I understand that layoffs are a blunt instrument and it is unlikely that all of the “right” people were affected, but Google has long been known as <i>the</i> FAANG to go to if you want to chill, coast, and vest. No Facebook PSC, no Amazon stack ranking, no Netflix “sports team”. Obviously it is team dependent, but it really has that reputation. The well-known tradeoff is that getting a promo to a post-senior level is borderline impossible.<p>I dunno, something had to give at some point? Leadership sent the message last year but it wasn’t well received: <a href="https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/google-ceo-faced-intense-pushback-from-employees-at-a-town-hall-his-2-sentence-response-was-smart-leadership.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/google-ceo-faced-intense-push...</a><p>Like, blame definitely falls on leadership here, ICs didn’t come up with the ten chat apps or streaming gaming failure, but the chilling couldn’t last forever.
I'll say something I wish someone told me in my 20's: most leadership/upper management is poor. I've worked at FAANGs, a unicorn, and currently @ a company that recently IPO'd. Most people in product leadership neither really understand how to make original ideas that effect the product at a high level or the technical details of the product, their responsibility is to be good stewards of a certain revenue stream and not mess it up and maybe grow it by x%. Most engineering leadership above the staff level is usually better at "aligning" with upper management and that's why they're kept around.<p>The main exception to this are some startups with strong/technical founders (however I've recently had conversations with recent yc & techstars founders where this isn't to be assumed) and biotech startups where a PhD/MD is needed to develop the initial idea.
This ruling [Dodge vs Ford Motor Company (1919)] stands at the heart of the current situations being faced by companies like Google today.<p>—-<p>It really doesn’t. First, that’s a Michigan case interpreting Michigan law. Almost every non trivial US company is incorporated in Delaware and subject to Delaware law.<p>Delaware law does have somewhat similar cases, eBay v. Newmark is a good one to read but …<p>Second, in both the Ford and Craigslist cases what was happening was really blatant. Courts are not in the business of deciding this or that corporate policy isn’t instantly maximizing shareholder value. What they won’t necessarily let you do is announce that you, being a controlling shareholder, never ever intend to make money and it sucks to be a minority shareholder.
My two cents; by picking a CEO who only knew Google, an environment full of self delusion that Google itself was responsible for Google’s success.<p>A general social trend to value tech in our lives seems lost on the genius CEOs. They really seem to think billions care they specifically exist, when really if they did not someone else would have been CEO. Some other company that came before Google would be Google big if not Google quality in search (which has gone to shit under the management of their current genius CEO).<p>Hubris, lack of social awareness, lack of career experience outside the Google RDF created a hyper-normalized world view.<p>Paraphrasing PG, who wrote somewhere, I forget where, don’t underestimate the power of money to motivate. We’re not picking good companies, just playing simple arithmetic games with fiat money.
> Before getting into that it’s worth noting that all publicly listed companies operate under a fiduciary duty to maximise profits for their shareholders.<p>This is a myth. Lynn Stout argued against the relevance of Dodge v. Ford (1919) in this article:
<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1013744" rel="nofollow">https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1013744</a><p>This misstep kind of undermines the rest of the piece, which now reads like a superficial just-so story in the same way.
You work for google because you make insane money and have cachet you can take anywhere and get hired instantly. Hell, you can pull in 10 million funding for your startup idea if you like. Or just retire, get a boat, go sailing.<p>Of course all of this had to go bad. Come on now. Stop whining already.<p>I work in the IT sewer fighting rats. I will <i>always</i> have work. I'm filthy and I smell bad, but I'm doing fine, and no, I don't sit around wringing my hands and thinking, <i>but what will become of our beloved and sacred google</i>? I could not possibly give a shit about google. But maybe someday I'll get a fucking boat.
Is there any publicly available commentary on what kinds of roles these big tech companies such as Google were chopping, and in what percentages?<p>Were these layoffs mostly recruiting/HR types, various managers, marketers, etc, or programmers?<p>Did they chop 70% of their recruiting/HR types, but closer to 1% of their techies, or vice versa?<p>Analyzing these layoffs IMO might be best done through the lens of what kind of roles were cut. If they didn't truly hit the real talent (the best programmers) there's a much different analysis that could be made.
The market for talent is quite competitive. Companies need to pay market rates and have a staff that's large enough to compete. In a market where capital is cheap they will bid up rates and hire more people. If you don't do this you give your competitors a chance to beat you. Companies might be able to slow it down a little bit, but not entirely. Similarly in a market where capital is expensive they need to reduce the spend and team size.<p>Google is a public company. If part of the team is costing them more than the value they create for shareholders, there will be immense pressure to down size. This is actually healthy in a way since talent frees up for other companies. The bigger problem is that in the USA healthcare is tied to employment. That's messed up
I think there are a couple of threads here...<p>First the layoff were a fairly obvious hamfisted way to simply appease investors. Profit margins are in-line with historical norms, 2021 was an outlier and it is insane to expect profit growth not to slow from that - the company is still wildly profitable. It really just demonstrates that the vision of being a 'unconventional' company is gone, and the vision of the executive team is just to react to whatever perceived threat is in-front of them that week (activist investors, now 'generative AI') and, of course, maximize their stock compensation.<p>Google 'bloat'. This is a bit undeniable but it's also unavoidable for companies Google's size. There are like eight layers of management between people who do things and people who talk about doing things. That number is probably too high but I'm not sure people have figured out a great alternative other than 'hierarchy' for directing an army of people. Honestly the best thing management can do is 'rest-and-vest' and rewrite the same vision/roadmap document/deck ten times under different names least they try to demonstrate their value by constantly re-orging and shuffling around priorities (millionaire children moving the food around their plate to make it seem eaten).<p>Total comp and lavish 'perks'. Google's talent is, on average, better than most other companies and it hires in very expensive areas so it's going to be more expensive. It is very clear they are moving hiring to cheaper 'discount' areas so this will likely stall/decrease. The 'perks' are heavily overstated. This is a fun fake narrative. The micro-kitichens are like bulk processed gains and cereals or faux-healthy products that manage to both be not particularly appetizing, not actually healthy (a chickpea fried in vegetable oil is still bad for you), and not expensive - so they are mostly just for show and sit there untouched. The cafe food is served in troughs again with an emphasis on the cheaper vegetable or grains upfront or the infamous kale -with a single trough with any protein at the end that they still try to partially submerge in quinoa. There are long tables where employees eat quickly and alone. It's an overtly cynical exercise to make you work longer and just like 'unlimited vacation' the dealer is clearly winning here. Same goes with travel or 'fun' budgets, all cut and now the same as any other company.
Everyone keeps complaining about being locked out of systems with just an email. Seriously, why do you care about this? You don't work there anymore: say goodbye to your friends over text message or email. The reason from the employer's side is obvious: knowledgeable, angry people with access to sensitive systems can wreak a lot of havoc. So take your severance and get out! Locking people out of systems is not a new practice and the outraged indignation I'm seeing on LinkedIn--Xooglers calling the practice "inhuman" and "abusive"--are just incredibly entitled and naive. No one in any other profession is getting the level of severance that these people are getting in a layoff; you are a highly paid professional with Google on your resume and you're going to be just fine.
This article could have been written about IBM in the 1970s and 1980s! When I joined IBM in 1991, the old timers used to talk nostalgically about the old days when they could do anything they wanted and the internal politics were vicious.
>Before getting into that it’s worth noting that all publicly listed companies operate under a fiduciary duty to maximise profits for their shareholders.<p>Not in that context. They have a duty to their shareholders, not absolute maximum profits. Plenty of further unethical methods that could be used if that was the goal.<p>Iron law of organizations states that any org over time will put the perpetuation of the org first, not the orgs mission that it was founded with. Those with that vision leave for better places, leaving voids filled by those whom cannot genuinely replace it. Purpose is lost, things slow down, and every solution is a myriad of bandaids and placebos to keep it afloat. A cow to milk. This was obvious when all these projects were born to fail and hiring practices started filtering hiring for binary search trees.<p>Same story across the board. They've lived past their expiration date, and rely upon the law and vertical integration to prevent anyone else from competing.
Actually they're about the financial class trying to protect the value of their wealth by pressuring the companies they own to contain salaries, in order to curb inflation.
> I’ve seen people promoted to VP based on a set or vague promises they haven’t delivered, mass hiring and vanity metrics<p>So basically Google has become like any big company. If this were true, then it was the a failure of the leadership chain. At some level some leader should be able to call bullshit of this. After all, Pichai should not care about vanity metrics but how Google really grows, right? It's just sad that at certain point that a leader high above simply can't understand every aspect of a business and therefore won't be able to tell if his reports are doing real jobs or chasing vanity metrics.
"Another reason that Google is wasteful is that it's too easy. The people inside it don't see it as a business as they don't have to struggle against the market forces everyone else has to deal with. Why would you when ads is so profitable?"<p>When the people oustide it stop seeing it as a business, then Google's goose is cooked.
The Google employee experiment, in my eyes was one to support.<p>Try treating employees pretty well, encourage a lot of new grass root projects in a supported environment.<p>No one in Google will be doing anything grassroots now. The end of this experiment is a shame.<p>For a while it dragged other companies up with it e.g. for top talent you had to go half way towards Google perks.
> The Dodge brothers owned 10% of Ford and opposed this and took Ford to court because they wanted the payments to be able to start their own company. They won and Ford was not allowed to lower prices or raise salaries at the company thus enshrining maximising shareholder value into law.<p>Is maximizing shareholder value really law now ? Just trying to understand if CEOs are legally responsible to return maximum share of profits to shareholders.
> You chase after vanity metrics about you looking good like active users rather than how useful your product is.<p>In what conceivable world is "active users" a vanity metric??
> It’s like Game of Thrones played out through email and calendar and over video call.<p>That seems true for a lot of corporations. At senior levels it’s all very hunger games
Was it bad Google leadership? Or capitalist excesses? I don't believe we even live in capitalism. We live in Creditism. It is obvious tech was the beneficiary of easy money, zero interest rates and expanded monetary supply. Its no coincidence as the Fed, raises rates and tries to simultaneously drain liquidity there will be less investment in tech, and pressure on income. If you are looking for someone to blame - blame the Fed. But as we see easy money is at the expense of causing inflation.<p>To turn this around a bit, Maybe you are being greedy? Perhaps you really want easy money - on the backs of the poor and middle class - to subsidize our industry?
"Members only".<p>Subscriptions and paywalls proliferate because Google as middleman takes a cut and makes online ads too expensive.^1<p>Yet Google gets a "free subscription" and in this case publishes a copy in its cache.<p><a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://andzwa.medium.com/why-the-google-layoffs-are-about-personal-ambition-and-poor-leadership-817236947368" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...</a><p>1. Argument of US government and state AGs in latest suit against Google for Sherman Act violations. See paras 9 and 267.
> My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business.<p>> The Dodge brothers owned 10% of Ford and opposed this and took Ford to court because they wanted the payments to be able to start their own company. They won and Ford was not allowed to lower prices or raise salaries at the company thus enshrining maximising shareholder value into law.<p>> At its heart this is a problem about unrestrained capitalism.<p>I was making this argument yesterday on the post about blizzard firing the employee critical of the stack ranking policy: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34498473" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34498473</a><p>These companies are having record profits, and doing layoffs anyway. I think they can get away with this because everyone's talking about recession and inflation. Thus they can increase pressure on current employees to work harder for the same or less money, and add further "proof" of their fears by doing layoffs and saying recession forced them. That's the wind around explanation I have but the article says it as simply as I think leadership is thinking about it: they probably aren't doing holistic class analysis and nefariously thinking about new and exciting ways to extract more labor for less money, they probably straight up are just trying to increase profit by reducing cost overhead.<p>But I agree with the article that this is in the end just then problem with unfettered capitalism. Incredibly, I had no idea the Ford story about the origins of "fiduciary responsibility to shareholders." Is that an oversimplification? Is that truly the first step down the stairs away from intelligently leveraged capitalism? I assumed the usa was the way it is because of a natural result of what happens when capital accumulates and is allowed to function as a analogue for political power: corporations will accumulate and then wield political power towards the goal of further accumulation. I had no idea the progress made on this front was already enshrined in law in Ford's time.<p>To me this seems inevitable. Corporations are like little AIs with a "never stop growing" directive. When society lets them get away with extracting more labor for less money by framing against recession, what means of protection do employees have, especially in the usa with comparatively minor unemployment benefits and layoff protections. It seems to me the only path forward, if we want then situation to improve for ourselves, is unionization. If we try to change the company from within by working with leadership, we're "activist employees" and a threat to shareholder profit, and get fired. If we wait, we get laid off when they can get away with it.<p>This is all predicated on the idea that the layoffs aren't necessary. The company won't die if the layoffs don't happen. It won't go bankrupt. It will simply be less profitable. And? So what? Does the value of the product change? Does the fact that google.com route basically all internet traffic change? In fact, if they leaned into reducing profit to share among employees, they'd be looking at being a co-op, which are provably more stable than traditional corporations and by some studies, more profitable... Just not for shareholders that don't actually do anything to contribute to that profitability.<p>Edit: reading more into it, the Ford thing doesn't necessarily make it federal law to seek shareholder profit above all other concerns. I don't believe that changes much about my comment: they're still doing this for the shareholders, not the employees.
As people get more intelligent and smarter, the Ad business will die. I'm sure about it.<p>In my whole life, there's no single ad that makes sense for me to see and click, because it's annoying.<p>I love smart search results, not smart ad results.