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Googler... ex-Googler

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Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#761

Post by cmrdporcupine »

jmyeet wrote: post #434
javawizard wrote: post #396

That was painful to read. I had a very similar experience at Google about a year ago, and the worst part of it was that they did it 2 weeks before I was set to receive a 6-figure retention bonus for sticking around for 2 years after an acquisition. Several other members of my team got the boot at the same time. All of us had come in via that acquisition and were set to receive that bonus, and because of the layoffs,…

You should consult a lawyer about this. You might be SOL but if this happened to several people, you might be able to show the company didn't act in good faith because there's a pattern of people about to receive their bonus being laid off. Layoffs aren't meant to work that way. Generally layoffs involve someone who doesn't know who you are picking names almost at random from a spreadsheet. Management may fight for c…

Yes as a person who had such a retention bonus before (from Google even) to me this seems rather cut and dry. Usually such bonuses are a mix of cash and RSUs, and set over a 3-4 year period. And are often also based on a perception of what the employees existing options were in the startup that they came from.

IMHO they should absolutely be paid out the whole amount of the remaining retention bonus at layoff. On the principle of things alone. Can't speak to the legality of it.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#762

Post by omoikane »

ein0p wrote: post #77
lazide wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is much easier to handle when departing is voluntary. Layoffs, especially surprise ones, are the opposite. For someone young with no dependents, it can be scary but doable. For those with kids? Not so much.

OP spent several years at Google. Kids or no kids, if they managed their finances well, they have a lot of latitude wrt next moves.

The finances are important but possibly not the first thing on their mind. The first thing on their mind is likely how their entire world has just changed around them, beyond their control.

People who left voluntarily can prepare for the lifestyle change, and maybe they can objectively look at this and say it's not all bad. For people who are laid off, it hits really hard in a gut wrenching way. The sense of despair about everything else comes first, the money part of it might not come until all the severance is exhausted.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#763

Post by cab11150904 »

shuckles wrote: post #640
cab11150904 wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caring about spoiled rich people = Intelligent Discourse Caring about marginalized and needy people = Cynical Loser.

Hard to tell if you’re a GPT account. Obviously you can care about all people; it’s not a zero-sum emotion. Your time is zero sum though, and you seem to be spending a lot of it just hating on people. And there’s many other loser accounts like you on here, moreso than I remember.

Is this the new form of opinion erasure? If you disagree it must be AI?

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#764

Post by burningChrome »

neltnerb wrote: post #707
_huayra_ wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how they're bad at this from start to end. Most of these comments talk about the "end" part, but don't forget: Google has a notoriously laggy hiring process with extreme delays and an unacceptably high level of silence on important issues from recruiters. I have been ghosted so heavily from recruiters TWICE at Google when I was literally telling them "Hey I have offers from $x and $y and I need to decide in 2 w…

I remember at the time being frustrated that, after in person interviewing, they left me hanging for four months. I had a NSF grant that had been approved and if Google X had offered me a role I would have turned down the grant, but after months of silence I had to tell Google that I needed an answer or the decision would be made for me. It was incredibly inconsiderate, the only thing I could guess is that they're in…

>> the only thing I could guess is that they're intentionally horrible to applicants in order to filter out the ones that won't tolerate it.

I had two friends within the span of 18 months have this experience where they've run the gauntlet of pre-screening, get invited out to Google offices. Run through two days of grueling interviews, all the while getting a lot of great positive feedback about their performance. They end the last day, go back to the hotel, thinking about leaving the following morning.

They get a call around dinner time. "Hey, we had two more directors that wanted to speak to you tomorrow, it would only be for a few hours, but they were really impressed with the feedback and wanted to have some more time with you. Can you stay for one more day?"

Both later found out this is a complete ruse to find out how bad you want to work at Google. This forces you to change your flight plans, pay for the change to your ticket, pay for another night at a hotel, etc. If you do, they line something up that's super casual. If you reject the offer and return home, they conclude you didn't want to work their bad enough to change all of your plans and remove you from the candidate pool.

Same thing, once you turn them down and maintain your plans of leaving the next morning, they just ghost you and you never hear back from them. The irony was one of the two was contacted a year later from a different department asking him if he would be interested in interviewing for another position there. He said he rolled his eyes and politely declined the offer. He said it was pretty unreal to treat him like garbage and then come back and see if he was interested in another role there. As if everything there is so disconnected or they thought this was just completely acceptable behavior.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#766

Post by [deleted] »

bee_rider wrote: post #712
_huayra_ wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how they're bad at this from start to end. Most of these comments talk about the "end" part, but don't forget: Google has a notoriously laggy hiring process with extreme delays and an unacceptably high level of silence on important issues from recruiters. I have been ghosted so heavily from recruiters TWICE at Google when I was literally telling them "Hey I have offers from $x and $y and I need to decide in 2 w…

The phrasing “from start to end” got me thinking—tangential, but—they were an extremely cool company when Millenials were in school and looking to join the workforce. Anybody would have jumped at the opportunity to work for them. Actually, I can’t even think of a similar company nowadays. Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if they had a really bad hiring pipeline as a result. Why work on the skill of hiring, if people w…

[deleted]

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#767

Post by ryandrake »

scarface_74 wrote: post #691
ryandrake wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Therefore, let's throw everything non-monetary under the bus because work should be purely transactional?

What else should it be? Do you believe that your company is like “your family”? Your coworkers or especially your manager are “your friends”? Why else do you go to work?

I don't believe my office is my family, but I expect to at least be treated with a baseline level of decency, civility, dignity, respect, and kindness, which are non-monetary and (by my reading of your post) unnecessary in your office full of Vulcans.

The fact that these things are seen as optional and unimportant explains a lot of what's happened to public discourse.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#768

Post by ska »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #620
nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important point. Especially overt the last two (three now?) years, it's become pretty apparent many software jobs are superfluous, even those that are ostensibly "skilled" or "difficult." I do wonder what the actual "needed" number of technical staff these companies would have in a perfectly "efficient" environment. Let's hope we don't have to find out.

Twitter was the experiment. Elon showed up and started cutting headcount left and right. People were even encouraged to just walk out. On paper this was supposed to lead to the immanent collapse of it's service. That didn't happen and instead every other tech CEO started to wonder about the amount of fat in their org.

"On paper this was supposed to lead to the immanent collapse of it's service."

I don't know anyone who expected this. The typical failure mode is slow degradation and lack of new development, not sudden collapse. Services become flakier, innovation stops. There was probably some fat to cut,as you put it, but the concept of eating your seed corn is also relevant.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#769

Post by jimt1234 »

ivraatiems wrote: post #9

The reality of one's lack of value to one's own employer is often baffling. It makes you wonder how anyone manages to stay employed at all, since apparently everyone is replicable and unimportant. I have been through layoffs where other people on my team, doing the same job I did approximately as well, got laid off. No explanation given for why them and not me. And it could happen to me at any time. It doesn't matter…

I've noticed a disturbing trend in the last year or so where a company announces a significant layoff, saying it needed to let go of "underperforming employees" or similar wording. I've been in this industry for a long time, experienced several layoffs, but this way to announce a layoff (publicly calling-out "underperforming employees") feels new to me. It also feels shady - like, announcing to the industry, "Don't hire these losers we just got rid of. LOL"

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#770

Post by bsimpson »

skybrian wrote: post #711
DannyBee wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is just really bad at this, but seems to think it's not bad at this. It's sad since there is no excuse for it - plenty of companies conduct regular layoffs and role eliminations in more compassionate ways, it would not take much to survey and learn from their practices. Hell, IBM was often more compassionate about layoffs than Google. Some of it they've tried to become more formal about in ways that actually m…

Google didn’t used to be quite so bad at this. Back when they closed the Atlanta office, people there got a lot of notice and opportunity to find another role. The complaints were about not being allowed to go full-time remote. I wonder what changed?

Ruth and Fiona aren't Patrick and Laszlo.

It feels like there was leadership turnover in the late 2010s where "conventional company" people assumed the reins of power and started managing it like one.

The founders are complicit too. People like to think "before Larry and Sergey stepped down…" but the founders still control the board (tacitly or explicitly approving of the company's current behavior). Plus, there's Sergey's "60h/w or GTFO" note from a few months back.

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