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Google To Cut 200 Jobs
- ktharavaad 18y agoAt least they are firing sales and marketing people and not engineers.
- kailashbadu 18y agoAnd why is that better?
- Kirby 18y agoBecause I'm not a sales or marketing person. :)
- old-gregg 18y agoPerhaps because they realize that the company's long-term future depends on products people want, as opposed to products people are being convinced they want?
- kailashbadu 18y agoOff topic but then I would presume that you do not know what marketing is. Marketing is not just about selling and shouldn't be. It is also about figuring what products people want and communicating it clearly to the people who build products.
- abstractbill 18y agoIsn't that market research? I used to date a market researcher - she was very touchy about the confusion between the two fields.
- daveungerer 18y agoI'm quite surprised that this was modded up. Market research is indeed a component of marketing. I would suggest that those who modded it up sign up for some business courses / read a book on general business management or marketing. Just as you respect business guys who take the trouble to understand technical details / are ex hackers, so too an understanding of business lingo will gain you respect in their eyes. And allows you to have more meaningful discussions. Or just read Wikipedia if in doubt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing
- abstractbill 18y agoShrug, all I know is the market researcher I dated was quite clear that marketing and market research are very different things and are not subsets of each other. Then again, the wikipedia article you linked to says "The marketing literature is also infamous for re-inventing itself and its vocabulary according to the times and the culture". So who knows?
- daveungerer 18y agoAhhh, but we do know. The Wikipedia article also says: "..at the Harvard Business School in the early 1960s, suggested that the Marketing Mix contained 4 elements: product, price, place and promotion." And then: "Product: The product aspects of marketing deal with the specifications of the actual goods or services, and how it relates to the end-user's needs and wants." Market research has been a subset of marketing for over over four decades now - modern textbooks will give you the exact same information I quoted above. While I'm sure the market researcher was a lovely girl, she's no substitute for reading up on the matter.
- andreyf 18y agoLast time I took a marketing class was in '03, and indeed, at least up until then, the 4 P's were still taught as the major components of marketing.
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- krav 18y agoAs someone who's been on the sales and marketing side (and is now on the Angel side), I agree. When I look at potential investments, if it's an internet company run by MBAs or sales and marketing folks, I immediately pass. Invest in and keep the people who build stuff. They're the talent. The rest (with exceptions, of course) can always be brought back in, outsourced, etc.
- jwilliams 18y agoOuch. So much negativity in these threads. They are just stereotypes. There are (some) bad MBAs, sales and marketing folks out there saying "I'll pass on the techies - it's just grunt work, I can get it done for nothing in (insert country here)". Stereotypes again. Google has simply decided that their marketing department is too big. It happens. Particularly when you acquire a lot of companies as Google does (other shared functions such as HR, Finance are in a similar boat). From the vibe of this thread you'd think they're getting rid of their marketing function entirely.
- palish 18y agoHe's saying that sales and marketing is less valuable than engineering, not that it's not valuable, which is (usually) true. If you had to lay off a bunch of your staff, wouldn't you lay off the least valuable ones? It's not a personal decision, it's a business decision.
- jwilliams 18y agoThey're saying engineers are the "talent" and the others are something you outsource. Or that engineers do the "real work". Or that "At least they are firing sales and marketing people and not engineers.". Doesn't sound like you describe.
- krav 18y agoIn an internet company, the people responsible for the product (engineers) are the talent. In my experience, marketing people at big companies only know how to spend money. Many sales people just have expensive dinners and long-winded biz dev meetings. Give me the sales guy who sold insurance door to door and is passionate about the product. Or someone who can excite Eskimos about snow to be marketing. The rest don't belong in startups (or any company trying to maintain a startup ethic)
- prakash 18y agoThere is a pecking order, I guess the engineers figure somewhere and that makes it a question of when and not if they fire engineers/technical folks.
- whughes 18y agoWhat makes you think they will need to? It's possible that this was an independent decision and not entirely based on economic pressure. Google might not need to move down the pecking order.
- skmurphy 18y agoIs it a contest? I don't understand this sentiment.
- sgrove 18y agoA little bit sad about the tone. It's certainly a reasonable thing to do, reading this, "We did look at a number of different options but ultimately concluded that we had to restructure our organizations in order to improve our effectiveness and efficiency as a business." An ever-so-slight amount of corporate sheen on the writing, a little bit less emotion. A dangerous step away from being a personable company people trust. On the plus side, they are being pretty generous with time for those let go, outplacement support, and possible severance packages. Just hope they can retain a personable face.
- menloparkbum 18y agoThat's a nice way to put it. However, the reality is they went on an insane hiring spree over the past 3 years and hired a lot of useless people. I'm surprised they are only cutting 200.
- gaius 18y agoIsn't that like 1% of their workforce? 2000 would be news.
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- prakash 18y agoMost companies conveniently avoid doing a RCA (Root cause analysis) on why these folks were hired in the first place, who hired them, and who was responsible for created overlapping organizations. Firing that person would really help Google, alas in most cases that is some VP making the firing decisions and is obviously not going to fire himself/herself.
- olefoo 18y agoIt's the inverse to the Peter principle, an organization grows until it is unable to govern itself.
- brent 18y agoIn their defense they probably didn't know a recession of this magnitude was on the horizon. If they were hesitant to grow in the early days they may have missed a number of key hires or growth areas.
- sketerpot 18y agoPerhaps it was an experiment. Hire people to do a bunch of things, then get rid of the ones that don't work. Science! Maybe!
- ComputerGuru 18y agoGoogle is still actively hiring engineers. While they're letting go some sales & marketing people, recruiters, head-hunters, interns, and engineers are still green-lighted.
- durin42 18y agoI've not seen that to be the case - in fact, from what my friends have told me, they're doing only replacement hiring right now.
- nostrademons 18y agoThose two statements are not mutually exclusive: replacement hiring is still hiring.
- oscardelben 18y agoAnd profitable if you do with a more skilled person. However I hope replaced people are reallocated somewhere else.
- ComputerGuru 18y agoI'm just going my what I've been told by G's head-hunters.
- andreyf 18y agoI'm really confused as to why, aside from cash problems, any company would do otherwise... Companies thrive on hiring more people, motivating them to create x amount of wealth (on average), and giving them salaries, benefits, and resources worth 0.9x (on average). More smart engineers means more x, means more 0.1x, and more profit. A recession is a time that there are more smart engineers in the market, not fewer.