[jjjjoe]

The reason the word "inept" keeps coming up is just how opaque and senseless to the rank and file the January 2023 layoffs were. High performers, low performers, newest hires, most tenure: we saw all kinds of heads roll. I saw a team lose its sole TL with a decade+ of tenure on the team, then turn around and hire 4-6 people to try and catch up. A growing deployment team was actively hiring before and after it got a 6% haircut.

The simplest explanation would be that every cost center/P&L had to offer up 6% of its people, regardless of that cost center's overall trajectory, place in company strategy or open headcount. And that every cost center's VP or general manager or whatever just got collared by HR, was given a list on a piece of paper and couldn't leave until they chose 6% by ...whatever metric they came up with on the spot.

Whatever actually happened I'll never know, but what I've seen was 100% compatible with that theory. Which in turn looks pretty inept.

[willio58]

> I saw a team lose its sole TL with a decade+ of tenure on the team, then turn around and hire 4-6 people to try and catch up.

My god.. That's pure ineptitude and I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now. This basically sends the message "doesn't matter how good you are, we're going to spin the wheel every so often and if it lands on you you're out"

[foofie]

> This basically sends the message "doesn't matter how good you are, we're going to spin the wheel every so often and if it lands on you you're out"

The conspiracy theory that's making the rounds is that these rounds of layoffs from tech firms have zero to do with financial reports or economy downturns, and are instead a coordinated effort, along with RTO policies, to wrestle negotiation power from tech workers and put downward pressure on tech salaries. Hence the apparent lack of criteria and indiscriminate layoffs complemented with hiring rounds.

I recall that a FANG ordered managers to decimate their teams while ramping up hiring on teams located in the same building, and HR openly rejected the idea of even having employees in the chopping block interview for those positions.

[bsimpson]

I've also heard it positioned as an age discrimination loophole to fire your seniors and replace them with juniors, while calling the whole thing a macroeconomic-driven layoff.

[datacruncher01]

I'd say the simpler answer is likely the right one. Rates being higher means it's more expensive for the business to maintain it's cash flow. Shouldn't be an issue for a company like Google but here's the rub, an exec at one public company sees a peer at another (that's probably doing worse financially) drop headcount and a rise in stock, if that exec doesn't do the same they get perceived as not doing enough and see a dip in stock. So they drop headcount too.

While it sucks for those who get the boot, this has the benefit of raising salaries overall. Because the company that does this usually cuts too much and has to later rehire at market rates which rise over time.

[darreninthenet]

Is there no law in the US that requires an employer to find a job for somebody before firing? And that includes being allowed to apply for open roles...

[lotsofpulp]

Barring an agreement to the contrary, employers and employees can terminate employment any time they want, except in Montana, as long as the termination is not due to the employee being in a protected class.

[darreninthenet]

So apart from the protected class thing, there's no concept of wrongful dismissal in the US?

And what's different in Montana?

[lotsofpulp]

Montana has a state law requiring “good cause”:

https://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/title_0390/chapter_0020/part_00...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

[johnnyanmac]

Nope, not unless you're let go due to slander/libel. Even then I'm not sure if that means you guarantee your job back.

Some states have stronger protections in terms of how much warning an employee gets or severerance. But it's not widespread.

[EvanKnowles]

We had this, but HR moved so slowly that the (good) guy that was fired was still there when the new guy arrived.

[MuffinFlavored]

> I'm sorry for anyone at that company right now

The average total compensation for an engineer is $250k-$350k/yr+

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-Sa...

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Citrix,UKG,American%2...

[refulgentis]

It's hard to describe the pure absolute hell that can be working there, you'd be surprised how quickly the money becomes not worth it.

[scarmig]

It all depends on the team, of course, but hell really isn't a good way to describe Google employment. Of the half dozen companies I've worked for, Google consistently offered better life quality than the others, even ignoring the money. (I'd go so far as to say that Google is almost too lax in how it treats employees.)

[refulgentis]

Right, honestly I shouldn't have posted the 2 sentence version, and we'd need to have a beer and an hour to even begin understanding now that I started from there.

But, what I'd say in another flippant sentence, since I'm tempted again: exactly, and that's the problem.

I had a great time, will be forever proud and grateful, and there's more to life than work. But, it left me with a permanently jaundiced view of a lot of things I used to admire, and I saw the worst, most careless, self-centered, behavior I've seen in my life there.

[scarmig]

I went through a progression, where I was first accepted to Google (genuinely one of the most exciting moments of my life), and I gradually fell into a deeper and deeper cynicism as I saw all my fantasies about how the world should work evaporate. Maybe it was just growing up. Even the "best company in the world that does no evil" is really just a bunch of profit-mongering assholes.

That said, so is the rest of the world, at least in my experience. So long as you go into it with open eyes about what it really is, Google is a pretty solid experience. You should never identify with it or sympathize with it, but if you approach it as a parasite hoping to extract as much value from you as it can, it offers a pretty great personal opportunity. You've just got to keep in mind that it is not your friend, it is not looking out for your best interests, and it is definitely not not evil.

[ipdashc]

This feels excessive... ? It's Google, not a coal mine.

[red-iron-pine]

coal mines are only hellish while you're down. yeah there is the black lung, but you can wear filters.

the goog tracks you (and everyone) 24-7, and depending on teams and egos, could be ugly. you spend your whole life tryin to get to FAANG tier, and now it's miserable.

[pests]

Is this sarcasm?

[RCitronsBroker]

this comment is really something

[sitkack]

I work at Google, fuck em. The whole place is toxic. I hope it is at peak larping lord of the flies. But if anything about modern history has taught me anything is that there is always lower.

Those 12k people they fucked over for zero real benefit, represented due to how Google hires, 240K interviews (5% accept rate). Let’s say they only did the screen. Still minimum 2 hrs, interview plus write up. 500k hours. 250 years of FTE time just in interviews flushed down the fucking toilet. And they are blowing the doors off the place hiring in LATAM.

And the bs just keeps coming by the dump truck full.

[refulgentis]

Bless. People don't grasp how it's gotten much worse than even bad workplaces. So complicated to explain.

I got pushed out, by an overworking bootlicker hiring their friend with 0 domain experience. Ultimate event was them and shiftless PM lying and said design VP had 0 interest in a project they had been asking for three years. They got away with it completely because SWE management closed ranks and pretended that was normal because fuck design, right? And I was very evil for not just being like "oh that totally makes sense that they don't care at all" (i.e. the PM got nuclear pissed because his boss' boss' boss got called in for a 2nd meeting with the design VP)

All that to say, your comment about LATAM reminded me how much it fucking. sucked. having management pull that in December 2022, and realize there wasn't any escape hatch to an anonymous org elsewhere, because all the roles are in Poland / India / etc.

Flashbacks to my 45 year old dad bitterly complaining about mass off-shoring in tech when I was 10. Now I get it. It's not that it doesn't make sense, we all know the $. What's evil is the lying and games.

[bdangubic]

that is supposed make you not feel sorry, $250k-$350k…? feel sorry for you for posting this…

[CamelCaseName]

Is it possible they did this on purpose to expand their team size?

[refulgentis]

No that's absolutely bonkers and an edge case. 5 women don't have a baby in 1.8 months, and headcount has been frozen-ish since late 2021 unless you're Bard, so we're looking at someone dangerously stupid sticking their neck out to over-compensate, for no good reason, and inexperienced with basic tech shibboleths.

Also, the large firing decisions in January 2023 and January 2024 were made up several steps up the ladder. There's been probably just as much firings done informally inbetween, and to your point, some were very purposeful: multiple people in Assistant org. reported independently that new directors and their couterie were grafted onto the org, they were shuffled onto "Still Very Important" Assistant teams, then the not-so-important Assistant teams were let go en masse.

[bluepizza]

> 5 women don't have a baby in 1.8 months

They have 5 (or more) babies in 9 months, which is precisely the point of empire building: being able to handle more than one priority.

[refulgentis]

Sure, except, it was 1 employee replaced by 5, and there isn't headcount backfill.

[Rastonbury]

I don't find that story believable, you don't layoff then open backfill or let alone multiple roles on the team. The handful of Googlers I spoke to are now in smaller teams handling the same workload. If true it must've been some AI related team

[PeterStuer]

Absolutely, and tick more boxes on things other than merit and 'gets the job done'.

[arvinsim]

Not uncommon. Take out the old guard and hire new people for empire building.

[jjjjoe]

no.

[dilyevsky]

If you think managers everywhere dont employ this tactic i have a bridge to sell you

[pooper]

Absolutely. There was a leaked memo iirc from Microsoft that prohibited "exceeds expectations".

And then there's the antipoaching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipoaching

[ryloric]

If you have some ambition and desire to work hard, large parts of Google were already wrong places to be in 2010-11.

I went in bright eyed, excited about the challenging work I would get to do, but instead found inept co-workers happy to do minimal amount of work while enjoying the perks and chilling most of the time. Couple that with the undeserved air of smugness many co-workers carried and the cult-like social environment... it was already not a great place to be, at the very least the team I was part of.

[belter]

Its almost like Developers need...A Union....

[avidiax]

Google has a union (AWU). It is currently protesting in support of Gaza.

[filoleg]

Anecdotal side-tangent: had a terrible second-hand experience with AWU.

I was an employee, and a friend of mine was interviewing at Google. After one of his interviews, he called me up and asked if I heard of AWU. I was not sure what prompted that, but I said I was roughly familiar with AWU, and then my friend elaborated on what went down.

Turns out, his interviewer spent half the interview just buzzing my friend’s ears off about AWU and trying to recruit him to join before my friend even got the offer.

And then my friend told me the exact details of what was said about AWU and what they do, and my ears just rolled up, because I realized that he was getting coaxed by an AWU member with a bunch exaggerations and half-truths. Mostly about the perceived self-importance of AWU, how much they actually accomplish, and what they actually do.

Left a sour taste in my mouth, because doing this as an interviewer is imo pretty unethical.

[true_religion]

Many unions have a goal that no one should be hired unless they are already a union member.

[filoleg]

If AWU’s goal is to waste valuable candidate time during the interview process on AWU propaganda (involving a bunch of misleading statements and half-lies about their group, on top of that), then perhaps my personal goal would be to report every single interviewer doing this (if I catch any during the feedback review sessions) and get them barred from interviewing candidates moving forward.

I don’t have anything against AWU specifically and am fully in favor of following this tactic for absolutely any group that tries to waste a candidate’s time in similar ways during an interview.

If the candidate asked for more info on this during the informal discussion during first/last 10 mins of the interview, that’s fine. It is also fine if the interviewer decided to disclose the info about their group briefly without being prompted (just like other interviewers might mention being involved in an ERG or some employee club or whatever). But it is imo not fine to shill it without being prompted for half the interview timeslot. Doubly so when you do it using a bunch of half-truths and almost outright lies.

P.S. That experience almost turned away my friend from wanting to work for Google, because he was afraid that this was the “typical Google experience.” I had to assure him that this was an outlier and not representative of how the rest of the people working here were like. Luckily, the rest of his interviewers were great, and he trusted me enough to believe me about this not being normal, so he took the offer once he got it.

[berniedurfee]

One possible explanation is that companies try to avoid discrimination lawsuits by laying off employees in a way that provides plausible deniability of discrimination.

That tends to mean broad sweeping layoffs that select whole orgs, functions, lines of business or locations.

Often that means rehiring (sometimes the same people) to rebuild what was lost by some broad sweeping blind decision.

There’s also some gaming that goes on beforehand to protect key people by shifting them around to get them out of the selection group.

So yes, opaque and senseless may have been a purposeful strategy.

[trashface]

Probably age discrimination. Fire broadly and you'll catch a lot of older workers, then rehire younger later.

[Ferret7446]

Was the TL in a high cost area, and the replacements junior SWEs in low cost areas? It's likely that they have a set budget for human resource (for lack of a better term), so they're cutting the "high cost items". Unfortunately, institutional knowledge/skill doesn't show up on a spreadsheet.

[winrid]

the better term would be "people"

[jjjjoe]

I've been on the receiving end of that kind of "reorganization" and this didn't look like that.

EDIT: Specifically, replacements were not "cheap".

[MichaelZuo]

Making it an even percentage across the company is pretty common, it prevents middle management infighting and horse trading over who has to cut more and who gets to cut less.

The actual decisions about which specific individuals, after the percentage is arrived at, however seems questionable if what you say is true.

[jjjjoe]

This thinking is taught in MBA programs but does not map onto real businesses. If you're in the ice cube business and you made the profoundly unwise decision to set up vending machines in Inuit communities, you don't recover by laying off x% of both your Alaskan retail and Caribbean Cruise wholesale businesses.

[MichaelZuo]

You do if you have multiple primadonnas in middle management that can’t come to an agreement otherwise, and if you can’t sack them due to other factors that require years to resolve.

The real world is thousands of times more complex then ‘MBA programs’ or theoretical examples from people who haven’t been in the hot seat making such serious decisions.

[hiptobecubic]

If your management team can't figure out how to do what you're asking, maybe you should be firing them instead. If _no one_ can figure it out, maybe you should be firing you.

[MichaelZuo]

You don’t need to pretend to have such an expertise, its fine to admit you’ve never actually handled such serious matters before.

[ryloric]

Lmao, most creative example ever.

[the_70x]

No matter what. Capital wants results and dividends.

[slowmovintarget]

"The AI just auto-fired [6%] of the company!"