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I also work at google (until last Friday). Agree with what you said. My thoughts are 1. This quote is clearly meant to exaggerate reality, and they are likely

I also work at google (until last Friday). Agree with what you said. My thoughts are 1. This quote is clearly meant to exaggerate reality, and they are likely including things like fully automated CL/PR's which have been around for a decade as "AI generated". 2. I stated before that if a team of 10 is equally as productive as a team of 8 utilizing things like copilot, it's fair to say "AI replaced 2 engineers", in my opinion. More importantly, Tech leaders would be making this claim if it were true. Copilot and it's clones have been around long enough know for the evidence to be in, and no one is stating "we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" - therefor my claim is (by 'denying the consequent'), using copilot does not materially accelerate development.

onion2k 2y ago
no one is stating "we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" That's only worth doing if you're trying to cut costs though. If the company has unmet ambitions there's no reason to shrink the headcount from 10 to 8 and have the same amount of output when you can keep 10 people and have the output of 12 by leveraging AI.
- hyperpape 2y ago
  Almost all the big tech companies have had layoffs over the past several years. I think it’s safe to say cost cutting is very much part of their goal.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - lupire 2y ago
    But the specific roles being laid off are arbitrary, and the overall goal headcount reduction is driven by macroeconomics factors (I'm being generous there), not based on new efficiencies. Note the difft between "cost cutting" (do less, to lower cost) and "efficiency" (do same, but with less cost)
  - theptip 2y ago
    The goal of these cost cutting initiatives is not an absolute reduction in cost, but a relative one. They needed to show an improvement in operating margin, ie % of revenue spent on engineers. If your engineers become 20% more efficient then your margins are better and your problem is solved. (Indeed if you have tech that can make any engineer 20% more efficient then you are back in the game of hiring as many as you can find, as long as each added engineer brings in enough additional revenue.)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
> no one is stating "we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" Even if that's been happening, I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. In today's social climate claiming to replace humans with AI would attract the wrong kind of attention from politicians (during an election year) and from the public in general. This would be even more unwise to admit for a company like Google who's an "AI producer". They may leave such a language for closed meetings with potential customers during sales pitches though.
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago
  > and from the public in general Don't think the public will be that concerned about people in Google's salary bracket losing their jobs.
  - ytss 2y ago
    The public might though be concerned that if they are being replaced, many in other positions at other companies will soon be replaced as well.
    - darth_avocado 2y ago
      That’s not how the mind works. People cheered when Elon fired 80% of the Twitter staff. No one cares when people with high paying jobs suffer.
      - mmcdermott 2y ago
        The people who cheered about the firing of 80% of the Twitter staff largely believed (rightly or wrongly) that they were being adversely affected by them. While Google may be seen with more wariness in tech circles, I don't think the average person believes that Google is actively harming them (again, rightly or wrongly).
      - almatabata 2y ago
        I think twitter is an outlier because people hated the employees already for various reasons. For example they thought that twitter had a bloated workforce because of videos like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buF4hB5_rFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buF4hB5_rFs). And a lot of people heavily disagreed with how they handled moderation. You can take things like the hunter Biden laptop suppression or in the funny category you had the getting banned for saying learn to code (https://reason.com/2019/03/11/learn-to-code-twitter-harassment-ross/ https://reason.com/2019/03/11/learn-to-code-twitter-harassme...). Take random company without controversies and you will find less vitriol about them getting fired.
ktnaWA 2y ago
Thanks, that is how I read the announcement. The powers that be decided that there must be some quota to be fulfilled, and magically that quota was fulfilled. AI engineers will not yet get a Nobel prize for putting everyone out of work.
pj_mukh 2y ago
"we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" Most likely what is actually happening is that the X% of workforce you would lay off is being put to other projects and Google in general can take on X% more projects for the same labor $$. So there is no real reason to make that particular "replaced" statement.
wcoenen 2y ago
> including things like fully automated CL/PR's which have been around for a decade I haven't seen this yet so I'm intrigued. Is this a commercial product, or internal tooling?
- OkGoDoIt 2y ago
  I’m assuming this refers to things analogous to dependabot on GitHub where maybe it automatically updates a library version reference and runs the tests and creates a PR if everything seems good, or similarly for fixing style issues or other stuff that is pretty trivial and has good test coverage. When you maintain an open source project on GitHub you will occasionally get some open source automated bot that submits a PR to do things like this without you even asking, and I’m sure there’s plenty more you can sign up for or implement yourself. I wouldn’t really call it AI, but it is automated. I agree with the parent comment that a journalist trying to push an angle would probably lump it in as AI in order to make the number seem larger.
- NotAnOtter 2y ago
  It's common at most mega-corps like google. For example, if a utility function in an internal library was deprecated and replaced with a different function that has the same functionality. A team might write a script which generates hundreds/thousands of PR's to make the migration to the new function. You don't want a single PR that does that, because that would affect thousands of projects, and if something goes wrong with a single one, the whole PR needs to be rolled back.
Sparkyte 2y ago
Google has to sell its AI some how. The problem is that businesses will see this and want to fire head count because they go, "Well I guess AI can do it for freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!". Nope no way is it writing code freely.

onion2k 2y ago

no one is stating "we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" That's only worth doing if you're trying to cut costs though. If the company has unmet ambitions there's no reason to shrink the headcount from 10 to 8 and have the same amount of output when you can keep 10 people and have the output of 12 by leveraging AI.

hyperpape 2y ago
Almost all the big tech companies have had layoffs over the past several years. I think it’s safe to say cost cutting is very much part of their goal.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- lupire 2y ago
  But the specific roles being laid off are arbitrary, and the overall goal headcount reduction is driven by macroeconomics factors (I'm being generous there), not based on new efficiencies. Note the difft between "cost cutting" (do less, to lower cost) and "efficiency" (do same, but with less cost)
- theptip 2y ago
  The goal of these cost cutting initiatives is not an absolute reduction in cost, but a relative one. They needed to show an improvement in operating margin, ie % of revenue spent on engineers. If your engineers become 20% more efficient then your margins are better and your problem is solved. (Indeed if you have tech that can make any engineer 20% more efficient then you are back in the game of hiring as many as you can find, as long as each added engineer brings in enough additional revenue.)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ahmedfromtunis 2y ago

> no one is stating "we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" Even if that's been happening, I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. In today's social climate claiming to replace humans with AI would attract the wrong kind of attention from politicians (during an election year) and from the public in general. This would be even more unwise to admit for a company like Google who's an "AI producer". They may leave such a language for closed meetings with potential customers during sales pitches though.

whywhywhywhy 2y ago
> and from the public in general Don't think the public will be that concerned about people in Google's salary bracket losing their jobs.
- ytss 2y ago
  The public might though be concerned that if they are being replaced, many in other positions at other companies will soon be replaced as well.
  - darth_avocado 2y ago
    That’s not how the mind works. People cheered when Elon fired 80% of the Twitter staff. No one cares when people with high paying jobs suffer.
    - mmcdermott 2y ago
      The people who cheered about the firing of 80% of the Twitter staff largely believed (rightly or wrongly) that they were being adversely affected by them. While Google may be seen with more wariness in tech circles, I don't think the average person believes that Google is actively harming them (again, rightly or wrongly).
    - almatabata 2y ago
      I think twitter is an outlier because people hated the employees already for various reasons. For example they thought that twitter had a bloated workforce because of videos like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buF4hB5_rFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buF4hB5_rFs). And a lot of people heavily disagreed with how they handled moderation. You can take things like the hunter Biden laptop suppression or in the funny category you had the getting banned for saying learn to code (https://reason.com/2019/03/11/learn-to-code-twitter-harassment-ross/ https://reason.com/2019/03/11/learn-to-code-twitter-harassme...). Take random company without controversies and you will find less vitriol about them getting fired.

ktnaWA 2y ago

Thanks, that is how I read the announcement. The powers that be decided that there must be some quota to be fulfilled, and magically that quota was fulfilled. AI engineers will not yet get a Nobel prize for putting everyone out of work.

pj_mukh 2y ago

"we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" Most likely what is actually happening is that the X% of workforce you would lay off is being put to other projects and Google in general can take on X% more projects for the same labor $$. So there is no real reason to make that particular "replaced" statement.

wcoenen 2y ago

> including things like fully automated CL/PR's which have been around for a decade I haven't seen this yet so I'm intrigued. Is this a commercial product, or internal tooling?

OkGoDoIt 2y ago
I’m assuming this refers to things analogous to dependabot on GitHub where maybe it automatically updates a library version reference and runs the tests and creates a PR if everything seems good, or similarly for fixing style issues or other stuff that is pretty trivial and has good test coverage. When you maintain an open source project on GitHub you will occasionally get some open source automated bot that submits a PR to do things like this without you even asking, and I’m sure there’s plenty more you can sign up for or implement yourself. I wouldn’t really call it AI, but it is automated. I agree with the parent comment that a journalist trying to push an angle would probably lump it in as AI in order to make the number seem larger.
NotAnOtter 2y ago
It's common at most mega-corps like google. For example, if a utility function in an internal library was deprecated and replaced with a different function that has the same functionality. A team might write a script which generates hundreds/thousands of PR's to make the migration to the new function. You don't want a single PR that does that, because that would affect thousands of projects, and if something goes wrong with a single one, the whole PR needs to be rolled back.

Sparkyte 2y ago

Google has to sell its AI some how. The problem is that businesses will see this and want to fire head count because they go, "Well I guess AI can do it for freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!". Nope no way is it writing code freely.