11 ms·

Twits Know: Google Quietly Laying Off Engineers

70 points by nickb 18y ago

RiderOfGiraffes 18y ago
See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473007 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473007 Same news, posted 2 hours earlier.
- alone 18y ago
  But that was "searchenginejournal.com", this is the far different and more insightful "searchenginewatch.com"
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
paul 18y ago
I have no specific knowledge, but I'd be surprised if there was a general layoff in Engineering. It seems more likely that they are pushing on people they have classified as "underperforming". I think they also shut down a few remote offices (there was a blog post about this), and anyone who doesn't want to relocate will be out.
- jacquesm 18y ago
  crises are a great excuse to lay off a bunch of people that were on the low side of 'acceptable' anyway. In 'good' times employers can get quite a backlash from doing this, in 'bad' times nobody complains and those that get to keep their jobs will work harder to avoid being 'axed' because of the crisis. Oldest trick in the book, I've seen this happen at a bank where I worked in the gray past. It would not surprise me one bit if employers would exaggerate the situation in order to push through even more layoffs.
  - strlen 18y ago
    This also has the advantage of not being as damaging or negative to the employees being let go as well (no stigma of being fired).
    - alecco 18y ago
      That's meaningless in the context of the problem of trying to get a job in a recession.
      - strlen 18y ago
        I've switched jobs (voluntarily) when the recession just hit (September '08). I still get requests from headhunters, without looking. Part of it has to do with having Yahoo! on my resume -- and I'd imagine having Google would somewhat more impressive. It's just a job someone will find now may not be a job on their terms.
    - strlen 18y ago
      After reading this, I think this comment was in poor thinking: the PIP would carry a stigma -- usually companies let of under performers as a part of a bigger lay off (no stigma attached, as positions have been eliminated -- not the individuals); here it seems to be they're doing the opposite (they're firing people as to avoid publicizing a general lay off). Of course I don't know the true situation, so this is mere speculation.
  - neilk 18y ago
    Agreed. I think it is highly unlikely that PIP is being used on a large scale as a real cost-cutting measure. PIP takes months. More likely, they simply are realizing that they have some duds on staff. They've grown tremendously in the past four years, and not all those hires were gems. I have even heard that there are new hiring rules, that engineers now have to have X years of experience doing Y before they can be hired. Which is totally anti-old-school-Google; they would hire the greenest college kid if s/he seemed brilliant and industrious. This suggests that they now believe they have a systemic hiring problem. Or, that brilliance is now not as important as experience. Either way, it suggests that Google is changing.
    - jacquesm 18y ago
      removed.
      - neilk 18y ago
        Your comment now doesn't make sense because I edited out that bit. I couldn't care less about identifying him though... he's not a friend, he's more like a former enemy-co-worker. ;) We struggled to fire him for months and then when we heard he got hired at Google you could have knocked us over with a feather.
andrewljohnson 18y ago
This is all hearsay.
vital_sol 18y ago
My friend was let go from Goog ~ 3 weeks ago. Was classified as "underperforming," put on PIP, worked his ass off while on PIP, and then fired without any severance. He was with Goog for 3 years, not a new hire.
- patio11 18y ago
  What does PIP mean in this context? Is it a probationary status, or a "here's a mentor to teach you to work better" status, or some combination of the two, perhaps?
  - azanar 18y ago
    I suspect Performance Improvement Plan. Not a google-specific thing, but I've not seen the acronym used before today.
    - kennyroo 18y ago
      Correct. It's a widely-used term in the tech area, and beyond.
  - neilk 18y ago
    PIP is a Performance Improvement Plan. It's not a Google thing, these things are common in corporate America. The employee is asked to sign a document that admits they are underperforming, with the promise that they can turn the situation around through their own efforts. In practice, the PIP is used to provide an evidence trail to fire someone. PIP is not the same thing as being laid off. In a layoff, you sometimes can get your boss to sign a letter that states this was NOT termination due to poor performance.
    - davidw 18y ago
      Wow... sounds like something that involves lots of TPS reports.
      - 18y ago
Maro 18y ago
I think a large organization like Google, with thousands of engineers can safely fire say 10% without loosing much productivity. I refuse to believe that Google has some magic hiring strategy that allows them to hire only smart, motivated and productive people. I'm sure they, like every other large corporation (PIP agreement?!) have a 10% "fat layer" of people who are not very motivated, productive, etc. I'm not saying these people are stupid, they just might not fit in or whatever.
ggruschow 18y ago
These people are talking about having lots of friends that could get a job anywhere (as in, they're unbelievably awesome). I wish I had a ton of friends like that. Either their standards are lower, or this is the fundamental thing about SV that I miss.
- andreyf 18y ago
  friends that could get a job anywhere (as in, they're unbelievably awesome) You don't have to be that awesome... generally, if you can create more wealth for a company than they pay you, you can get a job there.
danbmil99 18y ago
My impression has always been that Google has a "systemic hiring problem", as well as some deep organizational problems that make it very hard to get true productivity out of their workforce. 18 hour days are the last resort of bad managers. Then you get to the "The beatings will continue until morale improves!" phase, which sounds like where they're at now. The original Goog model just wasn't scalable, and now they have to completely re-engineer the company. It won't be easy.
- ambition 18y ago
  Can you elaborate? What is their systemic hiring problem? What are some of the deep organizational problems? What was the original model and why doesn't it scale? I suspect some of these might be obvious to people close to Google but I'm intensely curious.
  - potatolicious 18y ago
    My own anecdote: when I interviewed with Google it seemed to me that there was a lot of kool-aid drinking and elitism in the process. There was a time when if you were not from Stanford you didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting hired. Obviously as Google grew this requirement flew out the window, but they are still extremely biased against people from "lesser" colleges, even ones who have impressive portfolios and experience. In my experience academics is one of the poorest indicators of actual work performance you can use. Note that this isn't sour grapes :P Google recruits heavily from my college (lucky me?), but I generally dislike companies that assign too much weight to academics. This includes NVidia, which enforces a strict minimum-GPA requirement on all hires, but I digress. During my interview my interviewer seemed to really have a problem because I wasn't a die-hard Google fanatic. At the time I had a Gmail account that was idle most of the time, I didn't do the Google home page bit (my google experiences are strictly vanilla), and outside of Google Maps my interaction with G-products are relatively limited. He didn't seem to take that so well.
    - katamole 18y ago
      What was the position you applied for? I ask because if you applied for a Sysadmin (or somesuch) position, I can see your lack of usage of Google products as fairly irrelevant. But if you were going for some sort of product development post, I can see why your interviewer might be somewhat uninterested in you.
ruslan 18y ago
The Rise and Fall of Google Empire. Everything in less than a decade.
- DenisM 18y ago
  Isn't it interesting how things seem to get faster and faster?
  - jbarciauskas 18y ago
    I.e., the technological singularity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

70 points by nickb 18y ago

See also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473007 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=473007 Same news, posted 2 hours earlier.

alone 18y ago
But that was "searchenginejournal.com", this is the far different and more insightful "searchenginewatch.com"

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

paul 18y ago

I have no specific knowledge, but I'd be surprised if there was a general layoff in Engineering. It seems more likely that they are pushing on people they have classified as "underperforming". I think they also shut down a few remote offices (there was a blog post about this), and anyone who doesn't want to relocate will be out.

jacquesm 18y ago
crises are a great excuse to lay off a bunch of people that were on the low side of 'acceptable' anyway. In 'good' times employers can get quite a backlash from doing this, in 'bad' times nobody complains and those that get to keep their jobs will work harder to avoid being 'axed' because of the crisis. Oldest trick in the book, I've seen this happen at a bank where I worked in the gray past. It would not surprise me one bit if employers would exaggerate the situation in order to push through even more layoffs.
- strlen 18y ago
  This also has the advantage of not being as damaging or negative to the employees being let go as well (no stigma of being fired).
  - alecco 18y ago
    That's meaningless in the context of the problem of trying to get a job in a recession.
    - strlen 18y ago
      I've switched jobs (voluntarily) when the recession just hit (September '08). I still get requests from headhunters, without looking. Part of it has to do with having Yahoo! on my resume -- and I'd imagine having Google would somewhat more impressive. It's just a job someone will find now may not be a job on their terms.
  - strlen 18y ago
    After reading this, I think this comment was in poor thinking: the PIP would carry a stigma -- usually companies let of under performers as a part of a bigger lay off (no stigma attached, as positions have been eliminated -- not the individuals); here it seems to be they're doing the opposite (they're firing people as to avoid publicizing a general lay off). Of course I don't know the true situation, so this is mere speculation.
- neilk 18y ago
  Agreed. I think it is highly unlikely that PIP is being used on a large scale as a real cost-cutting measure. PIP takes months. More likely, they simply are realizing that they have some duds on staff. They've grown tremendously in the past four years, and not all those hires were gems. I have even heard that there are new hiring rules, that engineers now have to have X years of experience doing Y before they can be hired. Which is totally anti-old-school-Google; they would hire the greenest college kid if s/he seemed brilliant and industrious. This suggests that they now believe they have a systemic hiring problem. Or, that brilliance is now not as important as experience. Either way, it suggests that Google is changing.
  - jacquesm 18y ago
    removed.
    - neilk 18y ago
      Your comment now doesn't make sense because I edited out that bit. I couldn't care less about identifying him though... he's not a friend, he's more like a former enemy-co-worker. ;) We struggled to fire him for months and then when we heard he got hired at Google you could have knocked us over with a feather.

andrewljohnson 18y ago

This is all hearsay.

vital_sol 18y ago

My friend was let go from Goog ~ 3 weeks ago. Was classified as "underperforming," put on PIP, worked his ass off while on PIP, and then fired without any severance. He was with Goog for 3 years, not a new hire.

patio11 18y ago
What does PIP mean in this context? Is it a probationary status, or a "here's a mentor to teach you to work better" status, or some combination of the two, perhaps?
- azanar 18y ago
  I suspect Performance Improvement Plan. Not a google-specific thing, but I've not seen the acronym used before today.
  - kennyroo 18y ago
    Correct. It's a widely-used term in the tech area, and beyond.
- neilk 18y ago
  PIP is a Performance Improvement Plan. It's not a Google thing, these things are common in corporate America. The employee is asked to sign a document that admits they are underperforming, with the promise that they can turn the situation around through their own efforts. In practice, the PIP is used to provide an evidence trail to fire someone. PIP is not the same thing as being laid off. In a layoff, you sometimes can get your boss to sign a letter that states this was NOT termination due to poor performance.
  - davidw 18y ago
    Wow... sounds like something that involves lots of TPS reports.
    - 18y ago

Maro 18y ago

I think a large organization like Google, with thousands of engineers can safely fire say 10% without loosing much productivity. I refuse to believe that Google has some magic hiring strategy that allows them to hire only smart, motivated and productive people. I'm sure they, like every other large corporation (PIP agreement?!) have a 10% "fat layer" of people who are not very motivated, productive, etc. I'm not saying these people are stupid, they just might not fit in or whatever.

ggruschow 18y ago

These people are talking about having lots of friends that could get a job anywhere (as in, they're unbelievably awesome). I wish I had a ton of friends like that. Either their standards are lower, or this is the fundamental thing about SV that I miss.

andreyf 18y ago
friends that could get a job anywhere (as in, they're unbelievably awesome) You don't have to be that awesome... generally, if you can create more wealth for a company than they pay you, you can get a job there.

danbmil99 18y ago

My impression has always been that Google has a "systemic hiring problem", as well as some deep organizational problems that make it very hard to get true productivity out of their workforce. 18 hour days are the last resort of bad managers. Then you get to the "The beatings will continue until morale improves!" phase, which sounds like where they're at now. The original Goog model just wasn't scalable, and now they have to completely re-engineer the company. It won't be easy.

ambition 18y ago
Can you elaborate? What is their systemic hiring problem? What are some of the deep organizational problems? What was the original model and why doesn't it scale? I suspect some of these might be obvious to people close to Google but I'm intensely curious.
- potatolicious 18y ago
  My own anecdote: when I interviewed with Google it seemed to me that there was a lot of kool-aid drinking and elitism in the process. There was a time when if you were not from Stanford you didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting hired. Obviously as Google grew this requirement flew out the window, but they are still extremely biased against people from "lesser" colleges, even ones who have impressive portfolios and experience. In my experience academics is one of the poorest indicators of actual work performance you can use. Note that this isn't sour grapes :P Google recruits heavily from my college (lucky me?), but I generally dislike companies that assign too much weight to academics. This includes NVidia, which enforces a strict minimum-GPA requirement on all hires, but I digress. During my interview my interviewer seemed to really have a problem because I wasn't a die-hard Google fanatic. At the time I had a Gmail account that was idle most of the time, I didn't do the Google home page bit (my google experiences are strictly vanilla), and outside of Google Maps my interaction with G-products are relatively limited. He didn't seem to take that so well.
  - katamole 18y ago
    What was the position you applied for? I ask because if you applied for a Sysadmin (or somesuch) position, I can see your lack of usage of Google products as fairly irrelevant. But if you were going for some sort of product development post, I can see why your interviewer might be somewhat uninterested in you.

ruslan 18y ago

The Rise and Fall of Google Empire. Everything in less than a decade.

DenisM 18y ago
Isn't it interesting how things seem to get faster and faster?
- jbarciauskas 18y ago
  I.e., the technological singularity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity