Google Employees Brace for a Cost-Cutting Drive as Anxiety Mounts (nytimes.com) 66
Google has so far taken steps to streamline without mass layoffs, but employees are girding for deeper cuts. From a report: Google workers in Switzerland sent a letter this month to the company's vice president of human resources, outlining their worries that a new employee evaluation system could be used to cull the work force. "The number and spread of reports that reached us indicates that at least some managers were aggressively pressured to apply a quota" on a process that could lead to employees getting negative ratings and potentially losing their jobs, five workers and employee representatives wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times. The letter signaled how some Google employees are increasingly interpreting recent management decisions as warnings that the company may be angling to conduct broader layoffs. From the impending closure of a small office and the cancellation of a content-moderation project to various efforts to ease budgets during 2023 planning meetings, the Silicon Valley behemoth has become a tinderbox of anxiety, according to interviews with 14 current and former employees.
In some cases, Google employees have reacted to a program that the company began in July to simplify operations, cut red tape and make itself more productive. In other instances, they have had budget conversations, with some teams unable to hire more next year, the people said. And workers have also fretted over decisions made months ago that, to some, have taken on new meaning, they said. The worries have grown as Google's tech industry peers have handed out pink slips amid a souring global economy. Last month, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, purged its ranks by 11,000, or about 13 percent of its work force. Amazon also began laying off about 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs, or about 3 percent of its corporate employees.
In some cases, Google employees have reacted to a program that the company began in July to simplify operations, cut red tape and make itself more productive. In other instances, they have had budget conversations, with some teams unable to hire more next year, the people said. And workers have also fretted over decisions made months ago that, to some, have taken on new meaning, they said. The worries have grown as Google's tech industry peers have handed out pink slips amid a souring global economy. Last month, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, purged its ranks by 11,000, or about 13 percent of its work force. Amazon also began laying off about 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs, or about 3 percent of its corporate employees.
Twitter (Score:3, Insightful)
If this was Twitter there would be an outcry.
What's the difference?
I don't get the Musk-hate.
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If this was Twitter there would be an outcry.
What Elno did was illegal, you can't just fire that many people with that little notice.
I don't get the Musk-hate.
He's not a bigger piece of shit than anyone else in his class, he's just calling attention to it constantly.
Re:Twitter (Score:5, Informative)
What Elno did was illegal, you can't just fire that many people with that little notice.
Mass layoffs are legal with at least 60 days' warning, which includes any period covered by severance pay. Musk gave them 90 days' severance.
Musk has done plenty of illegal stuff, but the Twitter pruning wasn't one of them.
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Let's not forget Twitter Japan.
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You're leaving out the important bits (Score:3, Interesting)
He also brought a bunch of people back and cut them off from any useful work in an effort to make them quit so he doesn't have to pay severance. In America that's legal and a rat bastard thing to do. In Europe he's already being sued for it and will lose.
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If someone wants to fire me by keeping me on payroll with no useful work, I will just keep on upgrading myself while on company time, if I am not being asked to do any official work at that time.
Maybe plan what I want to do after the company finally fires me. Or, look for a better job while still on the payroll, and don't have to rush since am still "working" and getting paid for the forseeable future.
I doubt they can change my job scope to move to a position which is physically demanding or something to fo
That sounds good in theory (Score:2)
Most deserving corporate cancer? (Score:3)
Sounds to me like you [drinkypoo] are feeding a diversive troll. They seemed to have changed their tactics lately. The Subject wasn't even as vacuous as usual.
Back on the original story, my feeling is mostly disappointment. I had such high hopes that the google was going to make the world better, but it devolved (as usual) into a race to the bottom for more loot. Lots of real world problems that could use solutions, but the fake problem of "needing" more profit is never going to be solved.
Using various deba
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Sounds to me like you [drinkypoo] are feeding a diversive troll.
I sometimes find them useful. The trick is to not become angry.
I had such high hopes that the google was going to make the world better, but it devolved (as usual) into a race to the bottom for more loot. [...] I could argue that the corporate cancers are innocent and mindless machines that don't deserve to die, but then I remember the lobbyists. They are still paying to make the bad game worse.
No, look, everyone is doing that, only to differing degrees. The customers are doing it, the shareholders are doing it, but the executives and the lawyers are doing it the most — and deriving the most benefit. We know who the most responsible parties are, and their various shares of the responsibility can be easily measured in the currency units of your choice.
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I have trouble blaming the customers. The main thing is that most of them aren't motivated to care that much. For example, how many of them ever subscribe to Consumer Reports? (Long ago I did for a year or two.) Or even telephone their congress critter to complain about a company?
But it may be because I still have the "customer is gawd" mentality? (In the old IBM it was Principle 2 of three. The new IBM is completely different with LOTS of vacuous principles.)
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What did Elon do that was illegal?
I can explain the musk hate (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I can explain the musk hate (Score:5, Insightful)
His space company is just another run of the mill contractor building NASA designs.
He may be all the other things you said(don't know enough, to comment on everything else you stated), but this is one thing I have to disagree with. He practically invented (maybe not by himself, but by motivating / paying a bunch of people) reusable rockets. And don't tell me space shuttles are reusable.
NASA sure as hell did not design Falcon, and neither have they designed Starship. Both are inhouse designs of SpaceX. And when he wanted to do reusable rockets, people actually laughed at him, saying that it was impossible. I understand he is very handson with the rockets. From the planning stages onwards.
Yes, Musk has been acting as an asshole often nowdays. And yes, he let's his mouth run out of control often.
But even a rose(SpaceX) can grow on a pile of manure.
And yes, there is always a chance that Musk's mouth gets SpaceX into trouble as well. Am aware that he almost screwed up Starlink with the sudden payment demands from Ukraine.
Oh, as for Tesla, that company pretty much pushed EV vehicles into the mindspace of pretty much everyone who owns/wants to own a vehicle. Does not matter if from Tesla or VW or GM or whoever.
I suspect without Tesla(Musk) pushing EV hard, we will still be thinking of EV as not being practical/affordable for most people. Now, even if Tesla goes bankrupt tomorrow, the EV train has started and it will not stop and many people will want to have an EV option.
So yeah, he can be bad in many ways, but he has done at least a couple of things that has and will keep on changing the world for the better.
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It's the classic pattern we see with basic research where the expensive research is done by the government because no private citizen is going to put up the money for something that could take 20 or 30 years to pay off. So instead they wait for the government to d
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Show me one company or person who has not stood on the shoulders of giants to make something new.
If it was so easy, Boeing, Lockheed or someone else would have done it before him.
After all they all have (or maybe had now, compared to SpaceX) deep pockets and all sorts of government connections and contracts, etc.
The fact is noone else who wanted to, could. And those who could have, did not.
Yes much basic research is done by government or paid by grants (like in universities). But unfortunately this is how i
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I know this seems counterintuitive but a lot of things are counterintuitive.
What musk has done is make electric vehicles a luxury item that requires heavy government subsidies in order to make practical. So for example the tax credits are only really of any use to upper income individuals. Those kind of individuals would most likely be driving newer zero emissions luxury vehicles that don't go very far in the secondary market beca
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He practically invented (maybe not by himself, but by motivating / paying a bunch of people) reusable rockets.
Prior art:
* MD-X Delta Clipper (first flight 1993). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
* Rotary Rocket (first flight 2001). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
* Kistler K-1 (wins NASA contract in 2004). Musk LOST the contract, got lucky later when Kistler filed bankruptcy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
How did SpaceX succeed? Deep pockets. Excluding the MD was an early design and probably too expensive, the next two contenders went bankrupt without that wealthy boss who could afford a longer development on h
Not just deep pockets (Score:2)
Remember, without Tesla's valuation Musk is essentially broke. He doesn't own any property or have any particular
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If it was so easy, Boeing, Lockheed or someone else would have done it before him.
After all they all have (or maybe had now, compared to SpaceX) deep pockets and all sorts of government connections and contracts, etc.
The fact is noone else who wanted to, could. And those who could have, did not.
Maybe Musk just was at the right place at the right time with the right resources. But whatever it is, he has brought along alot more affordable access to space.
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If it was so easy, Boeing, Lockheed or someone else would have done it before him.
And that's exactly what happened. McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) did it before him and 1 unrelated startup did it before him. Check the links. (I did not say it was easy.)
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he's a fraud. He's a college drop out who was gifted a phony degree so he wouldn't get deported (yes, this really happened).
Interesting. And a lot more in line with his observable performance than what he claims his education is. That person is a moron with bad self-control that accidentally got a lot of money. Still, got a reference?
And that scares me and many like me. Because once you can get a large number of people to reject reality you can do some really nasty shit.
Indeed. The very principle all religions, cults and quasi-religions are built on. Organized evil, often build around one "leader" figure that usually has a lot of charisma, but not a lot of actual skills.
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If this was Twitter there would be an outcry.
What's the difference?
I don't get the Musk-hate.
See down below? Those are your people. That is their outcry. There is a whole class of people who agree with you. There are their arguments.
That's the funny thing. They can put out hundreds of messages every day about how their free speech is infringed, they can make weird ideas that their leaders, like Musk or Trump are being discriminated against and censored, or make postings asking why no one is mentioning their latest outrage, while simple google search shows nothing is being suppressed.
They can
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I don't get the Musk-hate.
He’s become nothing but a whiny little piss baby. Me and everyone else never cared where his jet flew but since he started flipping out about people tracking it I watch it in realtime now on its own dedicated site. He claimed to be bringing free speech back to twitter but has banned anyone who makes fun of him or points out his hypocrisy. He told the remaining employees they can’t work from home and need to put in 80 hours a week at the office. Meanwhile he runs multiple companies simultaneously
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Google is D-friendly, as Twitter once was (to put it mildly).
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Who will ensure that only the "upper class" have robots? The same people who made sure that cars, computers, and cell phones are unavailable to the masses?
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They will design it and hog it for themselves.
Except tensor processors are already available to anyone, and the code to design neural networks is open source.
It looks like "they" didn't get the memo that they were supposed to hoard the technology.
eating caviar and foie gras
They have to eat fish eggs and liver? I'm sure glad I'm not one of "them".
Everyone should be quitting (Score:2)
Every person at google should quit. But I don't think enough people have enough money saved to weather the storm. So once again you will do as the rich say and lose your jobs because shareholders need that extra $0.02 dividend
Re: Everyone should be quitting (Score:4, Interesting)
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Letâ(TM)s see if the layoffs have a high correlation with people who participated in collective action. These waves of layoffs aren't so much for making a short term buck, though they will have that effect, but for squashing the current trend of unionization in the US.
AFAIK, the only unionization at Google involves contractors, not employees, and those contractors already presumably cost way less than employees, so firing their cheapest labor to discourage unionization seems like it would be an unlikely and unwise move.
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And because you're not doing this to American citizens nobody's ever going to do a class action lawsuit cuz it won't go anywhere. The employees in the country are going to be too afraid to
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You should quit using google. But I don't think you can. So once again you will bitch and complain and continue to use SOMETHING google (be it search, youtube, android, chrome/derivatives) and be a hypocrite because you want everything without paying for it.
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Mod parent up though it forgot to mention Gmail.
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Remember when it was cool and special.. (Score:2)
..to work at Google ?
Now you're just another disposable cog in the big machine.
Welcome to reality.
Reality check hits Silicon Valley (Score:5, Interesting)
Silicon Valley has just going thru a huge reality check and found themselves far off it. They grew up to unsustainable companies, now in the need to act. Add into the equation the ease of vocalizing, provided by, uh, some of them themselves via social media companies and we are now hearing what many other companies have been thru the years since the Industrial Revolution days, bar the noise. If you have never been laid off before, either you are a public/government worker or you are in your earlier working days. But fret not, this is how life works. Like, the real life.
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It's like none of the shitposters here were alive during the dot.com bust of the late 90s.
I had plenty of friends who went from being millionaires (on paper at least) to trying to scrape out any job they could.
Cry me a river (Score:2)
Many companies have gone through cutbacks over the past couple years, and Big Tech is not immune. Since COVID, the manufacturer I work for cut almost 35% of its workforce. Hell, our IT department went from 7 to 3, and I've been expected to pick up the slack. Yes, it sucks that so many are gone, but I continued to work hard, I showed consistent commitment, and since then, I received a promotion.
You aren't entitled to a job. You have to prove your worth. Do companies take advantage? Absolutely. But your posit
Jobs Will Reappear Where Work is Cheaper (Score:2)
well the sad truth of it (Score:3)
Google is great. It's really good. But its an advertising company. The search engine is pretty good but it's not good enough that people would actually pay for it. Most google products are like this: good, but not good enough that somebody would be willing to pay for it. Products that aren't good enough to pay for probably shouldn't exist, and the jobs that make them probably shouldn't exist either.
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Twitter will run fine as long as nothing needs patched or upgraded. Like taking your hands off the steering wheel on the highway. You’ll be fine for a while.
Just find a better job (Score:2)
Google is slow, inflexible, bureaucratic and pretty much openly does not care whether they do evil these days. Unless you are smart but have no non-Google skills, finding something better should be easy.