4 ms·

If every one of the 13,000 employees made $300k in compensation then that’s $3.9B/year in expenses saved. Instead of the $70B stock buyback they could have emp

If every one of the 13,000 employees made $300k in compensation then that’s $3.9B/year in expenses saved. Instead of the $70B stock buyback they could have employed those 13,000 people for 17.9 years. Google is basically comcast or Nike in terms of caring about their employees and customers.

andsoitis 4y ago
a) what would you have them work on? b) total cost to company per employee is more than their cash compensation.
- voxl 4y ago
  a) future innovation (at a 300k price point, these are tech workers) b) 300k was total comp, never have I heard of 300k salary. According to levels.fyi, a L5 makes ~350k total comp
  - seattle_spring 4y ago
    L6 should be approaching $300k base, and the floor of the L7 band likely exceeds it.
    - voxl 4y ago
      Ah yes, let's just pretend we're firing all staff engineers
      - seattle_spring 4y ago
        The hell are you talking about. All I said was that there are plenty of engineering roles with $300k+ salaries, for which you had apparently “never heard of.”
- prepend 4y ago
  Who said cash compensation? I’m using $300k as a total compensation amount. Feel free to adjust the numbers. Even at $600k that’s 9 freakin years of 13,000 knowledge workers doing something. I’m not the CEO. The CEO’s job is to allocate resources effectively. So develop new products. Personally, I’d have them work on Google Reader, making GCP competitive, fixing search, fixing Bard, and monetizing Bard.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Giving money back to stockholders is a form of resource allocation. A company can decide whether it wants to develop new products or not or how many. If investors, the board, and Leadership thought there was more money to be in made by developing new products they would do that. Everybody wants to make more money. Nobody wants to make less money just so they can lay people off
  - toast0 4y ago
    > I'm not the CEO. The CEO’s job is to allocate resources effectively. So develop new products. How is Google developing new products an effective use of resources? Most often they spend a lot of resources on it, figure out it doesn't hit their metrics and abandon it. It would have been a better use of resources to return it to shareholders who can use it for something else.
    - prepend 4y ago
      > How is Google developing new products an effective use of resources? Generally, new products means new revenue streams and new profit, preferably improved profit margins. The complaint is that they can’t develop new products so are returning money to investors so investors can earn better returns. So that’s a sign of lack of innovation. I’d expect a company with the “worlds best programmers and AI” to be able to innovate and create new products. Google is showing they are just the new IBM, or worse, clear channel or some advertising company. Hopefully they can get leadership that has some new ideas other than giving their cash cow some vitamins. Apple and Microsoft get mentioned frequently as tech behemoths. They aren’t the height of innovation but they are still able to grow markets (Apple with AirPods and stuff and Microsoft with azure). Google should be cranking out new billion dollar products and inventing markets.
- htag 4y ago
  > a) what would you have them work on? This exactly. A stock buyback combined with layoffs are a signal that Google doesn't have enough good ideas to work on. Google thinks the money is just better spent being given back to investors. This is very different than the Google 10 years ago, which was arguably throwing minds/money at bad ideas.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > a) what would you have them work on? In other words, Google is now a mature company whose CEO can't make it grow anymore. Hey, I'm not judging. I have no better idea either. But the question stands, if the CEO can't do anything more than your average joe, why the big salary?
- kevingadd 4y ago
  If the company is so out of ideas and cares so little about maintaining/expanding existing products that they have to lay off upwards of 10k people, it's in pretty bad shape. Why were they hired in the first place?
- numbsafari 4y ago
  As a GCP customer? How about fixing a whole bunch of long-standing bugs and missing features? How about not having an entire region go down due to a flood in a single DC? As a Google Workspace user? How about making the search in Drive not be an embarrassment? How about creating an actual backup and restore function (DLP is not that). How about making ChromeOS not suck? How about making it possible to do zero touch deployments without involving some shitty third party reseller that wants to take over your Admin Console with their insecure and crappy “plug-in”? How about not forcing people to work with shitty resellers at all? There are so many things Google could be working on, that it is not. Having them eliminate staff, raise prices, defer and delay new features that have been missing for years, or leaving bugs on the table, while doing a stock buyback and lavishing money on the leadership that let OpenAI eat their lunch, or that is letting Microsoft embrace and extend his supposed wheelhouse, Chrome, or who shutdown Stadia and literally returned everyone’s money, … The list goes on. I get that it’s popular to dump on Google employees as overpaid and underperforming, but the fact of the matter is that that is only true because Google ‘s CEO is a crappy as fuck leader. I’ve never worked at Google, have no desire to, but I fail to see how he doesn’t deserve the lion’s share of the blame for the litany of strategic and operational blunders that this company can continue to pave over with massive cash from their supposedly failing ads business. Honestly, why does he even still have a job there?
HDThoreaun 4y ago
Businesses exist to serve shareholders, not employees.

andsoitis 4y ago

a) what would you have them work on? b) total cost to company per employee is more than their cash compensation.

voxl 4y ago
a) future innovation (at a 300k price point, these are tech workers) b) 300k was total comp, never have I heard of 300k salary. According to levels.fyi, a L5 makes ~350k total comp
- seattle_spring 4y ago
  L6 should be approaching $300k base, and the floor of the L7 band likely exceeds it.
  - voxl 4y ago
    Ah yes, let's just pretend we're firing all staff engineers
    - seattle_spring 4y ago
      The hell are you talking about. All I said was that there are plenty of engineering roles with $300k+ salaries, for which you had apparently “never heard of.”
prepend 4y ago
Who said cash compensation? I’m using $300k as a total compensation amount. Feel free to adjust the numbers. Even at $600k that’s 9 freakin years of 13,000 knowledge workers doing something. I’m not the CEO. The CEO’s job is to allocate resources effectively. So develop new products. Personally, I’d have them work on Google Reader, making GCP competitive, fixing search, fixing Bard, and monetizing Bard.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Giving money back to stockholders is a form of resource allocation. A company can decide whether it wants to develop new products or not or how many. If investors, the board, and Leadership thought there was more money to be in made by developing new products they would do that. Everybody wants to make more money. Nobody wants to make less money just so they can lay people off
- toast0 4y ago
  > I'm not the CEO. The CEO’s job is to allocate resources effectively. So develop new products. How is Google developing new products an effective use of resources? Most often they spend a lot of resources on it, figure out it doesn't hit their metrics and abandon it. It would have been a better use of resources to return it to shareholders who can use it for something else.
  - prepend 4y ago
    > How is Google developing new products an effective use of resources? Generally, new products means new revenue streams and new profit, preferably improved profit margins. The complaint is that they can’t develop new products so are returning money to investors so investors can earn better returns. So that’s a sign of lack of innovation. I’d expect a company with the “worlds best programmers and AI” to be able to innovate and create new products. Google is showing they are just the new IBM, or worse, clear channel or some advertising company. Hopefully they can get leadership that has some new ideas other than giving their cash cow some vitamins. Apple and Microsoft get mentioned frequently as tech behemoths. They aren’t the height of innovation but they are still able to grow markets (Apple with AirPods and stuff and Microsoft with azure). Google should be cranking out new billion dollar products and inventing markets.
htag 4y ago
> a) what would you have them work on? This exactly. A stock buyback combined with layoffs are a signal that Google doesn't have enough good ideas to work on. Google thinks the money is just better spent being given back to investors. This is very different than the Google 10 years ago, which was arguably throwing minds/money at bad ideas.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
marcosdumay 4y ago
> a) what would you have them work on? In other words, Google is now a mature company whose CEO can't make it grow anymore. Hey, I'm not judging. I have no better idea either. But the question stands, if the CEO can't do anything more than your average joe, why the big salary?
kevingadd 4y ago
If the company is so out of ideas and cares so little about maintaining/expanding existing products that they have to lay off upwards of 10k people, it's in pretty bad shape. Why were they hired in the first place?
numbsafari 4y ago
As a GCP customer? How about fixing a whole bunch of long-standing bugs and missing features? How about not having an entire region go down due to a flood in a single DC? As a Google Workspace user? How about making the search in Drive not be an embarrassment? How about creating an actual backup and restore function (DLP is not that). How about making ChromeOS not suck? How about making it possible to do zero touch deployments without involving some shitty third party reseller that wants to take over your Admin Console with their insecure and crappy “plug-in”? How about not forcing people to work with shitty resellers at all? There are so many things Google could be working on, that it is not. Having them eliminate staff, raise prices, defer and delay new features that have been missing for years, or leaving bugs on the table, while doing a stock buyback and lavishing money on the leadership that let OpenAI eat their lunch, or that is letting Microsoft embrace and extend his supposed wheelhouse, Chrome, or who shutdown Stadia and literally returned everyone’s money, … The list goes on. I get that it’s popular to dump on Google employees as overpaid and underperforming, but the fact of the matter is that that is only true because Google ‘s CEO is a crappy as fuck leader. I’ve never worked at Google, have no desire to, but I fail to see how he doesn’t deserve the lion’s share of the blame for the litany of strategic and operational blunders that this company can continue to pave over with massive cash from their supposedly failing ads business. Honestly, why does he even still have a job there?

HDThoreaun 4y ago

Businesses exist to serve shareholders, not employees.