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I guess a significant number of employees are just working really hard on things that don't matter. When every single thing that needs working on is already be

I guess a significant number of employees are just working really hard on things that don't matter. When every single thing that needs working on is already being worked on, a lot of people are going to be doing busy work. There was a post by Stevie Yeggie where he talked about working at google. he looked really hard to find a new project to lead but absolutely everything was already being worked on, he found. eventually he just couldn't see himself leading or doing meaningful work there and quit. the lesson here, i think is that there are limits to how much can be done, without moving into new industries and spreading horizontally.

ehsankia 3y ago
But isn't that just bad management / prioritization? Isn't the solution to just shuffle people to more useful projects instead of firing them? Especially at a company that hires general engineers who can work on any project, and also at a company that has a lot of internal tooling which makes ramping up new engineers slow and tedious. They'll probably grow back to 190k within a few months, but those 8k new hires will probably take months if not a year to fully ramp up.
- tomcar288 3y ago
  the problem is there's not enough high value projects to do. to much labor, too many employees and too much funding relative to the number of projects that actually bring value. Because all the high value stuff(high ROI stuff) is already done or already being worked on. all that's left is low ROI projects which take up huge amounts of time but bring little value. employees and managers know they generate little value, so they end up doing more of them to compensate which makes the problem even worse as there's less and less high value stuff to do. there's just too few opportunities, hence the need to expand into new industries.
  - feoren 3y ago
    Of course there are enough high-value projects to do. You just need to be willing to experiment, expand horizontally, and let your employees go out on a limb with new ideas; something that no corporate leadership anywhere has ever been willing to do. They didn't run out of valuable problems to solve, they just have shit-ass worthless leadership just like every other (public) corporation in America.
    - tomcar288 3y ago
      well, it's not like they're not trying to branch out. the list of failed project at google is incredibly long. i sometimes wonder if they would have more success with atoms based innovation rather than bits (reference to avc article on the matter). but that would necessitate hiring something other than software engineers.
- matwood 3y ago
  You're pointing to poor leadership which isn't an uncommon refrain coming from people who know Google.
- KeplerBoy 3y ago
  Good luck finding useful projects for 180k people. That's just a ridiculous amount of people and projects.
  - username135 3y ago
    There are more than just SWE's employed at google. Custodial, food service, administration, operations, HR, etc...
    - ojbyrne 3y ago
      A lot of those are going to be contractors employed by agencies.
      - hypothesis 3y ago
        Just wait, they will outsource to “AI agencies”.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - sdsd 3y ago
        Google also outsources SWEs. My friend in Mexico worked as this. They have an acronym for this kind of worker, I can't remember. But for example, they contract out work to SWEs at https://www.epam.com https://www.epam.com. Not contradicting your point really, just a note
        jfim 3y ago
        TVC
        sdsd 3y ago
        Yes! Can't believe I forgot. He was an interesting guy - a biologist who was deported to Mexico after living in the US since childhood without citizenship, and then tried working in a lab in Mexico, but the pay was so bad he learned to code and eventually became a TVC. Extremely cool individual who I miss. Maybe I should say hi to him.
- QuercusMax 3y ago
  In my org at the Goog, we didn't have any layoffs, but we also aren't expecting any new headcount any time soon. Projects that need more staff are expected to cannibalize it from other projects under the same VP. I feel like this is actually a good way of doing things, and wish Google did this more broadly. Just think if everyone who would have been laid off was instead transferred to a project that needs their skills, or given training to move into a role that's needed. Can you imagine what type of employee loyalty and morale that would engender?
  - epolanski 3y ago
    Google used to be exactly like that up to a decade ago. Talent was considered core for the org so you would be relocated rather than cut off. Values shifted with the focus on earnings and growth getting less impressive.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      Rewarding managers by headcount is like rewarding software engineers per line of code, yes, but that is how basically every company rewards managers. Imagine how obnoxious code reviews would be if everyone wanted to submit as many lines as possible for their salary to go up, that is how management headcount requests works today.
  - eitally 3y ago
    The problem with this (and I was also in an org that didn't get any headcount -- for several years) is that those non-growing teams often ultimately just wither and die, whether it's through internal transfer, attrition or layoff. Google doesn't really reward managers for their managerial skill, and there's nothing that says "managerial incompetence" at Google more than having the same size team for years on end.
    - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
      Maybe that’s okay though? It’s not like every team is supposed to exist forever. You could argue it’s ineffective or inefficient at this, perhaps.
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  > Isn't the solution to just shuffle people to more useful projects instead of firing them? Yes. However how do you find those less useful positions? And identify whether it's the developer who is less productive or the position? For top management the easiest way is to fire people broadly and assign it all over equally by pushing the decision down the management chain. Medium managers know their teams a tiny bit (but often not much ...) than too management and identify the least troublesome positions. And then you let them bring up cases to keep their headcount or hiring new. Works, after a short bump in productivity, if it's just (human) resources and numbers in a sheet. (Similar to other budget cuts, where you give a Mandate to reduce cost by X% everywhere and then see who cries the loudest and who adapts) Of course has impact on trust etc. which has an invisible cost.
skybrian 3y ago
The key word is "meaningful" and that's going to vary depending on the employee's interests. I transferred a few times at Google. When I looked at internal job listings, there were lots of jobs that I didn't want to do. I suspect that many good jobs went to people who learned about them in some way other than official job postings. (This is generally true.)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bloppe 3y ago
You don't just multiply employees x time = revenue. Google develops IP, systems, and processes over the course of years which pay out on long time scales. You would probably start feeling the financial effects of these layoffs in a couple years, and continue feeling them basically forever.
hibikir 3y ago
It's quite possible for the engineers to work really hard in ways that even directly harm the company, either directly, or by increasing the political costs of making a better decision. My favorite here is Bridgewater and their HR/Evaluation/Alignment system. There's books written about it. Developing it and running it took a high percentage of workers and contractors. Its implementation had all kinds of negative effects on everyone else, including the people doing the actual investment. But it took a pandemic, and the CEO being sidelined, for the whole thing to be basically thrown away.
- SeanAnderson 3y ago
  I'm aware of their alignment system from the book Principles, but I'm curious why/how you came to the conclusion it was a negative? Pandemic and larger-than-life CEO stepping down both seem like the major outliers in the dynamic you described. Bridgewater was very, very successful for quite some time with that policy in place.
  - fasthands9 3y ago
    I had always assumed (perhaps cynically) that Bridgewater's elaborate system was part of its marketing to people who run endowments and pensions. It gives people a sense that they are working with the best and hardest working, even if in reality their returns are equal to other less notable firms.
  - lancewiggs 3y ago
    Read "The Fund" - an entire book on the matter.
goalonetwo 3y ago
Talking to some Googler friends, it also seems like everyone there think they are "leaders". The reality is that most people at google end up working on something meaningless. That's the reality when you are in a company of 200k where the core business is at complete maturity.
- NtochkaNzvanova 3y ago
  > Talking to some Googler friends, it also seems like everyone there think they are "leaders". I guess we have different friends, but that doesn't match my experience. Of course, pumping yourself up and making yourself look more impressive for perf/promo is a huge thing, and accounts for a lot of pointless stuff being done just so you can say you "launched"/"landed" something. But the flip side of that is the recurrent memes about stuff like so-and-so over in that other division solved some incredibly hard technical problem, and "I'm just here copying protos around." Lots of Googlers realize they are just worker drones.
mkipper 3y ago
This is anecdotal, but whenever I read details about layoffs at FAANG companies ("$foo people were fired from the $bar team"), I'm shocked by the headcounts. I get it, developing and supporting some feature at a company like Google requires more people (both in engineering and elsewhere) than if you banged out a prototype of something similar at a startup. But I've read stories where hundreds or thousands of employees were laid off, and they were all working on some small service (or even an obscure feature of that service) that never had a chance of moving the needle for the company and offsetting their costs. I'm sure most of those employees were hard-working, motivated, and tried to build the best product possible, but there are no other companies on earth that would pay that many people top-of-market salaries to work on anything that isn't existential to the company. Other companies would simply go out of business if they operated this way, but in big tech companies, this is lost in the noise when times are good. But when things slow down, big tech companies start to pay very close attention to this.

ehsankia 3y ago

But isn't that just bad management / prioritization? Isn't the solution to just shuffle people to more useful projects instead of firing them? Especially at a company that hires general engineers who can work on any project, and also at a company that has a lot of internal tooling which makes ramping up new engineers slow and tedious. They'll probably grow back to 190k within a few months, but those 8k new hires will probably take months if not a year to fully ramp up.

tomcar288 3y ago
the problem is there's not enough high value projects to do. to much labor, too many employees and too much funding relative to the number of projects that actually bring value. Because all the high value stuff(high ROI stuff) is already done or already being worked on. all that's left is low ROI projects which take up huge amounts of time but bring little value. employees and managers know they generate little value, so they end up doing more of them to compensate which makes the problem even worse as there's less and less high value stuff to do. there's just too few opportunities, hence the need to expand into new industries.
- feoren 3y ago
  Of course there are enough high-value projects to do. You just need to be willing to experiment, expand horizontally, and let your employees go out on a limb with new ideas; something that no corporate leadership anywhere has ever been willing to do. They didn't run out of valuable problems to solve, they just have shit-ass worthless leadership just like every other (public) corporation in America.
  - tomcar288 3y ago
    well, it's not like they're not trying to branch out. the list of failed project at google is incredibly long. i sometimes wonder if they would have more success with atoms based innovation rather than bits (reference to avc article on the matter). but that would necessitate hiring something other than software engineers.
matwood 3y ago
You're pointing to poor leadership which isn't an uncommon refrain coming from people who know Google.
KeplerBoy 3y ago
Good luck finding useful projects for 180k people. That's just a ridiculous amount of people and projects.
- username135 3y ago
  There are more than just SWE's employed at google. Custodial, food service, administration, operations, HR, etc...
  - ojbyrne 3y ago
    A lot of those are going to be contractors employed by agencies.
    - hypothesis 3y ago
      Just wait, they will outsource to “AI agencies”.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - sdsd 3y ago
      Google also outsources SWEs. My friend in Mexico worked as this. They have an acronym for this kind of worker, I can't remember. But for example, they contract out work to SWEs at https://www.epam.com https://www.epam.com. Not contradicting your point really, just a note
      - jfim 3y ago
        TVC
        sdsd 3y ago
        Yes! Can't believe I forgot. He was an interesting guy - a biologist who was deported to Mexico after living in the US since childhood without citizenship, and then tried working in a lab in Mexico, but the pay was so bad he learned to code and eventually became a TVC. Extremely cool individual who I miss. Maybe I should say hi to him.
QuercusMax 3y ago
In my org at the Goog, we didn't have any layoffs, but we also aren't expecting any new headcount any time soon. Projects that need more staff are expected to cannibalize it from other projects under the same VP. I feel like this is actually a good way of doing things, and wish Google did this more broadly. Just think if everyone who would have been laid off was instead transferred to a project that needs their skills, or given training to move into a role that's needed. Can you imagine what type of employee loyalty and morale that would engender?
- epolanski 3y ago
  Google used to be exactly like that up to a decade ago. Talent was considered core for the org so you would be relocated rather than cut off. Values shifted with the focus on earnings and growth getting less impressive.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    Rewarding managers by headcount is like rewarding software engineers per line of code, yes, but that is how basically every company rewards managers. Imagine how obnoxious code reviews would be if everyone wanted to submit as many lines as possible for their salary to go up, that is how management headcount requests works today.
- eitally 3y ago
  The problem with this (and I was also in an org that didn't get any headcount -- for several years) is that those non-growing teams often ultimately just wither and die, whether it's through internal transfer, attrition or layoff. Google doesn't really reward managers for their managerial skill, and there's nothing that says "managerial incompetence" at Google more than having the same size team for years on end.
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    Maybe that’s okay though? It’s not like every team is supposed to exist forever. You could argue it’s ineffective or inefficient at this, perhaps.
johannes1234321 3y ago
> Isn't the solution to just shuffle people to more useful projects instead of firing them? Yes. However how do you find those less useful positions? And identify whether it's the developer who is less productive or the position? For top management the easiest way is to fire people broadly and assign it all over equally by pushing the decision down the management chain. Medium managers know their teams a tiny bit (but often not much ...) than too management and identify the least troublesome positions. And then you let them bring up cases to keep their headcount or hiring new. Works, after a short bump in productivity, if it's just (human) resources and numbers in a sheet. (Similar to other budget cuts, where you give a Mandate to reduce cost by X% everywhere and then see who cries the loudest and who adapts) Of course has impact on trust etc. which has an invisible cost.

skybrian 3y ago

The key word is "meaningful" and that's going to vary depending on the employee's interests. I transferred a few times at Google. When I looked at internal job listings, there were lots of jobs that I didn't want to do. I suspect that many good jobs went to people who learned about them in some way other than official job postings. (This is generally true.)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bloppe 3y ago

You don't just multiply employees x time = revenue. Google develops IP, systems, and processes over the course of years which pay out on long time scales. You would probably start feeling the financial effects of these layoffs in a couple years, and continue feeling them basically forever.

hibikir 3y ago

It's quite possible for the engineers to work really hard in ways that even directly harm the company, either directly, or by increasing the political costs of making a better decision. My favorite here is Bridgewater and their HR/Evaluation/Alignment system. There's books written about it. Developing it and running it took a high percentage of workers and contractors. Its implementation had all kinds of negative effects on everyone else, including the people doing the actual investment. But it took a pandemic, and the CEO being sidelined, for the whole thing to be basically thrown away.

SeanAnderson 3y ago
I'm aware of their alignment system from the book Principles, but I'm curious why/how you came to the conclusion it was a negative? Pandemic and larger-than-life CEO stepping down both seem like the major outliers in the dynamic you described. Bridgewater was very, very successful for quite some time with that policy in place.
- fasthands9 3y ago
  I had always assumed (perhaps cynically) that Bridgewater's elaborate system was part of its marketing to people who run endowments and pensions. It gives people a sense that they are working with the best and hardest working, even if in reality their returns are equal to other less notable firms.
- lancewiggs 3y ago
  Read "The Fund" - an entire book on the matter.

goalonetwo 3y ago

Talking to some Googler friends, it also seems like everyone there think they are "leaders". The reality is that most people at google end up working on something meaningless. That's the reality when you are in a company of 200k where the core business is at complete maturity.

NtochkaNzvanova 3y ago
> Talking to some Googler friends, it also seems like everyone there think they are "leaders". I guess we have different friends, but that doesn't match my experience. Of course, pumping yourself up and making yourself look more impressive for perf/promo is a huge thing, and accounts for a lot of pointless stuff being done just so you can say you "launched"/"landed" something. But the flip side of that is the recurrent memes about stuff like so-and-so over in that other division solved some incredibly hard technical problem, and "I'm just here copying protos around." Lots of Googlers realize they are just worker drones.

mkipper 3y ago

This is anecdotal, but whenever I read details about layoffs at FAANG companies ("$foo people were fired from the $bar team"), I'm shocked by the headcounts. I get it, developing and supporting some feature at a company like Google requires more people (both in engineering and elsewhere) than if you banged out a prototype of something similar at a startup. But I've read stories where hundreds or thousands of employees were laid off, and they were all working on some small service (or even an obscure feature of that service) that never had a chance of moving the needle for the company and offsetting their costs. I'm sure most of those employees were hard-working, motivated, and tried to build the best product possible, but there are no other companies on earth that would pay that many people top-of-market salaries to work on anything that isn't existential to the company. Other companies would simply go out of business if they operated this way, but in big tech companies, this is lost in the noise when times are good. But when things slow down, big tech companies start to pay very close attention to this.