4 ms·

I believe this is just a product of US corporate tax laws and high interest rate but I would like to hear other takes on it. Corporations don't want to bring ov

I believe this is just a product of US corporate tax laws and high interest rate but I would like to hear other takes on it. Corporations don't want to bring overseas profit home and be double taxed, so they borrow domestically using oversea cash as collateral. High interest rate and strong USD make it less attractive to hire in US.

vineyardmike 2y ago
This is definitely true, but Google pays US employees very well. Layoffs dramatically increase profits. That’s been a meaningful driver of their growth and margin in recent earnings reports lately. There are, of course, many benefits to US hiring - a strong talent pool, maintaining a team in the same region/timezone, etc. Google can easily hire back Americans in a few quarters if they need to. Join the alphabet workers union if you’re a Googler who cares.
- filoleg 2y ago
  > Join the alphabet workers union if you’re a Googler who cares. I was considering, but after seeing how they operate, I am certain I will be ok without doing so. I am yet to see them accomplish anything meaningful, and behavior of some of their members tripped my “this seems unethical” meter really bad. I might’ve mentioned that story on HN before, but the rundown of it was that one of my friends was interviewing at Google. He called me the day after one of his interviews, saying that he had a really weird experience, and he wasn’t sure what to think of it. TLDR: his interviewer was a member of AWU and spent every single second of the interview (that wasn’t spent on working on the coding problem) on trying to sell AWU to my friend (as a candidate/interviewee). All that time that would normally be reserved for the candidate to talk about their experience/projects, ask questions, etc., it was all taken up by the interviewer shilling AWU. My friend was shocked enough by this to warrant calling me, which he never did before with any work-related things. Had a neutral-positive opinion on AWU until then, and had a neutral-negative opinion since then. And it has only been very slowly going down as the time passes. P.S. The following part is definitely biased on my end, but the vibe I got from a bunch of interactions with a number of AWU members over the years was the same vibe I get from reddit slacktivists coming from certain subreddits (antiwork and atheism ones specifically). And while I have nothing against the stated goals/purposes of those subreddits, I have plenty against the actual reality of the behaviors of their members. I don’t care about it much, because a lot of them are actual teenagers. But it isn’t good optics for an actual workplace union, when your union members behave like they forgot they aren’t on reddit anymore.
  - algaeselect 2y ago
    On the internal memegen site, where people post and vote on memes, the AWU folks (they have a red logo around their profile picture, so easy to identify) are basically Debbie Downers. Constantly posting comments or memes shitting on the company. Whatever it is, see red logo around profile picture, you know it's going to be a "this company sucks" comment. They very much give me the vibe of the "late stage capitalism" 23 year old reddit type. I remember one post from a guy complaining about how the company abuses its employees because in the EU everyone gets so much more vacation. I guess he didn't compare his US salary to EU salaries. Checked profile, tenure: been at company 6 months, and already complaining.
    - srockets 2y ago
      Union's power is in the enforcement of employers to accept collective bargaining (that's why the misnamed US "right to work" laws are so effective at disenfranchising workers). AUW, as it currently organized, lacks that power, so yes, all that remains is bitching. Which is why memegen exists: it is a way to disarm Google's employees. Had they didn't had memegen to post on, the higher probability more would tunnel their disappointments into organizing. Those disappointments were created by Google: they (used to) market themselves as a benevolent employer. People get on board, and realize that the truth is far from that. Of course, they wouldn't be able to hire some people they wanted to if they had told them the truth. Should those employees know better? Maybe. But any relationship, including labor, is built on trust.
      - sitkack 2y ago
        Memegen is a way for employees to vent with no action taken by leadership. It serves its intended purpose.
        srockets 2y ago
        No further action taken by employees as well. If memegen didn’t exist, some might be inclined to escalate, actually forcing leadership to do better.
- CydeWeys 2y ago
  I would support the AWU if they were actually monomaniacally focused on worker issues like they're supposed to be (specifically I'd love to see a main focus on preventing offshoring). But instead it seems like they spend most of their time fighting the same kind of culture wars you see on college campuses, most recently Palestine. I don't agree with their views on that issue, and thus they've turned me off completely. They just overall strike me as young, immature, overly idealistic, and not actually suited to run a broad union that should be able to appeal to most of the employees (which is what is required for the union to actually be useful).
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    I always assumed these culture war unions were fostered precisely to make unions unpalatable.
    - CydeWeys 2y ago
      If that's not their intent, they're certainly doing a good job of it. The people running them are cosplaying running a union, without fundamentally understanding what a union really is.
      - cjbgkagh 2y ago
        It's a common management strategy pushed worldwide by consultants. Undermining the opposition by promoting the worst in it. The people who are making the union unpalatable are not under threat from Google as they're in effect unwittingly performing a valuable service for management. Due to intrinsic deficiencies in humans there is no real way to fight it. What usually happens is that the organization, now free from internal opposition, is be able to make the large changes that it always wished to do only to find out that management did not see all ends, makes a bunch of mistakes, and enters into a terminal decline.

vineyardmike 2y ago

This is definitely true, but Google pays US employees very well. Layoffs dramatically increase profits. That’s been a meaningful driver of their growth and margin in recent earnings reports lately. There are, of course, many benefits to US hiring - a strong talent pool, maintaining a team in the same region/timezone, etc. Google can easily hire back Americans in a few quarters if they need to. Join the alphabet workers union if you’re a Googler who cares.

filoleg 2y ago
> Join the alphabet workers union if you’re a Googler who cares. I was considering, but after seeing how they operate, I am certain I will be ok without doing so. I am yet to see them accomplish anything meaningful, and behavior of some of their members tripped my “this seems unethical” meter really bad. I might’ve mentioned that story on HN before, but the rundown of it was that one of my friends was interviewing at Google. He called me the day after one of his interviews, saying that he had a really weird experience, and he wasn’t sure what to think of it. TLDR: his interviewer was a member of AWU and spent every single second of the interview (that wasn’t spent on working on the coding problem) on trying to sell AWU to my friend (as a candidate/interviewee). All that time that would normally be reserved for the candidate to talk about their experience/projects, ask questions, etc., it was all taken up by the interviewer shilling AWU. My friend was shocked enough by this to warrant calling me, which he never did before with any work-related things. Had a neutral-positive opinion on AWU until then, and had a neutral-negative opinion since then. And it has only been very slowly going down as the time passes. P.S. The following part is definitely biased on my end, but the vibe I got from a bunch of interactions with a number of AWU members over the years was the same vibe I get from reddit slacktivists coming from certain subreddits (antiwork and atheism ones specifically). And while I have nothing against the stated goals/purposes of those subreddits, I have plenty against the actual reality of the behaviors of their members. I don’t care about it much, because a lot of them are actual teenagers. But it isn’t good optics for an actual workplace union, when your union members behave like they forgot they aren’t on reddit anymore.
- algaeselect 2y ago
  On the internal memegen site, where people post and vote on memes, the AWU folks (they have a red logo around their profile picture, so easy to identify) are basically Debbie Downers. Constantly posting comments or memes shitting on the company. Whatever it is, see red logo around profile picture, you know it's going to be a "this company sucks" comment. They very much give me the vibe of the "late stage capitalism" 23 year old reddit type. I remember one post from a guy complaining about how the company abuses its employees because in the EU everyone gets so much more vacation. I guess he didn't compare his US salary to EU salaries. Checked profile, tenure: been at company 6 months, and already complaining.
  - srockets 2y ago
    Union's power is in the enforcement of employers to accept collective bargaining (that's why the misnamed US "right to work" laws are so effective at disenfranchising workers). AUW, as it currently organized, lacks that power, so yes, all that remains is bitching. Which is why memegen exists: it is a way to disarm Google's employees. Had they didn't had memegen to post on, the higher probability more would tunnel their disappointments into organizing. Those disappointments were created by Google: they (used to) market themselves as a benevolent employer. People get on board, and realize that the truth is far from that. Of course, they wouldn't be able to hire some people they wanted to if they had told them the truth. Should those employees know better? Maybe. But any relationship, including labor, is built on trust.
    - sitkack 2y ago
      Memegen is a way for employees to vent with no action taken by leadership. It serves its intended purpose.
      - srockets 2y ago
        No further action taken by employees as well. If memegen didn’t exist, some might be inclined to escalate, actually forcing leadership to do better.
CydeWeys 2y ago
I would support the AWU if they were actually monomaniacally focused on worker issues like they're supposed to be (specifically I'd love to see a main focus on preventing offshoring). But instead it seems like they spend most of their time fighting the same kind of culture wars you see on college campuses, most recently Palestine. I don't agree with their views on that issue, and thus they've turned me off completely. They just overall strike me as young, immature, overly idealistic, and not actually suited to run a broad union that should be able to appeal to most of the employees (which is what is required for the union to actually be useful).
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  I always assumed these culture war unions were fostered precisely to make unions unpalatable.
  - CydeWeys 2y ago
    If that's not their intent, they're certainly doing a good job of it. The people running them are cosplaying running a union, without fundamentally understanding what a union really is.
    - cjbgkagh 2y ago
      It's a common management strategy pushed worldwide by consultants. Undermining the opposition by promoting the worst in it. The people who are making the union unpalatable are not under threat from Google as they're in effect unwittingly performing a valuable service for management. Due to intrinsic deficiencies in humans there is no real way to fight it. What usually happens is that the organization, now free from internal opposition, is be able to make the large changes that it always wished to do only to find out that management did not see all ends, makes a bunch of mistakes, and enters into a terminal decline.