20 ms·

What is Google doing with its open source teams?

326 points by elorant 4y ago

zengid 4y ago
Really curious about the Flutter/Dart team. It looks like great tech but its by google so its always at risk of abandonment.
- garganzol 4y ago
  I share the same sentiment on Meta's Docusaurus project. I hope that authors and maintainers of the project who were employed by Meta are ok.
noorkersz 4y ago
step one: shift the focus from free software (liberty minded software) on to "open source" software. i.e. software which you can look but not touch. step two: profit
- DefineOutside 4y ago
  step one: promote BSD and MIT licenses over more copyleft licenses such as GPL step two: profit from people willing to code for enterprises for free There has to be some reason that Google released PyTorch under BSD-3 by Meta and TensorFlow being released under Apache by Google.
  - honkler 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - friendlyHornet 4y ago
    You forgot step 1.5: make contributing to open-source an unwritten rule to getting a job in the industry Full disclosure: I got my current job before I had contributed anything to open source but I was asked a lot about it while applying to companies like it's expected that you work in your free time
    - jezzamon 4y ago
      I think in my entire time working I haven't met anyone who has significantly contributed to open source (aside from "let me fix some bug that's annoying me in a library"), so I'm not sure how required it really is
      - CHY872 4y ago
        It varies on focus area. Most big OSS projects are infrastructural in nature, and so if you're working in that space there's actually a lot of engineers who you meet with OSS experience beyond fixing random bugs. Even then, for every OSS engineer doing big OSS contributions, there are many who never do, it's just the nature of the business. I know of just one hiring decision (out of hundreds and hundreds) that was made because of OSS contributions, and I know no interviewers who routinely checked OSS contributions beyond surface level.
    - goodpoint 4y ago
      open-source using permissive licenses + pressure to contribute = unpaid labor No wonder Microsoft loves it.
  - CHY872 4y ago
    Ah, this is a bit of a false one. (A)GPL's pretty great for things that look like applications (or alternatively, pretty much anything GNU's ever made), but for anything looking like a library that is designed to be both free as in speech and free as in beer (Qt is the former but not the latter - want commercial usage? Pay us for a differently licensed edition!) it's a complete non-starter because it says that any usage of a library is a derivative work and infects. This is always going to be poisonous to any commercial use, and PyTorch and Tensorflow only gained the traction they have because they could be used commercially - they wouldn't have been successful if GPL'd. Even LGPL is super challenging here due to requiring dynamic linking. This is fine in Java (unless you use Graal AOT compilation) and Python, impossible in Go, and at best discouraged in other compiled languages like Rust and C++. I think there's likely a copyleft middle ground - something like the Mozilla public license seems about right, where it copylefts improvements without infecting users. I don't know why Google chose Apache 2.0 over MPL or the like - for something like Android it makes sense, for something like Guava it's not clearcut. But, when people talk copyleft, they're rarely, rarely talking MPL. I think it's unlikely that Google opensourced Tensorflow with a view to getting some free dev hours, they're doing it to push their OSS agenda, to wield influence over how everyone else does work.
    - dgacmu 4y ago
      This is entirely correct. Open sourcing tensorflow was about getting the world to use Google's stuff so that that stuff became more valuable / remained valuable / was possible to hire people with experience in it, not about getting people to work on it for free. The ratio of external to internal contributions is extremely small. Google saw what happened with other of their technologies like map reduce (not open sourced, the world reinvented in Hadoop and the progress started happening there instead of in MR) and wanted to avoid becoming the bit player in a space they pioneered in. It's a reasonable strategy. (The risk is that you're giving away something that could be a competitive advantage.) (worked on tensorflow at Google for four years.)
      - CHY872 4y ago
        K8s another example. Kind of amazing that Google effectively owns the now-standard deployment solution off of 'we don't really use K8s but want you to build your applications like us and K8s is a bit like something we do use'. At least Tensorflow's actually what Google runs internally (to best of my knowledge)!
  - mch82 4y ago
    Enterprises are (slower than I’d hoped) learning the value of contributing to the open source projects they use. More companies are establishing Open Source Program Offices and I expect the rate of contribution to go up. Most contribution from companies will go to software licensed under MIT/BSD/Apache. US government policy is that software developed with public funding is a public good. Current policy encourages government software to released under the most permissive license possible (ideally Public Domain, but practically permissive licenses like MIT/BSD). GPL is farther from the Public Domain than licenses like MIT/BSD. To enter the rabbit hole of material on this topic start at https://code.gov/about/overview/introduction/ https://code.gov/about/overview/introduction/.
    - mch82 4y ago
      Side note… the most interesting thing I learned today is that DoD (and probably other agencies) consider “Open Source Software” to be “Commercial Software”. This is a great development and likely means it will be much simpler to include OSS in make/buy trade studies. See “Is Open Source Software Commercial Software”, https://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software-FAQ/#q-is-oss-commercial-software-is-it-cots https://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software-FAQ/#q-is-os...
- ajross 4y ago
  > "open source" software. i.e. software which you can look but not touch That's not remotely consistent with the way that term is used in practice...
- jraph 4y ago
  > software which you can look but not touch. This is "source available". Open source software and free software are philosophically different but refer to mostly the set of programs (with two different but equivalent definitions [1,2]). [1] https://opensource.org/definition https://opensource.org/definition [2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en#fs-definition https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en#fs-definition
- kweingar 4y ago
  > step one: shift the focus from free software (liberty minded software) on to "open source" software. i.e. software which you can look but not touch I’m pretty sure when you say “look but not touch,” you’re talking about project governance, where outside contributors have limited input into the direction of the project. If that’s the case, I don’t like this conflation of governance and “freedom”. Google’s open source software is free software by all definitions (including FSF). For a project to be open source or free software, users need to have the “four essential freedoms”. The ability to get your changes merged upstream is not one of those freedoms. It is totally valid to criticize the corporate governance model of open source software. But it’s best not to confuse our already overloaded definitions by saying that corporate software with a free license isn’t really “free.”
0xcafefood 4y ago
"What is Google doing with its open source teams?" Laying them off? It is quite sad to see.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Really? The open source teams have the best of the best in terms of reputation and quality output often delivering more value and goodwill compared to the traditional marketing department. They should move some of those folks into search..
  - cute_boi 4y ago
    The problem is corporation are blinded by short term revenue over long term investments.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      What long term revenue stems from open source? I’m not talking about a million her or there. I’m talking about billions of dollars. IBM-style “consulting”?
  - steelframe 4y ago
    > They should move some of those folks into search Given the choice, I know a lot of people deeply involved in the OSS community who would rather leave for another OSS-friendly role at another company rather than get pulled into something that pulls their time and attention away from their OSS activities.
pm90 4y ago
It will be interesting to see amazing talent leave Google and build new companies and institutions now that it’s slowly being mismanaged to death.
- amelius 4y ago
  Yes, our smartest people, who were once making people click ads, are now fired.
  - wan23 4y ago
    The people on the revenue making teams aren't usually the ones who are let go.
    - amelius 4y ago
      The algorithms work. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
      - andromeduck 4y ago
        The algorithms need a lot of maintenance these days.
      - chaboud 4y ago
        That statement, right there, should be the epitaph of every former great that found themselves disrupted.
  - bigiain 4y ago
    “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” — Jeffery Hammerbacher (I seem to recall that was about Facebook at the time, not Google, but same same.)
- rapsey 4y ago
  I wonder. Google is known for being cushy. Building new companies is hard work.
AlbertCory 4y ago
I knew Chris DiBona quite well. While I don't know the whole community as well so this is a rash statement, it's hard to imagine anyone knowing more about open source than Chris does. And Chris, if you're reading this: you rock, man.
- milesward 4y ago
  This is 100% truth. Chris does rock! Unfathomable.
  - hallarempt 4y ago
    They let him go??? That's... Words fail.
    - civilized 4y ago
      Google was supposed to have the capacity to stick to a long-term vision because the founders retained preferred stock with (IIRC) 10x voting rights. By that same token, there is no one to blame but the founders now that Google has turned into another mediocre big corporation without vision.
      - Bloating 4y ago
        Like Apple, they have a vision for $$$
        scarface74 4y ago
        Every for profit cares about money. The issue is that Google has struggled to try to come up with a new product that convinced people to give it money.
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    Alternative take: when I was there he was tyrannical and constantly blocking employees from open sourcing code developed on their own weekends and evenings, purely on a personal whim. People had to fight internal battles to get like little video games and stuff put up on github. You'd think head of OSPO would do whatever it took to get code open sourced but no far from it. Loads of grumbling about how he was just an ex-Slashdot editor who couldn't even code, on a power trip abusing contract ip clauses.
buildbot 4y ago
TCI / Chris Hon are only doing this because his fund is mainly invested in Microsoft and Alphabet[1]. Guess what, his fund recently lost a bit of money for the first time: TCI[2] Its ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING that MS and Alphabet are being pushed into laying off collectively over 20K people so this billionaire can recover a bit. Like, could this not be a national security issue? This man is able to have Google trash their open source initiatives on a whim, making the company weaker. It should be very very illegal. 1: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4567705-chris-hohn-tci-fund-management-13f-portfolio-q3-2022-update https://seekingalpha.com/article/4567705-chris-hohn-tci-fund... 2: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-20/hedge-fund-manager-chris-hohn-s-13-year-winning-streak-ends-as-fund-drops-18 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-20/hedge-fun...
- lazide 4y ago
  Huh? He doesn’t have control of Alphabet, for sure. This is broad and across the industry.
  - buildbot 4y ago
    Yes that is correct, but specifically this person is the activist investor publicly pushing for this. Maybe that had no effect, but certainly it seems like this man might be a bit responsible.
    - mike_d 4y ago
      The man with basically no voting shares can scream into the wind all he wants, it does not impact Google leadership one way or the other.
    - sumeno 4y ago
      He's a convenient scapegoat for the people who actually made the decisions, the execs that are paid primarily in stock and have perverse incentives for maximizing short term gains.
- micimize 4y ago
  I really wouldn't assume Chris Hon has this much pull or that these decisions are due to investor pressure. Maybe a flimsy rationale but if he did have that kind of influence I kinda doubt he'd be speaking publicly – seems more like a personal branding effort.
spinningslate 4y ago
I've no inside knowledge on Google, so can't comment on the rationale for selecting those being let go. From the outside though, Google under Pichai increasingly looks like Microsoft under Ballmer in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Balmer was lauded for delivering good numbers from a dominant market position. That was fine - until it wasn't. Under his watch, Microsoft completely misjudged the internet and totally missed mobile. Gates still smarts about the latter. Pichai looks like Google's Ballmer. He inherited a cash cow - search was already dominant and both YouTube and Android had been in the stable for ~10 years when he took over. Despite the investment in ML/AI (Google Brain, DeepMind) and notable advances that have come from there (e.g. the Transformer architecture), Google has stagnated with Pichai at the helm. The profit drop is indicative of that. There's only so long you can keep milking the same cow. Of course, it's rarely those at the top of the tree that go first. Microsoft was staring over the precipice of existence before they finally got rid of Ballmer. OpenAI has grabbed the AI/ML limielight despite much of the formative work coming from Google. The recent "code red" looks a lot like a CEO who's been asleep at the wheel - and someone finally woke him up. I don't know what's ahead for Google, but I'll wager it'll need a change at the top.
- darkerside 4y ago
  This doesn't quite line up for me. Ballmer, for his lack of technical foresight, managed an incredibly profitable business. People act like anybody could have just stepped in to milk Windows and Office for all they were worth, but the focus and execution are easy to scoff at in hindsight. If MS had focused on mobile, who's to say they would have succeeded? And perhaps in the process of losing, also ceded dominance to an upstart in the office software space. Pichai may not have capitalized effectively on the impressive AI investments Google has made, but he has steered innovation in newer directions like AI and cloud. Technical victories, but questionable business decisions. I think one possible moral here is, sometimes the best opportunity is the one you don't take.
  - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
    Ballmer succeeded in spite of tripping over his own feet repeatedly, not because of it. https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft-kills-stack-ranking-internal-structure https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft-kills-... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
dboreham 4y ago
Google no longer paying developers of code that we all use for free is obviously not good (for us or those developers), but this article is otherwise really quite bogus because it suggests that "open source developer" is a thing, when it...isn't. The article implies that Google is cutting off its own nose because the prime OSS devs they fired could just as well be writing OSS AI code. That's not how this stuff works.
- bbor 4y ago
  I’m not sure I understand your point. Isn’t it true that someone experienced + respected in the OSS community would be the very best kind of person to transfer to e.g. the TensorFlow team?
bbor 4y ago
As a google employee (who obviously has no privileged info) I really don’t buy this whole activist-investor explanation for the layoffs. Besides the fact that the investors in question own <1% of the company, it doesn’t explain the rather random and opaque way the layoffs seem to have been conducted. Plus they (so far) haven’t laid off nearly enough to make hedge funds happy. I’m much more convinced by the argument that they saw this sector-wide wave of layoffs as an opportunity to scare their engineers and change the culture to be a more intense, hierarchical one. Google engineering culture has long been described as permitting coasters and encouraging employees to structure their work around what might get them promoted; that might be great for an innovative growing company, but I suspect Sundar & Co. know that that label doesn’t really fit google’s position anymore. I really don’t see any other reason they’d lay off high performing employees on important projects - especially OSS giants. If my guess is right, it worked, to say the least; the internal culture is best characterized as “terrified” and “stunned”
- chaboud 4y ago
  It’s much easier to lose trust that to gain it, and the ramifications of the move will be felt for a very long time. There’s the time before and the time after, and Google won’t ever really look the same to the industry. That said, Google probably now actually looks more like what Google is and has been for some time. The industry was just hanging on to goodwill forged over the last two decades. There’s still massive innovation and builder spirit there, but I’m betting that we’ll have a much easier time poaching our favorite employees from Google now than we have over the last few years. I’ve been part of several companies that have gone through layoffs, and one thing I’ve learned is that companies that haven’t done it in a while (or ever) typically do it poorly.
  - bbor 4y ago
    Very good points, especially the last one: when trying to understand the logic behind these layoffs, I honestly haven’t considered incompetence enough. Surely people making tens of millions of dollars a year got there through intelligence and merit and not capitalist fiat? Right? Right…?
  - 4y ago
euos 4y ago
I'm a part of a medium-sized team working on a popular infrastructure open-source project. There was no impact on our team, so it is not like Google hates open-source now.
raister 4y ago
"never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake"
jedberg 4y ago
> It has been widely reported that some of the firing was done by an algorithm. It's ironic that the people who have now been directly affected by Google's penchant to allow AIs to make decisions with no recourse no longer work for Google and can not fix that problem. Hopefully some of their colleagues finally realize that maybe having a human in the loop for termination decisions makes some sense, and we see fewer stories of gmail accounts getting shut off for no reason after 15 years with no recourse. Ah, a man can dream.
- gretch 4y ago
  The definition of algorithm is: > a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer. So yeah, I would hope that an algorithm was used. As opposed to what? "I like that guy more than the other guy". You seem to have the interpretation that some guy in finance wrote a script, it output some employee IDs, and then no one checked the output before laying them all off, as if slaves to the machine. Do you really believe that?
  - jedberg 4y ago
    First off, you know that "used an algorithm" in modern parlance means "was done by AI without human intervention". And based on that, absolutely I think Google did that. They run everything with data and statistics without humans. That's how they are so efficient. This is backed up by the fact that the managers who work there were simply told who they were losing and had no input into the process, and aren't even aware of who has been let go yet.
    - enneff 4y ago
      I’ve worked at Google for a long time and I assure you the chances of some AI being involved in the selection process for these layoffs is very close to zero. Don’t be so confident in something you apparently know so little about.
      - jedberg 4y ago
habosa 4y ago
This article feels like it was written by a friend of someone who is named as let go. Google let a lot of good people go last week. Some more and some less deserving than those in the OSPO. Google has never had a particularly coherent open source strategy (look at how many repos are on the github.com/google org) and I don’t think this latest layoff says much about what the future of the strategy holds either.
ed25519FUUU 4y ago
> These are not the people anyone in their right mind, or HR container, would want to fire. They are open source movers and shakers. In open source leadership circles, they're people everyone knows and are happy to work with. That’s good for us that they were let go. Google sucked them up and nailed their feet to the floor with amazing comp. Now they’ll innovate elsewhere.
unity1001 4y ago
So the problem with Google's earnings was that its exorbitant profit did not stay or grow at the same rate. During a pandemic followed by a global crisis prompted by a war. And they are laying off people. To make hedge funds and shareholders happy. ... What a destructive 'growth at all costs' economic culture. I guess those hedge funds and shareholders will pick up the slack in those open source projects...
- garganzol 4y ago
  It's always about the money. So nothing new here under the sun.
  - bagacrap 4y ago
    What is a business supposed to be about?
- riku_iki 4y ago
  > its exorbitant profit did not stay or grow at the same rate I think their profit margin reduced, so company became less healthy and balanced.
  - unity1001 4y ago
    However you look, their exorbitant, humongous profits have declined a slight bit !during a recession caused by a war!. This should not be a concern for any sane investor but the ones who want growth at all costs.
garganzol 4y ago
> These are not the people anyone in their right mind, or HR container, would want to fire. They are open source movers and shakers. In open source leadership circles, they're people everyone knows and are happy to work with. At the hands of Google, open source is just a weapon of the complement commoditization. So no wonder they are letting those people go now. In this way, they are trying to lower the antimonopoly pressure against them. The second benefit is preserving all those money that would go to the salaries of those fired people. I doubt this will change the trajectory of accusations. But it gives some momentum in terms of reaping the peak monetary benefits to shareholders before a possible company division through legislation.
eecc 4y ago
Well maybe it'll be a renaissance for many different and new projects. With Google hoardning all this talent and cushioning them on non-strategic, prestige tasks the ecosystem became desolate (thus enhancing Google's role as beacoun of OSS). It sucks for those fired but let's be honest, just a bit. They're household names in their respective industries, and they'll be welcomed in no time onto new projects. It's like a fire sweeping in a forest, clearing the undergrowth and making space for a new growth frenzy.
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
> Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be Evil"? Because it's impossible to be evil if it's in your motto not to be evil. Right?
yawnxyz 4y ago
With Firebase and the rest of GCP, there's absolutely no reason why those products are as hard to use as they are. Supabase, Vercel, etc. all stepped in to fill that massive void that Google could have taken care of so long ago. IMO that's a massive miss and failure on Google's part.
nfRfqX5n 4y ago
crazy to see people with 15-20 year tenures hit in layoffs
- dehrmann 4y ago
  Is it? Sure, they know the system, but they don't bring an outside perspective, and they're more likely to be complacent.
- bagacrap 4y ago
  Is there something about a tenure of that duration which precludes someone from underperformance? Lots of middling engineers in the 15-20 year range are likely to be coasting and over-compensated relative to their output. But those with a longer tenure did get a more generous severance package (more than a year's salary for a 20 year Googler), so they weren't treated with disrespect. They now have an entire year to figure out what to do next --- although someone who was there for Google's IPO is likely to be in a position to retire if they so choose.
davesque 4y ago
I feel like a good explanation for all this is that tech giants saw this as an opportunity to collaborate to reduce wage inflation. I feel like that explanation squares better with the fact that, during many of these layoffs, employee performance has often appeared to not factor in as strongly. In fact, the opposite seems to be true in many cases.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  If the sector believes that it can do just as well with 10% fewer employees, I'm not sure if that's the same as collusion to suppress wages. Surly some greedy player would be saying "no, I can make more incremental revenue by hiring these people." The story that tech overhired during the pandemic makes more sense.
  - davesque 4y ago
    Then why wouldn't they simply lay off the new hires instead of company veterans?
    - dehrmann 4y ago
      A new hire is expected to be an average employee in a year. A veteran might have a track record of being a below-average employee for several years.
      - davesque 4y ago
        That could often be the case. Although the Google veterans mentioned in the article seem to be examples of top performers that weren't just resting on their laurels. But I suppose there could have been other reasons they were let go that were not public, like company politics, etc.
ThinkBeat 4y ago
I would think that such senior guys with so much experience will find it easy to find new jobs. (Unless they demand to work on only open-source software then it may take a bit longer) Still: IBM/RedHat should hire right?
- Terretta 4y ago
  (Putting this note under here instead of at root level…) FTA: > It has been widely reported that … those fired included staffers who had just received high performance reviews … with annual compensation packages of $500,000 to $1 million. … Many … were the best of the best in Google's open source program office (OSPO) and other open source efforts. FWIW, we are actively hiring a handful of engineers in this competency+range, into a well funded (founder funded, not VC backed) startup. We are doing interesting things and intend to release generally useful patterns as open source. It's also an entrepreneurial change of pace for builders/makers after an enterprise, even an SV enterprise. My username at the freemail owned by the company in the article.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  > For example, Chris DiBona, who founded Google's OSPO 18 years ago, was let go. Sibling comment excepted, there aren't many companies hiring for this. 18+ years also makes it challenging because for the last two decades, you've only known Google, and it's not clear if you can operate in another environment.
  - bagacrap 4y ago
    I'm not saying this is the case, but if this is the case, it's really his own fault and not Google's. What is Google supposed to do, fire everyone after 10 years so they don't grow too complacent?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dehrmann 4y ago
There's no story here beyond well-known people on the open source team getting laid off and botching the layoffs with people learning their badges don't work. One is a valid strategic decision, the other is sloppy, neither is evil, or even all that interesting.
- bagacrap 4y ago
  I would take it a step further and deny that the layoffs were botched. How are you supposed to broadcast this information such that everyone learns at the same time and in the right way? Of course badges stop working when you're let go. What possible good can come of leaving the badges on? All it takes is one in 12000 disgruntled ex-employees to make it not worth it.
  - AStellersSeaCow 4y ago
    Yeah, I hate the way they were conducted but can't think of a better way that wouldn't open the company up to a lot of risk. I'm not convinced that announcing them in advance is actually better anyways. We have partner teams in Europe who get to spend a month or more after the announcement worrying about whether or not they still have a job. Morale on the teams in the US took a noticeable hit, but the teams in EU have seemed utterly miserable for the last week.
    - biztos 4y ago
      I was laid off in the EU (not from Google, and not in this wave) — and yeah, productivity completely tanked for months while we waited for the relevant information to seep through HR’s stonewalling. I think it’s better to have some warning, but it would have been great if they could have said “your job ends in three months, here are your options” instead of leaving people hanging while they figured out the details on the corporate side. Or even, if paranoid about disgruntled employees, to say “welcome to your garden leave, here are your options.”
AStellersSeaCow 4y ago
Current Googler, I have no insider info at all, found out about this the same Friday morning as everyone else. Everything expressed here is speculation based on my own observations and conversations with HR leaders at Google and other companies involved in this round of industry layoffs. It's unfortunately not surprising that some current and rising stars in the open source world were impacted by this. There's an important factor in layoffs that is poorly understood and almost never underlined in reporting: layoffs _must_ be done without regard to performance, because otherwise they aren't layoffs, they are mass firings. Layoffs have important legal and personal implications. They need to be applied broadly, either across the entire company or across divisions within the company that are unsustainable. They can't consider performance as a primary factor, since doing so both necessitates a lot more paper trail and makes unemployment insurance much more complicated. They can't be contested by individuals, since they don't count as termination in the legal sense. On the plus side, because they are not tied to performance it gives impacted employees an honest, blameless justification for why their role ended. The fact that there's public outcry about high performers being impacted provides air cover for everyone else. All that said, I agree with the posters who have called this out as being a fuck-you, know-your-place gesture from the wealth class to the professional class.
- drblastoff 4y ago
  > layoffs _must_ be done without regard to performance Do you have any citation for this? I’ve never heard this before, and a quick search pulls up many sources that contradict this.
  - AStellersSeaCow 4y ago
    https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/layoff.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/layoff.asp First sentence: "A layoff is the temporary or permanent termination of employment by an employer for reasons unrelated to the employee's performance."
    - drblastoff 4y ago
      A layoff is motivated by business reasons, but where does it say that performance can’t be considered when deciding who gets cut and who stays? “Sometimes, job performance does play a role, too; for example, if a company has to fire one-third of its sales force, those with the lowest numbers will almost certainly be more on the chopping block than those with higher numbers.” - https://work.chron.com/decides-employee-gets-laid-off-12311.html https://work.chron.com/decides-employee-gets-laid-off-12311.... “Nondiscriminatory employee selection criteria should be developed and used to select the employees who will be laid off. Common factors used to identify criteria are seniority, redundant roles, skills based criteria or other clearly delineated standards. Performance criteria may be used and employers may consider previous performance reviews and other performance documentation” - https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/(rif)selections.aspx https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-... “Microsoft Uses Layoffs to Push Underperforming Employees Out” - https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-layoffs-managers-push-underperforming-employees-out-quicker-good-attrition-2023-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-layoffs-managers-p... “They will often assess the work performance of team members and rank them against their coworkers using a curve (a practice known as stack ranking) in order to retain the top performers, all while identifying and weeding out lower performers.” - https://www.dice.com/career-advice/how-companies-decide-who-to-lay-off-and-who-to-keep https://www.dice.com/career-advice/how-companies-decide-who-...
spondyl 4y ago
> These are not the people anyone in their right mind, or HR container, would want to fire. I'm being facetious here but this is in line with what I would expect from an organisation that continually reaches for automation over human interaction
golemiprague 4y ago
[dead]
pipeline_peak 4y ago
> These are not the people anyone in their right mind, or HR container, would want to fire. They are open source movers and shakers. In open source leadership circles, they're people everyone knows and are happy to work with. And why is this in Google’s best interest?
bagacrap 4y ago
If you're as well known and beloved (and well-compensated) as Chris DiBona you are probably better-equipped to handle a layoff.
charcircuit 4y ago
>Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be Evil"? I do. Even though Google dumped that phrase from its code of conduct in 2018 Except it didn't. It's still there. https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/
bitwize 4y ago
Probably laying them off, the cheap paperwork-free, confrontation-free way, by simply revoking their access rights and door passes and "letting things work themselves out naturally" as the Bobs might say.
wolverine876 4y ago
Remember when SV was the center of innovation - 'disruptive innovation' - in everything, which included management, and included valuing employees in order to bring out the most innovation possible. Where is the innovation here? How are these moves cutting edge? It's the opposite - reactionary, megalomaniacal, short-term greed drives. That is not a culture that will produce innovation.
jacksmith131313 4y ago
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326 points by elorant 4y ago

Really curious about the Flutter/Dart team. It looks like great tech but its by google so its always at risk of abandonment.

garganzol 4y ago
I share the same sentiment on Meta's Docusaurus project. I hope that authors and maintainers of the project who were employed by Meta are ok.

noorkersz 4y ago

step one: shift the focus from free software (liberty minded software) on to "open source" software. i.e. software which you can look but not touch. step two: profit

DefineOutside 4y ago
step one: promote BSD and MIT licenses over more copyleft licenses such as GPL step two: profit from people willing to code for enterprises for free There has to be some reason that Google released PyTorch under BSD-3 by Meta and TensorFlow being released under Apache by Google.
- honkler 4y ago
  [flagged]
- friendlyHornet 4y ago
  You forgot step 1.5: make contributing to open-source an unwritten rule to getting a job in the industry Full disclosure: I got my current job before I had contributed anything to open source but I was asked a lot about it while applying to companies like it's expected that you work in your free time
  - jezzamon 4y ago
    I think in my entire time working I haven't met anyone who has significantly contributed to open source (aside from "let me fix some bug that's annoying me in a library"), so I'm not sure how required it really is
    - CHY872 4y ago
      It varies on focus area. Most big OSS projects are infrastructural in nature, and so if you're working in that space there's actually a lot of engineers who you meet with OSS experience beyond fixing random bugs. Even then, for every OSS engineer doing big OSS contributions, there are many who never do, it's just the nature of the business. I know of just one hiring decision (out of hundreds and hundreds) that was made because of OSS contributions, and I know no interviewers who routinely checked OSS contributions beyond surface level.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    open-source using permissive licenses + pressure to contribute = unpaid labor No wonder Microsoft loves it.
- CHY872 4y ago
  Ah, this is a bit of a false one. (A)GPL's pretty great for things that look like applications (or alternatively, pretty much anything GNU's ever made), but for anything looking like a library that is designed to be both free as in speech and free as in beer (Qt is the former but not the latter - want commercial usage? Pay us for a differently licensed edition!) it's a complete non-starter because it says that any usage of a library is a derivative work and infects. This is always going to be poisonous to any commercial use, and PyTorch and Tensorflow only gained the traction they have because they could be used commercially - they wouldn't have been successful if GPL'd. Even LGPL is super challenging here due to requiring dynamic linking. This is fine in Java (unless you use Graal AOT compilation) and Python, impossible in Go, and at best discouraged in other compiled languages like Rust and C++. I think there's likely a copyleft middle ground - something like the Mozilla public license seems about right, where it copylefts improvements without infecting users. I don't know why Google chose Apache 2.0 over MPL or the like - for something like Android it makes sense, for something like Guava it's not clearcut. But, when people talk copyleft, they're rarely, rarely talking MPL. I think it's unlikely that Google opensourced Tensorflow with a view to getting some free dev hours, they're doing it to push their OSS agenda, to wield influence over how everyone else does work.
  - dgacmu 4y ago
    This is entirely correct. Open sourcing tensorflow was about getting the world to use Google's stuff so that that stuff became more valuable / remained valuable / was possible to hire people with experience in it, not about getting people to work on it for free. The ratio of external to internal contributions is extremely small. Google saw what happened with other of their technologies like map reduce (not open sourced, the world reinvented in Hadoop and the progress started happening there instead of in MR) and wanted to avoid becoming the bit player in a space they pioneered in. It's a reasonable strategy. (The risk is that you're giving away something that could be a competitive advantage.) (worked on tensorflow at Google for four years.)
    - CHY872 4y ago
      K8s another example. Kind of amazing that Google effectively owns the now-standard deployment solution off of 'we don't really use K8s but want you to build your applications like us and K8s is a bit like something we do use'. At least Tensorflow's actually what Google runs internally (to best of my knowledge)!
- mch82 4y ago
  Enterprises are (slower than I’d hoped) learning the value of contributing to the open source projects they use. More companies are establishing Open Source Program Offices and I expect the rate of contribution to go up. Most contribution from companies will go to software licensed under MIT/BSD/Apache. US government policy is that software developed with public funding is a public good. Current policy encourages government software to released under the most permissive license possible (ideally Public Domain, but practically permissive licenses like MIT/BSD). GPL is farther from the Public Domain than licenses like MIT/BSD. To enter the rabbit hole of material on this topic start at https://code.gov/about/overview/introduction/ https://code.gov/about/overview/introduction/.
  - mch82 4y ago
    Side note… the most interesting thing I learned today is that DoD (and probably other agencies) consider “Open Source Software” to be “Commercial Software”. This is a great development and likely means it will be much simpler to include OSS in make/buy trade studies. See “Is Open Source Software Commercial Software”, https://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software-FAQ/#q-is-oss-commercial-software-is-it-cots https://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software-FAQ/#q-is-os...
ajross 4y ago
> "open source" software. i.e. software which you can look but not touch That's not remotely consistent with the way that term is used in practice...
jraph 4y ago
> software which you can look but not touch. This is "source available". Open source software and free software are philosophically different but refer to mostly the set of programs (with two different but equivalent definitions [1,2]). [1] https://opensource.org/definition https://opensource.org/definition [2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en#fs-definition https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html.en#fs-definition
kweingar 4y ago
> step one: shift the focus from free software (liberty minded software) on to "open source" software. i.e. software which you can look but not touch I’m pretty sure when you say “look but not touch,” you’re talking about project governance, where outside contributors have limited input into the direction of the project. If that’s the case, I don’t like this conflation of governance and “freedom”. Google’s open source software is free software by all definitions (including FSF). For a project to be open source or free software, users need to have the “four essential freedoms”. The ability to get your changes merged upstream is not one of those freedoms. It is totally valid to criticize the corporate governance model of open source software. But it’s best not to confuse our already overloaded definitions by saying that corporate software with a free license isn’t really “free.”

0xcafefood 4y ago

"What is Google doing with its open source teams?" Laying them off? It is quite sad to see.

ipaddr 4y ago
Really? The open source teams have the best of the best in terms of reputation and quality output often delivering more value and goodwill compared to the traditional marketing department. They should move some of those folks into search..
- cute_boi 4y ago
  The problem is corporation are blinded by short term revenue over long term investments.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    What long term revenue stems from open source? I’m not talking about a million her or there. I’m talking about billions of dollars. IBM-style “consulting”?
- steelframe 4y ago
  > They should move some of those folks into search Given the choice, I know a lot of people deeply involved in the OSS community who would rather leave for another OSS-friendly role at another company rather than get pulled into something that pulls their time and attention away from their OSS activities.

pm90 4y ago

It will be interesting to see amazing talent leave Google and build new companies and institutions now that it’s slowly being mismanaged to death.

amelius 4y ago
Yes, our smartest people, who were once making people click ads, are now fired.
- wan23 4y ago
  The people on the revenue making teams aren't usually the ones who are let go.
  - amelius 4y ago
    The algorithms work. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
    - andromeduck 4y ago
      The algorithms need a lot of maintenance these days.
    - chaboud 4y ago
      That statement, right there, should be the epitaph of every former great that found themselves disrupted.
- bigiain 4y ago
  “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” — Jeffery Hammerbacher (I seem to recall that was about Facebook at the time, not Google, but same same.)
rapsey 4y ago
I wonder. Google is known for being cushy. Building new companies is hard work.

AlbertCory 4y ago

I knew Chris DiBona quite well. While I don't know the whole community as well so this is a rash statement, it's hard to imagine anyone knowing more about open source than Chris does. And Chris, if you're reading this: you rock, man.

milesward 4y ago
This is 100% truth. Chris does rock! Unfathomable.
- hallarempt 4y ago
  They let him go??? That's... Words fail.
  - civilized 4y ago
    Google was supposed to have the capacity to stick to a long-term vision because the founders retained preferred stock with (IIRC) 10x voting rights. By that same token, there is no one to blame but the founders now that Google has turned into another mediocre big corporation without vision.
    - Bloating 4y ago
      Like Apple, they have a vision for $$$
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Every for profit cares about money. The issue is that Google has struggled to try to come up with a new product that convinced people to give it money.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  Alternative take: when I was there he was tyrannical and constantly blocking employees from open sourcing code developed on their own weekends and evenings, purely on a personal whim. People had to fight internal battles to get like little video games and stuff put up on github. You'd think head of OSPO would do whatever it took to get code open sourced but no far from it. Loads of grumbling about how he was just an ex-Slashdot editor who couldn't even code, on a power trip abusing contract ip clauses.

buildbot 4y ago

TCI / Chris Hon are only doing this because his fund is mainly invested in Microsoft and Alphabet[1]. Guess what, his fund recently lost a bit of money for the first time: TCI[2] Its ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING that MS and Alphabet are being pushed into laying off collectively over 20K people so this billionaire can recover a bit. Like, could this not be a national security issue? This man is able to have Google trash their open source initiatives on a whim, making the company weaker. It should be very very illegal. 1: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4567705-chris-hohn-tci-fund-management-13f-portfolio-q3-2022-update https://seekingalpha.com/article/4567705-chris-hohn-tci-fund... 2: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-20/hedge-fund-manager-chris-hohn-s-13-year-winning-streak-ends-as-fund-drops-18 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-20/hedge-fun...

lazide 4y ago
Huh? He doesn’t have control of Alphabet, for sure. This is broad and across the industry.
- buildbot 4y ago
  Yes that is correct, but specifically this person is the activist investor publicly pushing for this. Maybe that had no effect, but certainly it seems like this man might be a bit responsible.
  - mike_d 4y ago
    The man with basically no voting shares can scream into the wind all he wants, it does not impact Google leadership one way or the other.
  - sumeno 4y ago
    He's a convenient scapegoat for the people who actually made the decisions, the execs that are paid primarily in stock and have perverse incentives for maximizing short term gains.
micimize 4y ago
I really wouldn't assume Chris Hon has this much pull or that these decisions are due to investor pressure. Maybe a flimsy rationale but if he did have that kind of influence I kinda doubt he'd be speaking publicly – seems more like a personal branding effort.

spinningslate 4y ago

I've no inside knowledge on Google, so can't comment on the rationale for selecting those being let go. From the outside though, Google under Pichai increasingly looks like Microsoft under Ballmer in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Balmer was lauded for delivering good numbers from a dominant market position. That was fine - until it wasn't. Under his watch, Microsoft completely misjudged the internet and totally missed mobile. Gates still smarts about the latter. Pichai looks like Google's Ballmer. He inherited a cash cow - search was already dominant and both YouTube and Android had been in the stable for ~10 years when he took over. Despite the investment in ML/AI (Google Brain, DeepMind) and notable advances that have come from there (e.g. the Transformer architecture), Google has stagnated with Pichai at the helm. The profit drop is indicative of that. There's only so long you can keep milking the same cow. Of course, it's rarely those at the top of the tree that go first. Microsoft was staring over the precipice of existence before they finally got rid of Ballmer. OpenAI has grabbed the AI/ML limielight despite much of the formative work coming from Google. The recent "code red" looks a lot like a CEO who's been asleep at the wheel - and someone finally woke him up. I don't know what's ahead for Google, but I'll wager it'll need a change at the top.

darkerside 4y ago
This doesn't quite line up for me. Ballmer, for his lack of technical foresight, managed an incredibly profitable business. People act like anybody could have just stepped in to milk Windows and Office for all they were worth, but the focus and execution are easy to scoff at in hindsight. If MS had focused on mobile, who's to say they would have succeeded? And perhaps in the process of losing, also ceded dominance to an upstart in the office software space. Pichai may not have capitalized effectively on the impressive AI investments Google has made, but he has steered innovation in newer directions like AI and cloud. Technical victories, but questionable business decisions. I think one possible moral here is, sometimes the best opportunity is the one you don't take.
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  Ballmer succeeded in spite of tripping over his own feet repeatedly, not because of it. https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft-kills-stack-ranking-internal-structure https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5094864/microsoft-kills-... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U

dboreham 4y ago

Google no longer paying developers of code that we all use for free is obviously not good (for us or those developers), but this article is otherwise really quite bogus because it suggests that "open source developer" is a thing, when it...isn't. The article implies that Google is cutting off its own nose because the prime OSS devs they fired could just as well be writing OSS AI code. That's not how this stuff works.

bbor 4y ago
I’m not sure I understand your point. Isn’t it true that someone experienced + respected in the OSS community would be the very best kind of person to transfer to e.g. the TensorFlow team?

bbor 4y ago

As a google employee (who obviously has no privileged info) I really don’t buy this whole activist-investor explanation for the layoffs. Besides the fact that the investors in question own <1% of the company, it doesn’t explain the rather random and opaque way the layoffs seem to have been conducted. Plus they (so far) haven’t laid off nearly enough to make hedge funds happy. I’m much more convinced by the argument that they saw this sector-wide wave of layoffs as an opportunity to scare their engineers and change the culture to be a more intense, hierarchical one. Google engineering culture has long been described as permitting coasters and encouraging employees to structure their work around what might get them promoted; that might be great for an innovative growing company, but I suspect Sundar & Co. know that that label doesn’t really fit google’s position anymore. I really don’t see any other reason they’d lay off high performing employees on important projects - especially OSS giants. If my guess is right, it worked, to say the least; the internal culture is best characterized as “terrified” and “stunned”

chaboud 4y ago
It’s much easier to lose trust that to gain it, and the ramifications of the move will be felt for a very long time. There’s the time before and the time after, and Google won’t ever really look the same to the industry. That said, Google probably now actually looks more like what Google is and has been for some time. The industry was just hanging on to goodwill forged over the last two decades. There’s still massive innovation and builder spirit there, but I’m betting that we’ll have a much easier time poaching our favorite employees from Google now than we have over the last few years. I’ve been part of several companies that have gone through layoffs, and one thing I’ve learned is that companies that haven’t done it in a while (or ever) typically do it poorly.
- bbor 4y ago
  Very good points, especially the last one: when trying to understand the logic behind these layoffs, I honestly haven’t considered incompetence enough. Surely people making tens of millions of dollars a year got there through intelligence and merit and not capitalist fiat? Right? Right…?
- 4y ago

euos 4y ago

I'm a part of a medium-sized team working on a popular infrastructure open-source project. There was no impact on our team, so it is not like Google hates open-source now.

raister 4y ago

"never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake"

jedberg 4y ago

> It has been widely reported that some of the firing was done by an algorithm. It's ironic that the people who have now been directly affected by Google's penchant to allow AIs to make decisions with no recourse no longer work for Google and can not fix that problem. Hopefully some of their colleagues finally realize that maybe having a human in the loop for termination decisions makes some sense, and we see fewer stories of gmail accounts getting shut off for no reason after 15 years with no recourse. Ah, a man can dream.

gretch 4y ago
The definition of algorithm is: > a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer. So yeah, I would hope that an algorithm was used. As opposed to what? "I like that guy more than the other guy". You seem to have the interpretation that some guy in finance wrote a script, it output some employee IDs, and then no one checked the output before laying them all off, as if slaves to the machine. Do you really believe that?
- jedberg 4y ago
  First off, you know that "used an algorithm" in modern parlance means "was done by AI without human intervention". And based on that, absolutely I think Google did that. They run everything with data and statistics without humans. That's how they are so efficient. This is backed up by the fact that the managers who work there were simply told who they were losing and had no input into the process, and aren't even aware of who has been let go yet.
  - enneff 4y ago
    I’ve worked at Google for a long time and I assure you the chances of some AI being involved in the selection process for these layoffs is very close to zero. Don’t be so confident in something you apparently know so little about.
    - jedberg 4y ago

habosa 4y ago

This article feels like it was written by a friend of someone who is named as let go. Google let a lot of good people go last week. Some more and some less deserving than those in the OSPO. Google has never had a particularly coherent open source strategy (look at how many repos are on the github.com/google org) and I don’t think this latest layoff says much about what the future of the strategy holds either.

ed25519FUUU 4y ago

> These are not the people anyone in their right mind, or HR container, would want to fire. They are open source movers and shakers. In open source leadership circles, they're people everyone knows and are happy to work with. That’s good for us that they were let go. Google sucked them up and nailed their feet to the floor with amazing comp. Now they’ll innovate elsewhere.

unity1001 4y ago

So the problem with Google's earnings was that its exorbitant profit did not stay or grow at the same rate. During a pandemic followed by a global crisis prompted by a war. And they are laying off people. To make hedge funds and shareholders happy. ... What a destructive 'growth at all costs' economic culture. I guess those hedge funds and shareholders will pick up the slack in those open source projects...

garganzol 4y ago
It's always about the money. So nothing new here under the sun.
- bagacrap 4y ago
  What is a business supposed to be about?
riku_iki 4y ago
> its exorbitant profit did not stay or grow at the same rate I think their profit margin reduced, so company became less healthy and balanced.
- unity1001 4y ago
  However you look, their exorbitant, humongous profits have declined a slight bit !during a recession caused by a war!. This should not be a concern for any sane investor but the ones who want growth at all costs.

garganzol 4y ago

> These are not the people anyone in their right mind, or HR container, would want to fire. They are open source movers and shakers. In open source leadership circles, they're people everyone knows and are happy to work with. At the hands of Google, open source is just a weapon of the complement commoditization. So no wonder they are letting those people go now. In this way, they are trying to lower the antimonopoly pressure against them. The second benefit is preserving all those money that would go to the salaries of those fired people. I doubt this will change the trajectory of accusations. But it gives some momentum in terms of reaping the peak monetary benefits to shareholders before a possible company division through legislation.

eecc 4y ago

Well maybe it'll be a renaissance for many different and new projects. With Google hoardning all this talent and cushioning them on non-strategic, prestige tasks the ecosystem became desolate (thus enhancing Google's role as beacoun of OSS). It sucks for those fired but let's be honest, just a bit. They're household names in their respective industries, and they'll be welcomed in no time onto new projects. It's like a fire sweeping in a forest, clearing the undergrowth and making space for a new growth frenzy.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

> Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be Evil"? Because it's impossible to be evil if it's in your motto not to be evil. Right?

yawnxyz 4y ago

With Firebase and the rest of GCP, there's absolutely no reason why those products are as hard to use as they are. Supabase, Vercel, etc. all stepped in to fill that massive void that Google could have taken care of so long ago. IMO that's a massive miss and failure on Google's part.

nfRfqX5n 4y ago

crazy to see people with 15-20 year tenures hit in layoffs

dehrmann 4y ago
Is it? Sure, they know the system, but they don't bring an outside perspective, and they're more likely to be complacent.
bagacrap 4y ago
Is there something about a tenure of that duration which precludes someone from underperformance? Lots of middling engineers in the 15-20 year range are likely to be coasting and over-compensated relative to their output. But those with a longer tenure did get a more generous severance package (more than a year's salary for a 20 year Googler), so they weren't treated with disrespect. They now have an entire year to figure out what to do next --- although someone who was there for Google's IPO is likely to be in a position to retire if they so choose.

davesque 4y ago

I feel like a good explanation for all this is that tech giants saw this as an opportunity to collaborate to reduce wage inflation. I feel like that explanation squares better with the fact that, during many of these layoffs, employee performance has often appeared to not factor in as strongly. In fact, the opposite seems to be true in many cases.

dehrmann 4y ago
If the sector believes that it can do just as well with 10% fewer employees, I'm not sure if that's the same as collusion to suppress wages. Surly some greedy player would be saying "no, I can make more incremental revenue by hiring these people." The story that tech overhired during the pandemic makes more sense.
- davesque 4y ago
  Then why wouldn't they simply lay off the new hires instead of company veterans?
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    A new hire is expected to be an average employee in a year. A veteran might have a track record of being a below-average employee for several years.
    - davesque 4y ago
      That could often be the case. Although the Google veterans mentioned in the article seem to be examples of top performers that weren't just resting on their laurels. But I suppose there could have been other reasons they were let go that were not public, like company politics, etc.

ThinkBeat 4y ago

I would think that such senior guys with so much experience will find it easy to find new jobs. (Unless they demand to work on only open-source software then it may take a bit longer) Still: IBM/RedHat should hire right?

Terretta 4y ago
(Putting this note under here instead of at root level…) FTA: > It has been widely reported that … those fired included staffers who had just received high performance reviews … with annual compensation packages of $500,000 to $1 million. … Many … were the best of the best in Google's open source program office (OSPO) and other open source efforts. FWIW, we are actively hiring a handful of engineers in this competency+range, into a well funded (founder funded, not VC backed) startup. We are doing interesting things and intend to release generally useful patterns as open source. It's also an entrepreneurial change of pace for builders/makers after an enterprise, even an SV enterprise. My username at the freemail owned by the company in the article.
dehrmann 4y ago
> For example, Chris DiBona, who founded Google's OSPO 18 years ago, was let go. Sibling comment excepted, there aren't many companies hiring for this. 18+ years also makes it challenging because for the last two decades, you've only known Google, and it's not clear if you can operate in another environment.
- bagacrap 4y ago
  I'm not saying this is the case, but if this is the case, it's really his own fault and not Google's. What is Google supposed to do, fire everyone after 10 years so they don't grow too complacent?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dehrmann 4y ago

There's no story here beyond well-known people on the open source team getting laid off and botching the layoffs with people learning their badges don't work. One is a valid strategic decision, the other is sloppy, neither is evil, or even all that interesting.

bagacrap 4y ago
I would take it a step further and deny that the layoffs were botched. How are you supposed to broadcast this information such that everyone learns at the same time and in the right way? Of course badges stop working when you're let go. What possible good can come of leaving the badges on? All it takes is one in 12000 disgruntled ex-employees to make it not worth it.
- AStellersSeaCow 4y ago
  Yeah, I hate the way they were conducted but can't think of a better way that wouldn't open the company up to a lot of risk. I'm not convinced that announcing them in advance is actually better anyways. We have partner teams in Europe who get to spend a month or more after the announcement worrying about whether or not they still have a job. Morale on the teams in the US took a noticeable hit, but the teams in EU have seemed utterly miserable for the last week.
  - biztos 4y ago
    I was laid off in the EU (not from Google, and not in this wave) — and yeah, productivity completely tanked for months while we waited for the relevant information to seep through HR’s stonewalling. I think it’s better to have some warning, but it would have been great if they could have said “your job ends in three months, here are your options” instead of leaving people hanging while they figured out the details on the corporate side. Or even, if paranoid about disgruntled employees, to say “welcome to your garden leave, here are your options.”

AStellersSeaCow 4y ago

Current Googler, I have no insider info at all, found out about this the same Friday morning as everyone else. Everything expressed here is speculation based on my own observations and conversations with HR leaders at Google and other companies involved in this round of industry layoffs. It's unfortunately not surprising that some current and rising stars in the open source world were impacted by this. There's an important factor in layoffs that is poorly understood and almost never underlined in reporting: layoffs _must_ be done without regard to performance, because otherwise they aren't layoffs, they are mass firings. Layoffs have important legal and personal implications. They need to be applied broadly, either across the entire company or across divisions within the company that are unsustainable. They can't consider performance as a primary factor, since doing so both necessitates a lot more paper trail and makes unemployment insurance much more complicated. They can't be contested by individuals, since they don't count as termination in the legal sense. On the plus side, because they are not tied to performance it gives impacted employees an honest, blameless justification for why their role ended. The fact that there's public outcry about high performers being impacted provides air cover for everyone else. All that said, I agree with the posters who have called this out as being a fuck-you, know-your-place gesture from the wealth class to the professional class.

drblastoff 4y ago
> layoffs _must_ be done without regard to performance Do you have any citation for this? I’ve never heard this before, and a quick search pulls up many sources that contradict this.
- AStellersSeaCow 4y ago
  https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/layoff.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/layoff.asp First sentence: "A layoff is the temporary or permanent termination of employment by an employer for reasons unrelated to the employee's performance."
  - drblastoff 4y ago
    A layoff is motivated by business reasons, but where does it say that performance can’t be considered when deciding who gets cut and who stays? “Sometimes, job performance does play a role, too; for example, if a company has to fire one-third of its sales force, those with the lowest numbers will almost certainly be more on the chopping block than those with higher numbers.” - https://work.chron.com/decides-employee-gets-laid-off-12311.html https://work.chron.com/decides-employee-gets-laid-off-12311.... “Nondiscriminatory employee selection criteria should be developed and used to select the employees who will be laid off. Common factors used to identify criteria are seniority, redundant roles, skills based criteria or other clearly delineated standards. Performance criteria may be used and employers may consider previous performance reviews and other performance documentation” - https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/(rif)selections.aspx https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-... “Microsoft Uses Layoffs to Push Underperforming Employees Out” - https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-layoffs-managers-push-underperforming-employees-out-quicker-good-attrition-2023-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-layoffs-managers-p... “They will often assess the work performance of team members and rank them against their coworkers using a curve (a practice known as stack ranking) in order to retain the top performers, all while identifying and weeding out lower performers.” - https://www.dice.com/career-advice/how-companies-decide-who-to-lay-off-and-who-to-keep https://www.dice.com/career-advice/how-companies-decide-who-...

spondyl 4y ago

> These are not the people anyone in their right mind, or HR container, would want to fire. I'm being facetious here but this is in line with what I would expect from an organisation that continually reaches for automation over human interaction

golemiprague 4y ago

[dead]

pipeline_peak 4y ago

bagacrap 4y ago

If you're as well known and beloved (and well-compensated) as Chris DiBona you are probably better-equipped to handle a layoff.

charcircuit 4y ago

>Remember when Google's motto was "Don't be Evil"? I do. Even though Google dumped that phrase from its code of conduct in 2018 Except it didn't. It's still there. https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

bitwize 4y ago

Probably laying them off, the cheap paperwork-free, confrontation-free way, by simply revoking their access rights and door passes and "letting things work themselves out naturally" as the Bobs might say.

wolverine876 4y ago

Remember when SV was the center of innovation - 'disruptive innovation' - in everything, which included management, and included valuing employees in order to bring out the most innovation possible. Where is the innovation here? How are these moves cutting edge? It's the opposite - reactionary, megalomaniacal, short-term greed drives. That is not a culture that will produce innovation.

jacksmith131313 4y ago

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