are on the downward slop of peak Google.

Modern Google is an embodiment of many of the flaws which allowed them to crush Lycos 20 years ago.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#755

Post by anonymouse008 »

nojvek wrote: post #736

Google is almost a 2T company. The amount of wealth that big google shareholders hold in the 1T+ tech companies is mind boggling. Perhaps US should consider raising capital gains tax.

Funny enough, this is already a response to a tax. 174 capitalizes software and general unproven R&D as the default now… ruining the cash position of many businesses that “made taxable GAAP profits”

The rules of the game have changed. We were allowed to expense all employee compensation tied to software or R&D in the year in which we paid it. Now we can only expense a small fraction of that because we have to capitalize the expense. That means if you paid and developer $100 to develop a piece of software then sold subscriptions totaling $100 you now have a profit. The old model you have zero dollars in profit the new model says you have something like $80 in profit that you know have to pay taxes on… with what cash?

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#756

Post by alexeiz »

mnbion wrote: post #121
NorwegianDude wrote: post #6

> laid off employees who worked on ... the Pixel phone. That sounds weird to me. Pixel phones has grown very fast in the last years and I don't se how it can be seen as anything but a great success.

Google is increasingly treating Android as an iOS alternative for the developing world and outsourcing core Android development to its Indian offices. The reason they are doing this is probably because the non-tech management MBAs running Google are all using iPhones.

> non-tech management MBAs running Google are all using iPhones

That's a kiss of death. I remember while working at Windows Phone team at Microsoft, a lot of program managers and designers were using iPhones and Macs. Unsurprisingly their own product never got off the ground because they failed to develop a vision for it. Android at Google is in a slightly better position, but this kind of attitude of not using your own product but preferring a competitor's one leads to inevitable decline.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#757

Post by causal »

8note wrote: post #748
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…

Layoffs are very personal though? The person who is laid off has to scramble in order to say, not have to move countries, or pay for their healthcare bills. It's not personal for the company, but it is personal for each person who was laid off

Right? Magnitude matters.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#758

Post by sangnoir »

rednerrus wrote: post #512

This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion but these huge salaries of the past 5 years have really hurt technology. Instead of the best, hungriest minds working on the best problems in the most agile way, they're languishing in one of these gigantic megacorps working at a molassess pace on some improved way to sell you ads.

Are you suggesting that supply and demand market forces are somehow inadequate in allocating resources towards engineer salaries on HN? I am shocked.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#759

Post by alexeiz »

madeofpalk wrote: post #57
NorwegianDude wrote: post #6

> laid off employees who worked on ... the Pixel phone. That sounds weird to me. Pixel phones has grown very fast in the last years and I don't se how it can be seen as anything but a great success.

Google sells approximately zero Pixel phones. Every year they'll say "we're serious this time" and promise to dump money into marketing, but it really goes nowhere and carriers continue to push other phones.

Pixel phones are OK. They are just not priced competitively. They are priced like iPhones. But who are you kidding? Pixel phones are nowhere near iPhones.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#760

Post by yreg »

anthonypasq wrote: post #698
yreg wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

people are constantly job hopping, Google has to always be hiring just to negate attrition. Second, there isnt a single budget for hiring that interviews everyone and ships them out everywhere. certain groups/products can be growing within google while others are shrinking. should the chrome team not be allowed to grow because google+ was in the trash can? third, not every employee is exchangeable, you cant just shuf…

re: 1, 2, 3

Google has been hiring people into the same roles and teams where they have laid people off.

> all of these things are fairly obvious if you thought about it for more than 30 seconds, so its somewhat concerning you find this topic so perplexing.

Wow, you are rude.

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