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So what's a good employer now, now that Google has been losing the reputation for treating employees well? (Multiple rounds of laying off people isn't treating

• toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Federal government. No equity, but stability. Best place to take shelter during economic uncertainty or bearish conditions imho. Rode out the 2008 GFC at a DOE lab. https://www.usajobs.gov/ https://www.usajobs.gov/
  • danpalmer 3y ago
    And you get bonus days off any time congress needs to raise the debt ceiling!
    • toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Sometimes better than random layoffs because someone needed to juice the stock price. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-layoffs-cut-jobs-excessive-pay-investor-alphabet-2023-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-layoffs-cut-jobs-exce... (“A major Alphabet investor said the company should cut even more jobs and address 'excessive' pay in the wake of mass layoffs”) (Edit: retracted an unnecessarily snarky statement) (I admit Congress needs to get its shit together)
      • danpalmer 3y ago
        Hey both of these suck for everyone involved, I was just trying to point out that government work is not without its own issues. You may be right about government jobs being more stable, you're certainly less likely to just lose your job. They do tend to pay significantly less though from what I've seen. I'm from the UK so while we do have layoffs, like much of Europe we have relatively good employment protections. The government here don't tend to do layoffs, but do tend to use contractors significantly more than most businesses and do flex their contractor base up and down.
        • toomuchtodo 3y ago
          Wasn’t a personal attack by any means, more like “pick your poison” with a bit too much snark (which I apologize for). Google is great until it suddenly isn’t, and working for Uncle Sam has its own challenges. Happy to hear you’re in a jurisdiction where you’re not exposed to the US labor experience, I’m just trying to throw life preservers out because I’m not sure how long the market is going to be this dysfunctional for (and this will be my third “once in a lifetime” economic crisis).
        • usrusr 3y ago
          Not everyone involved, think of those poor investors! Spot on about the contractors. The city I live in contains some of the larger data processing hot-spots of the German government (not so much in terms of large number-crunching server farms, but in terms of ever changing complicated business logic running at high volume) and there's a crazy number of consultancies serving that market and nobody else. But ironically those are the safest jobs nonetheless, because that demand could only ever go away in total state collapse.
          • danieldisu 3y ago
            Working as a contractor for a public entity, I can't think of anything that I would like to do less than that...
            • usrusr 3y ago
              I can certainly feel what you mean, it's where those who will take on anything to get a bigger car congregate in these parts. But it's actually not that bad I think, deployments are not "the temp guy in an in-house team" but projects with a presumably not too difficult buyer: the customer-side person you are working with doesn't have too much skin in the game. Realistic expectations and all that. One of the more graspeable downsides I think (never worked that way, but went though the hiring process once) is that those state clients seem to never outsource a complete project, but insist on keeping projects neutral by staffing them from as many different consultancies as possible, which means that you'll only ever work with people who are nominally your competitors.
    • Rebelgecko 3y ago
      That varies quite a bit. I remember feeling bad for my coworkers who worked on "critical" projects in exchange for IOUs while I got free vacation (although I was also getting paid in IOUs for a little while)
  • bsdpufferfish 3y ago
    the value of stability is inversely related to confidence
    • toomuchtodo 3y ago
      The belief in this idea is an inverse function of wisdom and pragmatism. Confident people end up laid off all the same, you can only make so much luck, although I’d agree you can be more confident (take more risk?) when you’ve objectively derisked financially against downside. (Risk management is a component of my work)
      • bsdpufferfish 3y ago
        > Confident people end up laid off all the same Indeed, and I am under no such illusions. But it's silly to live in fear of. Hubris would be thinking that your organization or relationship is special. 7 years of plenty and 7 years of famine.
  • BobaFloutist 3y ago
    Incredible lens, to see working for the federal government as the employment version of investing in gold. A real fun concept.
    • beachy 3y ago
      Maybe not gold but as the old British saying goes "there's brass in muck"
  • photonbeam 3y ago
    Q: whats a realistic salary a SWE or SRE who is 10-15 years deep might expect? I do understand it’ll be lower, but the GS pay system isn’t that clear to outsiders
    • toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Made ~$85k/year at the DOE lab I mentioned as a sysadmin, was offered ~$175k/year for a US Digital Service role with ~15 years of infra/sysadmin/generalist experience. YMMV. Imho you’ll top out ~$190k-$200k. Not FAANG money, but also not homeless.
      • refulgentis 3y ago
        Honestly that's not too far off, Alphabet growth has been stalled since 2021 anyway.
        • sulam 3y ago
          Base salary is a relatively small component of your pay once you've been at Google more than 2 or 3 years. For me it is roughly 30% of my total comp after three years, without any crazy performance ratings or promos. Does the government even give bonuses?
  • rockskon 3y ago
    Federal government is mostly a miserable place to work if you enjoy up-to-date tech and flat organizational structures with high autonomy to get your work done. Also a miserable place to work if you enjoy earning money.
  • BHSPitMonkey 3y ago
    Stability, unless conservatives retake power: https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-conservatives-trump-heritage-857eb794e505f1c6710eb03fd5b58981 https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-conservatives-trump...
• wilg 3y ago
  In your opinion what is the proper way to do a layoff? Or if any layoff is a problem, how do you prevent companies from hiring too quickly or whatever?
  • tdb7893 3y ago
    They are making over a billion a week in profits (and still growing). Layoffs can be justified but it's a bit of a head scratcher to be doing them when the company seems to be doing generally well
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • wilg 3y ago
      IMHO Google's a hot mess top-to-bottom at the moment.
    • bogomipz 3y ago
      I feel like this has been a theme for the last year - big tech companies with big profits doing mass layoffs. We've seen Microsoft, Facebook, Goggle, Spotify etc all do this. It's this whole obsession with the word "efficiency" and the phrase "doing more with less." It really makes you think these CEOs are all a bunch of sheep. See: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/11/techs-new-business-model-do-more-with-less-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/11/techs-new-business-model-do-...
      • tdb7893 3y ago
        The craziest thing to me is that the employees at these companies are some of the most sought after people yet when push comes to shove they seem to have all just rolled over and not raised a fuss with layoffs. These companies are some of the most profitable companies of all time. It's not like I think everyone needs to run out and join a union but the seeming complete lack of torches and pitchforks internally is a huge shock to me. My dad was in a different field and when the company he worked for did layoffs the company was in a serious financial state and in danger of just folding entirely and also the employees had a say in how layoffs were implemented. Until I started working in tech I had assumed that was the norm but now I realize that that amount of respect for the employees from leadership was the exception (at least at large companies).
• qp11 3y ago
  Just use your resume to Move to location where ever they are hiring. Dont worry about "good employer" certifications. That stuff belongs to a bygone era thats never coming back. Large corps spanning hundreds of countries are managed primarily by finance arbitragers who use cross border differences in labor costs/interest rates/tax rates/govt regulations/freebies/tariffs etc to keep the lights on. As they get faster and faster at responding and taking advantage of these constant changes world wide, these methods come to dominate decision making, especially during uncertain times. So dont worry about what they are doing. It will never make sense unless you spend time reading financial statements every day. Just move to whereever they are hiring. And they are always hiring.
  • ChatGTP 3y ago
    Sounds like a defeatist comment.
  • chefandy 3y ago
    Picking up and moving to the “it” tech city assuming you’ll get hired sounds like a great solution… that is, if you don’t have family obligations, or, really… a family, long-term responsibilities of any kind, a chronic health condition, or lack money to support an expensive interstate/city/country move probably with an increased cost of living while unemployed… and all to assume that your employer is going to cast you side when they’re done with you so you’ll have to do it all over again? You’re either wealthy enough to not realize how infeasible this is for most people over 25, or you’ve got a serious case of tech industry Stockholm syndrome. I’ll continue to vet my employers.
    • ycdxvjp 3y ago
      It's feasible. I have done it. Moved to Singapore and now in South Korea with family. I think experienced people have lot of interesting options. Many don't look.
      • ahepp 3y ago
        Moved to Singapore from where? The USA? There was a point where I was investigating opportunities out in Southeast Asia, but I never had a ton of success even finding listings.
• JKCalhoun 3y ago
  I retired from Apple a few years ago but still follow the company. I am not aware of any layoffs at Apple. Others have pointed out that Apple didn't go on the same hiring boom that other companies did during Covid.
  • bpye 3y ago
    I looked at Apple a long while ago - and whilst they certainly have teams doing interesting work - relocating to California will always be a hard no for me… They have positions elsewhere but much less varied.
  • sulam 3y ago
    My friends at Apple say they avoided layoffs because they didn't hire as much during the pandemic. Sounds great, right? Except instead they just worked more hours. Dunno which approach I prefer.
  • jiqiren 3y ago
    Also retired from Apple (FIRE). I never worked so hard or got paid so much in my life. Would recommend AAAAAaaa+++++ would do again
    • agent008t 3y ago
      Have you written about your FI/RE story anywhere? Would be interesting to read. E.g. which SWR, did you end up moving somewhere cheaper, what do you do day-to-day now? How have you found actually living on your withdrawals - has it not caused more worry? How do you avoid the FOMO of seeing your former colleagues pressing on?
      • jiqiren 3y ago
        I've not shared my story. Much of the FIRE community is sick of hearing about engineers doing it. I was a SRE in Maps - I joined after Apple fired Scott. Many gave me a lot of hell for going to Apple Maps but there was a ton of work. I did move to Portland metro area during pandemic and actually got permission for perm remote work at Apple. But once I saw I could FIRE I waited for 1 more RSU vest and left. Zero FOMO - a coworker on my team left 6 months before me. I'm currently on a 4month vacation in Asia with wife. I'm still connected to former colleagues at Apple and visit the offices. I left Spring of 2022.
• pm90 3y ago
  I don’t think there are any left. The cycle repeats itself though. The leas desirable Google becomes, the more talent is freed up into startups, some of which eventually will offer something similar.
  • MrDresden 3y ago
    Problem being that capital is not free anymore, as it has been for close to two decades. As startups run on venture funding, I'm not so sure there will be a wellspring of new positions generated for those hit by the layoffs, this time around.
    • mega-flop 3y ago
      Which is probably why now is a safe time to release employees into the labour pool i.e. conduct layoffs. There’s a low risk those people will be absorbed into a competitor, until money gets cheap again.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• karmasimida 3y ago
  None There is no job security in this market right now. Even if you have a job, you can be replaced quickly. Might as well just don't think about it, and prepare for the worst if you are anxious about the future.
  • sjhdjshdjskhds 3y ago
    If you are anxious about future job market, just remind yourself that you would be dead one day anyway.
  • hashtag-til 3y ago
    Is that the US reality, I guess? Based in Europe, I'm not seeing this here.
• sjhdjshdjskhds 3y ago
  Join a monastery.
• EMM_386 3y ago
  > Multiple rounds of laying off people isn't treating only those people poorly, but also increasing stress for the people who remain, knowing they can suddenly be laid off as well. How is this not just "business"? That's what Google is. Granted, they make billions of dollars a quarter and it won't hurt them to keep employees around. But every company I've ever worked for over the last decades has laid people off, made others nervous, etc. It may sound harsh but they aren't a charity. People will be laid off, others will be nervous they may be next. If you are looking for a company where everyone just happy hums along with no fear of job loss, those don't exist. Except maybe in the Government.
  • BossingAround 3y ago
    I empathize with this POV, and I largely hold it myself. That said, there is something incredibly insulting about having a layoff when making billions of dollars. Look, if a company is going under, everyone can understand they have to lay off huge number of folks (otherwise, they'll lay off everyone). But laying people off when you're profitable just because you want to be more profitable..? We need some regulation for it, the problem is what regulation. But I don't think it's controversial to say that this behavior shouldn't be encouraged (despite the fact that it is not illegal, and very few would say that it should be illegal).
  • yyyfb 3y ago
    Even so - I don't have a moral objection to profit motive, I just think they're going about it wrong. There is one large shift happening now in the industry, to AI. Google will need tons of talent to rise to the challenge. There have been other such shifts before (social, mobile). In the past, Google handled these shifts very differently, by retraining and reorganizing engineering staff, which had for the most part been hired for its generalist ability and could therefore jump to other areas. The theory was that there wasn't a need to know the domain too much, since you were going to reinvent it anyways. It worked exceptionally well for a lot of things. People there didn't build data centers using techniques from the field, they didn't build maps like ESRI or Navteq, etc. Now it seems to handle it differently, through layoffs that give their employees clear signals that the company will look outside for talent first. Employees are no longer valued as adaptable generalist hires but as narrow-function cogs. That's a strategic mistake, because the AI field is still so nascent and full of hacks that generalists able to handle novel challenges in innovative ways are so sorely needed. It isn't a mature space at all and outside hires - at the scale that will be needed - will almost certainly be of lower quality and productivity. What would make sense if they wanted to increase profits: routinely cut low performers to keep people motivated to do their best, and completely drop entire business lines that are losses for the company. It doesn't seem like either thing is happening. By their own admission, it's not the lowest performers that get cut ("role eliminations"), and businesses that cause losses are expected to continue operating with less staff. Staff cuts don't fix structurally lossy businesses, they just make them limp longer. It seems like it's setting up these businesses for a long and painful agony.
• kvathupo 3y ago
  I wonder if layoffs will affect company loyalty in the future? I'm leaning towards not, given the frequency of turnover at big tech companies for higher TC
• nashashmi 3y ago
  Do you know of any founders with these superiority complexes built upon some ideas of how great their career and field is? Like PhDs were at Google? Or Engineers were at IBM? That's the foundation of a good company until some MBA type comes and takes over. Then it is not about the work you do but the metric you are judged upon. And the metrics for Google Assistant are not great. And neither are the metrics for a lot of google projects. But the team and fascination behind their technologies are the only roots keeping them from being X'd. This is why Android and Chrome will continue to be heavy handed. The current CEO came from over there and started/led the team. But things like Google Search will always be judged by the numbers and metrics, not by the ideas of connecting people with info. (I ranted. But to answer your question, go to place that is a darling of the power broker.)