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Let me take a stab at this with a viewpoint that's not "stingy rich f$*k wants to take away worker's money". The letter is macro level, doesn't really bring up

by a1371 4y ago

Let me take a stab at this with a viewpoint that's not "stingy rich f$*k wants to take away worker's money". The letter is macro level, doesn't really bring up the reasoning, but the data points tell a story. > Over the last 5 years the headcount has doubled That's coincidentally been as long as I have used their business and cloud services. I can hardly tell a difference between Google's offering of 2018 versus today. At least not as much as it would explain 2x the employees. Same for their search and other services. And their customer service still sucks. > Median salary is $300,000. Average is higher. This is truly a win for tech workers. But an investor might see this and feel people come to Google for money, not passion. I think from an investor perspective, these data points are interesting, in context. This person is recommending what they understand; that the headcount and salaries must go down. Is that a solution to the dysfunctionality implied here? What do you folks think?

gieksosz 4y ago
Do investors come to Alphabet for money or passion?
- a1371 4y ago
  Why should there be a comparison here?
easytiger 4y ago
There are wider examples were people get hired in certain geos to provide political leverage. e.g. in Ireland google employs between 5000 & 9000 people. Mostly well paid too but the purpose is twofold. "high tech" employment with well paying jobs is well protected by politicians in a country that until the late 90s/2000s had limited opportunities. This in turn "buys" political protection via Ireland's government's EU veto rights. [if you don't know in the EU single market you currently only have to recognise revenue in whichever member state you claim to be based]. It in turn ensured highly profitable exceptional tax deals, as should be Ireland's sovereign right to negotiate.
birdymcbird 4y ago
Same story at Amazon. have kindle, fire stick, prime subscription, and alexa echo puck. prime shopping worse today than 5 years ago. many item take longer than 2 day promise. too many scam items, like shopping at some flea market. reviews unreliable. me kindle same thing as what I purchase in 2017 or 2016. in past two year they update some screen so feel more like android style but its otherwise exact same product. alexa is timer and alarm clock. sometime use for weather but it always say “by the way” and try to sell something stupid. ok now we discuss aws. “hey we give like nothing to open source community but let us take you open source project, create our own fork, and sell your hard work as managed service.” ok but what aws really even do that big in past 5 year? s3..lambda.. ecs decent. redshift basically eat hole in your wallet. but all this stuff available 5 years ago. no significant disruption or amazing feature. ok AWS at least make money. rest of they business is low or no margin. massive grift from amazon friends brag about rest and vest.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > many item take longer than 2 day promise Maybe my experience is atypical, but I'm still pretty happy with Prime. Nearly everything comes in the expected 2 days, sometimes things come in 1 day. Last time I (barely) remember anything taking more than 2 days was at the height of supply chain and logistics disruptions during the pandemic. > ok but what aws really even do that big in past 5 year? [...] no significant disruption or amazing feature. Why does everything need to be "disrupted"? If the business is doing well with what it has, maybe that's fine. Worse is when a company starts spraying new ideas at the wall, hoping to find something that sticks. > too many scam items, like shopping at some flea market. reviews unreliable. Absolutely agree with this, unfortunately. But I think this problem has been around quite a bit longer than 5 years. I remember getting a counterfeit item back at the end of 2015, but I'm sure that wasn't the first time.
  - rswskg 4y ago
    'too many scam items, like shopping at some flea market. reviews unreliable.' Might even be intentional. You are essentially pushed into buying amazon basics where you can to save the research time.
gsatic 4y ago
I think they should kick the Chrome and Android teams (and other assorted empire defense trash) into the Pacific ocean. The world and google will be a better place.
anon7725 4y ago
Once you become one of the most valuable companies in the world, with virtually all revenue derived from ads, you give up the ability to recruit for passion.
ulfw 4y ago
> Median salary is $300,000. Average is higher. Cry me a river. This is coming from someone paying himself 6 times this yearly salary... PER DAY!!! As much as 2400 Googlers make. I guess he is THAT special. https://fortune.com/2023/01/23/christopher-hohn-rishi-sunak-old-boss-tci-fund-management-letter-to-alphabet-sundar-pichai/ https://fortune.com/2023/01/23/christopher-hohn-rishi-sunak-...
- jmathai 4y ago
  Found this relevant from Wikipedia: As of 2014, he had given over $4.5 billion to The Children's Investment Fund Foundation.[3] Hohn is worth $5 billion according to the Forbes billionaires list in 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hohn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hohn
  - kevingadd 4y ago
    Hm, I wonder who runs 'The Children's Investment Fund Foundation'. I'm going to take a wild guess before checking that it's someone named Chris Hohn. > CIFF was established in 2002 by Sir Chris Hohn and wife, Jamie Cooper-Hohn as the philanthropic arm of Hohn's hedge fund, the Children's Investment Fund Management (TCI Fund Management) How generous! Giving over 4.5 billion dollars to himself!
    - jmathai 4y ago
      You should read about the work that his foundation does. Many billionaires set up foundations like this. Not sure where the skepticism comes from but surely he isn’t “giving over $4.5 billion to himself”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Investment_Fund_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Investment_Fu...
- mrweasel 4y ago
  Wouldn't that only mess up the average, not the median. A median of $300.000 would indicate that half of Googles employees makes less, and the other half makes more.
- 4y ago
kelnos 4y ago
> But an investor might see this and feel people come to Google for money, not passion. Pretty hypocritical. I doubt the investor has put their money into Google because of "passion". Why should an employee join for passion, then? > that the headcount and salaries must go down Maybe upper management should feel those decreases just like the rest of everyone else. But yeah, right, like that'll happen. Whenever anyone advocates lowering salaries, upper management never takes a cut.
mrweasel 4y ago
Giving the salary as a median is a good call, that is honestly way too high, or Google/Alphabet is extremely top heavy. Both would be a problem. My initial reaction was that investors really shouldn't interfere like that, they can sell their shares if they are unhappy with how the company is run, or vote for a different board next time. In this case I think they have a point. 150.000 is a lot to lay off, but it's also a lot of people to hire within a single year. You could defend the hiring though. Unless I'm completely off, it does seem like profit are still going up. Ideally their profits should be going down, as they onboard large numbers of support staff to increase their customer service, but those aren't $300.000 a year kinda jobs.
- Thorrez 4y ago
  >150.000 is a lot to lay off, but it's also a lot of people to hire within a single year. There were not 150,000 people hired in a single year, and the letter doesn't say that.
hourago 4y ago
> Let me take a stab at this with a viewpoint that's not "stingy rich f$*k wants to take away worker's money". It is literally exactly that. You can say that "they just wan to optimize the system" but you are giving them a lot of credit. > But an investor might see this and feel people come to Google for money, not passion. Yes, that is called a job. Otherwise it would be a hobby. Why workers trying to make money is bad meanwhile rich investors trying to rent-seek for even more money is good? That seems that would lead to a non-functional society were adding value is not rewarded but just owning thing is.
rsynnott 4y ago
> But an investor might see this and feel people come to Google for money, not passion. Bad news for investors; people are generally pretty concerned with salary when taking a job. Few people are sufficiently passionate about Google to work for it if were sufficiently below market and they could get jobs at market. What they seem to be suggesting here is managed decline.
confidantlake 4y ago
Does google employee people because they are passionate about having workers? Or not charge advertisers because of they are passionate about ad tech? Also why be concerned about the people making $300,000? Why not the ones making 50,000,000? It is always the obscenely rich complaining about everyone else making too much.

by a1371 4y ago

gieksosz 4y ago

Do investors come to Alphabet for money or passion?

a1371 4y ago
Why should there be a comparison here?

easytiger 4y ago

There are wider examples were people get hired in certain geos to provide political leverage. e.g. in Ireland google employs between 5000 & 9000 people. Mostly well paid too but the purpose is twofold. "high tech" employment with well paying jobs is well protected by politicians in a country that until the late 90s/2000s had limited opportunities. This in turn "buys" political protection via Ireland's government's EU veto rights. [if you don't know in the EU single market you currently only have to recognise revenue in whichever member state you claim to be based]. It in turn ensured highly profitable exceptional tax deals, as should be Ireland's sovereign right to negotiate.

birdymcbird 4y ago

Same story at Amazon. have kindle, fire stick, prime subscription, and alexa echo puck. prime shopping worse today than 5 years ago. many item take longer than 2 day promise. too many scam items, like shopping at some flea market. reviews unreliable. me kindle same thing as what I purchase in 2017 or 2016. in past two year they update some screen so feel more like android style but its otherwise exact same product. alexa is timer and alarm clock. sometime use for weather but it always say “by the way” and try to sell something stupid. ok now we discuss aws. “hey we give like nothing to open source community but let us take you open source project, create our own fork, and sell your hard work as managed service.” ok but what aws really even do that big in past 5 year? s3..lambda.. ecs decent. redshift basically eat hole in your wallet. but all this stuff available 5 years ago. no significant disruption or amazing feature. ok AWS at least make money. rest of they business is low or no margin. massive grift from amazon friends brag about rest and vest.

kelnos 4y ago
> many item take longer than 2 day promise Maybe my experience is atypical, but I'm still pretty happy with Prime. Nearly everything comes in the expected 2 days, sometimes things come in 1 day. Last time I (barely) remember anything taking more than 2 days was at the height of supply chain and logistics disruptions during the pandemic. > ok but what aws really even do that big in past 5 year? [...] no significant disruption or amazing feature. Why does everything need to be "disrupted"? If the business is doing well with what it has, maybe that's fine. Worse is when a company starts spraying new ideas at the wall, hoping to find something that sticks. > too many scam items, like shopping at some flea market. reviews unreliable. Absolutely agree with this, unfortunately. But I think this problem has been around quite a bit longer than 5 years. I remember getting a counterfeit item back at the end of 2015, but I'm sure that wasn't the first time.
- rswskg 4y ago
  'too many scam items, like shopping at some flea market. reviews unreliable.' Might even be intentional. You are essentially pushed into buying amazon basics where you can to save the research time.

gsatic 4y ago

I think they should kick the Chrome and Android teams (and other assorted empire defense trash) into the Pacific ocean. The world and google will be a better place.

anon7725 4y ago

Once you become one of the most valuable companies in the world, with virtually all revenue derived from ads, you give up the ability to recruit for passion.

ulfw 4y ago

> Median salary is $300,000. Average is higher. Cry me a river. This is coming from someone paying himself 6 times this yearly salary... PER DAY!!! As much as 2400 Googlers make. I guess he is THAT special. https://fortune.com/2023/01/23/christopher-hohn-rishi-sunak-old-boss-tci-fund-management-letter-to-alphabet-sundar-pichai/ https://fortune.com/2023/01/23/christopher-hohn-rishi-sunak-...

jmathai 4y ago
Found this relevant from Wikipedia: As of 2014, he had given over $4.5 billion to The Children's Investment Fund Foundation.[3] Hohn is worth $5 billion according to the Forbes billionaires list in 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hohn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hohn
- kevingadd 4y ago
  Hm, I wonder who runs 'The Children's Investment Fund Foundation'. I'm going to take a wild guess before checking that it's someone named Chris Hohn. > CIFF was established in 2002 by Sir Chris Hohn and wife, Jamie Cooper-Hohn as the philanthropic arm of Hohn's hedge fund, the Children's Investment Fund Management (TCI Fund Management) How generous! Giving over 4.5 billion dollars to himself!
  - jmathai 4y ago
    You should read about the work that his foundation does. Many billionaires set up foundations like this. Not sure where the skepticism comes from but surely he isn’t “giving over $4.5 billion to himself”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Investment_Fund_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children%27s_Investment_Fu...
mrweasel 4y ago
Wouldn't that only mess up the average, not the median. A median of $300.000 would indicate that half of Googles employees makes less, and the other half makes more.
4y ago

kelnos 4y ago

> But an investor might see this and feel people come to Google for money, not passion. Pretty hypocritical. I doubt the investor has put their money into Google because of "passion". Why should an employee join for passion, then? > that the headcount and salaries must go down Maybe upper management should feel those decreases just like the rest of everyone else. But yeah, right, like that'll happen. Whenever anyone advocates lowering salaries, upper management never takes a cut.

mrweasel 4y ago

Giving the salary as a median is a good call, that is honestly way too high, or Google/Alphabet is extremely top heavy. Both would be a problem. My initial reaction was that investors really shouldn't interfere like that, they can sell their shares if they are unhappy with how the company is run, or vote for a different board next time. In this case I think they have a point. 150.000 is a lot to lay off, but it's also a lot of people to hire within a single year. You could defend the hiring though. Unless I'm completely off, it does seem like profit are still going up. Ideally their profits should be going down, as they onboard large numbers of support staff to increase their customer service, but those aren't $300.000 a year kinda jobs.

Thorrez 4y ago
>150.000 is a lot to lay off, but it's also a lot of people to hire within a single year. There were not 150,000 people hired in a single year, and the letter doesn't say that.

hourago 4y ago

> Let me take a stab at this with a viewpoint that's not "stingy rich f$*k wants to take away worker's money". It is literally exactly that. You can say that "they just wan to optimize the system" but you are giving them a lot of credit. > But an investor might see this and feel people come to Google for money, not passion. Yes, that is called a job. Otherwise it would be a hobby. Why workers trying to make money is bad meanwhile rich investors trying to rent-seek for even more money is good? That seems that would lead to a non-functional society were adding value is not rewarded but just owning thing is.

rsynnott 4y ago

> But an investor might see this and feel people come to Google for money, not passion. Bad news for investors; people are generally pretty concerned with salary when taking a job. Few people are sufficiently passionate about Google to work for it if were sufficiently below market and they could get jobs at market. What they seem to be suggesting here is managed decline.

confidantlake 4y ago

Does google employee people because they are passionate about having workers? Or not charge advertisers because of they are passionate about ad tech? Also why be concerned about the people making $300,000? Why not the ones making 50,000,000? It is always the obscenely rich complaining about everyone else making too much.