4 ms·

There's a huge difference between "in a company of 150K+ engineers, a non-negligible number of them are probably not very productive" vs "over-hired talent to d

There's a huge difference between "in a company of 150K+ engineers, a non-negligible number of them are probably not very productive" vs "over-hired talent to do fake work". At that scale, there will always be inefficiencies and imperfections. I also don't think a big mass firing was a smart move long term, but it does make some investors happy for some reason, and gives a short term stock boost.

Panini_Jones 4y ago
Quick correction: Google does not have 150K+ engineers.
blowski 4y ago
When you’re hiring a lot of people, a significant number of people will be underperformers - people who are either not motivated or capable of delivering enough value to justify their salary. In a bull market, large companies don’t want the negative publicity that comes from layoffs. So instead of firing them, they get shifted into underperforming teams. The axeman cometh with the bear market. That unwillingness to tell people you’re cutting costs suddenly becomes exactly what they want to hear, so you take the opportunity to get rid of all those underperforming teams. It’s garbage collection at an organisation level. This is capitalism.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  > So instead of firing them, they get shifted into underperforming teams. I work at Google. I've seen this one time. A manager didn't want to do the hard work of firing somebody on their team and then misrepresented their productivity to another manager when that person tried to switch teams. This manager received a bad performance review and left the company (I don't know if it was their choice). It is easy to move teams within Google (or, it used to be at least). But it is very hard to move teams within Google if you have bad performance reviews. You can't really shift underperformers to underperforming teams at scale.

4 ms·

There's a huge difference between "in a company of 150K+ engineers, a non-negligible number of them are probably not very productive" vs "over-hired talent to d

by ehsankia 4y ago

Panini_Jones 4y ago
Quick correction: Google does not have 150K+ engineers.
blowski 4y ago
When you’re hiring a lot of people, a significant number of people will be underperformers - people who are either not motivated or capable of delivering enough value to justify their salary. In a bull market, large companies don’t want the negative publicity that comes from layoffs. So instead of firing them, they get shifted into underperforming teams. The axeman cometh with the bear market. That unwillingness to tell people you’re cutting costs suddenly becomes exactly what they want to hear, so you take the opportunity to get rid of all those underperforming teams. It’s garbage collection at an organisation level. This is capitalism.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  > So instead of firing them, they get shifted into underperforming teams. I work at Google. I've seen this one time. A manager didn't want to do the hard work of firing somebody on their team and then misrepresented their productivity to another manager when that person tried to switch teams. This manager received a bad performance review and left the company (I don't know if it was their choice). It is easy to move teams within Google (or, it used to be at least). But it is very hard to move teams within Google if you have bad performance reviews. You can't really shift underperformers to underperforming teams at scale.