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Googler... ex-Googler

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Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#851

Post by int_19h »

asadalt wrote: post #700
Sonnigeszeug wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats just not true. You don't sound like a big company ceo. If you have a good reason, even as a small company, and revenue / affordability is one, you can fire people. You just need to be able to pay them for min. 3 month if thats your contract length and as a business owner you should know how to calculate.

vs. i can hire in canada/ukraine/india/pakistan/china for a more skilled person with no such bs restrictions.

This doesn't make sense. If you hire them to work in local offices in those countries, they often have even more employee protections than Europe does. And if you bring them over to US, then it's the same law regardless of where they are originally from.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#852

Post by jiveturkey »

wffurr wrote: post #426
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and they're still hiring too, while doing this at the same time. As a person who worked there for a long time, I never thought it was a good idea how rapidly they hired and never felt they needed that many people. But the layoff process has been sadistic. And the people who made the decisions to hire like crazy are not paying the consequences. In fact it feels very much like they're using this as an opportunity…

>> the people who made the decisions to hire like crazy are not paying the consequences They should have been first out the door, but Sundar is part of the problem.

This is incorrect thinking. Over-hiring is very easily corrected. You are weighting the 'human' in human resources too much. It's 'resources' that gets the emphasis.

This is a success at Sundar's level.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#853

Post by int_19h »

crazygringo wrote: post #568
acdha wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The trusted and valued employee yesterday can turn on a dime and become malicious when they feel they have been wronged regardless of whether that is independently true. On the flip side, treating them like a crook seems more likely to inspire that kind of revenge instinct. Most people would understand removing privileged access immediately but giving them a dignified exit seems more likely to prevent problems.

It does, but if you've removed the damage they can do, then to the company it's preferable to have more people angry who can't do damage, than less people angry but some of them will do damage. It's a sad reality. For some people a "dignified exit" won't do a single thing to lessen the rage they feel that they were wronged. It's a sad situation all around.

This kind of arrangement doesn't affect only the employees that were laid off, but also the ones remaining in the company. It's how you get people who will cynically exploit every ability to do as little as they can get away with while climbing as high as possible on the career ladder.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#854

Post by int_19h »

ajb wrote: post #322
ahtihn wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have the option of putting them on 'gardening leave' during the notice period. This is extremely rare That must depend on the country. In Switzerland it's standard that employees don't work during the notice period when they're laid off.

Must do. I wonder if that's because of the wide access to weapons? Although I thought I'd heard that there still wasn't much gun violence in Switzerland.

Even in US, it's not a strict rule. I gave my notice more than a month in advance and retained access to all employee spaces (both physical and digital) until my last day. Coincidentally, I own enough guns that describing it as an "arsenal" would not even be an embellishment it usually is.

At the end of the day it's more about culture (i.e. people's expectations of what is normal) than any objective factors.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#855

Post by varenc »

hnfong wrote: post #577
mcherm wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strange sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Effectively, your argument says that if there is any step, whether wise or foolish, kind or cruel, that some take, all must take it or risk being found negligent. That's no way to run an (overly litigious) society.

I don't even agree with the self-proclaimed legal experts in the replies. Employers generally assume liability for torts (civil liability arising from wrong-doings) vicariously. For example if an employee somehow puts rat poison into a customer's burger, the employer is automatically liable for that, because they are responsible for the employee's actions. (See eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability )…

I generally agree with you and the parent on this. It definitely is self-fulfilling. Because some companies cut access to laid off employees immediately, it makes the others look negligent if they don't. I'm not trying to say I think this is correct or the best, just trying to speculate why some employers choose to take this action. Certainly all don't, but it does seem more common the larger a company gets.

I'd be curious if every laid off Google employee experiences this hard cut off, or if it's determined case by case.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#856

Post by int_19h »

EE84M3i wrote: post #307
abdj8 wrote: post #110

Layoffs are a difficult thing for employees and their managers. I have seen people (one was a VP of Engineering) escorted out of the building, sent in a cab to home along with a security guard (this was in India), not allowed access to computer or talk with other employees. But, recently have had a very different experience. The current company I work for announced 30% layoffs. The list was made public within one hou…

Wow, I've never heard of terminated employees being able to keep their corporate laptops before. Did IT at least wipe them first?

Quite often it's literally cheaper for them to let employees keep the laptop (sometimes for a token price) after wiping than it is to process it for reuse, just because bureaucracy is that expensive.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#857

Post by int_19h »

rurp wrote: post #829
wiether wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for me personally, this is also a huge disillusionment in Google This feels like "I installed Chrome before Google went evil". https://fortune.com/2025/03/19/tesla-owners-elon-crazy-bumpe...

I can't wait for everyone to be shocked, shocked , in five years when the biggest genAI companies get caught engaging in a bunch of sleazy behavior.

You don't have to wait at all, given that OpenAI has been at it for some time now.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#858

Post by jiveturkey »

acyou wrote: post #606

Content aside, does anyone else have poor scrolling performance on his blog? I saw similar issues on both mobile and desktop, what's with that?

exceptionally poor to the point of being unreadable, on safari. in chrome it works perfectly for me. i believe it is due to the bluesky feed, seeing as the author's own content is really short.

i'll have to figure out how to block bluesky. the blockers focus on privacy stealing feeds like facebook etc.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#859

Post by int_19h »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #502
spicyusername wrote: post #468

I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp. Yep. One of the most unfortunate realities of modernity. Your managers, or your managers managers, or their managers don't care about you. At all. If you ask them on the weekend, they'll decry that the things they are asked to do are horrible. but they'll still do it. Some gladly. They are themselves cogs in the machine. A machine that goes all the way to the executive c…

>I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp. >Yep. One of the most unfortunate realities of modernity. The crazy thing to me is the lack of awareness of these people. Has hiring at Google fallen off that badly? Was there always such a gap between 'smart enough to work at google' and 'smart enough to realize their corpo-we're one big family-speak is total BS' ?

"Smart" and "naive" are not antonyms. Indeed, it is practically a stereotype that the two often go together.

Re: Googler... ex-Googler

#860

Post by int_19h »

LPisGood wrote: post #680
bbqfog wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have and this poster is spot on, he needs to go higher up the chain though. Investors hate employees, even founders. Founders are out to get rich. Executives are out to get rich but don't have what it takes to be founders. All of these people detest labor. They are the enemy you must work with to buy food. Treat them as such.

I feel like this is a very cynical way of looking at things. I know some excellent people in leadership that have been promoted from lower level management jobs. I’m not sure the career change made them no longer care about people.

It's not that the career change makes them not care about people. It's that it's practically impossible to get into upper management without eating others. People who don't embrace their sociopathic tendencies don't make it - they get out-competed by those who do. The very occasional exception just proves the rule, and usually doesn't last in any case because once they get to that point, they still have to compete to remain there.
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