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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. Mana
by 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 agoAgree with that. The wording is very human and focus on the bad parts of it. I hate the term "let people go".
- gcr 4y agoIt 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 agoI think it’s worth focusing attention on getting the delivery vehicle for such life-changing news right.
- sillysaurusx 4y agoHear 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.
- profstasiak 4y agoit's amazing how you contradict yourself in two paragraphs > Hear hear re: not letting work consume your life > Weirdly I now seem to enjoy staying up till crazy o’clock hacking away or doing stuff over the weekend.
- hun3 4y ago> But only because it’s so much fun; it’s still a selfish motive. This implies that the overtime work isn't necessarily the most beneficial to the employer.
- nine_k 4y agoOvertime work is like an afterburner in a jet engine: it does allow you to get somewhere faster, but at a disproportionately higher cost than normal.
- sillysaurusx 4y agoYup. My employer benefits, but the fact is, I’ve waited basically my whole life to be in the position I am now. If I don’t make a significant research contribution over the next decade, I likely never will. Three years ago, I was a peasant, scratching out a living (metaphorically as a researcher) using google colab GPUs to experiment. Today I find myself a king, in command of a cluster of GPUs with so much memory and power that they could host GPT-3 four times over. Today that cluster comes online, and you better believe I haven’t felt this excited since I was 10 and my parents got me a playstation 1 for Christmas. I’m gonna final fantasy 7 the heck out of these gpus. I have literally everything a researcher could possibly dream of. Or at least me. Every single one of the ideas I’ve been brewing over the last few years can now be tested, analyzed, and discarded — and it’s only a matter of time till I find the gold among them. My daughter’s on the way in T-minus 7 months. I’ll be keeping my life balanced. But damn it feels good to finally have a research target plus resources plus skill. I’ve been playing a game of “choose two” till now.
- grugagag 4y ago
- SethTro 4y agoDo you know the subject line of the follow up email (for those laid off)?
- miguelrochefort 4y ago"Notice of unemployment" (personal email address)
- Jagerbizzle 4y agoSignificantly better than the tone-deaf email Satya sent Microsoft employees, which continues to cause undue anxiety for employees who have no clue if or when they'll be laid off over the next 90 days.
- rippercushions 4y agoGoogle US employees know if they'll be laid off or not immediately, but all non-US employees are still waiting.
- Jagerbizzle 4y agoDoes anyone have a summary of what laws need to be abided to in EU, Canada and other countries that prevent them from rolling this out at the same time as the US?
- foepys 4y agoIn Germany, and possibly many other EU countries, there is a mandatory notice period plus a social plan. The longer you are with the company, the longer notice period, starting from 4 weeks and can get up to 6 months. You also cannot fire a parent of a newborn if you keep the single 20-something in the same position.
- oblio 4y agoSometimes they need to negotiate with unions or government agencies. They could still notify employees, it would be the nice thing to do. "You'll be laid off once we get approval from the relevant groups". Of course, that disrupts productivity for these target employees for 1-2-3 months, so they won't do it. I wonder if the hit to productivity to <<everyone>> is worth it.
- sweezyjeezy 4y agoIf you make layoffs of over 100 people in the UK, there needs to be a 45 day consultation period with representatives from the groups of people affected. This sometimes means people end up in a horrible situation where they are in a pool that have been told their jobs are at risk but not whether they are actually being made redundant, though presumably it's more fair, and allows staff to volunteer themselves for severance if they so choose.
- mi_lk 4y agoThis is the right attitude. Other higher-voted threads trying to shame the company/CEO etc. are only depressing to see.
- Draiken 4y agoI'd argue these aren't mutually exclusive. The email/comms might be okay, but this is still their fault and will ruin people's lives. Most (if not all) companies are shit and don't give a shit about you. We're just a necessary cost.
- 331c8c71 4y agoHaving Google on one's CV is probably better than not having worked there at all. Sure being let go is painful but I would keep the term "ruined lives" for people getting serious diseases or experiencing loss of the loved ones.
- Draiken 4y agoSuicide rates surge after layoffs. Assuming it's "okay" just because they were in a big company earning more than most is disingenuous in my view. For the company this is a blip. It'll probably even make some profit for shareholders. For the people it's almost always life-changing and for the worst.
- twelve40 4y agoit absolutely sucks ass and is a major psychological hit. Also, when lesser brands decide to follow the trend these companies so prominently follow, it will be even worse.
- 331c8c71 4y agoI've been let go more than once from small companies that were effectively shut down. Once on a work authorization tied to the employer. I am sorry but I won't feel sorry for those ex-Googlers.
- ddevault 4y agoHaving Google on your resume is not a good thing depending on who's reading it. Googlers generally need to be extensively re-trained on reality outside of companies that cargo-cult Google's practices, and I'll have some questions about the moral compass of anyone who shows up with Google on the resume.
- bdavis__ 4y agoThe moral compass points to the money
- hgsgm 4y agoThat tech stack concern and attitude only affects a small-poulation collection of startups. "Morally opposed to Google" affects a tiny sliver of professionals who boycott Google products or choose to use it despite allegedly being opposed to it.
- otikik 4y agoOh, you would be surprised. I once met a bank director that would call Google “those hippies”. In his view Googlers where “not enough money-centered”.
- notyourwork 4y agoNow it’s bad to work with some of the brightest talent in the world? Come on…
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- itsyaboi 4y ago2012 Google? Sure, pretty good chance you're getting world class talent. 2023? Lmao not even close. Anyone with a heartbeat and memorized leets can receive an offer, and the offers aren't even particular competitive.
- cbarrick 4y ago
- revskill 4y agoPer my experience, nothing beats the "i work on what i love and passionate". Coorporate environment of course has some advantages, for what they called "the real world experience". But it doesn't mean they're more capable than "lonely hackers" that can build his own universe by the weekends. "Learn/Work by heart" is a dangerous thing.
- pelasaco 4y agothe only thing that beats "i work on what i love and passionate" is "i work on what i love and passionate and therefore I'm well paid" and "i work on what i love and passionate and therefore I'm well paid with a great work life balance"
- Zvez 4y agowhile I agree with the attitude you promote. But it is not that simple. If your visa is attached to your job, you are pretty much fucked. Same goes if you decided to leave your previous job just to join Google (because it was your dream) and now you are let go - you are fucked. So yes, it is your responsibility to take care of yourselves. But it is hard to be prepared for everything and layoffs like this one doesn't make it easier.
- grugagag 4y agoMaybe this will make people wary of joining hiring sprees in the FAANG space as you could easily become jobless in an economic downturn.
- foogazi 4y ago> If your visa is attached to your job, you are pretty much fucked. Everyone on a visa knows this - it’s part of the gamble on immigration You take the risk hoping for a payoff. If it doesn’t work out you try again with FAANG on you resume
- jyrkesh 4y agoI'm so rapidly becoming someone who just feels no guilt. It's balance against the abject anxiety I feel no matter what day or time of day it is. The balance against waking up on in a panic that's it's 9:30a and I missed 2 hours of EU meetings only to realize that it's Sunday and everything is fine and I'm supposed to be relaxing. It's clearly not healthy. But yeah, I've got a FAANG(+? what's it called now? I think I'm in whatever the new one is called now?), and the market isn't _so_ bad, I think? But at the end of the day, the checks clear, and it's mostly on me to decide and act on the prerogative that software is just software, and I need to chill. (But it's really hard...9s are addictive...)
- mradek 4y agoWhat do u mean 9s are addictive
- nlowell 4y ago"9s" are brought up in reliability discussions. They refer to the number of 9's in an uptime metric like 99%, 99.9%, 99.9999%, ... See also "march of the 9s"
- johnvanommen 4y ago> The balance against waking up on in a panic that's it's 9:30a and I missed 2 hours of EU meetings only to realize that it's Sunday The thing that's been messing me up, is the completely unhealthy schedules that are typical when you work with people all over the world. For instance, I got up at 6am today, my first meeting was at 7am. In the meeting were people in three countries and at least five timezones. This trend where people are located all over the planet leads to a scenario where it's not unusual for me to be taking 7am meetings while also working on infrastructure at three in the morning because that's when the maintenance window is. If we were going to an office, nobody would tolerate this ridiculous schedule. But since most of us WFH now, it's just become increasingly common that we're working 20 hours days, but there's a bunch of gaps scattered between a 7am start and a 5am end. Sleeping in shifts is a drag.
- 4y ago
- lwhi 4y agoWill a workforce of ex-Googlers create a positive benefit to other non-Google companies?
- asda_ 4y ago[dead]
- falcrist 4y agoAs a sort of corollary to what you said: being loyal to a company is foolish because companies cannot return that loyalty. There may be some borderline exceptions with very small companies (less than 10 employees), but in general a company isn't capable of being loyal to individual employees. Just keep in mind that in your relationship with your employer, you only have value insofar as you generate profit for them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]