It's a shame that companies that are actually creating great tech and solving difficult problems are shrinking while some vaporware nonsense raises a billion:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/28/23893939/jony-ive-openai-...
Waymo Layoffs
91–100 of 130 posts
Re: Waymo Layoffs
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Which is to say, assuming you are not actively looking for the exit door, why even bother to do your job There’s one reason - from experience, it’s a lot easier to find a job if you are currently employed. So if you think you will likely be a target in round 2 or 3, the rational thing to do is to try to stay employed as long as possible and switch jobs quickly. Also, the severance tends to get worse with each round…
That seems to suggest coasting your job, not really doing it.
Really? Seems like the people most likely to get cut in round 1 are those who are identified as coasters. If you can avoid that label, your odds of sticking around until round 2, 3, or beyond are much better.
Re: Waymo Layoffs
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> southwestern and southern US (SF, ...) I never considered SF as southwestern, but Wikipedia says you're correct
I don't think so. According to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_United_States#Reg... the southwestern US extends to the Sonoran and Mojave deserts on the west side. It lists the largest cities of the southwest as Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. SF is not in there...
Ok, "western/southwestern/southern". My point was clear.
Re: Waymo Layoffs
#94I can’t imagine three layoffs in a year is great for morale. Is there a reason they chose this sort of trickling layoffs approach?
A friend of mine convinced me this was the FB strategy to get people to resign instead of needing to fire them (a costly, legal.minefield). As a founder, the act of paralizying the company to effectively "bleed the fat off the bone" while cost effective, is insane. Because nothing gets done during those low morale months. I refused to believe this could be a valid strategy. Then I was countered with: this org is alre…
From my past experience, when an org could not build what people wanted, there were usually (i.e. almost always) specific reasons why. The things I’ve seen have included: inability of product to capitalize on ideas that did not come from them, directors who blocked/stifled work at odds with their interests (i.e. empire building), culture that was good at one thing (and not the other things they needed to succeed), absolutely psycho top management resulting in fear throughout the org, engineers who cared more about technical thing X than shipping product, management that did not grasp the technical aspects enough to manage the engineering effort, management that is simply spiteful and shoots itself in the foot, toxic culture that spends more time on intra-company competition than actual work.
Funny thing is, I think I can pin the problem on the rank-and-file at just one company. The reality is that most of the front-line just do whatever they’re told. When you have e.g. toxic culture, that comes from top down, or is at least given a free pass by the folks at the top.
There will be rare exceptions here and there. I’ve seen a company that made something that people wanted, but they simply did not have the marketing, money, and focus to acquire enough users to break even, and lost to a competitor that had an inferior product but went gonzo on their marketing. But maybe you could say that that was a fault of marketing, product, and senior leadership, not the org making the product.
So anyway, my retort is that if you do not know what exactly is broken in your org, then you have bleeped up royally. There is practically always a very specific reason, and you don’t address a specific problem with a blind sledgehammer.
Re: Waymo Layoffs
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine convinced me this was the FB strategy to get people to resign instead of needing to fire them (a costly, legal.minefield). As a founder, the act of paralizying the company to effectively "bleed the fat off the bone" while cost effective, is insane. Because nothing gets done during those low morale months. I refused to believe this could be a valid strategy. Then I was countered with: this org is alre…
> A friend of mine convinced me this was the FB strategy to get people to resign instead of needing to fire them (a costly, legal.minefield). It's a major pet peeve of mine when people's conspiracy theories don't even make sense even if you accept the theory at face value: 1. If you want to fire people for performance or other reasons, it's true that a great time to do it is during layoffs - there doesn't need to be…
> If anything, it's usually the crappiest people who are OK stocking around when a company becomes paralyzed during layoffs season - it's top performers who see the writing on the wall and go elsewhere.
I'd like to amend that - it's not the lowest performers who stick around and the top performers who leave.
It's more, the poor-at-interviewing people who stick around and the good-at-interviewing people who leave.
I've worked with a shmuck who took two years to deliver a basic CRUD system that fell over at 10 req/sec [1], and then got hired at a another place as an architect (or team lead - I forget which).
[1] I did a similar one in about 3 months, and it handled more than 4 req/sec, without weird crashes.
Re: Waymo Layoffs
#96I can’t imagine three layoffs in a year is great for morale. Is there a reason they chose this sort of trickling layoffs approach?
A friend of mine convinced me this was the FB strategy to get people to resign instead of needing to fire them (a costly, legal.minefield). As a founder, the act of paralizying the company to effectively "bleed the fat off the bone" while cost effective, is insane. Because nothing gets done during those low morale months. I refused to believe this could be a valid strategy. Then I was countered with: this org is alre…
Tbf I still don’t see any improvements to twitter. The messaging experience is still absolute horsesh
Re: Waymo Layoffs
#97I can’t imagine three layoffs in a year is great for morale. Is there a reason they chose this sort of trickling layoffs approach?
Every time you all drive prices of stocks down, layoffs happen. Think twice before you drive the prices of a stock down again, you're part of the cause. Consider selling at a higher price than you bought the stock for. If you drive stock prices down three times a year, layoffs will happen three times a year. If you drive stock prices up, they'll go on a hiring spree. It's that simple.
Unless you are the CEO it's hard to personally drive down a stock.
Re: Waymo Layoffs
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's worth a shot, though. waymo is 14 years old, maybe it is enough for a shot and time to move on something more proven? Like poor billions into smarter public transportation for example.
this comment would make sense if there werent a fleet of 100 cruise and 100 waymo sucessfully operating for months in SF now
100 people is about one train carriage. That is not a lot of bang for the buck.
Re: Waymo Layoffs
#99At this point how long before the fed starts to lower rates.
Layoffs are not an unintended side effect or overshoot, they are part of the goal: slow down the economy. Inflation has been ticking back up for the last few months, so don't expect a cut anytime soon.
Of course, but the question was getting at how long before the fed blinks.
Re: Waymo Layoffs
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would they lower rates? We're back to normal times like the 80s and 90s.
My understanding is that lower rates are good for economic growth, except when they cause inflation. Is that wrong?
They are good for growth. Too much growth without productivity gains causes inflation.