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Google to reduce workforce by 12k

• afandian 4y ago
  > Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago That seems like a weird thing to throw in there. Does anyone else read it as a hasty "we were doing AI before ChatGPT was cool"?
  • guerrilla 4y ago
    Hopefully someone can inform us as to whether they did announce such a pivot (I have no memory of that) but it wouldn't surprise me. ChatGPT feels a lot like search-without-citations to me, and the closest existing thing in production to it is the blurb at the top of Google results, which I suppose will soon be replaced by this kind of thing (if they can ever get it to stop lying.)
    • knorker 4y ago
      “Computing is evolving again. We spoke last year about this important shift in computing from a mobile-first to an AI-first approach. … In an AI-first world, we are rethinking all our products and applying machine learning and AI to solve user problems.” —Sundar Pichai, 2017 https://techbeacon.com/enterprise-it/google-goes-ai-first-io-what-dev-ops-need-know https://techbeacon.com/enterprise-it/google-goes-ai-first-io...
    • ta988 4y ago
      It is not lying, it is not conscious. It is just displaying whatever it says using confidence filled sentences.
      • guerrilla 4y ago
        > it is not conscious Obviously. Whatever you want to call it, it needs to stop consistently vomiting up false statements before it's fully useful.
    • spuz 4y ago
      Since 2015, Google have rolled out RankBrain, BERT and MUM which are machine learning enhancements of their search algorithm and allow Google to understand the meaning of the terms you search for and provide matches based on that.
      • oriolid 4y ago
        So that explains how Google knows that when I'm searching for X, it can give me results for slightly related Y instead. Sometimes it works, often it feels almost hostile.
        • omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
          I've noticed the same thing with YouTube notifications. It feels like Google wants to recruit/queue my attention as a resource for their client's ads instead of just notifying me when a new video from someone I follow is available.
          • oriolid 4y ago
            That at least make some sense, but I don't understand whose benefit is showing results for Rider and IDEA when I search for some detail in CLion that is different from the other IDEs from the same company.
  • gnfargbl 4y ago
    I would guess he means that they use AI algorithms to perform some of the tasks that are performed manually at most companies. If so, most of Google's customers wouldn't really consider this to be a win. ML-driven account suspensions etc are universally hated and seem to have damaged Google's image, at least in the tech community.
    • HeckFeck 4y ago
      Part of my job is developing and testing a Google calendar sync tool. I've created a secondary throwaway email address so I don't fill my own calendar with test data. During testing I often have to link/unlink the calendar with different users in my application. Some AI bot has evidently flagged this as 'suspicious' because I now get 'An error has occurred, please try again' when linking my application with Google Calendar. No further details of which error it might be or what I might do to resolve it. To whom may I write to explain this situation and have my account unlocked? There is no one. I really despise this behaviour. Why should I put the time in to test and develop an application that benefits users of Google's calendar when they won't even lift a finger for me?
      • lmm 4y ago
        > Why should I put the time in to test and develop an application that benefits users of Google's calendar when they won't even lift a finger for me? Well, why are you? They treat you like that because you let them.
        • HeckFeck 4y ago
          Modern users expect everything to integrate with Google Calendar, unfortunately. You can't avoid them when it comes to developing scheduling applications.
      • visarga 4y ago
        > To whom may I write to explain this situation and have my account unlocked? There is no one. I really despise this behaviour They will probably never hire humans for support tickets. But they could "hire" their star model PaLM to solve support questions. It could be a good demo and a product useful for many companies. Even if it is only 70% or 80% effective, still better than nothing.
  • swyx 4y ago
    > "we were doing AI before ChatGPT was cool" definitely google is on the defensive right now[0] and just this week they had jeff dean do a "here's all our AI credentials" recap [1] 0: https://lspace.swyx.io/p/google-vs-openai https://lspace.swyx.io/p/google-vs-openai 1: https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyond-language.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyon...
    • throwaway29303 4y ago
      Jeff Dean has been doing yearly recaps since 2017. 2017 https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/01/the-google-brain-team-looking-back-on.html 2018 https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/01/the-google-brain-team-looking-back-on.html (part 1) https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/01/the-google-brain-team-looking-back-on_12.html (part 2) 2019 https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/01/looking-back-at-googles-research.html 2020 http://ai.googleblog.com/2021/01/google-research-looking-back-at-2020.html 2021 http://ai.googleblog.com/2022/01/google-research-themes-from-2021-and.html 2022 http://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyond-language.html
    • DocTomoe 4y ago
      A friend of mine who is in "serious" AI research keeps telling me not to get too excited about Google's AI stuff, as they do release a lot of papers, but these are essentially worthless and non-reproduceable as they hide raw data. He suspects half of them or more are completely made up, as they do not align well with what else happens in the field. I can't verify that, but whenever the "AI" behind my Google Home gets a bit more stupid (happens once a week nowadays, with it 'forgetting' even the few things that worked before), I am inclined to agree.
      • swyx 4y ago
        agree that they are nonreproduceable, but they are probably not worthless in that i'm sure they have very extensive review processes and theyve said that they actually put models like T5 into production on search. there's no bigger skin in the game than that. > they do not align well with what else happens in the field i'm interested in this comment though. havent transformers changed the field? what is this referring to? mind getting your friend to elaborate?
  • achow 4y ago
    Quite possible (ChatGPT related). Considering this was the Tweet that he sent yesterday.. https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1615820298305118221 https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1615820298305118221 As a followup to AI blogpost (which is clearly in response to ChatGPT) https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyond-language.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2023/01/google-research-2022-beyon...
  • helsinkiandrew 4y ago
    In Google I/O 2017 they announced a "pivot to AI". https://www.engadget.com/2017-05-20-at-i-o-2017-google-doubled-down-on-a-future-built-on-ai.html https://www.engadget.com/2017-05-20-at-i-o-2017-google-doubl... Google Assistant, Tensorflow, Google Lens, Cloud TPU, Google Goggles, auto mail responses etc. A lot of interesting stuff but nothing that has made the popular press like chatGPT, dall-e etc.
    • kgwgk 4y ago
      DeepMind has occasionally made to the popular press - but not like ChatGPT. Coverage was more like that of IBM’s Watson and Deep Blue back in the day.
  • joshvm 4y ago
    I'm not sure if you'd call it a pivot, but Google Brain was initially an X project that was started well before the deep learning craze took off. They hired Geoff Hinton in 2013. Investment in AI has been going on for a long time at Google, probably before Facebook/FAIR got seriously involved, but probably not Microsoft (MSR has been going for ~30 years and Chris Bishop started the Cambridge lab in '97 and they've long been known as a good ML group). It's not like Google wasn't using ML before that either. Search, recommender systems for ads, anti-spam, translate. Deep learning just turned out to be a lot better than the tools we used to use.
  • samwillis 4y ago
    Google Ads, their most significant revenue stream, are entirely AI base, and speaking as an advertiser, it's only made it more crap. It's "ai" algorithms are designed to maximise value extraction from advertisers, rather than value creation for advertisers. There has been a systematic trend over the last 10 years to remove the controls advertisers have over their placements and spend and move towards a black box we are supposed to trust.
  • cutenewt 4y ago
    This is definitely tone deaf. Who cares if you were held the lead in the first leg of the marathon? All that matters is who's in the lead now and who's in the lead at the finish.
• jstx1 4y ago
  Do we have details on which geographies and teams are affected?
• neodypsis 4y ago
  Amazon and Meta I can understand why. But why Microsoft and now Google? What positions were affected in Google? Just developers?
  • summerlight 4y ago
    Beside Apple (whose YoY growth on its workforce was consistent before and after the pandemic), I think almost all tech company made a wrong bet that economical changes will be accelerated by "going online" and thus dominated by FOMO.
  • bantunes 4y ago
    It's correcting a decade of over-hiring, and a shortcut to a slightly higher stock price.
  • cdiddy2 4y ago
    Cost of employees has gone up as stocks drop due to such high RSU compensation. Stock is 40% off its highs which means they have to make up that difference in either cash or more stock, and neither look good to investors at the moment so smooth the financials 10% layoffs is the go to for large tech here.
    • JonChesterfield 4y ago
      I don't follow. RSUs being worth less than they used to be means employees are cheaper. You gave out $X a couple of years ago and when it finally vests it's worth 0.6*$X or similar, that's a direct drop in employee compensation. Are you reasoning that employees paid in RSU are not amused by this and are likely to leave if not "made whole" somehow? Seems like waiting for people to quit would get headcount down fairly quickly if so.
      • cdiddy2 4y ago
        Ya basically people will feel they are getting a pay cut, and since the higher you go in the company the larger percent of your salary is from RSUs those are the people most likely to be unhappy. You potentially lose your high level core employees while entry level are much less affected edit: this graph shows how much of your compensation is stock by level at google https://imgur.com/a/wlpa6Wm https://imgur.com/a/wlpa6Wm
• shmde 4y ago
  (Question): Are all major tech companies doing this when everyone else is so that they face less backlash for it ? Also what about the news of companies having record profits during pandemi. Were they false/fake too ?
  • d3m0t3p 4y ago
    apparently : "Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today."
  • wolfi1 4y ago
    layoffs aren't only when profits plummet, they are when stock prices must rise because of some bonus package
    • RivieraKid 4y ago
      Ideally, layoffs should happen when employee count is above the amount which maximizes company value. It should never be a response to stock price changes, makes no sense.
      • wolfi1 4y ago
        C*Os only have one incentive and that's their compensation package
  • Zvez 4y ago
    Major companies are laying off now not because they don't have money. It is mostly because they have been hiring a lot for past year based on growth they had during pandemic. Now as economic situation has changed, they just revert their previous hiring decision. They don't want to risk their money by holding to people they hired 'by mistake'.
  • matwood 4y ago
    Some of it is trimming the fat because these companies grew a lot over the pandemic. These companies are also looking at what's happening right now in their business, not last quarters profits. They are likely all seeing a slow down and preparing.
• ak_111 4y ago
  Question for those who got laid-off from tech recently (say since Aug last year): how hard did you find it to get another tech job? Would be interesting to get some anecdotal evidence to shed light on the following WSJ article which claims laid-off tech workers are finding it easy to get re-recruited: https://www.wsj.com/articles/laid-off-tech-workers-quickly-find-new-jobs-11672097730 https://www.wsj.com/articles/laid-off-tech-workers-quickly-f... If the phenomena described in the WSJ article is true then the consequence to the macro environment could be substantial and not in a good way. Basically the fed will probably need another round of hikes to really bring down unemployment to bring down core inflation. Since it would imply that (ironically) the recent fall in unemployment is "transitory" and not sufficient to bring down inflation.
  • bearmode 4y ago
    Not been laid off myself, but I'm still being absolutely hounded by recruiters. There are still a ton of tech jobs out there, at least in the UK.
    • ak_111 4y ago
      Interesting I am not noticing this in the UK, what part of tech do you work in?
      • substation13 4y ago
        Tune the keywords on your LinkedIn a bit and you should see loads of recruiter inbound.
      • kypro 4y ago
        I'm from the UK. I got laid off in the first week of Jan and accepted a new contract role yesterday. The market was extremely quiet last week, but it seemed to pick up quite a bit this week. I'd guess it depends on experience and stuff, but there does seem to be stuff out there... What I did notice was less tech companies seemed to be recruiting. Almost all of the roles I was approached for were in industries like finance, retail, healthcare, etc.
• robbiet480 4y ago
  This week: Amazon 18,000 Microsoft 10,000 Alphabet/Google 12,000
  • rk06 4y ago
    Microsoft mentioned 10,000. Where did you get 11000 from?
    • Ensorceled 4y ago
      Lots of sources were predicting 11K before the actual announcement. I thought it was 11K too, had to look it up.
    • rfoo 4y ago
      I also remembered the 11k number and just did a search in my browsing history. Turns out there was a rumor saying 11k, with Microsoft said it was not true shortly before they announced the 10k layoff. Since it all happened in the same week, it is pretty confusing. At least to me.
    • robbiet480 4y ago
      Thanks for pointing this out, corrected.
  • 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
    is it possible that this is all a response to falling stock price. it seem historically a quick fix for any CEO to bump the stock price is to make layoffs, and it seems to work. and i don't think any of those companies are strapped for cash
    • swyx 4y ago
      most good ceos, and definitely ceo's at this level, know not to overreact to stock price which is very macro and short term driven, when they should be playing the 10-20 year game.
      • 4y ago
• laserlight 4y ago
  Can we update the title to let everyone know of the size: 12000?
  • saagarjha 4y ago
    Seems to be updated.
  • herodoturtle 4y ago
    Out of a total of roughly 140,000 employees (according to Wikipedia as of 2021). So a tad less than 10% of their workforce. Just thought I'd add that for perspective.
    • danpalmer 4y ago
      It's just over 6%, the company is much bigger now than in 2021 due to hiring and the Mandiant acquisition.
      • mkl 4y ago
        Mandiant was only 2-3000 people - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandiant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandiant.
        • danpalmer 4y ago
          Oh ok, that's quite a bit smaller than I thought. Thanks.
    • bongobingo1 4y ago
      I saw a comment on the recent MS layoffs of 10k, after they hired 40k in the last 2-3 years (iirc), so they were still up 30k jobs...
    • thecompilr 4y ago
      The big companies hired so many new engineers over the past fee years, I wonder how many of them just abused the remote work to score multiple jobs? Like where did all those jobless engineers come from on such short notice?
• drstewart 4y ago
  >I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here There it is! The free bingo space
  • 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
    > I take full responsibility but no consequences.
    • rk06 4y ago
      Of course not. He will be taking extra bonus and stocks. Not to mention stock value increase due to his direct decision
  • mk89 4y ago
    After so long, I decided to think of it differently: it's a learning company. You can eventually fix the problem you're responsible for by chopping off a part of it, convince people you can do better, and then move on. (Don't try at home!!!) :) Now the question for all these learning companies would be: how do they prevent this from happening again? What did they learn and what are they going to do differently? I would seriously like to know. The way I see it: right now everyone is kind of "rebalancing" their resources, but what's next? How do you prevent over-provisioning of resources (without under-provisioning)? How do you say which (internal) project is worth throwing money at and which one not? Another question I would have is: will they stop hiring for 2023-2024? Couldn't they offer these people an alternative role internally? Maybe not all the 10000, but maybe 2000 could stay and be in the same role in other teams? Or did they do it already and those 10000 are really people that can't be placed at all internally? (Like we don't want full remote, and we're shutting down that particular office, in which case I can even understand...)
    • trashtester 4y ago
      > Another question I would have is: will they stop hiring for 2023-2024? Almost certainly not. Maybe the first few months, fewer will get hired. > Couldn't they offer these people an alternative role internally? They almost certainly will try to do that with the top performers. But I suppose it doesn't make much sense doing this to retain below average performers (even if their average may be a bit high), given their salary levels and the current market. Moving someone from one type of product to something completely else may require almost as much training as the training of a new hire. Better to hire someone new in a few months, at a lower salary and possibly someone with more potential. Also, most ex-googlers will probably have an easy time finding other work (especially engineers), so even they may be better off in the end. Now, I do wonder what kind of roles are seeing the biggest slashes, especially outside of tech. (Ie, sales, marketing, key account, domain experts, content moderation, HR related). If any of those are cut disproportionally, it may indicate a change in direction.
• Silverback_VII 4y ago
  Well, developing AI systems which are able to replace you and your abilities was not the best idea I guess.
  • kmac_ 4y ago
    Wait until everyone realize there is no AI but a really large statistical string concatenate machine. Edit: I forgot /s
    • Silverback_VII 4y ago
      does it matter? it can already write computer code and will form now on only get better.
      • tuyiown 4y ago
        The trick is writing useful code autonomously, with is widely yet to be proven.
        • ben_w 4y ago
          It can definitely do OK at that. Not Google-level, also definitely, but it can make stuff that works. Virtually everyone I've been talking to has a question about if the chats are logged (bad for corporate secrecy if so).
    • ben_w 4y ago
      A large statistical string concatenation machine by any other name will smell just as much of redundancy.
  • testplzignore 4y ago
    The repeated mentions of AI comes across as him being completely tone deaf. Does he not realize that people fear AI will cause jobs to be lost? Talking about AI and layoffs at the same time is going to earn him some heat for quite a while.
  • 4y ago
• rvz 4y ago
  Not even Google. Looks like the era of free money for decades and over-hiring had to come to an end. The correction and then crash of the market had bring everyone back to reality since the covid bubble had burst in November 2021 as warned back at the time. [0] As I said before, no one is safe. Doesn't matter if your a FAAMNG company. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508238
• dzonga 4y ago
  I blame companies for blaming with people's lives like this: not market dynamics. companies are the ones that decided to overhire, overpay - based on covid demand, cheap money that was floating around. companies not the market, resulted in a war over talent. now it's a war on talent. and of course everyone and their grandma will want to work at these tech companies where life is laid back and you get all the benefits and can express your political opinions. but other big companies - say a tech company in the middle of nowhere e.g Epic - was paying good salary and not matching the faang / vc salaries. i'm sure those companies, if they didn't follow the herd ain't laying off people. their people are still employed, getting paid decent (enough). and work normal hours.
  • iLoveOncall 4y ago
    > companies are the ones that decided to overhire, overpay - based on covid demand, cheap money that was floating around But this concept of over-hiring and overpaying doesn't make sense. There is no way to predict whether a positive economy will last 10 years or 10 months, and if you don't follow the economic growth you will lose bigger than if you follow it and have to make cuts later. Everyone is quick to blame companies for "over-hiring", but they would also be quick to blame them for being too careful in a positive economy, and the market would punish them.
    • dzonga 4y ago
      overpaying makes sense, over-hiring makes sense. for two comparable companies, with comparable products look at Asana vs Basecamp. How much does Basecamp pay for a senior engineer ? they pay top end of SF salary regardless of location. However, you can best that Asana is paying at least 1.5x what Basecamp pays + RSU's etc. Yet Basecamp is printing money and yet Asana is bleeding money. How many engineers does Basecamp have ? How many does Asana have ? so yeah the concept of overpaying and over-hiring exists and not just a fallacy. if it was market driven, then the laws of the market would dictate Asana not to pay a premium over Basecamp for talent.
  • raverbashing 4y ago
    Yeah, I also wonder how much of the current layoffs are "we need to fire people as to look good on paper for the market"
• pepF 4y ago
  [dead]
  • JonChesterfield 4y ago
    Your landing page is crazy. Full screen image of awkward looking people talking without audio working (tried a few things, can't get it to make a sound). Is the product a mobile phone application that you give access to your bank and it displays the same information your bank statement does but sorted into categories?
    • fragmede 4y ago
      which, intuit bought mint.com for $170 million dollars, so that's not a bad play.
  • activitypea 4y ago
    On MacOS / Safari, the full-screen video loops the first few seconds while bufferring, so I was just looking at the awkward guy on repeat. I also have to agree that it was a "bold" choice to use black text with a dark green background on a website whose primary color is orange.
• iLoveOncall 4y ago
  > As part of that, if you are just starting your work day, please feel free to work from home today. What a generous offer.
  • saagarjha 4y ago
    “Please don’t show up on campus and make trouble for security”
    • mk89 4y ago
      Ahahahaah
  • DrSiemer 4y ago
    Please feel free to voluntarily limit turmoil on the work floor today
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    My brain somehow skipped that sentence. I would be relatively certain all the affected people were already feeling quite free to do what needs to be done in their individual cases. This is such a weird Friday.
• durnygbur 4y ago
  oh hello my brain teaser, and algorithm puzzle loving friends. Welcome to the job search market!
• sai_c 4y ago
  Does anyone know what "Outside the US, we’ll support employees in line with local practices." exactly means? In Germany I could imagine it to be "You're fired. Go to the Arbeitsagentur and find a new job". Of course within the legal forewarning period.
  • mejutoco 4y ago
    I guess it just means they will follow the law in each country. In the case of Germany I believe the minimum notice period is one month (unless on probation, 2 weeks), but it is common to get 3 months. So they will pay for 3 months.
    • jpadkins 4y ago
      US FTEs were paid 6 months. We will see, but DE will probably get as much.
  • type_Ben_struct 4y ago
    Taking the UK as an example, there are strict laws and processes that need to be followed to implement redundancies: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights
  • vincnetas 4y ago
    it means we will do what law requires. Which is quite a low bar to clear :)
    • ggm 4y ago
      C/F musk and his stupidity at twitter. Lawsuits in progress.
  • mkl95 4y ago
    At some EU countries mass layoffs at large companies follow their own process, usually with some union involved, etc.
  • joshvm 4y ago
• eCa 4y ago
  I guess someone has to write this comment: > I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here As usual, he says nothing more what the consequences for him are. It seems like all of the FAANGs have made severe strategic cockups when it comes to hiring lately. I wonder if it will affect their longterm attraction as employers.
  • mrazomor 4y ago
    He doesn't say it's going to be a punishment or a reward :). I'd bet on the latter. Lower operational cost! Increased stock value! Beefy bonus! Sundar takes all...
  • bawolff 4y ago
    I always find these comments a bit silly. Saying something is "my fault" is not the same as saying they intend to die on their own sword.
    • parasight 4y ago
      He did not say, "It is my fault." He said, "I take full responsibility." The question stands: what does that mean?
      • xiphias2 4y ago
        The same, that it was a miatake on his part, even though he was getting signals from different people that Google is overhiring.
      • fs111 4y ago
        Nothing. It means nothing. It is in the current CEO firing template, that is why it's there.
      • baloki 4y ago
        Wasn’t there a whole scene in Silicon Valley with Gavin Belson that basically mocks this kind of language?
• mkl95 4y ago
  > In the US: > We’ll pay employees during the full notification period (minimum 60 days). Weird flex. Would it be legal not to?
  • eftychis 4y ago
    No it wouldn't be legal. Edit: This is a layoff.
  • mcculley 4y ago
    Yes. California is an at-will state. The employer can terminate at any time for any reason. Unless they have a contract, they can do anything they want.
    • leoedin 4y ago
      Do employees not have some sort of contract? Surely you'd want to have some level of notice - it's no good for employers for people to quit with no notice either.
      • mcculley 4y ago
        I agree that notice is preferable. The question was, “Would it be legal not to?”
      • mercutio2 4y ago
        Employment in the US is largely at will. Only in large layoffs do workers have any rights to notification, and large layoffs are rare, so most US employees expect there’s zero right to notification. This is a shock to folks in Europe, but when people quit here they generally give two weeks notice, and no one expects you to do any work in those two weeks. This equilibrium is bad for labor, but very good for capital. Not shockingly, the US is a magnet for capital! The macro term of art for this is “a dynamic labor market”, and capitalists love it. If you’re wealthy in the US, it leads to extremely generous compensation for in demand functions. But it’s also correlated with a weak safety net.
• pembrook 4y ago
  A lot of people seem to be chalking this one up in the “memetic imitation among tech execs” column. However, in the case of Google, I’m not so sure. Google is an advertising business. And advertising revenue is extremely sensitive to changes in the economy (Companies cut ad spending when there isn’t as much demand to soak up). In the last recession Google was still rapidly stealing ad share from old media, but now they’ve won the game and are the market. So this one makes complete sense to me. I’m sure everyone still thinks Google only hires engineers, but they actually employ A TON of ad sales people.
  • DrBazza 4y ago
    This all happened in the dotcom crash - all the companies shed staff. It happened again during the credit-crunch. It (used to?) happens in reverse every year in the banks - everyone watched Goldmans pay out bonus before xmas and then adjust their bonuses accordingly. Business always watches what the other guy does.
  • 88 4y ago
    Just a theory but in a downturn I could see a lot of companies increasing their ad spend as they lose existing customers and find they need to work harder to acquire new ones. Obviously this doesn’t apply to advertising which is just gratuitous brand building.
    • somedude895 4y ago
      It applies to Google. Their main revenue still comes from Search Engine Advertising, which is a really good customer acquisition channel. But the reason ad spends decrease during downturns is that people consume less, so there's no point in advertising when nobody's buying.
    • bigcloud1299 4y ago
      This is opposite. Marketing budget is second to be cut first being building (space expansion). The R&D budget however goes up mid recession. Here is how the cuts work R&D, space expansion, marketing, parties, raises, new product building, warehouses,
• yellow_lead 4y ago
  Big tech companies have a "Get out of jail free (in the press)" layoff card right now, and they're taking full advantage of that, despite not needing to at all.
• ur-whale 4y ago
  Milquetoast Google CEO Sundar Pichai finally does something after 7 years at the helm
• monkeydust 4y ago
  This is a short-term downward adjustment to what is a long running trend of increasing demand for software professionals across every industry. I feel private companies who don't have the play the quarterly announcement game can come out stronger given conviction in what they are doing and a strong balance sheet.
• Aeolun 4y ago
  I swear all these companies are just using the fact that everyone else is firing as an excuse to get rid of such a large part of their workforce.
  • nness 4y ago
    Yes, my suspicion is that most were forced into that position by macro economic trends, i.e. Facebook and smaller start-ups. Where as Google's delay in announcing this helped distance themselves from being lumped into the financial woes/overvaluation concerns of "the tech industry." That said, I thought they'd at least wait until Q2/Q3, but that's a whole quarter of money to save...
• tigerlily 4y ago
  I wonder what they'll sunset next? Anyone got any hunches?
• csvm 4y ago
  Amazon, Microsoft, and now Alphabet. Is this because Twitter showed an example where you can lay off most of the non-core workforce and the tech will still go on?
  • HeckFeck 4y ago
    I do wonder if this is a consequence of the "My day at Linkedin" TikTok videos that were circulating. Looks like they'll have to manage life without the wine on tap and the morning pedicures before attending 1/2 hour of meetings each day.
    • lexapro 4y ago
      You think executives had to watch TikTok videos to know what's going on in their companies? I mean they allowed this to happen. It's not the fault of the employees. And of course these videos don't show reality, they cut out the boring parts (the desk work).
      • coredog64 4y ago
        Not the execs, the shareholders. They were seeing this and in turn that increased the pressure on executives to rationalize staffing.
        • pm90 4y ago
          This is not how any of this works.
    • paganel 4y ago
      > the wine on tap That always looked like an abomination to me, for the wine, that is. You either drink the wine poured directly from a bottle (or directly from the barrel, like my grandpa used to do), or you don't.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Musk definitely seem to have served as a convenient excuse[1] for a ton of related articles. Just yesterday, my boss gave us speech on working full 40 hours and not abusing the system. Something is definitely in the works now. edit: I figured some context may be warranted here. We are obviously salary. Some remote. Some hybrid. Seemingly, it is a result of someone in person in the office complaining. I love people. [1]https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-elon-musk-your-bosss-anger-translator-11669073893 https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-elon-musk-your-bosss-anger-t...
• DrBazza 4y ago
  Another multi-billion dollar company making billions of dollars of profit dumps thousands of staff on the streets. There are two approaches here. Firstly, attrition, simply don't replace those that leave. Given the sheer size of the company, a hiring freeze and attrition would gradually reduce the size of the workforce. I'd be astonished if a company with a market cap of $1.2 trillion would be likely to collapse if it didn't immediately get rid of 12,000 people right now. Second, stop over recruiting in the first place. I'm sure google, like the others this week have some company mantra about how precious their staff are, and they're all family. Until they're not.
  • DebtDeflation 4y ago
    That would be the logical approach if their only objective were reducing headcount. In reality, it's both that AND they're trying to get the wage spiral under control. As terrible as it sounds, layoffs send the "stop asking for more money, you should be thankful to even have a job" signal to the workforce.
  • rvba 4y ago
    The employees who can leave on their own are often the "better" ones.
  • jwhiles 4y ago
    I think that your best employees are the people who are most likely to leave a company of their own accord, and so if you rely on attrition to reduce headcount you will also reduce the average quality of your workers.
    • DrBazza 4y ago
      In the tech industry the best employees are going to leave regardless, especially if they're bored. Also, like banks, the FAANGs pay bonuses. And also like banks, if you want to 'suggest' to someone that ought to leave, regardless of who they are, you pay them a near-zero bonus, and give them a negative annual review as well. Conversely, if a company wants to keep someone they pay more to encourage that person to stay. All the gears and levers are in place in Megacorp, to do this kind of thing. The whole mass-redundancy thing from companies of this size I find distasteful and cowardly, a reflection of the disrepect and arrogance senior management has for it staff, and an indication of mismanagement at a high level that can be afforded because a company is too large to fail.
• trabant00 4y ago
  I don't understand why the comments are mostly upset in these cases. If it makes financial sense for you, as an employee, you are free to leave a company. Shouldn't companies have the same freedom? Why should the CEO be punished in any way for making such a decision? Having too many people being payed for some time and having to pay severance packages is not enough? What is the moral or legal base for attacking these companies? Honest question.
  • yakireev 4y ago
    > What is the moral or legal base for attacking these companies? Honest question. If an employee leaves Google, Google loses 1/140k = 0.0007% of its workforce, a negligible amount. If Google fires an employee, employee typically loses 100% of their income, which is non-negligible. So, Google firing 12k employees means that twelve thousand people will lose 100% of their income, for the sake of... shareholder interests? Many people see this situation as morally not-okay.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Broadly, yes. The issue appears to be a little more complicated though. There is no clear reason to do any of it beyond 'signalling' to the market that executives are trying to rein in cost in anticipation of what now appears to be almost inevitable recession ( partially because of signalling just like the one from Google ). It is a vicious cycle. I am not upset, but I am not yet personally affected. I also have been saying for a while that low rate encourages unhealthy habits ( including in VC realm ). I guess my beef is that the entire layoff is.. not really necessary?
  • kazakx 4y ago
    The issue is not simple. There are various reasons why people may react negatively to news of layoffs. Some may be angry at upper management for not feeling the impact of the layoffs and still receiving bonuses. Others may be worried about the potential for a recession. Additionally, some people may critique the capitalist system, despite participating in it in their own lives on a smaller scale. And on some level you are completely right as it may be necessary for a private company to occasionally lay off employees, like pruning a tree.
• jacquesm 4y ago
  This 'I take full responsibility' thing is getting really tiresome. Of course you take full responsibility, you're the f'ing CEO, and in case on account of this someone loses their house I'm sure you'll make good on it, because it's your responsibility, right?
  • nix23 4y ago
    >Of course you take full responsibility But politicians normally don't say that, but they also don't have stocks :)
  • ritzaco 4y ago
    It's an over-compensation for the earlier responses that blamed things on "unforeseeable market conditions" or something in a "we did everything perfectly and this is just the way the world is" kind of excuse. It doesn't really help the people who are out of a job, but I think it's a nice gesture at least to say "this one is on us, we'll reflect on what went wrong and try to do things differently next time" even though I have around 0 faith that any of these leaders would hire less in another Covid-like scenario where funding was cheap and demand for their services was growing.
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      It's a two sided street: Google is super profitable and could easily support their workforce through an economic downturn. But they feel their shareholders are more important than their employees. And so the employees, whose loyalty is demanded in good times, receive none of that loyalty in return in bad times. Also, pretty weird to see 'careers.google.com' up and running and apparently hiring for all kinds of roles while at the same time letting go of all these people.
      • ssnistfajen 4y ago
        Microsoft had <24hr old job postings on the day they announced lay-offs. They don't always have to go in lockstep esp for companies this big. There are always teams that need backfills.
• jatins 4y ago
  I wonder if 6% really moves the needle in terms of cost. Coupled with the fact they are still hiring it feels like succumbing to investor pressure rather than a real cost cutting measure.
  • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    As I commented elsewhere, Q4 earnings report is in two weeks. The last two were poor and the trend wasn't looking good. I expect this is happening in part because Q4's is going to look even worse.
  • pocket_cheese 4y ago
    If the average cost of those employees is 150k usd, then it's 1.8 billion. I imagine it's probably much higher than 150k depending on how many were US based engineers. If they make 55ish billion this year, I think it makes a pretty decent impact. I 100% support siphoning as much money as possible while doing as little work as possible (a.k.a coasting). However, from a capitalist perspective, it makes sense to try to weed those people out. Gone are the days of a 26 year old making as much as a neurosurgeon while working 20 hours a week.
  • whatyesaid 4y ago
    In the UK they only have 20 roles for hiring and it's been that way for months prior. Not development jobs by the way, that's all jobs. I've also heard other companies paused hiring (Amazon?) and basically stopped interviewing yet their websites advertise plenty of roles. I wouldn't consider them reliable. You could say it's almost as if they want people to think there are opportunities to aim for at such companies... What you'll have to see is for the next round of "top" CS graduates how it is.
• makach 4y ago
  Not a bad email, and a decent follow up on the ones that are affected. It is also a reminder that killing yourself slowly at the workplace is meaningless. Management has no responsibility to you, and no promise is certain. It’s your responsibility to take care of yourself. My take, don’t be bitter. Take the severance as soon as possible and get back on your feet. Having Google on your resume is a very good thing.
  • oaiey 4y ago
    Agree with that. The wording is very human and focus on the bad parts of it. I hate the term "let people go".
    • gcr 4y ago
      It feels a little crass to me to judge the wording and character of layoff emails, as if some of them are satisfying artistically and others are unsatisfying to consume somehow. At the end of the day, a layoff email is a layoff email. Sugarcoating it is just PR. “It’s only a layoff email if it came from the layoff region of France, otherwise, it’s just a sparkling pink slip”
      • nkingsy 4y ago
        I think it’s worth focusing attention on getting the delivery vehicle for such life-changing news right.
  • sillysaurusx 4y ago
    Hear hear re: not letting work consume your life. Seeing someone else say that was very refreshing. It’s so true that when you’re gone, the company hardly notices. Being let go with no severance and zero days notice was the last straw for me to ever put my soul into a soulless company again. Luckily there are cool ones out there worth putting yourself into. I managed to find one. Weirdly I now seem to enjoy staying up till crazy o’clock hacking away or doing stuff over the weekend. But only because it’s so much fun; it’s still a selfish motive. Lots of devs really believe that they have a duty to the company or whatever, which is a huge mistake —- one I made too many times.
• cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Next earnings report (for Q4 2022 results): Feb 2nd. Last reports showed EPS down by ~15%. The one before by ~6%. Layoffs seemed timed to get out in front of all of this. All a bit callous and cynical, what these companies are doing. Still, while I resigned from Google a bit over a year ago, I almost wish I'd stuck around to roll the dice and see if I could have gotten this severance package. Accelerated vesting is pretty sweet, even with the currently lower stock price. On the other hand I'm glad I left and landed in a place I prefer and didn't have to live through the stress and bleak feeling something like this would bring to the workplace. I also doubt this will be the last round and if history with other companies is any predictor, the next round of layoffs will have less generous severance packages.
• md_ 4y ago
  I found https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-layoffs-worried/ https://news.stanford.edu/2022/12/05/explains-recent-tech-la... to be very insightful, framing layoffs as "social contagion." As others noted here, irrespective of whether there is a coming recession, for companies like Google and Microsoft, 10-20k employees are not so expensive as to be existential for the company, *or even for specific opportunities the company wants to pursue*. (E.g. for Microsoft, buying Blizzard is not predicated upon laying off employees.) Instead, it's best to see this as a sort of social trend: layoffs to demonstrate fiscal responsibility to investors, in order to promote equity valuations that are in general valuable (either strategically, or as the ultimate purpose of a publicly traded company). If that sounds like I think this is all reasonable and justified, I don't. But it's a reasonable thing to do if your sole goal is profit, which is how we generally look at public companies in a capitalist economy.
  • pm90 4y ago
    Yes exactly. CEOs that don’t follow the “trend” will be marginalized and questioned. Of course they need to demonstrate that they’re “serious” and can make “tough” decisions. Keep in mind that being the CEO often requires a person to have a certain kind of personality that might be easier to influence this way.
• jstx1 4y ago
  One hypothesis is that the big tech companies are just better at sensing what the market is doing and reacting accordingly as quickly as they can, while companies from other industries are sleeping at the wheel. If that's true, we can expect those other companies to eventually follow with the layoffs.
• jonp888 4y ago
  I work for a company about twice as big as Google. Getting permission to hire anyone is very difficult, and everyone is always 100% busy just to meet customer deadlines(which we often don't). I guess Google and other FAANG-type companies must work in a different way that I can't comprehend if they can just randomly decide to fire 10% of their workforce. If 10% of the people on my project were fired, our customers would sue us for not delivering on the contracts we signed.
  • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Google has been over-hiring for years. While there are definitely projects that felt understaffed, there are just as many where you'd join a team and look around and really have no idea what you should be doing with yourself because all the work seemed spoken for. Honestly, 90-ish% of Google's revenue comes from ads. Almost every other product area there is just a financial loss unless it's supporting search&ads. They keep making "bets" to try to diversify the revenue stream, but it never works. Hence why I don't think this will be the last round of layoffs. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out and what parts of the org and what roles this affected. (Worked there for 10 years, so find this all... sad and interesting)
  • rsynnott 4y ago
    A lot of these companies are building stuff now which might deliver revenue in X years, so by firing people now they're effectively borrowing money from the future; they cut costs now and revenue later. They're more sacrificing future growth than ability to deliver on current contracts, in general.
  • michaelt 4y ago
    Google struck oil 20 years ago and money has been flowing in faster than they can spend it ever since. Some of that money let them drill more holes, and about 15 years ago some struck oil again. Because it's worked in the past and they can afford it, they've continued drilling countless holes. For example, their many incompatible messaging systems [1]. Some of the holes seem to have been drilled without any regard as to whether finding oil in that location is even possible. Presumably they hope to cut down on go-nowhere drilling, while still doing some drilling, in the areas where an oil strike is most likely. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...
• paulsutter 4y ago
  A timid half-step. If you’ve ever visited Google (even before the pandemic) the offices are empty (everyone is “working from the bus”) and only a small minority of employees are involved in revenue products FANG have been stockpiling very skilled people and letting them atrophy, it’s the biggest tragedy in Silicon Valley and for the US economy generally
• oars 4y ago
  Let's see where this goes.
• kypro 4y ago
  Are we about to enter a new era of ultra-profitable tech companies? While companies like GOOG and MSFT have had ridiculously healthy margins compared to traditional industries for some time now, it's also been clear in recent years that these companies have become very loose with spending. Take GOOG for example, they spend so much unnecessary money on fancy offices, free lunches, diversity programs, highly speculative investments, stock based comp, etc. But perhaps more importantly what happens when all the unprofitable tech companies with 80% gross margins decide to operate profitably? A lot of companies are so wasteful in tech today that they're actually choosing not to operate profitably so they can grow faster. We've seen Uber basically do a u-turn on this stance, but many other companies are following suite. The media seems to think these cuts are a sign that tech companies are struggling and other industries like energy will now take the lead, but surely being able to drop 10-50% of your workforce with almost no consequences is a sign of strength not weakness? I guess this whole time the most profitable companies in the world apparently weren't even trying that hard to be profitable.
  • jensensbutton 4y ago
    > diversity programs... Not even remotely comparable to the other things you listed. People such as yourself seemingly can't stop talking about it though, despite it having no effect on your life.
    • type-r 4y ago
      for a period of time, one of my previous employers had an unwritten policy that you couldn't send a job offer to a non diversity applicant at our headquarters. so yeah, these programs can actually have a pretty big impact on my life.
      • jensensbutton 4y ago
        Yeah, google doesn't have that. So it doesn't affect your life.
    • rippercushions 4y ago
• shapefrog 4y ago
  Google had 156,500 full-time employees in 2021, an increase of nearly 16% year-over-year as compared to the 135,301 full-time employees in 2020. Google's pace of hiring was also torrid in the second quarter of 2022 as the company added 10,000 new employees to its 163,906 workforce - that is only through to July 2022. These "Layoffs" are awful for individuals, but they are simply a sign that they went on a hiring spree in 2022 - plenty here were talking about the massive pay increases on offer all over the valley with demand off the charts. So really it isnt sign of pending apocalypse etc.
  • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    It's best to split 2022 in two. The first half was quite different from the latter. I saw it in practice as I left Google at the end of 2021 and job hunted on and off through the year. The pace of hiring everywhere significantly dropped mid-2022.
  • komadori 4y ago
    Wow! I worked at Google circa 2015 and there was an internal web page showing how many employees there were. My recollection is that there were about 50k full-time employees and 50k TVCs then. Even then, it felt crazy how large and incohesive the organisation was. I wonder what it's like now.
    • shapefrog 4y ago
      GOOG ; 2016, 72,053 ; 2015, 61,814 ; 2014, 53,600 ; 2013, 47,756. 2015 is really not that long ago either!
    • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      I joined end of 2011 and I think there were just north of 20,000 FTEs. When I left end of last year I had been there longer than 95%+ of the 100k+ (I forget) employees, which I found ... odd... since I still felt like a Noogler.
    • kyrra 4y ago
      It's in Google's 10-Q filing with the SEC btw. https://abc.xyz/investor/ https://abc.xyz/investor/
• spaceman_2020 4y ago
  The clock is ticking for Google. The quality of their products is consistently on a downward trajectory. Somehow, both search and maps have become worse. Spam that would have previously been easily filtered now gets through my Gmail. Meanwhile ChatGPT runs circles around Google for any serious query.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• lessname 4y ago
  This leaves only Apple as a tech giant that has not announced layoffs yet. I wonder if they are going to follow this "trend".
• kkoncevicius 4y ago
  I don't understand some of the comments here, maybe someone can explain. Does a company need to have an excuse to let people go? Is there a right to stay employed? As far as I am aware working for a company is not a life-long situation. And further - why don't we invert it and praise these companies for supplying thousands of six figure jobs for years. Surely being employed for several years is better than never being hired at all?
  • malteof 4y ago
    They need to explain themselves to shareholders (why did they hire so many people in the first place, expensive) and employees (so that people want to keep working there also in the future).
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • helmholtz 4y ago
    > Is there a right to stay employed? People have spouses, kids, mortgages. They relocate for work. They pour a lot of their time, energy & emotion into it. It causes people strokes, and hairloss. People bring the stress of their work home, and marriages suffer for it. Your comment is rather glib. Praise these companies? No thanks.
  • gls2ro 4y ago
    (I am not talking here about Google but more like general) A company (especially a big one) needs to have an excuse to let people go. The argument here is two-fold: 1. There is a power imbalance between a company and an employee. Just as a short example: letting go of 1 employee usually means nothing for the company life, but for the employee is biggest/impactful event happening that month or maybe that half of the year. Thus we usually balance this with laws (in some countries/states) and, of course, with public expectations. 2. Companies are asking for your whole professional time, and they usually want exclusivity You can see this usually written in contracts like "you dedicate all your work time", "you cannot work for other companies", "you dedicate all your business time" ... Thus when a company is asking this from you then they need to offer something in exchange. And this exchange is they need an excuse to let you go. --- (again I don't speak here about Google as I never worked there so I don't know what they offer and what they ask for)
• maayank 4y ago
  Anything we know about the makeup of this or other recent layoffs? Any professions overly represented in the layoffs compared to the firing org’s distribution?
• giantg2 4y ago
  Doesn't seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3542681/how-many-jobs-are-available-in-technology.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3542681/how-many-jobs-...
• FpUser 4y ago
  Earlier in 2022 Google introduced this GRAD performance review system. In my opinion said system turns employment into a rat's race but I digress. One of the goals of that system was to eliminate about 10000 people which falls just in line with this reduction. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/11/21/alphabet-seeks-to-cut-10000-poor-performing-googlers/?sh=764e70302704 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/11/21/alphabet-s... https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/11/21/alphabet-seeks-to-cut-10000-poor-performing-googlers/?sh=764e70302704 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/11/21/alphabet-s...
  • robocat 4y ago
    “Hohn is not factoring in the counterintuitive reason why Google and other tech companies pay software engineers total compensation packages of $300k to $800k. They are hoarding talent from their rivals and paying workers handsomely so there isn’t a motivation to quit and build a startup that will disrupt the status quo.” Terrible reporting. I would like to see a proper financial analysis on whether hoarding or preventing competition makes financial sense. I think the hoarding idea is a crock of shit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24487744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24487744
    • fragmede 4y ago
      Well, what do you think of ChatGPT as a product in the open market that challenges Google?
• nicolapede 4y ago
  Is there any analysis explaining how the new interest rates regime is affecting the number of employees in tech? I think the impact on VC is probably more direct, but, given what is happening all over FAANGs, I would imagine there could be some causal relation there, too?
• gniv 4y ago
  And the GOOG stock is 3.4% up before open. It seems this was a bit unexpected.
• ergonaught 4y ago
  I need to see these "I take full responsibility" people actually punished. At the very least, this sentence needs to be removed from their mouths. Alphabet had 116 billion USD "cash on hand" at the end of September 2022. Even if the full cost of each of those 12K employees is 500K per year, that's "only" 6 billion dollars to keep those "great" people that they "love" working with around. Net income for that quarter was almost 14 billion dollars, and net income for "that year" was almost 67 billion dollars. Things are in decline, sure, but clearly this is a company that can actually afford to keep "great" people that they "love" working with employed, so "affecting Googlers lives" doesn't have to "weight heavily" on anyone. Sorry, but these antics require revolution. Not a friendly chat with the brand imagery wizards. Not a "well just use DuckDuckGo". It's rare to encounter a whole "class" of people more desperately deserving barbarians at the gates of their tower.
  • HDThoreaun 4y ago
    Punished for what? This is all going to plan. Big tech gambled that the pandemic would create huge opportunities and it hasn’t totally panned out. They always planned to lay people off in that situation.
    • rvnx 4y ago
      This, punished for what ? In many big US companies, people are chilling as the revenue per employee is very high. Additionally, the low interest rates situation pushed tech valuations higher, and these employees benefited from the situation by getting a higher salary and relaxing job (see videos from Twitter or Meta employees). A lot profited from the scheme and are just sad that paradise is not forever with free wine, massages, sports and buffets at work and that downturns occasionally happens.
  • phpisthebest 4y ago
    I agree they need to stop with the rhetoric... but I am sure we are not going to agree with why or what the end result of that change be The statement should read "We saw the "day in the life" video, we know you were not doing enough work so now we are reducing head count because clearly you have too much free time"
• Moissanite 4y ago
  I wonder how much major tech companies are taking into account "revenge" when doing their firing. For example, if I was a GCP Solutions Architect and got laid off, my skills would be well suited to jumping to a customer who is using GCP - but would I be inclined to support this activity, giving the employer who fired me more revenue? Depends on the availability of roles of course, but I would certainly be giving strong consideration to ways to screw them over in return, for example by advocating for another cloud and quietly, tactically airing some dirty laundry.
  • pm90 4y ago
    Nobody behaves this way. A GCP solutions architect has spent years acquiring valuable skills and experience. They aren’t gonna throw it away out of spite. The only thing laid off employees will generally do is never, ever work for the employer that laid them off ever again.
    • Moissanite 4y ago
      > A GCP solutions architect has spent years acquiring valuable skills and experience Citation needed :-) Joking aside, I think you're right for the vast majority of cases, but "nobody" feeling this way seems highly unlikely. Also, mid-level technical people having a grudge next year aren't a problem - but that might not be the case in 10 years, when the laid-off person is CTO of a big potential customer - at that point, the technical skills are irrelevant, but the impact being laid off had on that person emotionally/financially won't be.
  • eunos 4y ago
    I think for most people 'revenge' either doesnt exist or dissipated quickly. If GCP skills bring money to the account then most people will leverage it regardless of their personal feeling to Google
• oblio 4y ago
  If you've ever wondered, this is not about immediate money concerns. In 2021 Google made $257 billion aka $257 000 000 000. And a profit of $76 bn aka $78 000 000 000. It had 187 000 employees. That works out to $1.3 million income per employee. And a net profit of $406 000 per employee. They don't need to lay off anyone. They just want to. I've seen smaller companies where they first shift employees around, offer everyone a choice, etc. People are only really laid off is things don't work out over many months or even years.
  • W4ldi 4y ago
    > They don't need to fire anyone. They just want to. Why would they want to? If they make so much money, why fire a few people for a massive amount of bad PR? So seem to know the reasoning. Enlighten us please.
    • IshKebab 4y ago
      Because Google employees are really really expensive, and this won't generate a massive amount of bad PR because everyone is doing it. It's the ideal time to sack of employees you don't want.
    • pm90 4y ago
      Its not bad PR when the narrative has already been set. This is a very opportunistic move at cost reduction that would have been scrutinized heavily under regular circumstances.
    • oblio 4y ago
      Everyone's doing it, we might be in a recession, now is the best time. Their announcement both follows a trend and gets lost in the noise, it doesn't stand out as possibly bad management. Plus someone was saying that it reduces inflationary pressures for employees. I.e. you put a lot of people out on the job market and you scare others inside the company, who are now suddenly happy to still have a job, ergo they stop asking as much for raises or for high salaries when they apply. > Why would they want to? Then enlighten me how a <<hugely>> profitable business needs to <<layoff>> large percentages of its workforce???
• chirau 4y ago
  Is Apple doing cuts as well?
  • pm90 4y ago
    At this time almost certainly. They already have a hiring freeze in plce.
• bitL 4y ago
  Is this the end of Google? Rarely a company recovers after massive layoffs. Are they in the SUN Microsystems negative feedback spiral now?
  • Strom 4y ago
    Massive? This is 6% of their workforce.
    • bitL 4y ago
      6% isn't massive for a profitable company? 1 out of every 17 people getting fired at the same time? That will have huge consequences to internal culture and employee optimism, leading to all kinds of weird people getting to the top.
      • jollyllama 4y ago
        >= .05 significant, >= .1 big, >= .15 huge, >= .2 massive,
        • bitL 4y ago
          Layoffs aren't a p-test...
• lvl102 4y ago
  Layoff very much due to investors' push. GOOGL, the stock, has been lagging the other big tech companies by a wide margin in the past year or so. Big picture though, you have to start wondering if WFH trends have largely exposed "unproductive" jobs in these big corporations. It was very hard to identify them in the past but now it's become so evident. You don't really need these gap-filling-there-for-the-optics people. Companies are going to be run that much more efficient.
• joshruby123 4y ago
  Anyone who has experience with search interested in joining us? sirchit.com josh@sirchit.com
  • activitypea 4y ago
    FWIW, I went through sirchit.com top-to-bottom twice, and I have no idea what the product is. It looks like something out of HBO's Silicon Valley. "It's about people" is a weird pitch to make a highly technical utility like a search engine. "Google's mission is to organize information. Our mission is to help people get stuff done. In order for Google to accomplish its mission, it indexes the web. In order for Sirch to accomplish its mission, it connects users with people; people that offer goods, services, or [sic] infomation". I swear I uttered "those are certainly all words" to myself. Is Sirch a classifieds thing, or like a Craiglist?
• Romen_b 4y ago
  Anyone know of a slack/discord channel for affected employees outside google's network?
• lonelyasacloud 4y ago
  Seen enough cycles of laying off about 10% [1] of your workforce to try and halt a share price slide and make investors happier to realise it's in the Howto CEO & Keep Your Job manual. QED, this announcement is almost entirely about share prices sliding in the tech sector since about the beginning of 2022. ChatGPT's impact on Google is unknown, but it is a fair bet that it will be larger [2]. [1] It's always around 10% because all large companies carry functions and individuals who can be removed from the enterprise, and things will essentially carry on as before once the shock subsides. [2] I don't think many would doubt Google could have rolled out its own ChatGPT'alike years ago. The fact that they didn't suggests that internally a combination of the undoubted reputational risk, cost and the risk to their existing revenue streams was enough to prevent it. Google's full of very bright people, and they've failed to find a palatable solution in years. So even if it is a solvable problem, it seems unlikely that the recent nasty shock from ChatGPT is going to have changed that.
  • Neil44 4y ago
    Despite the hype ChatGPT is not ready to replace search engines yet - no referencing and it literally makes up gibberish if it's not sure. At this point I don't see any advantage to Google rolling that out. GPT4, GPT5... different story maybe!
    • visarga 4y ago
      The hallucination part is somewhat solvable, but the inference cost is huge. Especially in the chat format where you want long history, you have to pay for all the previous tokens in each round of dialogue. The cost is about $0.01 per page, so it can become $0.10 per reply after 10 pages of history accumulated. Even short lines of text have the same overhead.
    • lonelyasacloud 4y ago
      Fundamentally a Google search typically returns a research project that involves the user attempting to build their own mental model of the "truth". ChatGPT instead returns an answer that needs research to verify facts. This second approach is already quicker for many use cases and can get much better. So yes, the user may still need search engines to verify. But in the future, it seems unlikely that search will be the dominant, primary means of people accessing information. The problem for Google with ChatGPT-a-like results is that they strip out the presentation of Google's ads and one of its most significant revenue streams. The chief advantage of Google acting quickly is it increases its chances of retaining an ad business.
• 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  > As part of that, if you are just starting your work day, please feel free to work from home today. i feel like we are living a black comedy sometimes.
• hsn915 4y ago
  I find it odd that most of the comments here are angry, as if at someone who stole the livlihoods of thousands of people. I understand the general public thinks their life depends on a company. I find it odd that this sentiment is so strong on HN.
  • nness 4y ago
    As an outsider, it often feels like Silicon Valley like organisations have a particularly unique culture compared to the rest of the Western corporate world. It's built from decades of hacker culture, start-up mythos, antidisestablishmentarianism, etc. I think people are angry because they thought that Google (and others) were behaving with the same social contract, acting in their interests. It's a tough pill to realise its just another company behaving as they all do.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • wildrhythms 4y ago
    >I understand the general public thinks their life depends on a company. And do you think this is not a fair assessment?
    • hsn915 4y ago
      I think it's a fair assessment for the general public, but not for the kind of person who is interested in the startup world. I expect an environment like HN to self select against this mindset that is prevalent in the general public. There's a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy effect in this assessment too, so to some extent, it is only as accurate as you believe it to be.
• mailmrg 4y ago
  might not be a popular opinion, but different perspective. during pandemic, demand was high and employees where asking anywhere from 60% to 100% hikes to do the same job. no one complained. people were ready to jump every 6 months in search for more pay without thinking career, is the position impacting the company or anything of that sorts. founders (esp smaller ones) had tough time meeting insane demands. people were asking for joining bonus (an insane concept in my view) to the tune of 50% of annual salary. Now the tables have turned. so if former is accepted then later also has to be accepted without complaints. just how things work in this new age.
  • fundad 4y ago
    That’s exactly how I feel about consumer prices, rising rents and home prices. We accept that they soak up more of our discretionary income with with their high prices. We have every right to complain when they cut jobs as a result.
• est 4y ago
  Could there some kind of labor law that if you fire big chunks of workforce then the hiring should be frozen for some years or so? It's so unfair seeing companies mass firing ppl then instantly aggressively hiring when markets recovers.
• rr808 4y ago
  This is well over due. Lots of people resting and vesting.
• dcj4 4y ago
  [flagged]
• tryagainynot 4y ago
  "Up in the morning and out to school Mother says there be no work next year Qualifications once the Golden Rule Are now just pieces of paper Well the factories are closing and the army's full I don't know what I'm going to do I've come to see in the land of the free There's only room for a chosen few. " -- Lars Frederiksen I feel bad for everybody who spent the past 4 years going $200k into debt for a now worthless compsci degree. New grads, juniors and general employees who are not rock-stars, are in a miserable ride. As everybody casually writes it off to "over-hiring" you are forgetting the fact that there are 150k newly unemployed, a significant portion of whom will take many months, possibly a couple of years to find something. Meanwhile, all of those fresh graduates are now saying "Oh shit, I have to start making $2k/month student loan payments now, and don't have any income. As an oldster observing what I believe my 4th tech downturn, I am currently advising people to go into the trades instead of becoming a software "engineer". The money can often be far better than tech, and there are actually more opportunities to advance than in tech. If you consider inflation, offshoring, record profits for many companies who are still laying off, crypto crashing and rapid advances in AI-generated code, then you should be able to read the writing on the wall. Remember a significant portion of these layoffs are coming from companies whose revenues and profits are increasing .. because they just don't need as many people to keep the investors and c-levels rich. If you don't have at minimum 18 months worth of living expenses saved up when you get laid off, you could be in a world of hurt.
  • steve_gh 4y ago
    Anyone who quotes early Billy Bragg lyrics at me on HN definitely deserves an upvote.
• Mikeb85 4y ago
  You can blame companies all you want but it was governments who said the new normal was here to stay. And then it was they who backtracked when they realised just what kind of social chaos they'd unleashed... Companies only followed what was happening and statements by government officials.
• rejectfinite 4y ago
  All the TikTok "I work in tech" women who sends 3 emails a day finally getting the axe + middle managers This and MS layoffs Boohoo
• testfoobar 4y ago
  Will Google and other big tech run their college summer intern programs this year? They may not be able to hire new grads.
• sgsag33 4y ago
  Amazon as well coming with 18k layoff
• bdavis__ 4y ago
  12K? What is that 5 to 7% of the total employment. Just don't hire for 120 days. Accomplish the same results and you don't even need to make a press release.
  • ninkendo 4y ago
    Layoffs make it easier to get rid of underperforming people without having to file too much paperwork, so it probably has a better effect on the median employee quality to do layoffs instead of a hiring freeze.
    • bdavis__ 4y ago
      Easier but not better. If you have a performance problem, there is a process in place to to deal with it. Not easy, but it gives the employee notice and the opportunity to improve. Vs. Gone.
• nextstep 4y ago
  I asked ChatGPT to generate a layoff announcement email for comparison: Dear valued employees, It is with a heavy heart that I am writing to inform you that the company will be undergoing a restructuring process that will result in the layoffs of 12,000 employees. This decision was not made lightly, and we understand the impact it will have on our workforce and their families. We have been closely monitoring the economic climate and have determined that this action is necessary to ensure the long-term success and sustainability of the company. We are committed to treating all affected employees with fairness and respect during this difficult time. We will be providing severance packages, outplacement support, and other benefits to assist impacted employees in their transition. Additionally, we will be working closely with local authorities to provide job training and other resources to help affected employees find new opportunities. We understand that this news is difficult to hear, but we are committed to supporting our employees through this transition. We appreciate your contributions to the company and wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Sincerely, Sundar Pichai CEO, Google LLC
• saos 4y ago
  Concerned by knock on affect to other industries.
• dec0dedab0de 4y ago
  Are all of these layoffs essentially collusion to reduce wages? If they all end up with the same headcount but with a reduced wage in the next year, there should be a class action. Not that those help anyone but lawyers, but it's nice to have an official punishment on record.
  • gilbetron 4y ago
    While I don't know if it is the sole reason, it certainly is a nice side benefit. I think all the major tech firms figure they can all do a layoff and then hire each other's talent as needed at reduced compensation.
    • ma2rten 4y ago
      This makes no sense, you benefit from the low prices if you are not buying.
• elektrontamer 4y ago
  Judging by the comments I think it's safe to assume that the "taking responsibility" part is a meaningless statement at best. What I want to understand is does he even owe anyone an apology? Isn't employment just an agreement to provide services in exchange for money and benefits? Anywhere I work I expect my employer to fire me the moment they don't need my services or find a better/cheaper alternative, I wouldn't think twice if I found a better employer. So why would I be owed an apology or someone to "take responsibility"?
  • lm28469 4y ago
    It really depends on how you see work and companies on an almost philosophical level. It hasn't always been as bleak as it is now
• franczesko 4y ago
  While this is always bad news, this is also a cold shower - back-to-reality check for anyone who thinks that working for a company is anything beyond just a job. I hope, that for the ones affected, in the end this will turn up as an opportunity.
• 3327 4y ago
  [dead]
• seydor 4y ago
  For the past 10 years the common advice in HN is quit your startup and join bigtech. Now what?
• nullhash 4y ago
  I got accepted at Google back in October for New Grad and my job was to start in May 2023. I am still in “Team Matching” and they told me that I should hear from them by January. I have yet to hear from them, so I take that this is not very ideal.
  • karmakurtisaani 4y ago
    I passed hiring committee in July. Never got the actual offer, don't think it's happening while these interview results are valid. The money is good so maybe I'll try again in a few years, but it is very demoralizing.
• AYBABTME 4y ago
  Every time I read stuff like: > "Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." I feel taken for a fool. Every damn body knew that the last 2 years were not representative of the future. Everybody knew that free-money, COVID and related phenomenons were a phase. I can't believe that Google, Shopify, Coinbase, everyone, really believed that this was the new reality going forward. It was written in the sky since April 2020. Anyone with a semblance of understanding could guess that the COVID-fueled situation and artificial economic prop up would come due in the medium term. Really either the folks writing this crap take us for fools, or they're really shortsighted fools themselves.
  • kmlx 4y ago
    sure, but the problems back then were immediate for google et al: "we need more people to deal with the increased flow". they hoped those covid patterns will remain after covid. they didn't.
    • grugagag 4y ago
      At that level of money decisions only make sense financially with complete disregard for anything else and without any efficiency in mind
  • dustingetz 4y ago
    we are measuring something about humanity here
  • saurik 4y ago
    So, part of the issue is that those "last 2 years" also simultaneously felt a bit like an economic slowdown caused by the pandemic via lockdowns and infection fear. Maybe for some relevant areas of "tech", such as video conferencing, sure: people alone at home would make that stuff overly important in a way that would crash back down... but, I certainly had felt a world that went from being pretty awesome in 2019 to businesses shutting down left and right through 2020 and 2021 due to people all staying inside. I had not just hoped but kind of expected that, if we ever again felt reasonably safe returning outside and eating at restaurants and shopping together at stores and going out to theaters and the such, that things--including, very relevantly, advertisements on Google for all of those physical products, services, and entertainment options people might now want again--would kind of explode from latent demand and pent up frustration during the COVID period... not that we would only THEN go into a recession! But like, I guess this is why we can say with some certainty that I don't know much about complicated global- or even national- scale financial matters as I didn't know much about how--and very critically when--the Federal Reserve functions (having not had to care at all about this around 2008/9, when I had my bandwagon hitched strongly to the iPhone and everything looked amazing) and have never actively tracked inflation indicators as anything other than a dry numerical input for CPI wage increases :(.
• frays 4y ago
  Which areas of the business are likely to be impacted? I assume it'd be primarily ads, but any other obvious areas I'm not aware of?
• insane_dreamer 4y ago
  This comment from a NYT opinion piece by former Slack CPO added some clarity as to one reason why tech companies are doing this: pressure from investors to keep the share price up. Public companies lose that freedom to do whatever they want even if they have tons of money in the bank. > Meta and Salesforce combined lost more than $700 billion in market cap last year. Both companies are now dealing with activist investors who have taken prominent positions in their stocks. The activists have called for the companies to slash costs, reduce nonstrategic investments and, notably in Meta’s case, aggressively reduce its work force. edit: link to article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/opinion/tech-layoffs-meta-amazon-silicon-valley.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/opinion/tech-layoffs-meta...
  • insane_dreamer 4y ago
    Another comment on this: don't forget that no matter what these CEOs say about their workforce, we're family blah blah blah, they are first and foremost beholden to their shareholders. The very purpose of a capitalist corporation is to serve the interests of its shareholders, aka make more money; everything else is secondary.
    • skybrian 4y ago
      This is called "shareholder primacy" and it's more of an ideology than an actual legal requirement. It's going to be true to the extent that the company leadership believes it's true, and a lot of different strategies could be justified as serving the shareholders in the long run. Matt Levine has written a few columns about how this works out in practice, or doesn't.
      • ROTMetro 4y ago
        Costco seems to do a pretty good job at saying no and they have not had repercussions.
      • lazide 4y ago
        Unless the bylaws and structure are explicitly setup to be different, the shareholders elect the board, and the board appoints the corporate officers. So any board that doesn’t get the shareholders what they want doesn’t last long. And any corporate officers that don’t get the board what they want don’t last long either. Of course, many opportunities for ‘capture’, owner/agent issues, market perception and ‘fog of war’, etc. It’s an ideology for a reason, it’s the naive truth.
• gbajson 4y ago
  Reduce? They are hiring in Poland!
• honeybadger1 4y ago
  [flagged]
• hankman86 4y ago
  I wonder what hidden benefits there are in these layoffs. Sure, companies lose skilled staff and nominally taken a hit in overall corporate output. On the flipside, people work twice as hard, eager to show their worth. That may be the cynic intent behind these industry-wide layoff. Scare the crap out of everyone and make them do the extra mile.
  • pm90 4y ago
    Fear isn’t a good long term strategy though. If your culture is fear driven, engineers will be less likely to join, or you will attract certain kinds of engineers. When operating on survival mode teams will switch from collaboration to competition. It can become really bad really quickly.
• deanmoriarty 4y ago
  For what is worth, I am employed at the company and I think this is a good thing, the amount of “fat” around here is just astonishing and, quite honestly, demoralizing. I truly believe that the company could function well, and continue its mission, even with a 30% reduction or more. The number of people who do completely nothing all day, in SWE roles, is just unbelievable. And this without even counting the incredible severance benefits. 16 weeks of salary + GSU? Wild. I’d sign in a heartbeat if I were offered that.
  • kderbyma 4y ago
    Sounds like poor poor management, probably many layers thick. Too many people is not a problem a company like Google if run well....
  • ineedasername 4y ago
    It depends a lot on which jobs they cut though. Do they know which departments & work groups are the least necessary? Or are most of them needed, but with fewer people so they cut X% of each team? Cutting the fat at any company is worthless or even catastrophic if the strategy for implementing those cuts is crap.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• xyst 4y ago
  These companies must hire the same marketing or PR people to write these letters.
• LatteLazy 4y ago
  I think this and the rest of the FAANG (plus M$) layoffs show us that these are now all established corporates. When you're growing and innovating and building new products etc, you hire during recessions to make the things you will sell during the booms (and just to keep up with your growth). But when you're a stable, mature company with no plans for new products, business lines etc, then the name of the game is efficiency. And efficiency is doing the same as last year but with 12k fewer people. It's not "wrong" per se. It's just that these companies are no longer what they were. Investors and Employees should know what they are engaging with: out is the growth machine where you will have a team hired under you and revenue can be expected to 10x in a decade. In is "every year we get to 5% more revenue and pay 5% less in expenses". Such is the company life cycle. Google have done very well to be fair to keep the growth phase going so long...
• osigurdson 4y ago
  I wonder if some of what is behind this here and at other companies, is the thought that LLMs will make devs more productive thus less are needed. It seems like a reasonable assumption with zero-sum-game mentality. However, I suspect what LLMs actually mean is a more vibrant startup space as fewer people will be able to do more.
• lwhi 4y ago
  I find the 'work from home' final comment strange. Is he saying employees can work from work, because he's equating working from home as an easier ride?
  • warkdarrior 4y ago
    Almost all articles on WFH posted on HN are followed by lots of comments on how WFH is better, less stressful, more productive, more enjoyable, etc. So yes, lots of people find working from home easier.
• Communitivity 4y ago
  The current flood of layoff news from FAANG level companies is surprising, sad, and pathetic. As others have posted, they could keep the people on but they aren't, probably because it isn't financially optimal in the short term to do so. The two problems I see with that are (1) the loss of institutional knowledge, morale, and attractiveness as a place to work mean it is financially suboptimal in the long term, but companies right now are only thinking 1 quarter ahead (maybe 2); (2) it takes time to ramp up, get acclimated, and execute a vision - that clock resets for each position when someone is released and the a new hire is added back later. It used to be that when you worked for one of the new big corps (FAANG and those like them) it represented some security. Now I am saddened to see them adopting the big consulting corp model, where you can get released at will and staff is constantly being optimized for the current task set/direction/clients.
• BurningFrog 4y ago
  This kinda makes me feel old... When I joined Google in 2006, we were 8k total.
• timcavel 4y ago
  [dead]
• dazuaz 4y ago
  You can now Join an AI company and wait for Google to acquire the company and make Bank? Looks more like marketing Google investments in AI than anything else on that letter. Best of luck to anyone affected.
• softwaredoug 4y ago
  The last recession - if you were a software developer, or in tech, you had a great deal of immunity. I remember having spending power when everyone else was unfortunately suffering and taking time to find jobs, etc. Now it feels like the same is true of machine learning. And to some degree other specialist roles within software engineering. If you're a generalist software developer, you're in a vulnerable position. If you have more specialized skills (AI, etc) you're going to be in a better, more robust position. Being a developer is more commoditized than it ever has been (of course good developers are still hard to find, but a lot of work doesn't really need good developers) It makes me think that specialization over time is telescoping. At one point computer engineering was a specialization of electrical engineering. Then computer science / software became a specialization out of computer engineering. Now other specializations are being born out of general software developers.
  • nvarsj 4y ago
    Specialisation is a risky long term bet though. The amount of companies a good generalist software engineer can work at is orders of magnitude more than an ML engineer and I imagine it will remain like that for a long while. Same thing for more extreme niches like compiler engineers - the number of opportunities is substantially less.
    • deleted 4y ago
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  • zer0tonin 4y ago
    This has not been my experience. I have seen plenty of people with generic backend/full-stack keep their jobs, while my Linkedin is full of impacted infrastructure, security and data engineering specialists. Although I do agree that the developer world is becoming increasingly commoditized, I do not think that specialization is really the way to escape it.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• jmyeet 4y ago
  This is market virtue signaling. Some ascribe it to "copycat" behavior but I don't think the accurately captures the intent. Sundar is telling the market "we're cutting costs". Even the most generous estimates of what these employees cost mean Google could have them do nothing and still make a healthy profit. Obviously they were doing something though so some value is being lost while costs are being cut. Remember that every time you hear "we're laying you off because of a recession" or "cheap labor in the developing world took your job" remember that it's all propaganda. In all cases, a capitalist simply decided to eliminate your job and possibly give it to someone else who is ostensibly cheaper. It's also worth noting that Sundar is financially incentivized to boost the share price [1]. There's not much semantic difference between "I take full responsibility" and "I want to maximize my own (already ridiculously large) pay packet". [1]:https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/story/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-gets-a-big-raise-heres-how-much-he-will-earn-now-357355-2022-12-22 https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/story/google-ceo-sun...
• college_physics 4y ago
  For those affected the tech layoffs may be crushing (though by many comments here on HN lots of people are fully comfortable with transactional relations with an employer). An interesting question is whether this round of layoffs signals some sort of paradigm shift in the broader tech world, a "disruption event" amidst a "bad economy" that would indeed be a motivation for alternative business models, startups etc to pull up their sleeves, hunker down, survive the dinosaur extinction and emerge standing on the other side? I don't think so. This is just "management-by-public-markets-stock-price", which is in turn management by collective madness
• bapetel 4y ago
  It has begun after E. Musk fired lot of people. He showed that TT can work with less people. Now that covid is far away, everyone is cutting.
  • dymk 4y ago
    It certainly did not start with Musk. We’ve been in a pandemic for over 3 years now.
• names_are_hard 4y ago
  > As part of that, if you are just starting your work day, please feel free to work from home today. This closing line is what stuck out most to me. Is there really such a strict WFO culture there that this needs to be said explicitly?
• GrumpyNl 4y ago
  Its all about greed. they could also keep those people and settle for a lower profit. How much do they need?
• smugma 4y ago
  Is Apple the last major tech company standing without layoffs? Yes, at least for FANG/MAGA. I wonder if they will avoid them or just be the last one to cut. Related, with employee growth charts: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcount-growth-than-tech-peers-no-layoffs-yet.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcou...
• EthanHeilman 4y ago
  The Google of 2005 wouldn't do this. The Google of 2005 would use this as opportunity to monopolize all the talent and move into some new space and eat everything with fantastic software. * I had a good seat to watch google obliterate mapquest and yahoomaps with amazing javascript maps. It was day and night. Yahoo was penny pinching their mapping engineers while Google was buying geographic satellite companies and innovating with lazy loading javascript maps. It went from, websites can't provide anywhere near the functionality of desktop apps to why would ever use a desktop app for that. * I was building phone software and mobile search engines before, during, and after the launch of android so I got the inside perspective on cellular carriers reactions. Google was this a dinosaur ending asteroid to them and their wall gardens. They saw signs, then sky darkened and in their hearts they knew Google would build something 100X better than what they could ever build even if they wanted to give up their walled gardens which was a cognitive improbability. The carriers began going through the stages of grief, while they were still on anger, like the sound of thunder[0] android launched, and reality shifted under their feet. After that it seemed like nothing else had ever been possible or true. Hungry Google was sight to behold. [0]: The Sound of Thunder - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sound_of_Thunder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sound_of_Thunder
  • bumby 4y ago
    Are your examples also examples of survivorship bias? I was reading in the WSJ how all tech seems to be paring back their moonshot programs. I think the Google example was a program cut that had $1B in revenue but $6B in costs. (forgive me if the exact numbers are wrong). It seems like prioritizing and cutting back on programs that lose money (despite being innovative or inspiring) is a natural consequence of economic downturns.
    • acdha 4y ago
      There’s definitely some risk of that but I’d put it more at 2008: that’s when Google acquired DoubleClick, and the sea change away from building products which people wanted to use seemed to start a bit later when the ad focus had set in. It’s hard to think of something they’ve done since then which has been a popular success.
• moneywoes 4y ago
  Well guess I finally got something in common with google employees
• aero-glide2 4y ago
  12k is just FTEs. How much if you include TVCs? Probably 30k+.
• JCM9 4y ago
  Google’s best days may be behind it. The search revenue is looking increasingly shaky. New business units like GCP are struggling to operate profitably. They had an amazing cash cow (ad revenue) for a long time but that cow is getting old and starting to look rather ill. Compared to some of the other tech giants Google has struggled to evolve its business to diversify revenue and profit streams and evolve offerings. Now the make or break moment to make more progress there or the company will slowly drift off into the sunset of has-been tech giants.
  • kderbyma 4y ago
    way behind it....like....Trump was not yet elected...
• Hacktrick 4y ago
  Google has 120 billion dollars of cash on hand. Why are they laying off people? They should be poaching talent from other companies experiencing lay-offs to build better products.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• meltyness 4y ago
  Apparently shrinking and firing people is inspired work! It's gonna be huge and cool! "Tough decisions" all around! Cheers!
• Octokiddie 4y ago
  > Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today. Translation: we fell for the economic mirage. I'm not buying it. Google sees something on the economic horizon and is now bracing for impact. And that something is not a mean reversion. It's an overcorrection. Google's main product, advertising, puts it in a unique position to see into the economic future. Google is a bellwether. If the coming recession were truly going to be "mild," then Google wouldn't care. It's time for everyone in tech to admit that the last two years were a mirage driven in part by corporate FOMO. Many do, but I don't think they're prepared for what comes next.
  • gpt5 4y ago
    > Google sees something on the economic horizon and is now bracing for impact They haven't been successful in foreseeing the current bust, and were hiring like crazy a year ago. Why do you think that they'd be so good at seeing into the future now?
• rumblefrog 4y ago
  In the dawn of rounds and rounds of layoffs in the tech sector. How would one advise a new CS BS graduate to tread? I've been told that young engineers are still in demand, and to look for opportunities in small startups, but seemingly out of the applications, merely no one has moved forward or replied back.
  • nmca 4y ago
    Do a PhD at ETH Zurich
    • rumblefrog 4y ago
      I'm sorry I'm not familiar with ETH Zurich, is that a Switzerland thing? I reside in the US.
• siliconviking 4y ago
  I'm surprised people aren't connecting all these layoffs with their root cause: the increasing cost of capital. Naturally, projects that were economically profitable only at a very low cost of capital could turn unprofitable at a higher cost of capital, destroying value instead of creating value. Shifting resources away from such projects is the logical thing to do, but if you end up with a surplus of resources, the only other possibility is to trim those resources. Discussions about how much cash Google has on hand are completely irrelevant in my view.
  • lostmsu 4y ago
    While this is a cause, it is definitely not the root cause.
    • siliconviking 4y ago
      What is the root cause in your view?
      • ragnot 4y ago
        It is the root cause. I think people just don't want to admit that the Fed has more control over our economy than they thought.
      • lostmsu 4y ago
        Well, the capital costs are not increasing on their own. You can argue what caused them to rise, and then that would be the reason.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• unholiness 4y ago
  Possibly naive question: Everyone's talking about how these companies are preparing for a global recession. But it's striking how specific to large tech companies. Is it possible these companies are just seeing the new remote-first paradigm as an opportunity to replace US devs with cheaper, foreign developers? Obvious this is absurdly difficult, but it's likely more realistic now than it's ever been before.
  • charles_f 4y ago
    I don't think this is true, I have seen a number of small companies doing the same thing in here.
  • dcolkitt 4y ago
    It more has to do with tech companies having expanded headcount way more than other industries in the past few years. The reality is that tech cos overbites since market conditions were extremely ebullient in the tech sector circa 2021. A large fraction of those new hires never had anything productive to even do.
  • cvhashim04 4y ago
    Maybe but likely not. Lots of devs overseas who work for these tech giants have also been cut. The 12k cuts is global.
  • dopeboy 4y ago
    These companies experienced solid growth during covid (because everyone was home using tech) and now that's starting to recede. They predicted this growth would continue and hired for it. They are choosing to recede that. > replace US devs with cheaper, foreign developers? The quality of the average engineer entering Google is significantly higher than the one of an average, foreign developer. That is a generalization, but not an over generalization. I know this having worked with a sample size of ~20 on each side of the coin.
• hbarka 4y ago
  >> We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. When I first read this I saw the word “role” and not “jobs” and therefore interpreted it as more than 12,000 jobs, because a role can be one or more people. By that definition however it’s absurd to think that that many roles would be eliminated. Why didn’t they just say “jobs”?
• ra7 4y ago
  Larry and Sergey used to proudly boast that they are not a “conventional company”. In fact, this quote is still in Alphabet’s home page: > As Sergey and I wrote in the original founders letter 11 years ago, “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” Google looks more and more like a conventional big company with moves like this. They’ve become really boring in the last 5-6 years.
  • KingFelix 4y ago
    and visiting the house they built at CES, super boring! The mirror showcasing a very lame feature (when you get close to a speaker it notifies you and asks if you want to connect to it) was much more interesting. So boring, I know they have a google announcement day, but wow, so uninspiring.
  • ssnistfajen 4y ago
    It's like a person who won the lottery more than a decade ago finally having their directionless identity crisis unravel in full force.
• anonymouswacker 4y ago
  It's a shame that Google is so good at hiring top talent, and even better at under utilizing them. The company had a hypomanic vision of greatness by throwing everything to see what stuck, and still can't get a new idea that is profitable besides marketing & advertising due to their virtual monopoly. I'm very curious what the breakdown of positions will be. This is a failure of leadership and Sundar should resign.
  • wildrhythms 4y ago
    You don't have to utilize the talent; you just have to keep it out of the hands of your competitors.
• charles_f 4y ago
  > I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here When an incident occurs in prod and it affects the livelihood of 12.000 people (or more if you include family), you'd expect at the very least a post-mortem. I've never seen a company produce one after that. What was the root cause? crazy hiring, massive wage war Could the current situation be anticipated? hell yeah, out of a pandemic, war raging in Europe, petrol production going down, supply chain problems all over the world, resulting in inflation going massively up... Don't need an MBA to anticipate the economy was par for a correction. what could you have done to prevent this? realize it was too good to be true. Don't enter the rat race, be cautious about hiring. Focus business. what steps will you take in the future to prevent this from happening again? "I take responsibility" is a beautiful thing to say but it's completely empty if you don't take the consequences as well, and don't learn anything in the process. I bet you that if/when we recover from this dip, the same hiring practices as before will re-submerge so that resiliency doesn't move and we see the same move in another 5/10y. So I guess the answer to this question is "none, loyalty goes only one way and trust me when I tell you that no-one is safe"
  • MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    > you'd expect at the very least a post-mortem. "Despite getting paid millions to be good at my job, I did what every other CEO was doing when the Federal Reserve set interest rates low and hired a bunch of staff. I didn't think "hmm... this might change in the next 6-12 months". It changed. I am now doing what every other CEO is doing and jumping on the bandwagon and correcting." Now I don't actually have proof that interest rates directly affect Google (who is probably flush with cash/very profitable/has high margins/has lots of money coming in). I don't think they were financing 12,000 employee salaries with "cheap debt" and now they can't. Not sure how inflation plays into it. I just like to tell myself "these people weren't top performers and if you work for a company like Google (and get paid a lot), you are expected to do a lot/be a top top top performer"
    • charles_f 4y ago
      > these people weren't top performers Problem is that this is not how this is unravelling. Large lay-offs like that cull entire departments, not the lower performers.
• hbarka 4y ago
  A significant percentage of Google’s workforce are temps, vendors, and contractors (what they call TVC). They are approximately more than FTE. I believe the stats are 150,000 TVC versus 144,000 full-time employees. How is Google juggling this reduction in force? Are we talking TVC or FTE?
  • kart23 4y ago
    usually when a company says layoffs, it’s FTEs. contractors probably don’t even get an announcement and aren’t included in this number.
  • cmyr 4y ago
    This post refers to full-time employees. You don't really need to fire TVCs; they're generally on shorter term contracts, which you can choose not to renew.
    • hbarka 4y ago
      Any classification is an at-will relationships to Google. Google can choose not to keep/renew anyone. I’ve met many TVCs who have tenure at Google as good as an FTE. The idea was that TVCs are the buffer headcount during recessions and would be the first to go when rebalancing. If they are truly laying off only FTE, it’s worth asking what Google is doing to TVC headcount. It’s unspoken so far.
• cokeandpepsi 4y ago
  I'm not suprised, they have been scraping the bottom of the talent barrel pretty hard lately
• ifyoubuildit 4y ago
  > Pivoting the company to be AI-first years ago led to groundbreaking advances across our businesses and the whole industry. > Thanks to those early investments, Google’s products are better than ever. Does he really believe this? Maybe I'm just biased towards the parts that are annoying and I end up missing the good parts, but search seems worse every day. I worry about using google products for anything essential due to the risk of being locked out with no recourse, or the product being unceremoniously dumped after a year. Chat (whatever it's being called that month) is always changing, and not for any benefit that I can see. Their office suite is pretty impressive, but again I can't trust that it (or my files) will be there when I need them.
  • clint 4y ago
    I would say you are an extreme outlier. Most people use all these Google products with no problems nor do they seem to share your fears.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • justin_oaks 4y ago
      While "extreme outlier" is probably true, here on HN many of us are extreme outliers. So while true, at least he's in good company. I am on the road to de-Google my life, or at least add some backups in case of Google locks me out of my account. On HN I've seen articles about people who have been locked out of their Google accounts based on 1) taking a picture of a boy's genitals intended medical purposes, 2) submitting a chargeback for a Pixel phone that never arrived, and 3) unknown reasons, likely Google's AI incorrectly flagging an account.
      • pb7 4y ago
        Even on HN, you’re in the minority. If you took HN as a representative sample, you’d think Linux was the #1 OS by a long shot even though it’s a rounding error for personal usage. There’s a big old bubble here.
• jeegsy 4y ago
  > To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today I will never tire of reading phrasing/euphemisms like these. Language can be so beautiful even when its something bad.
  • asda_ 4y ago
    [dead]
• datalus 4y ago
  I hope startups focused on letting builders build is a net positive outcome of this and all the other tech layoffs.
• pedro2 4y ago
  Buy the new shampoo ABC -- your hair will notice. CLICK HERE NOW. -- ai inserted ad through duplication of similar elements with custom text --
• leesec 4y ago
  Maybe a hot take but 6 months severence is extremely generous, they don't have to give anything. This is basically being spoiled compared to how the rest of the world is treated. I'm sure these talented engineers can find new gigs within 6 months
  • gowld 4y ago
    > I'm sure these talented engineers can find new gigs within 6 months Not everyone laid off is an engineer, and even among engineers, how likey is that is all these companies are shedding staff at the same time?
  • robocat 4y ago
    Getting laid off can have serious long term consequences. Six months severance is relatively good, but perhaps not enough to cover the losses to an employee (just stating a fact, not saying that companies are only responsible for lifetime of employees). From https://www.nber.org/papers/w13626 https://www.nber.org/papers/w13626 We find that job displacement leads to a 15-20% increase in death rates during the following 20 years. If such increases were sustained beyond this period, they would imply a loss in life expectancy of about 1.5 years for a worker displaced at age 40. It is hard to pick a fair balance between economic needs and human needs, but that is one thing society is supposed to be doing for us all.
• rmk 4y ago
  It is beginning to look like all the large companies that were hiring to deny talent to competitors are now feeling comfortable trimming the fat because they know that the startup fundraising scene has shifted dramatically in their favor (fewer potential competitors being funded), and they can trim costs and regain the initiative as far as having more leverage/bargaining power over current and future employees is concerned.
  • wildrhythms 4y ago
    My theory is that it's cyclical: trim costs today, and a few years from now buy up all the startups that resulted from a suddenly flooded tech labor market. Rinse and repeat.
• steve76 4y ago
  [dead]
• AlbertCory 4y ago
  When pointing out anything that Sundar did wrong to get to this point, remember the 3 responses of the Management Class to an inconvenient fact: 1. It's not true. 2. It's true, but it's not important. 3. It's true, and it's important, but we already knew it.
• hintymad 4y ago
  Did anyone notice the trend of dilution of candidate quality along with inflation of titles in the past few years? NLP engineers who could mention BERT but nothing else? Recommender experts who couldn't articulate the landscape of recommendation algorithms or their approach of selecting algorithms? Distributed engineers who could draw a few boxes yet couldn't explain or use any single concept in distributed systems? Tech lead who could barely recommend a concrete solution, let alone offering detailed analysis of pros and cons? A reset in the industry seems a good thing for the health of this sector.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• jeffybefffy519 4y ago
  10/10 chance google gets a new ceo in the next 1-2 years.
• Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  [dead]
• mancerayder 4y ago
  Is that 24 weeks plus two weeks per year of service? That sounds like an absolute dream. Now I regret not working at Google. That's a vacation of a lifetime plus lots of time to relax, practice and then interview.
• danniescott 4y ago
  [dead]