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Google to lay off 10k “poor performers”
- johnnypangs 4y agoIs the current macroeconomics really a good reason to lay people off? It feels to me almost like double speak for a company that just made less money than they expected and blaming it on the economy rather than taking any responsibility.
- sokoloff 4y agoIf your primary business is selling ads and ad spending by companies is down (a macroeconomic factor), that seems a pretty logical connection between the macro and the ad company's response to it.
- smarmgoblin 4y agoBREAKING: 6% of workforce will be ranked in the sixth percentile. This “news” is from back in May when the new performance management system buckets were released.
- bbor 4y agoAs a current employee: this is so, so accurate. This whole “article” and the 10 others just like it this week are just a bad rehash of the exact same article posted below, but baselessly (I.e. with no quoted source at all) ratcheting up the stakes from “Under the new system, managers have been asked to categorize 6% of employees, or roughly 10,000 people, as low performers… In the previous performance review system, managers were expected to put 2% of employees in that [low performing] bucket.” To “google is laying off 10k people lol trust us”. The first quote isn’t even correct! They added a new “moderate” bucket that covers the 2nd-6th percentiles, which I think is obviously different from expanding the very worst rating to be 3x bigger.
- kevinventullo 4y agoThank you for being the only commenter in this thread with an accurate take.
- smarmgoblin 4y agoUnfortunately my take is probably not the whole story. There’s likely some grain of truth to this reporting in terms of a reduction in force being planned, but nobody is sure what form or strategy will be employed.
- kevinventullo 4y agoAgreed.
- assbuttbuttass 4y agoSource?
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoProbably Blind lol
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- torben-friis 4y agothe link doesn't reach anywhere for me.
- Ptchd 4y agoAre you on Google's network?
- didactickhan 4y agohttps://archive.ph/BjMZn https://archive.ph/BjMZn
- pdrojack 4y agohow to get these links ?
- greenyoda 4y agoGo to http://archive.ph http://archive.ph, paste the original URL into the input box, and click "save". You'll be redirected to the archived page, and can copy the archive's URL from your browser's address bar. If the article has been previously saved, this will happen quickly. If not, you'll need to wait in a queue for the article to be archived.
- projectileboy 4y agoIt’s incredibly shitty to telegraph to other employers that all the people you’re about to layoff are damaged goods. Completely unnecessary.
- chadash 4y agoWhen you are the size of Google I’m not sure how to tell managers across the company to assess poor performers and _not_ have it leak to the press. It’s not like this is a company press release.
- Tempest1981 4y agoWas it leaked as "poor performers" (absolute), or "lower performers" (relative)? Relative would imply they have good skills, but don't meet Google's extreme requirements.
- Tempest1981 4y agoDownvoted because I didn't put "extreme" in quotes? Or because Google is nowhere near being truly "hardcore"?
- chadash 4y agoThe NBA has extreme requirements. You can be an incredibly talented athlete and not be in the NBA. If you bring have what it takes you are out. At Google, or any large company, there are plenty of people who for various reasons just aren’t good performers but don’t get cut. The requirements to stay on there are not “extreme”.
- mc32 4y agoWith the exception of companies going under or closing divisions or departments what kind of companies shave off “high performers”? Sure some high performers could erroneously slip trough but the intent is predominantly to lay off poor performers (sometimes high earners or older employees, but not usually)
- chris_wot 4y agoI seem to recall that entrepreneurial projects employees work on get regularly canned. Any Google venture that they want to sell as a setvice is very likely not going to be taken up with much enthusiasm in the market because of this. I’d not be blaming employees for this!
- johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
- conradfr 4y agoPeople didn't even stop shopping on Amazon knowing full well how drivers and warehouse employees were treated so...
- isthisthingon99 4y agoThe driver thing could be regional. I have always lived in a less dense area and the drivers always were happy and helpful. Didn't look at all like what I'd expect from the news.
- kadoban 4y agoWere they happy, or did they just appear so? Some places punish employees that don't act unnaturally friendly and happy.
- isthisthingon99 4y agoHow often do you see your driver directly? I see them frequently because I'm often outside.
- kadoban 4y agoOnce every couple weeks or so, I'm home a lot. They don't _look_ that miserable, but they also don't look like they get any breaks or free time. They're always on the verge of running.
- isthisthingon99 4y agoKind of like workers at fast food restaurants? I would say so. Sometimes they are happy, sometimes it's just a job.
- wittyusername 4y agoThe founders are done with each other and long gone. It's just a financial entity maximizing profit. It's amazing to watch the full circle of Google's brilliant birth to slow plateau.
- albertopv 4y agoSo Pichai is also laid off?
- des429 4y agoI was told at some point by someone that a layoff can’t be done based on performance, because that would mean it’s a firing instead. An amazon manager told me they were careful to avoid mentioning perf as a factor in their latest layoffs. Is that accurate and if so how does this jive with that at all?
- simonh 4y agoThe article says this new performance tool is to be used to fire people, as against lay them off.
- thinkharderdev 4y agoI don't know how it works exactly but there is a meaningful difference between being fired "for cause" vs just being fired in many jurisdictions. For instance, if you're fired for cause then you may not be eligible to collect unemployment insurance. But as I understand it (and IANAL) this would apply only to things like gross misconduct (eg stealing from the company, assaulting colleagues, showing up to work drunk, etc) and poor performance wouldn't really count as being fired for cause. In the US though employment is "at will" meaning you can be fired for any reason or no reason at all. There are various exceptions to this but the burden of proof is generally on the employee to show that they were wrongfully terminated (eg if they were fired because of their race, sex, sexual orientation, etc).
- _nalply 4y ago> [...] but the burden of proof is generally on the employee to show that they were wrongfully terminated [...] This is same for Switzerland and probably Europe. In Switzerland you have three month's notice for resigning and for being laid off. You can be fired for cause without notice, but this applies only if the cause is severe enough that a continuation of the employment shouldn't be asked of the company or the employee any more. This has consequences for unemployment insurance. Usually the ex-employee needs to wait 4 weeks for unemployment benefits. It's the same if the employee resigned.
- ralph84 4y agoStack ranking still isn’t fully discredited yet?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- neilv 4y agoWhat's worse than being laid off from Google? Laid off from Google while being publicly labeled a "poor performer", in this job-hunting environment. I'd prefer more ambiguity about why people were separated, such as varying reductions by team, offers to take a sweet separation package, etc. One silver lining about the Twitter massacre is that it appears so crazed that it's easy to imagine many of the people most valued by Twitter either getting the axe or fleeing. So less stigma hurting people as they job search.
- softwaredoug 4y agoIt’s been eye opening to see Google, FAANG, et al to gradually be transformed from the “rebel” to basically the core of corporate America - with the corresponding structures and incentives they once said to have despised. Early on, they set out to keep the “startup” culture internally - to drive ongoing innovation. But it turns out that this requires a tremendous amount of both trust and capital to waste to do at scale. The skills to survive and progress at a large organization don’t resemble running a new, daring business.
- unity1001 4y ago> Early on, they set out to keep the “startup” culture internally - to drive ongoing innovation There are a lot of companies outside the US that keep their original culture way into their maturity at global scale. Hetzner, for example - started as an upstart hosting provider that prioritized engineering. It became a global entity with DCs in Europe and the US, possibly the biggest datacenter operator and cloud provider in Europe. Their engineering is still top notch. So much that even as a $50/month paying customer, your technical support related ticket gets attended by an engineer every time. Impressive feat considering how they have ~200,000 companies as their customers - in addition to the individuals that use their services. Especially their network quality was praised a lot when they first came out. Their network is still top quality. Their inital culture as it was known has not changed. What destroys American companies are the American laws that force the board to thrash the company, the employees and the users for the sake of shareholder profit. If you don't sell your soul to the devil and suck every cent as profit for the shareholders every quarter, the shareholders have a right to sue, depose you and put there someone who will. There is no way in hell US companies can protect their original culture and keep theier missions intact as long as such rapacious laws enable the worst profiteers in the American society to burn down everything for short term profit.
- mattkrause 4y ago> If you don't sell your soul to the devil and suck every cent as profit for the shareholders, the shareholders have a right to sue.... That's not actually true, except insofar as anyone can file a lawsuit for basically anything. Long discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23393674 but in brief, Dodge v. Ford is a tough case that gets overinterpreted. More recent ones give enormous latitude to the company's management.
- rychco 4y agoI'm sure it's already been said, but I genuinely avoid all new Google products/services like the plague. I don't see how anyone could comfortably invest time into a Google service when they have a graveyard of over 200+ cancelled services. If I were an employee, I would be incredibly demotivated. Why build anything new at all? Why work hard at all?
- revskill 4y agoYes, even i don't use Golang at all, as i don't trust any of them for long term.
- einpoklum 4y agoWhy just the new products/service? You had better avoid them all. > Why build anything new at all? Why work hard at all? The money, Lebowski... but also, they do a lot of interesting FOSS and published research work, which can't get "canceled".
- FartyMcFarter 4y agoThis article looks very speculative: > The company’s new performance management system could help managers fire thousands of its underperforming employees from early next year I suppose it could do that, but it could also not do that? It seems to be based on a report by The Information - no idea whether that had anything more solid.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jacobjjacob 4y agoThis article and the others like it are baseless speculation based on perf process changes from earlier this year. There’s no new information they are reporting on.
- bluescrn 4y agoIt'll be interesting to see how this (and the Meta layoffs) are reported on, compared to the to weeks of non-stop outrage over the goings on at Twitter
- nso95 4y agoWell Google and Meta aren't laying off 75%
- mansion7 4y agoSurely now we'll see a barrage of articles about how those respective CEOs are terrible, how they are associated with left-wing figures (as it is frequently pointed out that Musk is right-wing as a perjorative), sob stories of the laid off parties, journalist inquiries to their advertisers if they intend to halt ads (with the implication that they should), guides a on how to flee those services and providing free advertisement for their competitors, etc.
- julianeon 4y agoGoogle has dozens of moonshots which add nothing to the bottom line, to say nothing of the software projects they launch all the time which people look at and go "it'll be dead in 6 weeks" (and they're right). Meta spent 10 billion dollars on Metaverse stuff no one uses. If Meta had done 0 Metaverse things, they would have lost no revenue, but would have 10 billion more dollars. So those two have areas, probably entire departments, they can trim. By comparison, Twitter was all muscle.
- more_corn 4y agoKeep in mind that google employees passed one of the hardest tech screens on the planet and google is a weirdly difficult place to excel at. I’d expect a “low performing” ex-google engineer to be in the top 10% of another company.
- greenyoda 4y agoKnowing enough about obscure algorithms to pass a tech interview does not automatically make someone productive in a gigantic company. They'd also need to be able to work/communicate effectively in a team (and across teams), write performant and maintainable code, navigate huge legacy code bases, etc.
- mathverse 4y agoBigTech is ripe for disruption to be challenged by NewTech. We can only hope that can happen fast enough
- autotune 4y agoNewTech was supposed to be “web 3,” so we are going to have to wait a little longer for something real at this point.
- humanizersequel 4y agoYou could have said the same thing about internet companies after the first dotcom bubble.
- autotune 4y agoSure, I am not saying it won’t happen. Just that it’s going to take longer than expected thanks to FTX and friends.
- postalrat 4y agoWhat is this "NewTech"?
- ctvo 4y ago> Under the new system, managers have reportedly been asked to categorise six per cent of Alphabet’s workforce – corresponding to about 10,000 employees – as poor performers. Stack ranking eventually comes for us all.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoWhy would Google hire "poor performers" in the first place? Google, in part, built credibility with its talent because it's hiring process selected for exceptional talent and Googlers levereaged this into basically a passport to work anywhere. Google is shooting itself in the foot by framing it this way in the sense that it destroys the illusion that they have better hiring practices has the cost of not attracting the exceptional candidates they once could.
- Solko 4y agoBecause it's an excuse to fire people, what else? Also the company is producing bad products and nothing innovative at all. They just try to copy and fail, look at Stadia and others. Without count Angular and everything around it.
- Ferrotin 4y agoIt should be obvious that many people who pass an interview, by intelligence or hard practice, will slack off on the job.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoRight, and what Google is signaling is that they aren't actually very good at detecting this during the hiring process.
- throwaway71271 4y agoin any group of people, half are below average, by definition. they might still be in the 95th quantile in the rest of the world, and be in the bottom 6% in google.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoI'm glad you brought this up. Stack ranking is known to decimate morale. Microsoft was notorious for this.
- conscion 4y ago
- jarek83 4y agoSo now it seems that all big-tech was keeping tens of thousands of poor performers for years. I believe those performers were not really poor, it is probably matter of bad management so people were not able to present their true skill, but in any case - why they kept so many people as it seems they never needed them?
- Tade0 4y agoA few months ago I interviewed a candidate who was being recruited internally. Few days passed and the delivery manager reached me to arrange a meeting with some other people who interviewed the same person. Apparently their assessment was very different and they didn't want him in their project, so they were curious why mine was generally positive. We went back and forth on this and eventually I asked how long he's been in this organisation. Two years. He's now in a mostly solo project and I occasionally review his work. It's fine. I've seen much worse around here.
- Exendroinient00 4y agoFinally some positive news. There are too many people at faang and they are vastly overpaid.
- wdr1 4y agoWhat crappy reporting. This is just regurgitating an older article from The Information about the new rating process. The part of layoffs is unsourced & pure conjecture.
- seshagiric 4y agoUsually hiring managers are a bit compassionate about hiring workers laid off by other companies. But in this case, when an application of someone recently at Google comes up, the first question is going to be if they were fired due to performance reasons. Whatever happened to the do no evil.
- mkl95 4y agoI have an interview with Google in a few days and this is making me reconsider it. I'm not sure it's a good time to join any big tech.
- throwaway71271 4y agobecause its great time to join small tech.
- mkl95 4y agoI'm getting some juicy offers from small tech so I agree.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]