If this was a < 10 employee company it would probably be over. But for Google people will forget about this next week
Googler... ex-Googler
931–940 of 1001 posts
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#932Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is just really bad at this, but seems to think it's not bad at this. It's sad since there is no excuse for it - plenty of companies conduct regular layoffs and role eliminations in more compassionate ways, it would not take much to survey and learn from their practices. Hell, IBM was often more compassionate about layoffs than Google. Some of it they've tried to become more formal about in ways that actually m…
Google didn’t used to be quite so bad at this. Back when they closed the Atlanta office, people there got a lot of notice and opportunity to find another role. The complaints were about not being allowed to go full-time remote. I wonder what changed?
IIRC during Google's first few mass layoffs in January 2023 and in January 2024, it gave people lots of notice, including opportunities to find another role. As time went on, it just stopped caring.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#933Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly.. Many see it as some sort of marriage in an age where even marriages are contractual relations
I hope you're not suggesting that you approach your marriage the way you approach your relationship with a corporate partner.
I am subjected to periodic performance reviews, you know.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#934Earlier quoted context omitted.
Puzzled by why anyone would downvote a pure question. Wide distribution of guns is an obvious commonality between the US and Switzerland; if that's offensive observation please let me know why!
Probably because only the US has the kind of gun violence that you're wondering about. I don't think in Europe, the idea that someone is going to come after you with a gun because you pissed them off generally hits the radar. Someone may find the question offensive because of that.
Fair enough.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#935Right, okay, let's look at their most recent SEC filling to see how much money they lost in 2024 to justify layoffs... right, they made 350 billion in revenue (the highest ever in their history from what I can see) with a 100 billion in net income. Yep, this checks out, they definitely need to lay off people, can't afford them.
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…
> In fact it feels very much like they're using this as an opportunity to push the median average age and compensation level of their staff down.
They're doing exactly that, veiled in euphemisms like "making our talent pool more reflective of our user base."
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#936Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But by any objective measure, the tools make Google's developers wildly productive, That’s the thing, they might be winning all the productivity battles there are (and I genuinely believe that they do, on top of great tools Google employs good-enough programmers to make use of those tools), but at the same time they’re losing the general war. Because, with rare exceptions, the last war Google the company won when i…
> Because, with rare exceptions, the last war Google the company won when it came to launching something of lasting value happened in the late 2000s, give or take a few years. People repeat this a lot, but it's obviously not true. Google Photos is recent, really good, and had more than a billion users really quickly. Waymo is like a decade away from eating the entire urban taxi market. Gemini is the best LLM for writ…
If Photos is recent then Google search was recent when Photos was released!
It’s a decade old and that’s only if we don’t count what it was before it was spun into its own product, google’s more recent integrations spun as “releases” non withstanding.
YouTube INCREASING creator support? That’s news to me and every other YouTube creator. Creator support peaked around the time Photos released, nearly a decade ago and has only gotten worse since (although if we were to graph it, it would certainly have peaks and valleys).
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#937As important as your work seems, none of this would really function if folks weren't replaceable. The only exception I can think of is the highest level of professional sports.
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#938Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What does this say about Google's attitude to web and to Chrome? What does this say about Google's commitment to developer excellence? It probably says "the DOJ really is gonna force us to sell Chrome."
Unless the prospective buyer's name rhymes with Melon Tusk, I doubt the DOJ will do anything to challenge Google's web monopoly this strongly.
You don't think DOJ will force Google sell chrome? https://www.wired.com/story/the-doj-still-wants-google-to-di...
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#939ISTM software engineers have been living in a privileged and elite world. They are then utterly shocked to be treated like employees are treated elsewhere. Pretty much anywhere if you are let go, your email access and physical access are cut off immediately. Start-ups do this all the time as funding gets tight or there is a need to pivot. I get that this sucks (and have been on the both the dishing out side of this a…
[dead]
Re: Googler... ex-Googler
#940ISTM software engineers have been living in a privileged and elite world. They are then utterly shocked to be treated like employees are treated elsewhere. Pretty much anywhere if you are let go, your email access and physical access are cut off immediately. Start-ups do this all the time as funding gets tight or there is a need to pivot. I get that this sucks (and have been on the both the dishing out side of this a…
This is largely a US issue.
My partner here in NL got fired from a regular retail job, but the company still had to pay her 3 months of salary because she had a permanent contract and worked there for 3 years. I mean it's minimum wage, but still. She also had a month of warning, plus she could choose whether she wanted to use her remaining vacation days or have it paid off alongside the 3 months (the holiday pay gets taxed up the ass though).