Google Cuts Managers and VPs in Efficiency Drive (businessinsider.com) 43
Google has reduced its senior management positions by 10% as part of an ongoing efficiency initiative, CEO Sundar Pichai announced during a company-wide meeting earlier this week.
The restructuring affected managers, directors, and vice presidents, with some roles eliminated and others converted to non-management positions, a Google spokesperson told BusinessInsider. The move follows Google's January 2023 layoff of 12,000 employees and Pichai's September 2022 goal to improve company efficiency by 20%.
The restructuring affected managers, directors, and vice presidents, with some roles eliminated and others converted to non-management positions, a Google spokesperson told BusinessInsider. The move follows Google's January 2023 layoff of 12,000 employees and Pichai's September 2022 goal to improve company efficiency by 20%.
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Of course my opinion is worth what you paid for it, and if you have better info, I would enjoy learning about it! (no sarcasm intended)
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Re:If Twitter could do it (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as I can tell, management almost always slows down progress by inserting themselves into technical reviews, among other things
Of course my opinion is worth what you paid for it, and if you have better info, I would enjoy learning about it! (no sarcasm intended)
I guess it depends on the management style. When I managed projects (yes, I am one of *them*), I saw my role as interfacing between the customer and my staff to be sure expectations and requirements were clear, ensuring we had the resources we need, and occasionally stoping someone from "making it better" when it already works fine because often making one thing better broke something else.
Sales people, OTOH, should be locked in a room onsite and allowed to party all day; but every time the customer says "the sales person said it could do..." we get to go in and beat them with clue by fours. Don't even get me started when they come to you and say "You have to do this project for x because that is all the cutter would pay (read: I get a bonus no matter what)..." even if it costs a large multiple of x to actually deliver it.
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At one company I was at it was not uncommon to have sales people come to directly talk to developers, browbeating them into adding features they wanted. Eventually the developer corridor was locked off and the sales badges wouldn't open it. They'd still hang around the door trying to nab people.
Once a sales guy asked if the product did X, and I said no. At which point he glumly said "that's not good, I just sold that feature." This was also the sales guy that came in once happy that he just got his half
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There's a big difference between line managers and higher level managers.
A company simply won't work without line managers. Your employees will end up getting nothing done, either because they weren't told what to do or because they're slacking off.
Middle managers are supposed to tell line managers what to do, develop strategies and allocate resources for their area within the company. The problem is, line managers are already pretty self-motivated and don't need to be constantly monitored, while the rest b
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As a former line manager, I HATED all the strategies and allocating resources and stuff like that. It was all mumbo jumbo to me, and they wanted me to accurately predict what everyone was going to be working on in 12 months. So I was very glad to have a boss who also had a boss to do most of that work for me.
Also you need middle managers otherwise there's someone in the chain that has 50 people to juggle. Sometimes you'll someone in the middle leave, get fired, expire, whatever and then there's some VP,
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I HATED all the strategies and allocating resources and stuff like that. It was all mumbo jumbo to me, and they wanted me to accurately predict what everyone was going to be working on in 12 months. So I was very glad to have a boss who also had a boss to do most of that work for me.
Do they do that accurately or are they just better at bluffing than you?
There's still the misaligned incentives problem. Middle managers don't manage a big enough piece of the company for their performance to affect the company stock price (at least not at the scale of Google), so stock-based compensation isn't that effective. It's more rewarding for them to play politics, build empires and sabotage competing teams.
Also you need middle managers otherwise there's someone in the chain that has 50 people to juggle. Sometimes you'll someone in the middle leave, get fired, expire, whatever and then there's some VP, or even CEO, baffled that someone who does actual work is one of their direct reports.
I'm not saying they should disappear entirely, however, if you ask the lowest rung workers an
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In theory, management should improve progress by reducing mistakes and waste. Unfortunately, it often doesn't work that way.
Management aren't the only culprits for injecting delay and waste, though.
So called product owners and project managers retitled as Scrum Masters can create almost unbounded amounts of busy work even though they might not be officially "management".
I am convinced the solution for that is some kind of arbitrary budget on the busywork tasks, but I haven't figured out how to quantify and
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However... Twitter used to have all of these teams working on things that were not approved then the senior managers would fight about what was or was not going live. A lot of work went towards things that never got released or were released years after they were done. It was due to Jack's management style which by all accounts was pretty bad. Now that hes gone and they have a dictator with a massive ego and is w
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This. Twitter's revenue has been plummeting since Musk took over in 2022. [businessofapps.com] Its user-base growth has slowed way down and its market valuation has gone down from 44 B$ to 24 B$.
Someone should tell saloomy that whatever Twitter/X is doing now, it doesn't apopear to be helping the bottom line.
Twitter was overvalued (Score:2)
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I assumed that the frist post was parody.
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I plead Poe's Law. I don't know saloomy's style.
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Mostly I assume that if it's on Slashdot that it's a parody.
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Twitter? That cesspool of stupidity? Well, sure, there are a lot of stupid people out there, but drawing them all in is hardly a positive accomplishment.
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Jobs worldwide are going down for sure (Score:4, Insightful)
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There may be technological reasons, but I wonder about what banks and elites do to focus on asset bubbles and wealth extraction. I have nothing against elites or corporations, but maybe there's perverse incentives at play. Maybe the game is to create funny money rather than genuine things of value.
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1) raise government debt by bailing everyone out
2) buy bonds
3) ???
4) profit
lol jk there is no step 3
Re: Jobs worldwide are going down for sure (Score:2)
During and after COVID most business were growing by absolutely stupid amounts. We'll be seeing corrections for years. That's not the same as shrinking the business, it's not even a sign the business isn't doing well. It's just not growing like it was 2019-2021, which was insane.
https://m.macrotrends.net/stoc... [macrotrends.net] https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
When you hear about cuts in the IT industry look at their headcount year by year from 2019. A 4% reduction makes the news but consecutive years of 15-20% growth don'
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Shrink domestic jobs. Bunch of ingrates who think they deserve time off to say hello to the spouse. Just dump them and outsource everything. Outsource the hardware to the cloud, and outsource the people to Elbonia, and sublease all the buildings to crypto miners.
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No, just jobs at big-name companies, who over-hired during the COVID pandemic. Jobs in general, and tech jobs in general, are still in huge demand. Unemployment is still at historic lows, including tech unemployment.
Maybe decide on an objective first? (Score:5, Insightful)
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If anything the workload will increase post layoff. Fear will drive the employees to work longer hours in order to keep getting a paycheck. Since the job market isn't great right now, a lot of mediocre employees will not have any choice but to buckle down and do what management tells them to do.
If you have the financial means, or are one are lucky enough to get another job lined up. Get out. The problem with quitting and working for someone else is it typically won't be much better anywhere else, and you us
Not efficient enough (Score:4, Funny)
Cut Pichai's total compensation by 10%. That seems efficient.
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Typical end-of-year short term thinking.
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It's also the board and shareholders being insufficiently cutthroat. Cutting CXO pay is the next frontier in investor relations.
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Given that he is in the process of slowly killing Google, it would be better to throw him out completely. That would also save a lot of money.
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He'd just be replaced by someone who makes as much or more money.
I already told you (Score:5, Funny)
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super-l0l
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While I deal with customers personally, having a good manager there to help, coordinate and organize things is _very_ nice and _very_ valuable. Good managers are facilitators.
\o/ Only 90% to go (Score:1)
90% of managers feeling their positions under threat, up their game to ensure that they're able to prevent progress more than the original 100%.
Management bloat happens (Score:2)
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I like the euphemism... (Score:2)
I like the euphemism of "improve efficiency" as in "terminate in the workforce" by some percentage. GM did something like this in the 1980s with "the frozen middle" of middle management.
JoshK.
Managers can be good (Score:3)
There are good managers. Like the ones that discern what resources are needed and arrange for those resources. Like the ones that intercept useless meetings and requests. Like the ones that champion good work in their group so that the work is used in the company and is rewarded.
Re:Managers can be good (Score:5, Insightful)
I have met and worked with a small number of good managers. They try to understand what you want to do, then ask what they can do to help and keep all the bureaucratic BS from bogging you down. The very best can also find people for you to talk to when you need to do something specific or figure something out. A good manager realizes he/she is a _helper_ with specialist knowledge in how to deal with their organization. A bad manager is under the delusion of being a "leader".
More like "enshittification drive" (Score:3)
It seems, for example, YouTube is getting ever more arbitrary in banning, demonetizing and otherwise harassing creators. The cases where not even the people inside Google can find out what happened seem to be mounting. Short-term, that may be good for profits. Long-term, that is deadly. Well, nothing of value will be lost when Google dies.
Welcome AI (Score:1)