The Verge reported that CEO Sundar Pichai defended the layoffs and claimed that workers sometimes reach out to express gratitude for the cuts. “And I just want to clarify that, through these changes, people feel it on the ground and sometimes people write back and say, ‘Thank you for simplifying.’ Sometimes we have a complicated, duplicative structure,” he said, per the Verge.
Chalmers: People send thank you’s for lay offs?
Pichai: Yes.
Chalmers: May I see one?
Pichai: No.
- Who writes an email directly to the CEO of their company, and
- Who would that email have to be from for the CEO to actually bother reading it?
I’m guessing it’s not your rank-and-file type “people”.
Managers from unaffected departments who are glad they have less internal competition. And that’s pretty much it.
Certainly only certain people have email addresses that can even send to his inbox. Everyone else would be blocked.
“a lot of people are saying” = the voices in my head are telling me
“This is a conversation I could imagine happening if I spoke to my employees directly, and that’s as good as an actual conversation.”
Yeah that whole line smells like pure bullshit. I’ve never seen anyone be grateful for having their coworkers laid off.
I can imagine it, but just a few really awful people. Google, like any company, will have some extreme right-wingers working for it. And, working for Google tends to go with big egos. I can imagine some dude looking at his stock options thinking “yes, all those useless people were holding down the value of my options, now that they’re gone I’m going to be rich”.
We had a coworker that got fired a while back, man that was a relief for the entire department. That person was absolutely toxic to work with, or even near.
Fired and laid off are different. The people who were laid off weren’t let go because they were a drag on their teams or their departments, but because theoretically the company didn’t have enough work for them.
Who could’ve imagined that Google is becoming just as mediocre and boring as any other large corporation. What a surprise!
They’ve long been quite mediocre judging by the incredible long hours of those working there and shit quality of basically any technical framework they put out.
They have shoved tons of resources into some things (such as Android) and thus at times succeeded (though usually they don’t), but in terms of quality from a technical point of view (i.e. software design, technical architecture) their stuff looks like it was hammered together by a bunch of junior devs.
Lucky timing followed by some smart strategical decisions (and, seemingly, lots of money together with a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks management strategy) are what made Google, not excellence.
It’s unfair to discount Google’s early days. They DID have technical excellence. Search was leagues better than the competition. Gmail was an amazing leap from other providers. Android started as trash but improved rapidly. The Nexus line of phones was amazing. Google Maps was a huge improvement over what else existed. They did a lot right.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when the fall started. Was it when Pichai became CEO? When they removed “don’t be evil?” I remember a speech Pichai gave where he talked about “more wood behind fewer arrows” as why they were getting rid of employee child projects, so maybe it was that.
Gmail was an amazing leap from other providers.
Gmail really wasn’t any better than Hotmail at first, it was just that they gave you a huge (at the time) amount of storage, when Hotmail users regularly had to delete old mail or attachments.
Android started as trash
It started off by beating the pants off of iOS in terms of features, but was not nearly as polished.
Definitely not trash. But also not polished for the masses.
It became this in approximately 2009 - 2010, around when the founders left and the business bros took over. We’ve been seeing the slow decline since then, though it may be accelerating now.
I loved Google for so long, but they have really lost it. I switched back to Firefox last year as a meek sign of protest. My work still uses Gmail and my personal email is still Gmail, it’s gonna be rough to extricate myself. My fucking phone number is Google voice
It’s happening at my company right now. We just merged. I got a taste of power, performed well, then got written up for spending too much time on my power project. Now they have neutered any power I had, and I’m a glorified babysitter and messenger. The hunt now begins in earnest.
Damn that sucks. I’ve been laid off before, and I was lucky enough to have a bunch of references and ins at other jobs right away.
Just keep making friends and building marketable skills on the company dime, is what I am doing anyway
Yes, I’m in no danger of being fired it doesn’t seem. I’ve been there 6 years and have an enormous amount of knowledge of our product and operations. And it was just a ‘verbal counseling’ (which is written down, sent to HR, and added to your record; totally verbal though). So I’ll just keep on project managing timelines and crap, and collecting my Pacheck. But now I have like 8 months of successful product management under my belt to add to the resume
I thought the same thing at 5 years, and everyone I heard from said it was a mistake to lay me off. Last I heard, my responsibilities were being split up between 3 people. On top of that I found out I was getting underpaid, so I was a good deal on top of that :p
Anyway despite all that, I still wasn’t part of whatever vision upper management had going forward, so they gave me a sweet severance and sent me on my way. I’m not mad, but it’s definitely made me careful not to expect my job to be safe.
Last time I was laid off it started with “we need to really nail down the docs for these systems”.
No one ever gives you extra time for documentation.
Like you, my responsibilities were split between 2 or 3 people.
I’ll never again do documentation that well. Fuck 'em. That’s not true - I will, for myself.
Those are really stupid managers.
If you don’t have docs it’s a tough competition between having your more knowledgeable devs re-explaining what they know X times to X new hires, or letting new devs figure it out on their own which is both costly in terms of their time and more importantly, risky as hell.
Bad managers love risk though. Since it usually is a choice between speed now and risk later, it only blows up in your face later, and quite spectacularly, and everyone looks like heroes while they are putting fires out on overtime.
That said good managers probably don’t tolerate that shit from bad managers under them and can sniff out a firefighter culture pretty quick.
I guess what I meant to say was, managers that value doc do exist. If they really do, they’ll let you know.
“Becoming”?
“Don’t be evil”. Not-evil people don’t need to say such things.
Also, any large organization is a shit show, regardless of what it’s organized for. It’s the nature of humanity.
A (former) boss used to say “if you have 3 employees you have nine problems”.
“Don’t be evil”. Not-evil people don’t need to say such things.
That was a reference to Microsoft. They were on trial / convicted for abusing their monopoly in awful ways to screw over any potential competitors, and making the experience terrible for Microsoft users. As bad as Google might be today, they’re nowhere near as bad as Microsoft was. And, in the early years, they were definitely the anti-Microsoft in the tech world.
They famously threw out “Don’t be evil” when they formed Alphabet, a move that was, I have to admit, surprisingly honest of them.
It was a Warrant Canary
Only Google? Management is forged on that mostly
I feel like the editor that wrote the headline missed the main point of the article. The headline makes the article sound like there are a bunch of dumb and boring middle managers at Google. The actual article has nothing to do with people’s direct bosses or even their bosses’ bosses. The article was about how Google execs are ruining the company to appease the shareholders. Best quote from the article is:
“We get that execs are excited about Google’s future,” another question reportedly said. “Why should we be excited, when we might get laid off and not be around to share in that future? If we lose our jobs and equity grants, it’s cold comfort that Google is succeeding off our hard work, and we don’t get rewarded for it, but you do.”
IMO one thing I think should be made into law is that if a company grants unvested equity, everything granted will automatically vest when you get laid off.
If you decide to quit before they vest, I understand that those grants should be forfeited. If you get fired for not doing your job, I also get forfeiting them.
But if the company lays you off, that’s on their side, so I think the opposite (automatic vesting) should be guaranteed by law.
I had to verify the current situation in the United States is what you stated because it’s intuitively so wrong. I can’t believe an employer can set terms for compensation and, through no fault of the employee, legally prevent that employee from completing those terms.
Land of the free!
Yeah, my company just re-organized their shares and reset my vesting schedule after 5 years. And are trying to get rid of me.
Reset the schedule for shares they already granted you? Or for future grants?
Ones they already granted me
Do you have a signed agreement with them on the original schedule? I don’t think it’s legal for them to unilaterally change that agreement.
Don’t know anything about their case, but an acquaintance of mine works for a company that got bought and their vests just evaporated the moment the company changed hands ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Illegal. Sue them.
You’re right. Google employs over 140k people.
If the average team is 8-10 people, this article is kinda complaining about 10000+ people being shitty at their jobs.
When really, middle managers are also part of the same worker class.
It’s the same everywhere. Companies will kick people out when they want to. Any talk of family or loyalty is extreamly manipulative.
From the article:
“And I just want to clarify that, through these changes, people feel it on the ground and sometimes people write back and say, ‘Thank you for simplifying.’ Sometimes we have a complicated, duplicative structure”
Employees think leadership is out of touch. This statement from the CEO proves this problem exists and starts at the top.
Fuck Scott Adams.
A good example of a bottom-feeding boomer who went batshit insane.
This makes me so sad, I really enjoyed the comic for years and years. Then he had to go and open his fucking mouth and ruin the entire thing. Now I feel a twinge of disgust rather than delight when I see a reference of him.
Not sure if I want to know, but what did he say? I’m out of the loop…
Edit: just found the comment with context from TwilightVulpine below…
Behind the Bastards did an entire takedown on Scott. Dude has never had it together. He can’t imagine himself as anything but the smartest person in any room, then he got rich off Dilbert, which only confirmed it. He views all human interaction as an opportunity to impose his views on others while never changing his mind. He blames other races for every inconvenience he has ever experienced. Trump and COVID then sent him into full fascist lunacy.
He blames other races for every inconvenience he has ever experienced
For those who haven’t listened to it, this is not an exaggeration. He blamed diversity initiatives for being fired. It was actually just the company going down the tubes.
That actually sounds like a good Dilbert plotline for a throw away character, maybe named “Scott the vague racist”.
Scott Adams is a complete piece of shit
I didn’t know what this was about. I found this that can serve as context for others unaware: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/26/1159580425/newspapers-have-dropped-the-dilbert-comic-strip-after-a-racist-rant-by-its-creat
[…] Adams urged white people “to get the hell away from Black people” during a racist rant on his online video program last week, during which he labeled Black people a “hate group.”
On his video show last week, the 65 year old said he had been identifying as Black “because I like to be on the winning team,” and that he used to help the Black community. Adams said the results of the Rasmussen poll changed his mind.
“It turns out that nearly half of that team doesn’t think I’m okay to be white,” he said, adding that he would re-identify as white. “I’m going to back off from being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off,” he said. “I get called a racist. That’s the only outcome. It makes no sense to help Black Americans if you’re white. It’s over. Don’t even think it’s worth trying.”
This is not the first time Adams’ strip has been dropped. Last year, The San Francisco Chronicle and 76 other newspapers published by Lee Enterprises reportedly dropped Dilbert after Adams introduced his first Black character. Quinn noted that the move was “apparently to poke fun at ‘woke’ culture and the LGBTQ community.”
Well go figure… Rasmussen polls have been seen to drift with a rightward bias over the last decade or so. In the early 2000s they were the gold standard, but eventually they started with the political manipulation bullshit by wording their polls in a biased way.
More than likely whatever poll this asshat read about was one of those manipulative ones that was created to serve a specific political purpose to help Republicans.
The whole “it’s okay to be white” thing is a dogwhistle to begin with. It might seem benign, if weirdly unprompted without context. The issue is that among some groups this is often followed up with accusing black movements and immigrants of wanting to get rid of white people, rather than just seeking equality, which is done to fuel racism. This is why a lot of black people might be suspicious of that statement. Nevermind that not agreeing with it might simply mean unsure rather than against.
This whole thing is a roundabout rhetorical play to bait people who are more afraid of being accused of being racist, you know, because racism is bad, than understand that racism has a whole history, that black people have good reasons to be wary of people who are a little too proud of being white. But detached white people might be fooled by a superficial read of “why is it okay to be you but not okay to be me, maybe you are the racist”.
If anything he proved that he is exactly the kind of white guy that black people might be worried about. He doesn’t care about them unless he’s on the “winning team” and gets a reward for it.
See, the thing is it’s totally fine to be proud of being white. You can be proud of your family, region, native country, language, whatever. Plenty of people go visit where their family is from.
The problem is dummies (who actually know nothing about their heritage) thinking skin color means you’re better than someone. That’s probably caused by a lack of information about heritage. Especially in the US, black people are like 25% white. That means a lot of Southern white people have black relatives.
it’s totally fine to be proud of being white
Why would anybody be proud of their skin colour?
If you think of yourself as Scottish and are proud of Scottish culture and things Scots have done, that’s one thing. Especially if you think you were raised with Scottish culture and it shaped who you are today. Same with pride in a religion, or a family, or who knows what. But, pride in a skin colour is ridiculous.
[…] Sundar Pichai defended the layoffs and claimed that workers sometimes reach out to express gratitude for the cuts.
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week.”
Those workers are kissing ass to make their careers.
Sundar is a complete idiot if he believes what those guys say. And he probably doesn’t, but it sounds good to the press I guess.
Google employs, what, hundreds of thosuands of people now? All of them have stock options, many are millionaires from their Google stock. They also have big egos, and are often engineers (i.e. not very empathetic).
I can imagine a few people not caring about co-workers they never met being let go, and believing management’s story that they were letting go people who weren’t needed and were just a drag on the company. Some, especially right-wingers, probably look at their options, see the share price going up, and are happy about the layoffs. They mistakenly believe it wouldn’t happen to them because they’re much more valuable, and they see themselves more as Google stockholders rather than employees.
Still, a competent CEO knows that those kinds of employees are terrible for the culture of the organization. Rather than admitting that some employees like it their fellow employees are let go, he’d be smarter to say “it’s tough for us because we’re a family, so nobody likes it when we have to lay people off, but sometimes business realities make it necessary.”
Quick! Somebody order more pizza and ping pong tables…
I heard 9^th of February is world pizza day, so… makes total sense
Every day is pizza day here!!! That’s what makes us a “Great Place to Work” (GPTWTM)
Would you care for a chair massage?
