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~$14B profit in one quarter. I now totally understand why they have to lay off people. /s
by gorbachev 4y ago
~$14B profit in one quarter. I now totally understand why they have to lay off people. /s
- alberth 4y agoOperating margin went from 32% to 25%. That's a massive swing. They are considerably less profitable this quarter than last year same quarter ($19B)
- gorbachev 4y agoThere are companies on this planet that can only dream about 25% operating profit.
- qeternity 4y agoHow on Earth is this relevant? Whatever your salary is, I guarantee there are people on this planet who could only dream of earning that much. Should you earn less because of that?
- ksaxena 4y agoSo?
- bushbaba 4y agoGoogle's corporate culture relies on a high profit margin. The perks, the ability to invest in large bets, all hinge on a high profit margin. If their profit margin shrinks you'll end up loosing the culture. Without the culture, Google would turn into an IBM/Oracle/HP.
- adam_arthur 4y agoYeah, and value is relative? Who cares if there’s a consumer staple company with 5% margins out there? Companies are evaluated against their own results and valuation.
- jstx1 4y agoBetween Q3 2021 and Q3 2022 they went from 150k to 186k employees; that's a huge increase over only a year. It makes sense to slow down at some point.
- qeternity 4y agoI don't really get these takes. Why would any company keep more employees than they need? It's not a charity. Shareholders, who ultimately foot the bill for all those incredibly juicy RSU packages, expect management to pursue to greatest ROI. And HN has been saying for years that these companies are extremely bloated (insert generic "how does Company X need Y engineers?").
- alimov 4y ago> Shareholders, who ultimately foot the bill for all those incredibly juicy RSU packages… How do you figure? Are the investors not making a profit? Or are you saying that the employees are basically stealing investor profits?
- qeternity 4y agoIt's arithmetic, not an opinion. RSUs dilute shareholders. I'm not suggesting they are stealing profit, I'm saying they have earned a share of the profits. That's literally the point of share awards: to align management with shareholders.
- masukomi 4y ago> Why would any company keep more employees than they need? Why would any company hire more employees than it needs? Do you really think the amount of work at Google has declined? If Google didn't need them they shouldn't have hired them in the first place. Same applies to all the big tech companies that hire boatloads of people and then have major layoffs. Exceptions apply to companies that are actually still fighting to survive or who have massive _declines_ in profits but a lot of the time the layoffs are just a "protect profits" measure, not a "we didn't need them" measure. There is, of course, a separate discussion to be had around "do big companies really need _thousands_ of employees?" but by their own thinking the answer is yes, so they did need to hire them, and thus the question to them is "Why was protecting literal billions in profits more important than protecting the people who you employed? Why do you think you'd be worse off with those people you claimed to need, but 1 billion less 'profit' ? "
- advisedwang 4y agoI haven't seen any news about Google layoffs - not sure what you are referring to.
- adam_arthur 4y agoNominal numbers are meaningless. It’s like when people tout $10B in buybacks like it’s a big deal when the market cap is over $1T. Everything is relative
- beckingz 4y agoThey're down to $369k of revenue per employee, down from $434k in Q3 of last year. Which is still insanely good.
- fuckstick 4y agoNot when you’re paying them more than that (or close to it) though.