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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

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Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#831

Post by anifru »

gspetr wrote: post #814
michaelgrosner2 wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally only hear that Google search is bad from HN. No one else in my daily life - my family, friends, people out at my gym or grocery store - ever complain that Google search is bad. In fact, Google is still the default for looking up information anywhere. It's sentiments like this that make you realize how much of a bubble HN exists in. OTOH, people have trouble using GMail, google home, or ban YouTube in thei…

>Next to no one uses Android Wait, what? Who's in the bubble now?

I thought it was clear the poster was talking about their daily life, and not commenting on world statistics.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#832

Post by abdabab »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #774
insane_dreamer wrote: post #438

This comment from a NYT opinion piece by former Slack CPO added some clarity as to one reason why tech companies are doing this: pressure from investors to keep the share price up. Public companies lose that freedom to do whatever they want even if they have tons of money in the bank. > Meta and Salesforce combined lost more than $700 billion in market cap last year. Both companies are now dealing with activist inves…

This is definitely the case. I was just talking with a Googler after the Microsoft layoffs about how Google is (now was ) one of the last big tech companies avoiding layoffs, and Pichai was fighting investors like hell to keep it that way. He supposedly literally told them "these are real people " out of frustration at some point. It's hard to look at that incredibly generous layoff package an not see it as a "fuck y…

Who are these investors that he’s fighting?

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#833

Post by maximinus_thrax »

charles_f wrote: post #656

> I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here When an incident occurs in prod and it affects the livelihood of 12.000 people (or more if you include family), you'd expect at the very least a post-mortem. I've never seen a company produce one after that. What was the root cause? crazy hiring, massive wage war Could the current situation be anticipated? hell yeah, out of a pandemic, war raging in Euro…

> and it affects the livelihood of 12.000 people

I'll stop you right there. Why would they do a post-mortem for this? They're not accountable to the employees. This should be a reminder for everyone as to who SLT actually works for.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#834

Post by unsui »

michaelgrosner2 wrote: post #792
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 literally only hear that Google search is bad from HN. No one else in my daily life - my family, friends, people out at my gym or grocery store - ever complain that Google search is bad. In fact, Google is still the default for looking up information anywhere. It's sentiments like this that make you realize how much of a bubble HN exists in. OTOH, people have trouble using GMail, google home, or ban YouTube in thei…

> Next to no one uses Android, etc.

Seems like a self-selection bias, possibly based on socio-economic factors that determine who you surround yourself with.

In my personal circles, I only know 1 person who uses iPhone, everyone else uses android.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#835

Post by jedberg »

charles_f wrote: post #656

> I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here When an incident occurs in prod and it affects the livelihood of 12.000 people (or more if you include family), you'd expect at the very least a post-mortem. I've never seen a company produce one after that. What was the root cause? crazy hiring, massive wage war Could the current situation be anticipated? hell yeah, out of a pandemic, war raging in Euro…

From the point of view of a CEO of a public company, no post-mortem is necessary because nothing went wrong.

Hiring during a soaring economy and then letting people go as the economy cools is just standard operating procedure. Grow when money is cheap, stabilize when it's not. If you don't do that, then you'll get out-competed by the companies that are doing that.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#836

Post by amf12 »

deadmutex wrote: post #777
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…

> Does he really believe this? Google Translate, Google Photos, YouTube Recommendations, etc. and many many more are powered by AI. It is included also sprinkled in features such as gmail smart reply, etc.

Google Lens, AI algorithms for pixel cameras, voice recognition for Assistant, Translate, etc. We really just focus on Search being bad - a lot of which is because of SEO spam.

When it comes to big companies, Google does have pretty good AI in products. I don't particularly find any mature product bad per se.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#837

Post by notyourday »

charles_f wrote: post #693
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'd expect at the very least a post-mortem. "Despite getting paid millions to be good at my job, I did what every other CEO was doing when the Federal Reserve set interest rates low and hired a bunch of staff. I didn't think "hmm... this might change in the next 6-12 months". It changed. I am now doing what every other CEO is doing and jumping on the bandwagon and correcting." Now I don't actually have proof that…

> these people weren't top performers Problem is that this is not how this is unravelling. Large lay-offs like that cull entire departments, not the lower performers.

> Problem is that this is not how this is unravelling. Large lay-offs like that cull entire departments, not the lower performers.

Companies like Google are overstaffed by the lazy, entitled Prima Donnas. You can see it all over HN in its advice:

"Don't go to a startup! You would need to work. Rather get a job at FAANG, get paid a very large salary, leave on the dot, don't ever be on call. Also, best part, you will get at least a few hours a day to play around on the internet. Also, remember, you have a power of pocket veto! If you do not like something, just don't do it. What are they going to do? Fire you? You will get another job in a jiffy!"

With the zero interest rate environment gone the culling is inevitable.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#838

Post by Rebelgecko »

chippiewill wrote: post #494
insane_dreamer wrote: post #438

This comment from a NYT opinion piece by former Slack CPO added some clarity as to one reason why tech companies are doing this: pressure from investors to keep the share price up. Public companies lose that freedom to do whatever they want even if they have tons of money in the bank. > Meta and Salesforce combined lost more than $700 billion in market cap last year. Both companies are now dealing with activist inves…

Google don't have to worry about such activist shareholders in the same way that other companies do. Larry Page and Sergey Brin have the controlling share in Alphabet thanks to their Class B shares. They only have a fiduciary responsibility to the other shareholders.

Not directly, sure. But in this case the activist shareholders desires are aligned with what's best for the compensation of execs who are mostly paid in RSUs

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#839

Post by TheRealPomax »

westernpopular wrote: post #828
michaelgrosner2 wrote: post #792

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally only hear that Google search is bad from HN. No one else in my daily life - my family, friends, people out at my gym or grocery store - ever complain that Google search is bad. In fact, Google is still the default for looking up information anywhere. It's sentiments like this that make you realize how much of a bubble HN exists in. OTOH, people have trouble using GMail, google home, or ban YouTube in thei…

Because non-tech people don't think about which search engine they're using. Doesn't mean it's not bad.

People care when things are bad. They don't care when things are fine. Not good or great, but fine. It gets normal folks the information they were looking for the vast majority of the time. Whether the results "got worse" is irrelevant when the results are still what people were looking for.

Re: Google to reduce workforce by 12k

#840

Post by bobinux »

michaelgrosner2 wrote: post #792
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 literally only hear that Google search is bad from HN. No one else in my daily life - my family, friends, people out at my gym or grocery store - ever complain that Google search is bad. In fact, Google is still the default for looking up information anywhere. It's sentiments like this that make you realize how much of a bubble HN exists in. OTOH, people have trouble using GMail, google home, or ban YouTube in thei…

Haven't you noticed how search results quality has changed let us say from 2007-2013 and comparing recent time period? I used to get the best information, websites, media material that I was looking from the rarest sources on the web, even probably rare to find given my geo location. Today I usually get information not by the quality, but from "the biggest brands" on the web. I was surprised that I didn't find one specific forum in over 20 search pages, but then I had checked my bookmarks and the site was still running and functional and contained what I was exactly looking by the keywords and other possible search factors. These days I just feel I get the information sources that are the most advertised or well branded, but do not reflect the accuracy of what I'm looking for.
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