News Google CEO 'Takes Full Responsibility" Lays Off 12,000 Employees

[Admin]

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announces that 12,000 employees, across many areas of Alphabet, will be laid off.

Google CEO 'Takes Full Responsibility" Lays Off 12,000 Employees : Read more

 

[peachpuff]

What punishment is he going to give himself for this failure?

 

[RichardtST]

What punishment is he going to give himself for this failure?

sarcasm on
What failure? He's saving the stockholders billions by taking responsibility and making the hard decisions.
He will be giving himself a bonus for being so strong and decisive.
sarcasm off

Unfortunately, the sarcastic part is what will happen in real life.
Nevermind that he allowed the overstaffing and failed to anticipate the slowdown.

 

[PlaneInTheSky]

This is just the beginning of the tech bubble popping.

Smartphones sales are down a record 17%.

The biggest drop in a decade.

 

[King_V]

So, here's what I wonder when all these huge, highly profitable companies start laying people off due to economic trends.

Are they really doing this in order to preserve the company? Because, frankly, my suspicion is that it's more along the lines of "well, we'd still be making profits, just less profits, if we kept them all."

Which is a <Mod Edit> move any way you slice it by any company.

 

[Zerk2012]

Well if they average 100K each a year that is saving 1 billion in payroll.
200K then 2 B

 

[vanadiel007]

What punishment is he going to give himself for this failure?

$20 million severance package instead of $30 million severance package.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

What punishment is he going to give himself for this failure?

But a 5th home and 10th car.

 

[JamesJones44]

I agree with what others have said here, this is just to make wall st. happy with their d bag investors pounding the table for them to cut costs. All that being said, Google is at least giving them an extra 2 weeks of severance for every 1 year served. If an employee has been their 3 years they will get 30.5 weeks of pay (60 days + 16 weeks + 6 weeks (2 weeks * 3)). I've never seen anything like that in my 20+ years in tech. The last time this happened for tech in the dot gone era, they were just showing employees the door with very little in the way of a severance.

 

[King_V]

Well if they average 100K each a year that is saving 1 billion in payroll.
200K then 2 B

Which is a tax deductible expense, but ALSO an expense that produces valuable results.

But, I guess not quickly enough for next-quarter's bonuses.

 

[palladin9479]

The major tech companies are now cutting all the dead weight they've been holding onto for the past several years. Previously times were good, no reason to get rid of the baggage, now it's crunch time and gotta cut down.

Just see all those tiktok videos with a Gen Z doing "day in the life at company X".

 

[blppt]

This is just the beginning of the tech bubble popping.

Smartphones sales are down a record 17%.

The biggest drop in a decade.

I recently was forced to upgrade from an old Moto X 2nd gen from 2015 (3G dropped by carrier), so I bit the bullet and got an iphone 13. I was expecting major leaps, but honestly the only difference I notice is the GUI is a little snappier than that old Moto, which may have been the case with iOS vs Android (6?) anyways.

That's really sad for 7 years of tech advances. Probably why people aren't really busting down doors to get the latest phones.

 

[bit_user]

This is just the beginning of the tech bubble popping.

Smartphones sales are down a record 17%.

The biggest drop in a decade.

Spoiler

How do you know that's the beginning and not the peak? People can only hold off replacing their cell phones for so long... I'm already on the second battery in my 4-year-old phone, and its life is starting to shorten.

 

[bit_user]

The major tech companies are now cutting all the dead weight they've been holding onto for the past several years. Previously times were good, no reason to get rid of the baggage, now it's crunch time and gotta cut down.

Yes and no. Whenever you have cuts this big, you can be sure there are some good people getting cut as well. Maybe they just happened to be on a project that's not in line with the company's strategic priorities.

I do suspect managers sometimes hold on to low-performers for longer than they should, just so they have someone to cut when asked. Plus, the employee gets a much better deal than if they were terminated for cause. The bad part is when you have to work with some of these low-performers that aren't pulling their weight.

 

[bill001g]

Years ago when I worked with a couple x microsoft employees they said they would pretty much do layoff every year to get rid of employees who had consistent poor performance reviews. The employees pretty much knew after a couple bad reviews they were out soon, they could pretend like everyone else it was a layoff and take the severance or fight it and likely get terminated for cause. Now you could still get unlucky and they decide to get rid of business unit completely. Even worse if they sell it to another company because then you get take it or quit option.

 

[Why_Me]

'Learn to code.'

 

[bit_user]

Oh no, I'll have to get a job where actual work needs to be done instead of brainstorming in plastic tree houses with chai tea and houmous all day.

Google works most of their people pretty hard. They've had a few high-profile research projects that get a disproportionate of press, but I gather it's generally a pretty grinding job.

 

[Rokinamerica]

Tech industry is now feeling what all of us non tech companies went through 3 years ago. We had to find and keep high performers and jettison dead weight.

Tech went through the roof. There were both record profits and no reason to cut on staff. Now that some normalcy has returned over the last year, they need to cut down because anything many of us needed to get in order to be able to WFH or in office, we have.

Inflation, recession, crypto collapse. All have become the Perfect Storm for Tech.

 

[King_V]

Huh, seems like an "oh, those guys were probably useless anyway, they deserve to get laid off" attitude is prevalent to an unhealthy degree...

And not enough of an understanding of "well, we need to boost the stock prices right now so my options are worth more, or you grab that quick mega bonus, because look, I just 'cut costs' and aren't I a genius for that?" mentality that tends to be way more prominent in these decisions.

The stock market and shareholders do not give a rat's rump about the long-term health of a company.



I've experienced a few too many "Chainsaw Al (Dunlap)" incidents myself.

Yet, when being on the receiving end of that, they weren't so shameless as to claim any of us were dead weight. Where'd this attitude come from?

Edit: typos/autocorrect fixes

 

[korekan]

tech is stuck since anything else cant keep up with it. starting from regulations, lifestyle, adoption (since its becoming pricey not cheaper),.
gaming, tech. when the investor "of greed coming" has becoming downhill

gaming start to think profit profit profit, tech as well.

10 years ago when i search google about intel cpu of some kind of type it directly refer to the official page.
now ads, ads, ads, shop with top SEO up until second or thrid page. silly. just silly

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

tech is stuck since anything else cant keep up with it. starting from regulations, lifestyle, adoption (since its becoming pricey not cheaper),.
gaming, tech. when the investor "of greed coming" has becoming downhill

gaming start to think profit profit profit, tech as well.

10 years ago when i search google about intel cpu of some kind of type it directly refer to the official page.
now ads, ads, ads, shop with top SEO up until second or thrid page. silly. just silly

Maybe it's time to start "Privatizing" all the "Big Tech" companies so they don't have to be "Beholdened" to dumb Wall-Street expectations of endless growth and be realistic with what is possible with each company.

Dell went Private and it worked for them, maybe it's time for other companies to do so and "Stay Private".

 

[TheOtherOne]

Just one step closer to building our lord savior, Skynet! 💪💪💪

 

[Jaxstarke9977]

Are people really shocked to learn and realize that businesses are in business to make money and that most corporations have no social responsibility to the public, society or their employees, only to their shareholders?

 

[USAFRet]

'Learn to code.'

TV ad - "I didn't know what a server was until I came to ECPI. Now I'm a Cyber Security Analyst!"

 

[bit_user]

10 years ago when i search google about intel cpu of some kind of type it directly refer to the official page.
now ads, ads, ads, shop with top SEO up until second or thrid page. silly. just silly

Okay, right now I type "i7-12900K" and my very first hit is the ark.intel.com entry for it. And it's not a sponsored link, either. Tried a private window - same thing. And this isn't usual. When I google a CPU model number, I don't remember a time the ark.intel.com link wasn't the first hit.

Your experience might have more to do with your browser, ad blocker, other browsing behavior, local laws & regulations, etc.