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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

#801

Post by granshaw »

TrackerFF wrote: post #41

Well, hopefully there's a silver lining to all this: Talented and underappreciated engineers (or those just caught in the crossfire of shitty policies) will go on and start new, more exciting companies.

Still young without dependents? Great.

Have a family and esp these employees in high CoL cities? Very tough.

Speaking from experience. Been there done that.

"We'll have all this new innovation via new startups now!" is such a feel good sentiment to layoffs but in reality is nowhere close to a solution for the affected employees

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#803

Post by ramesh31 »

Solvency wrote: post #768

Between Discord, Twitch, Amazon+Prime, and Google... what's the layoff pattern here? Are we talking about social community teams? Streaming/networking engineers? Or is there no connective thread between these four companies? Are there other corporate layoffs that round out this intrigue?

R&D mostly getting the axe. Growth's off the table this year. Outside the AI bubble, companies are soley focused on paying down debt and remaining profitable.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#804

Post by Kon5ole »

Google makes me kind of sad. They used to be so cool, pushing technology forward, making it accessible to the masses, doing things that seemed almost impossible and making it mainstream. Ads were the money stream but they did it tastefully. Now the main page is all ads, dark patterns are everywhere in everything Google does. They've basically become one of the ethically worst technology companies around.

Is it inevitable? Will the allure of short-term profits kill every good company? IANAL but it seems to me it should be possible to have a company "constitution" that prevents it, somehow. "If the profit margin of operations exceeds 10% the CEO has to be replaced" or whatever.

So far I've only seen companies be decent until an idealistic founder leaves or dies, then the MBA's take over and the worst possible way to make the most money takes over pretty quickly.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#805

Post by sib »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #193
DrBazza wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are often non-compete clauses in employment contracts. Depending on the country, they're not worth the paper they're written on sometimes. In others, legally binding.

I don't think you get to non-compete people you fire. That's an on-resignation constraint.

Not true as a general statement. May be true in certain cases. And certainly, in the case of a layoff (such as this one), with a severance package, a non-compete could be part of the severance agreement.

(Or not, depending on locale. For sure not in California.)

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#806

Post by hajile »

mynameisnoone wrote: post #778
vkou wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The connective thread is that tech growth has slowed/stopped and Wall Street is looking to make cuts, because salaries are expensive, and shit, if they have the option between more expenses and less expenses, they will keep taking 'less expenses', until it clearly and incontroversially affects the bottom line.

It's an "and me too" business fad despite profits being already at record levels. The entire point is to suppress tech worker wages if not by explicitly-agreed conspiracy then by independently-stochastic layoffs.[0] 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... Edit: One way out for both stability and fair compensation is worker-owned co-ops. Unionizing within publicly-traded or private-equity-ow…

It's more about inflation. The Fed has stated that they don't get those low interest rates back until they fire a lot of people and drive up unemployment.

EDIT: from the Chair himself

> We’re never going to say that there are too many people working, but the real point is this: Inflation—what we hear from people when we meet with them is that they really are suffering from inflation. And if we want to set ourselves up, really light the way to another period of a very strong labor market, we have got to get inflation behind us. I wish there were a painless way to do that. There isn’t. So, what we need to do is get rates up to the point where we’re putting meaningful downward pressure on inflation, and that’s what we’re doing.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon...

This is hardly just his opinion either and has been pretty widely covered across the media.

https://time.com/6253699/federal-reserve-inflation-interest-...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/07/perspectives/inflation-jobs-r...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/10/12/does-the-f...

https://www.businessinsider.com/jerome-powell-fed-jobs-unemp...

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#809

Post by cjsplat »

fluidcruft wrote: post #412
wt__ wrote: post #134

In relative terms, it's not huge - NYT is no more specific than hundreds, so let's say 500, out of 182,000 - that's 0.27% (though obviously a higher impact on engineering - you might that would be what they'd cut last).

And it seems to be layoffs in hardware which, frankly, Google is not great with. Yes, Pixel has improved vs previous years. But Pixel is mostly US, Apple owns the US market and Pixel is not making any inroads (at best it is eating other Android devices). Google has no real runaway hardware hits. It's had a few promising launches but then they manage to take them in bad directions (Google WiFi going from a simple focu…

You need to distinguish "hardware" and "consumer hardware".

Google wouldn't exist as you know it if they didn't didn't build great data center and network hardware.

Their problems in consumer hardware are not about the hardware specifically. It is about product management and go-to-market.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#810

Post by [deleted] »

Kon5ole wrote: post #804

Google makes me kind of sad. They used to be so cool, pushing technology forward, making it accessible to the masses, doing things that seemed almost impossible and making it mainstream. Ads were the money stream but they did it tastefully. Now the main page is all ads, dark patterns are everywhere in everything Google does. They've basically become one of the ethically worst technology companies around. Is it inevit…

[deleted]
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