Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#911

Post by scoofy » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 1:07 AM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #753

scoofy wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to large shareholders that wouldn't actually do anything. Nobody sells in these new blue chips; they just borrow against their positions. I've thought about this for a long time. If we wanted to actually tax this wealth, we should just make people pay capital gains on marked-to-market positions every 10 years. Now before everyone starts shouting "yea, but the valuations aren't value," you could easily t…

If you wanted to tax the wealth.. have a wealth tax? It's a thing in countries including Norway and Switzerland, and similar things exist in others (e.g. Italy taxes assets in some weird non linear way).

This is a scheme to tax capital gains, not wealth. The point of this prescription isn't that "the rich have too much money," it is that we have gotten to the point where some of the largest capital gains go untaxed, period.

The idea that a gain isn't a gain until the asset is sold is nonsense. That'd literally be like saying that Bill Gates or Warren Buffett never made a dime on any of their stock that they are giving the charity. It's a ludicrous conception of capital gains, but it's exactly the one we use.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#912

Post by dbsmith83 » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 1:21 AM UTC

forward1 wrote: post #883

htss2013 wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My furnace broke after 15 years. I called a business to fix it. They replaced the dead pump motor and it worked again. The repair guy was paid well and I was happy to pay. What exactly is inherently unethical about this?

How about the cost of producing and shipping the new motor pump, and the cost of disposing of the old one? And do you think the individuals who made the motor pump are treated and compensated fairly, or are they likely exploited in third-world dystopia to bring you (but mostly the business) cost savings? And this is saying nothing of the actual use of the furnace and all the energy it requires. And I have yet to see…

What a load of rubbish... Your entire argument hinges on what you consider 'fair compensation' and your value judgement about energy cost. Guess what--living your life and using resources is not unethical

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#913

Post by wutwutwat » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 1:24 AM UTC

kentm wrote: post #826

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…

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.

Advertising, the entire industry, exists to convince you to buy something you don't want, hence why you have to be talked into it, through psychological manipulation, preying on your insecurities, repetition via repeat ad exposure, and insane amounts of money and testing to build brand recognition and create biases to certain companies dubbed "brand loyalty"... so, there is no such thing as ethical advertising.

Advertising is psychological manipulation at scale and it's effective. How does one ethically manipulate someone into doing something they wouldn't do if not influenced to do so? Ethical advertising can't exist, the same way two masses can't occupy the same point in space at the same time.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#914

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 1:27 AM UTC

wutwutwat wrote: post #913

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.

Advertising, the entire industry, exists to convince you to buy something you don't want, hence why you have to be talked into it, through psychological manipulation, preying on your insecurities, repetition via repeat ad exposure, and insane amounts of money and testing to build brand recognition and create biases to certain companies dubbed "brand loyalty"... so, there is no such thing as ethical advertising. Adver…

Thats a bit of a pessimistic if realistic take. Advertising in its ideal form is meant to inform you of something that could improve your life (happiness, productivity, health, etc...). It could conceivably be "let the consumer know that our product solves their problems that competitors can't solve or for a cheaper cost." Of course, cutting corners leads to more profits for less effort, so that's what often happens.

Ethically speaking, ads simply shouldn't be manipulating us at all, just informing us of something that might be useful.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#915

Post by strix_varius » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 1:35 AM UTC

hajile wrote: post #824

scoofy wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to large shareholders that wouldn't actually do anything. Nobody sells in these new blue chips; they just borrow against their positions. I've thought about this for a long time. If we wanted to actually tax this wealth, we should just make people pay capital gains on marked-to-market positions every 10 years. Now before everyone starts shouting "yea, but the valuations aren't value," you could easily t…

Tax the sale of everything and the entire problem goes away. At that point, it doesn't matter that they borrowed against their positions because spending the money they borrowed still taxes their stocks indirectly.

Exactly, people constantly debate this but it's a solved problem. Don't tax input, tax output.

It also gives you a better scalpel. Instead of trying to wrangle the different income structures (blends of w2, 1099, stocks, bonds, real estate, etc etc), differentiate via the purchases:

- superyachts: very high tax - luxury cars: high tax - vacation homes: high tax - clothes: low tax - staple groceries: no tax

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#916

Post by wutwutwat » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 1:38 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #914

wutwutwat wrote: post #913

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising, the entire industry, exists to convince you to buy something you don't want, hence why you have to be talked into it, through psychological manipulation, preying on your insecurities, repetition via repeat ad exposure, and insane amounts of money and testing to build brand recognition and create biases to certain companies dubbed "brand loyalty"... so, there is no such thing as ethical advertising. Adver…

Thats a bit of a pessimistic if realistic take. Advertising in its ideal form is meant to inform you of something that could improve your life (happiness, productivity, health, etc...). It could conceivably be "let the consumer know that our product solves their problems that competitors can't solve or for a cheaper cost." Of course, cutting corners leads to more profits for less effort, so that's what often happens.…

> Ethically speaking, ads simply shouldn't be manipulating us at all, just informing us of something that might be useful.

Sure, if that existed in a vacuum, and not in a capitalist economic system where you are rewarded by doing unethical things to generate more profit. In reality, there is no way to successfully deploy ethical advertising. Even if one tried, it could never compete with the ones not being ethical, since they will have higher returns, and infinitely more budget as a result, to make it so your ethical ad is never even shown to a single human eyeball

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#917

Post by gymbeaux » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 1:49 AM UTC

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…

I don’t think you can have a company both be public and ethical in the way you’re describing, at least in the US where you’ll get sued for giving some profits back to employees instead of to the shareholders, for example. Though if the company stays private, they’re subject to the “benevolent dictator” problem where the company is only ethical because the leader is. At least with a public company (or a non-profit), the CEO is subject to discipline by the board of directors.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#918

Post by wutwutwat » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 1:56 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #914

wutwutwat wrote: post #913

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising, the entire industry, exists to convince you to buy something you don't want, hence why you have to be talked into it, through psychological manipulation, preying on your insecurities, repetition via repeat ad exposure, and insane amounts of money and testing to build brand recognition and create biases to certain companies dubbed "brand loyalty"... so, there is no such thing as ethical advertising. Adver…

Thats a bit of a pessimistic if realistic take. Advertising in its ideal form is meant to inform you of something that could improve your life (happiness, productivity, health, etc...). It could conceivably be "let the consumer know that our product solves their problems that competitors can't solve or for a cheaper cost." Of course, cutting corners leads to more profits for less effort, so that's what often happens.…

Although, the sharing of useful information is different than an advertisement, entirely, so such a thing wouldn't be called an ad.

Wikipedia exists to share information and inform us of something we might find useful. It doesn't need to be pushed on anyone. It just needs to exist in the open.

Anytime something is brought to you that you didn't ask for, demanding your attention, there is motive behind why it's being done, be it a coworker pitching a tool to you trying to get buy-in and force a decision they want to be made in their favor, a flyer of sales happening at the grocery store that's delivered to your door on Sunday, or the blinking square ad impression telling you that if you just give up some of your money, they will provide you with a service that will make you feel like you're making progress on something (and then you'll convince yourself that's true even if it's not because nobody likes to admit they made a mistake and wasted time and/or money).

Ads are forced upon us, telling us something, and there is so much motive behind why it's being done, people will spend millions to make sure you see it. Even if it's just a tidbit of info, selling no product, whoever is motivated enough to pay a lot of money for you to see it, has motive to push an agenda which you seeing that info stands to benifet from. It's still manipulation. It's not possible to be ethical.

The only example of real world ethical advertising I can think of, would be the million dollar webpage. A webpage of pixels purchased to show an ad, that you have to willingly make the decision to navigate to and look at, and that website no longer exists, which proves my point pretty well imo

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#919

Post by Jensson » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:16 AM UTC

ironlake wrote: post #732

throwaway13394 wrote: post #442

I work in Core Eng at google. Woke up this morning and saw my director - who we all loved and had been at Google for 20 years - is gone. One concerning thing that I haven't seen reported is that my leadership chain is almost entirely Indian, all the way up. And they've announced that they are starting to offshore entire core products to India, primarily in bangalore IIUC.

As an individual contributor software engineer, I've worked with offshore developers before and always found the experience unproductive. The problem is always management tells me to help them so they can learn. I don't mind being in a mentor role, but I'm not interested in mentoring a temp contract worker. Google is a global company. They make money from developing countries, they should have employees in those coun…

> But they don't want employees in Bangalore. They want indentured servants and poverty wages.

Google has a ton of employees in Bangalore that passed the same interviews and are paid way more than typical offshore devs, this just isn't true. Google gets the best people in India who wants to stay there, those are good enough to develop software without much help.

Re: Google Cuts Jobs in Engineering and Other Divisions

#920

Post by daddylongstroke » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:40 AM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #861

treyd wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>The weird thing is we take it for granted instead of being repelled by it. Yes, exactly this right here. It was straight up bizarre to grow up with near 0 advertising in commie Eastern Europe and get hit with a shockwave of fairly disgusting ad bullshit when we moved to the US. I was shocked at people putting up with it as if it is something to be tolerated instead of burned to ashes. I continue to be shocked.