4 ms·

Uh, what? Did you just list two companies which had some of the most comprehensive layoffs this year and a third Chinese private firm for clearance-based US en

Uh, what? Did you just list two companies which had some of the most comprehensive layoffs this year and a third Chinese private firm for clearance-based US engineers (generally stereotyped as uptight and/or establishment types) to move to?

happyopossum 3y ago
You seem to be stuck in a weird news bubble / or some kind of layoff echo chamber. Google had a 6-7% layoff 12 months ago, and has been hiring steadily, almost aggressively since then.
- acdha 3y ago
  They’re just better informed that you: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/technology/google-layoffs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/technology/google-layoffs... All of the big tech companies are going to have a risk of layoffs for a while: the Wall Street activist crowd is looking to cash out and those companies which have guaranteed income like ads will look great in the short term with lower costs on the same income stream. It’ll take time for the drawbacks to manifest, and often that stage will lead to more layoffs when they decide to get out of a particular business they’ve let themselves fall behind in.
  - oskarkk 3y ago
    Is a 0.5% layoff important?
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    The story is about a company with 180,000+ employees laying off hundreds, less than one one-thousandth. What does that mean? It would be like a company with an $1.8 billion budget losing < $1.8 million on something.
    - acdha 3y ago
      It means anyone considering working there has to think about how directly their work connects to one of the big strategic goals and assess the odds that they’ll be next. That certainly doesn’t mean nobody should take a job there but it adds to the absurdity of someone suggesting Google and Boeing are in a hiring competition given how different those jobs are.
      - wolverine876 3y ago
        The odds are less than one in a thousand that they'll be next. They only have to be above the 0.1th percentile of Google employees.
        acdha 3y ago
        That’s only true if everything is determined at random. In real life, new hires are usually more at risk than people who’ve been around long enough to have a track record and allies. More importantly, layoffs also tend to involve shifts in business priorities which is why I mentioned needing to think about goals – it might be that 0.1% of the total staff are being laid off, but that doesn’t help you if it’s your entire project.
        wolverine876 3y ago
        And your odds might be better, depending on the project, etc. The average is less than 0.1% - some better, some worse. If > 999 out of 1,000 aren't good enough odds for you, where will you work? Lots of people dream of that kind of job security.
        elevatedastalt 3y ago
        These things are often not uniformly distributed. Most of the recent layoffs affected teams within Google Assistant, many of which lost more than half of their headcount. So if you were in Google Assistant, your chance of being laid off was much higher. Of course, you could counter with, "just don't join Google Assistant lmao", but it's not clear to an outsider what the fortunes of various teams will be. Heck, it's often not even clear to the VPs running those very teams, to say nothing of the rank and file engineers there. So a bit more compassion please, thank you.
- CableNinja 3y ago
  Many many many companies have had layoffs in 2023, and more are already on the chopping block for 2024. A lot of people i talk to regularly, including myself, have been laid off in the last 6-7 months. Google is not the only company in the world. You can even search here on HN for layoff discussions, which have spiked in the past year.

happyopossum 3y ago

You seem to be stuck in a weird news bubble / or some kind of layoff echo chamber. Google had a 6-7% layoff 12 months ago, and has been hiring steadily, almost aggressively since then.

acdha 3y ago
They’re just better informed that you: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/technology/google-layoffs.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/technology/google-layoffs... All of the big tech companies are going to have a risk of layoffs for a while: the Wall Street activist crowd is looking to cash out and those companies which have guaranteed income like ads will look great in the short term with lower costs on the same income stream. It’ll take time for the drawbacks to manifest, and often that stage will lead to more layoffs when they decide to get out of a particular business they’ve let themselves fall behind in.
- oskarkk 3y ago
  Is a 0.5% layoff important?
- wolverine876 3y ago
  The story is about a company with 180,000+ employees laying off hundreds, less than one one-thousandth. What does that mean? It would be like a company with an $1.8 billion budget losing < $1.8 million on something.
  - acdha 3y ago
    It means anyone considering working there has to think about how directly their work connects to one of the big strategic goals and assess the odds that they’ll be next. That certainly doesn’t mean nobody should take a job there but it adds to the absurdity of someone suggesting Google and Boeing are in a hiring competition given how different those jobs are.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      The odds are less than one in a thousand that they'll be next. They only have to be above the 0.1th percentile of Google employees.
      - acdha 3y ago
        That’s only true if everything is determined at random. In real life, new hires are usually more at risk than people who’ve been around long enough to have a track record and allies. More importantly, layoffs also tend to involve shifts in business priorities which is why I mentioned needing to think about goals – it might be that 0.1% of the total staff are being laid off, but that doesn’t help you if it’s your entire project.
        wolverine876 3y ago
        And your odds might be better, depending on the project, etc. The average is less than 0.1% - some better, some worse. If > 999 out of 1,000 aren't good enough odds for you, where will you work? Lots of people dream of that kind of job security.
      - elevatedastalt 3y ago
        These things are often not uniformly distributed. Most of the recent layoffs affected teams within Google Assistant, many of which lost more than half of their headcount. So if you were in Google Assistant, your chance of being laid off was much higher. Of course, you could counter with, "just don't join Google Assistant lmao", but it's not clear to an outsider what the fortunes of various teams will be. Heck, it's often not even clear to the VPs running those very teams, to say nothing of the rank and file engineers there. So a bit more compassion please, thank you.
CableNinja 3y ago
Many many many companies have had layoffs in 2023, and more are already on the chopping block for 2024. A lot of people i talk to regularly, including myself, have been laid off in the last 6-7 months. Google is not the only company in the world. You can even search here on HN for layoff discussions, which have spiked in the past year.