Exactly. Not sure why people get surprised, this sort of things (company wins, employees lose) happen all the time. I imagine that since this is HN, people here

Exactly. Not sure why people get surprised, this sort of things (company wins, employees lose) happen all the time. I imagine that since this is HN, people here have Google in some kind of a throne and they think Google employees (engineers, mainly) have some sort of privileges that make them immune. Well, Google is just like any other company out there and Google engineers are just like any other employees out there, peons with zero power of decision. I hope I'm wrong and Google engineers take a step forward to avoid this pay cut, otherwise this will happen in every dumb IT company out there as well (because, if Google does it, it must be good).