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Incredible, Google laid off a L9 Distinguished Software Engineer. I wonder what the calculus there was. I didn't even think it was possible to layoff anyone of
by filereaper 4y ago
Incredible, Google laid off a L9 Distinguished Software Engineer.
I wonder what the calculus there was. I didn't even think it was possible to layoff anyone of that caliber.
Who decides that a L9 is going to be cut. Some VP who joined after the L9? The Board? The founders? Did the CEO make enough contributions to decide this cut?
I'm still stunned.
- jeffbee 4y agoFor reference this is the title held by David Patterson, giant of the industry and Turing Award winner.
- danuker 4y agoWow, the guy has a Wikipedia article in 19 languages.
- andsoitis 4y agoHe is also 75 years old.
- xapata 4y agohttps://research.google/people/105290/ https://research.google/people/105290/ Still on the website.
- joshuamorton 4y agoTo clarify, since people seem to think so, he wasn't the particular person fired, just an example. Another example is Rob Pike, who was L9 when he retired in 2021.
- jeffbee 4y agoYeah I was just trying to give an example of the kinds of things you have to do to get the title. Things like "invent the computer".
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- smugma 4y agoPatterson was very well liked when I was at Berkeley. Maybe a little eccentric but not in a bad way. He famously would buy his students pizza at the end of the semester, saying he used royalties from the textbook that he wrote and taught from (Hennessy* and Patterson). * Hennessy is chairman of Alphabet
- pyuser583 4y agoGoogle still brags about him being a “Google distinguished engineer.” https://research.google/people/105290/ https://research.google/people/105290/
- phendrenad2 4y agoI suspect that many companies do layoffs in random order, to avoid any biases.
- actually_a_dog 4y agoIf I had to guess, I would speculate it was more of a buyout than a layoff. That person probably wanted to leave anyway, and Google just made it easier for them.
- ghaff 4y agoAbove a certain age and a certain amount of money in the bank, a lot of people are ready to move on--especially given the right nudge.
- notyourwork 4y agoAnd in many cases financially free to do so without blinking. It's a different calculus for sure.
- ghaff 4y agoI think a lot of people are way too quick to say that others who have kids in college and possibly expensive hobbies/houses/etc. don't need the money. That said, long-term Google employees should generally be pretty comfortable given relatively sane financial decisions.
- throwaway6734 4y agosomeone with 10+ years at google should easily be a multimillionaire. The stock has 6x since 2012
- loeg 4y agoAn L9 makes millions every single year.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y agoIf Twitter is anything to go by, I saw one Google engineer with a 20year history find out they got laid off in the same way as anyone else and expressed surprise.
- vuln 4y agoI saw the advice in a thread on here about voluntarily quitting during the first round of layoffs. Perhaps that's what happened here? Maybe they just said "f it I'm out, I've got some money to spend."
- opportune 4y agoThe Google layoff planning was supposed to be limited to VP+ (L10+) as I understand, with many directors (8-9) finding out about them at the same time as everyone else. Almost certainly it was the same for ICs. OFC I am sure many long time folks are well connected enough to know in advance anyway, but I think it’s unlikely
- balakk 4y agoI suspect not, https://twitter.com/Kantrowitz/status/1616888609885372416 https://twitter.com/Kantrowitz/status/1616888609885372416 May not be the same folks, but it surely didnt happen that way.
- paganel 4y agoI feel for the guy referenced in that post, but he shouldn't have gone to work at 4AM "to finish an important analysis", no matter how urgent, especially after a certain age. It can get to you pretty fast, I'm thinking about future health prospects.
- fragmede 4y agoYou don't get to Daniel Russell's level by sleeping in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M._Russell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M._Russell
- lr4444lr 4y agoMaybe he led a lot projects that simply didn't pay off, a luxury in more cash flush times.
- blululu 4y agoOr maybe she just got unlucky. Attributing skillful planning/execution to a company that publicly announced that it has made a series of large mistakes seems like a stretch.
- whateveracct 4y agoThat assumes that managers doing layoffs have a good "hit rate." Cmon - they don't know what the fuck they're doing. They definitely aren't the ones actually making a difference. Which is why layoffs are so funny. It's like the blind leading the blind.
- fancl20 4y agoFrom my personal experience if you have a good personal relationship with your manager, when you want to leave the company they may told you there’s an unannounced layoff in months so you can wait until then. You get extra cash and they can meet the headcount reduction goal. Although it’s hard to know whether this is the case here \_(ツ)_/¯
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- enos_feedler 4y agoI actually saw a linkedin post where someone described this exact scenario as the context for them being chosen for layoffs. They were very senior so maybe this was the L9. I’ll never find the post
- xavdid 4y agoSide note: > I’ll never find the post This a big pet peeve of mine on linkedin and twitter - doesn't matter if I navigate away from the page for just a second; if the algorithm reshuffles my feed at all, there's a good chance I'll never see that post I was looking for again. It's a real bummer if I ever need to find anything. The only solution I can think of is storing every link I come across in a searchable format, just in case I need to find anything.
- prayashm 4y agoI have been facing the same! rewind.ai helped me retrieve it.
- vineyardmike 4y ago> The only solution I can think of is storing every link I come across in a searchable format I take screenshots of any content I find interesting. Effortless, even on mobile (where links suck), and usually enough context to search for it again. If I ever want it, its usually shortly after first seeing it, if not.. its lost in the endless pile of photos.
- greesil 4y agoSELECT * FROM employees WHERE title NOT LIKE '%VP%' ORDER BY salary DESC limit 12000
- gpm 4y agoI know a newgrad who was laid off as well...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- greesil 4y agoIt's probably so they can't be sued for age discrimination
- CydeWeys 4y agoSucks to be someone who was just about to turn 40 and was affected by this layoff, knowing they'd have had additional legal protections were they only a little bit older.
- somsak2 4y agostill crzy to me that you can legally discriminate based on age as long as the person is less than 40. what an insanely ageist law
- CydeWeys 4y agoTotally agreed. All the other protected statuses work both ways, as in, you can't discriminate against people who are pregnant/parents, but you also can't discriminate against those who are not (i.e. by expecting them to shoulder greater responsibilities, or targeting them for layoffs first).
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoMore like ORDER BY RAND()
- lokar 4y agoMy survey of L9 ICs a few years ago found almost all (80%?) where in fact directors (30+ person orgs) with a vanity title.
- squokko 4y agoHilarious that in Silicon Valley, "IC" is the vanity title.
- laristine 4y agoI think parent's point is that "director" is the vanity title for these ICs. IC is a normal label found anywhere in and out of Silicon Valley.
- tsimionescu 4y agoNo, it's the other way around. They were saying that some directors (managers of 30+ employees) held an official position of "L9 IC" - since L9 IC is much more respectable than a director, which would be something like L6 on the management track.
- lokar 4y agoYes, this. The IC title is harder to get, and pays a bit more. But director is L8 and L9
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoThere’s a lot of L9s. Most of them you’ve never heard of.
- lokar 4y agoLots of l9 directors, not that many ICs
- JustLurking2022 4y agoEhhh... You'd be surprised.
- lokar 4y agoSee my other reply, I counted them all a few years ago
- JustLurking2022 4y ago"A few years ago" there were half the employees in total, or less. I'm guessing the L9 IC population has grown similarly - I just heard of a former colleague at another company bring hired in at that level. Also, not everyone even makes their level visible, with makes me miss skeptical of this supposed survey.
- lokar 4y agoL6 and above can’t be hidden
- refurb 4y agoMaybe they volunteered? When i was involved in layoffs there were plenty of of people who had been on the fence about leaving and jumped at getting a sweet package. Instead of getting nothing when you quit, getting 6+ of salary, free healthcare for 6+ months and early vesting is hard to turn down. Especially for someone senior who likely gets a fat severance package for years with the company.
- CydeWeys 4y agoAs far as I'm aware they wouldn't have known it was coming and wouldn't have been able to volunteer. I haven't heard of anyone who was voluntarily laid off. As far as I know you were either (seemingly randomly) laid off, or you're still employer, in which case you could just resign, but you wouldn't get severance.
- onos 4y agoI would think if you have a high title the company would have high expectations to go along with it. If this person hadn’t done anything useful in a while, very reasonable to let them go.
- harles 4y agoManager at a different FAANG here. I had a very senior (not L9) engineer laid off on my team. The thing about super senior ICs is that they have super high expectations, ones that are easy to miss. It’s almost silly every performance review season, we sit down and go “what did this person do to redefine the industry this cycle?”. Unfortunately, when the answer is “not much” or they simply wrote great code, they get a low rating. At places where curves for ratings exist, these folks frequently fill in the lower portions of those curves - despite appearing to crush it from the outside, they’re just not hitting all expectations. The end result of all of this is that when senior leaders set filters for who is laid off, these folks get hit. Multiple cycles of subpar ratings, it’s an easy decision looking at the numbers. Maybe not a good decision, but that’s where these systems have led.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MuffinFlavored 4y agoHow often is an L9 engineer "eccentric" and not very fun to work with? I'm going to guess not often because... you don't get to that level without learning how to work well with managers/co-workers, right?
- el_benhameen 4y agoHuh, that’s an interesting point. Personally, when I see “L9 IC”, I assume that the person is an extremely eccentric genius who likely does not work especially well with a team. But I’m not an L9, nor do I work at a FAANG, so who knows.
- log_n 4y agoThose kinds of people are generally stuck at a lower level. L7/8/9 is very much a political game. To get there (generally) you need to make your entire org/company look very good, and generally to make your team look good you need to work well with them so that you can convince them to work on the high impact projects that you identify.
- JustLurking2022 4y agoEhhh... There's an interesting question there as to what degree some of these folks contribute to the bottom line. For sure, many have made groundbreaking contributions to the field, although often in an academic setting. That doesn't necessarily translate to shipping production software, so some may be vanity hires as much as people actually working on products. In tighter times that becomes tougher to justify. I have no idea but I wouldn't rule it out.
- tannhaeuser 4y agoWTF is a L9 distinguished software engineer? Is it below or above L9 operating thetan? A guild navigator?
- packetslave 4y agoIt's near the top of the individual contributor (ie. non-manager) job ladder. L5 = senior L6 = staff L7 = senior staff L8 = principal engineer L9 = distinguished engineer L10 = fellow None of these are titles that Google invented, btw.
- dekhn 4y agoyes, an L9 is roughly a guild navigator but the MKs stopped serving spice 10 years ago
- tannhaeuser 4y agoMy bad, seeing as it's roughly between chief science officer and the (less bourgeoise and more Google-ish) Lord of Sith.
- JaceLightning 4y agoThey let whole departments go irregardless of who worked in them.
- vidoc 4y ago> Who decides that a L9 is going to be cut. I dont know, reality perhaps? I don't know for google, but the idea that titles/level always reflect what the employee's performance actually is has been debunked for me a long time ago.
- discordance 4y ago“Hey, just between you and me… you mentioned you were planning to retire soon. Why not take a bunch of stock and 6 months of pay and do me a favor and volunteer yourself in this RIF?”
- neilv 4y agoI could see that. I could also see a Principal+ having enough visibility and experience to be pretty sure when layoffs were coming, and mentioning to the right person that it'd make sense for themself to be included this time.
- CydeWeys 4y agoWhy shouldn't an L9 get laid off? They even laid off some VPs (including mine). The layoffs hit all up and down the org chart. The most senior people are also the most expensive people, and considering that layoffs for cost reasons are always trying to meet a specific total savings value, it does make sense to trim from higher up people too.
- cortesoft 4y agoNot only that, but you are going to have good and bad performers at every level. It isn't like you take all your employees and put the best of them into upper management; they are completely different jobs and different skill sets.
- filereaper 4y agoBecause most L9's at Google have created significant contributions to the industry, these are folks like David Patterson (created RISC), Rob Pike (created Golang) etc... Foundational work that affects Google's bottom lines but also the rest of the industry. Its this work done earlier that even allowed these glorified managers to be employed and have their ridiculous salaries. Its frankly shocking that some VP+ can come in and fire a Distinguished Engineer. Its the equivalent of pissing on the shoulder of a titan. Totally deplorable that this is allowed or tolerated.
- CydeWeys 4y ago> Because most L9's at Google have created significant contributions to the industry, I see that you're using the past tense there. "But what have they done for me lately?" L9 isn't a sinecure. It is a very highly compensated position, and the ongoing production from all of that compensation needs to be high. But I think you missed the larger point, which is that, during a layoff, even good employees let go. When you let go X% of your workforce, that means you're letting go even good employees. And you're letting go roughly X% of people at all levels. Some L9s were gonna have to go, same as some L4s were gonna go. No one is immune from a layoff. Indeed having people that are immune is legally problematic. When you do a layoff, you are accepting that you are potentially going to be letting anyone and everyone go. Yes, even high level long-tenured engineers.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoYou have to lay off teams or else you will get sued for discrimination. It’s absurd, but that’s is what lawyers have done to scare HR.
- geraldyo 4y agoThat's just false
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bojo 4y agoAnother comment pointed out they make like $2M/yr. While I understand and respect what that level represents from a value prospect, I'm... sure they'll be fine. They are making more in a year than I am in 10, hard to care really.
- bitL 4y agoMaybe long COVID? Temporary(?) reduction in cognitive abilities, 1-2 years of subpar work, "we don't need you anymore", and when it rains, it pours?
- gigatexal 4y agoYeah. Imagine laying off Kelsey Hightower. Imagine the destruction of goodwill to GCP that would have. These layoffs seem insane. All this talent just gone. The high level management seems to make a bit more sense but very technical and capable SWEs surely could have been placed in different teams or divisions.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Foobar8568 4y agoIn addition to what other people said, maybe this person was highly toxic and more a liability than anything else.
- pdntspa 4y agoClassic story of bullshit unrealistic expectations being leveled on folks from high up above
- somsak2 4y agolevels at Google only have a very loose correlation with competence the association between level and age is higher.
- aix1 4y agoI don't know what ladder (SWE or EM) Chris DiBona was on, but he was L9 and was let go. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34558576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34558576 More broadly, there have been a bunch of cuts at the VP and director levels. I have visibility into an org where a VP and three directors where let go. Also, for context, L9 = Sr Director = Distinguished SWE = Distinguished Scientist depending on the ladder they're on. Historically Google was quite flexible in letting people remain on a technical ladder as they move to people management. Just because someone's title is Principal X or Distinguished X doesn't mean their full-time job isn't people management. I can see evidence of that very clearly in my own org, for example.
- itronitron 4y agoIt sometimes gets mentioned that Google and related companies often hire in order to keep talent away from their competitors. If the competition is not in a position to hire, or is laying off employees, then that makes it harder for Google to justify their headcount.
- summerlight 4y agoNot a Google case, but I heard that a principal or distinguished engineer was laid off from Meta. They pushed some unpopular technical bets which turned out to be very costly for the org. This is a typical "I told you so" story. And there had to be someone accountable for the failure. I guess this could be something similar... or not.