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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

#861

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

treyd wrote: post #851
kentm wrote: post #826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm beginning to believe that it's just impossible to do advertising ethically. The hypothesis is that an advertising firm that attempts to do so will perform worse than ones doing unethical things, and eventually lose customers.

I've come to this conclusion a long time ago. If consumers have perfect information about a class of product from different producers then advertising would be completely useless and the market for that product would be completely efficient (on the consumer side). Of course consumers don't have perfect information, and that's what the marketing industry claims their purpose is to address. But really the role that the…

It's corporate behaviour modification and social engineering. Perhaps not a surprise to anyone familiar with Bernays and his Propaganda.

I don't see it as information asymmetry, so much as mostly mediocre products and services designed to a budget trying to look more exciting and life-changing than they could ever hope to be.

The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#862

Post by wolverine876 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #830
Pentamerous wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still real people who suffer when the numbers tell a different story - not charity cases.

It’s the government’s job to provide support in the event of loss of income. , i.e. a floor for quality of life.

> It’s the government’s job

It's your job (and mine).

The world doesn't divide roles that simply. Any community needs much more than 'government' contributing.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#863

Post by geodel »

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.

It is not like those pixel phone are hand made and tuned to exacting standards by highly qualified google engineers like Mercedes Benz does it on some of its expensive models.

It is a commodity gadget made at some cheap shop in Asia. So people worked pixel phone have not much to do with its growth or lack of it.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#864

Post by devjab »

elteto wrote: post #563
devjab wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Denmark we rarely perform tech interviews the way you Americans do. Part of this is because of how available education is, so virtually everyone who’s applying for a tech job comes with some sort of academic education, meaning that they’ve proven their worth to get it. I’ve worked a side gig as an external examiner for a decade now, I’ve got good confidence in anyone I haven’t failed. Another part is that tech int…

Cultural, personal and ideological (oof, what a word... kind of a red flag) are just proxies for "people _I_ like". Go far enough down that path and that is how you end up discriminating people for how they look/think/express themselves. I'll honestly take Leetcode every time over this. I can grind algorithms, I can't change the fact that I'm Indian/Hispanic/Whatever.

It can be, again, being Danish makes this a little hard to talk about on the global scale. We’re very homogeneous to the point that I once worked in a team where 33.3% weren’t white men and that was so far above the organisations average that we were awarded… we had one woman and one Indian guy, so 2 out of 6, and that’s how homogeneous our society is.

But I’ve worked in a little bit of both environments. Usually it depends more on the people than the hiring practices in my experience. It’s always a danger that you’ll want to hire someone like yourself.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#865

Post by 10xDev »

riffraff wrote: post #817
10xDev wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying this is the reason at all, but personally speaking sell me something that is not a subscription based service. I will make a handful of exceptions but not more. All these companies relying on Nitro, Prime, Premium, Plus as if anyone wants to add yet another subscription to their bill. Meanwhile companies like Apple and Nvidia are releasing new high-end products that I can buy and not think about.

Apple sells six or seven different subscription services including tv, music, photo storage, and fitness. They obviously don't think that selling subscriptions is a bad idea.

"Not saying this is the reason at all"

But also, Apple is not relying on Fitness+ to survive unlike Discord with Nitro.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#866

Post by hyperliner »

morkalork wrote: post #832
oh_sigh wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably didn't get to the point of making $18B a quarter by keeping on a bunch of organizational dead weight.

It's a failure of creativity and leadership if they can't think of something productive to do with their world class talent and infrastructure.

[dead]

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#867

Post by lokar »

superconduct123 wrote: post #661
lokar wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did over 400 interviews working there, and many hundreds more serving on hiring committees. I never gave a leetcode interview, and saw only a modest amount of them in committee. “It’s all leetcode BS” makes a great offhand d complaint but was not the actual truth.

Then why is there hundreds of Google tagged questions on LeetCode?

It’s a big company, and I left 5 years ago

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#868

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

freedomben wrote: post #846
forward1 wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All business is inherently unethical and relies on hiding and externalizing costs of production unto the environment, a vulnerable population, or other forms of legal/tax trickery. Advertising is no more evil than the for-profit healthcare system in the US, or the food industry, or really any other industry, when you really stop to consider it. People who think they are operating or working for an "ethical" business…

what's the ethical alternative? everybody must produce everything they want/need without any sort of trading, and without owning any land? or does the government just force people to work and distribute everything anybody needs?

The ethical alternative is one that balances innovation and entrepreneurship with ecological and social responsibility.

You can use resources, invent stuff, and organise people to work on it, but you only get to do it if Reality-Based Accounting rates the project as a net positive for the planet, and you have to share some of the benefits.

And if you can't make it happen without being consistently cruel and exploitative to some individuals, groups, or locations, you don't get to do it again.

This is not trivial to organise. But it's far more likely to lead to an R&D explosion than the current myopic and manic-depressive comic book version of "the economy" we're all supposed to have irrational faith in.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#869

Post by spamizbad »

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

You're going to hear the same answer you always hear, which never satisfies people, but it's a culture thing. Americans are more willing to say "no" or try and negotiate with their boss/leadership on what they can realistically accomplish. The end result is that engineering will push back against unrealistic deadlines or unreasonable feature requests - theoretically making a successful outcome more likely. You'll notice this has nothing to do with skill or intelligence (well, maybe "soft skills"). But - and this might be controversial - providing that feedback to leadership makes you a better programmer.

In the US the expectation setting works both ways: management tells employees what it expects of them, and employees tell management what they're realistically capable of achieving. Management will ask for extra, and employees will sometimes get less done than they promised (sometimes because there were unforeseen difficulties, extenuating circumstances etc), but in the end it all works out.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#870

Post by quonn »

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…

> "If the profit margin of operations exceeds 10% the CEO has to be replaced" or whatever.

They would find a way around that, for example by buying other companies in order to not make a profit.

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