Google stock is up 56% compared to a year go.

And yet Sundar is happy to destroy morale by keeping to fire people.

after saying "Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, Says Laying Off 12,000 Workers Was the Worst Moment in the Company's 25-Year History"

https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/googles-ceo-sundar-pichai-say...

It’s shocking he hasn’t been sacked yet. He’s completely incompetent, has led exactly zero successful initiatives, and has arguably trashed Google’s brand with constant product shutdowns.

> He’s completely incompetent, has led exactly zero successful initiatives,

That's not what the stock ticker says. That's what the CEO's job is at megacorps, not "product innovation". Google has one core product, Ads.

Everything else loses money.

Ah, so they decide to go the old boeing route, short term profits but long term deterioration.

Yeah. It makes you wonder what is Google's secret to only Hire and Promote the Best People...

As I have been saying for a while Google, Amazon, Facebook, all these companies are on the decline. We have allowed them to become so big that they don't fall fast but it's very apparent that they would have been disrupted if they were normal sized like companies were in the past.

For FB/Meta the decline is very obvious on the technological side as well. Nothing really works properly on their platform. And I'm not talking about their basic user features - I'm talking about the features that make them money.

Ad setup doesn't work, you are hitting random errors on setting up API calls, basic UX and non-functional pixel setups, some weird limits or even plain unresponsive pages.

Just few days ago, talking to their support about ficitonal ad account limit after hitting 5 ad accoutns, they responded to me randomly with system messages in vietnamese - my acc has never had association with vietnamese.

Facebook obviously did a great job in handling so much traffic but things have always been crap. Notifications on the Web and when they tried to get into mobile spring to mind.

Microsoft was once on the decline and it's now bouncing back. Having billions and captive markets (by network effect) seems to help.

Microsoft did decline. Windows, office MSFT mobile and Xbox have either stagnated at the top or declined. Now, stagnation at a few dozen billions in revenue is still good. But very much legacy company stuff.

Microsoft built a whole another company called Azure. Smartly acquired 2 other companies called LinkedIn and Github. Then invested early in the biggest phenomenon of the post covid world - Openai.

Google ended the 2000s with Ads, Search, Youtube and Android. It's 2023 and not much has changed. Facebook sustains it's growth entirely through multi-billion$ acquisitions.

In all cases, the original middle management did very little to help.

Azure is the only exception.

Office has stagnated? It's the first thing orgs require third-party apps to integrate SSO for.

Office 365 + Sharepoint is a major, major business.

There is no other earth to sell copies of Office to. Very hard to have growth there.

By that metric, Slack, Jira etc are finished because they don't sell to alien civilizations.

The number of employees that need Office 365 accounts is always going to be more than the number that need a Figma, Salesforce or chatGPT account.

And?

All you've pointed out is Wall Street's demand for eternal growth is untenable, as if we didn't already know that.

There's lots of things Microsoft can do to make Windows more valuable and thus charge more for it, and additional services they can sell. They didn't just sell Windows but also a ton of software on top (Encarta, Flight Simulator), added game consoles, made the OS more stable etc. But that doesn't mean a single product line will continue to grow vs. stagnate. You only get to invent the word processor once.

From a stock perspective, yes.

GCP has had growth, like Azure

Microsoft has access to ALL corporate data of ALL companies (sharepoint, teams, outlook, office365). Remaining step is to link chatgpt to it and train automated agents.

They can't legally do that though for a vast swath of those companies due to various data-protection regs.

They do already have several "train your own model"-style ChatGPT products available though.

I mean, there’s a dozen lawsuits against OpenAI just for training on published books. If you’re going to get sued anyway, why not train on private data?

Not all corporates use Microsoft

That's true. Only 95% of enterprise companies use Azure [0] and only 83% of Fortune 500 use Office 365.

0: https://www.extremetech.com/deals/307468-microsoft-azure-is-...

1: https://zipdo.co/statistics/microsoft-office/

The 17% who don’t use outlook email all their data to the 83% who do use outlook on a daily basis. MSFT has it all.

This is one of the reasons I mostly gave up on protonmail. Sure all my email is encrypted on proton's servers, but everyone else on any given email chain is using gmail, so what's the point?

What? Hasn’t Nadella been, like, a complete turnaround from the Ballmer years? Did you think Ballmer was onto something with Windows Mobile and not releasing Office apps for the web/iOS/android?

And you believe these were hard decisions? That's exactly the point everyone besides the stubborn ceo before would have made them.

> We have allowed them to become so big

You have?

I believe they are using the democratic _we_ (as opposed to the royal _we_).

> As I have been saying for a while

I mean this seriously:

Who are you (not name, but in terms of your significance in the community), and why does it matter what you've been saying for a while now?

By the one they that was revealed in their dream.

I wonder what does this mean for the "Everyone can code" movement (bootcamps, initiatives within Google and the like, government funding). They keep saying that you can get a high paying job if you do a 9 month course. When the best of the field are getting laid off, I wonder how long will the "Everyone can code" movement survive

That concept doesn't hold water. If everyone can code, it won't be a high paying skill. And soon, it will really be true that everyone can code. Schools are teaching computational thought as early as kindergarten, so the next generation is growing up with coding being a basic literacy skill.

Of course, knowing how to code and being good at creating software are two different things. Just like knowing how to write and being able to succeed as a novelist are two different things.

But that is also why the "best of the field" get laid off - why pay FAANG salaries to get the best, when entry/mid-level salaries to get "good enough" still meets business needs?

I keep hearing that schools are teaching 'computational thought' and programming, but then I also hear that kids can't do math at anywhere near the expected level, can't read at their expected level, and have zero attention span. Either someone is lying or very wrong.

Anecdata but a lot of kids and young adults around me also seemingly struggle with use of a full computing environment; they’re much more used to something like iPad OS.

I don’t really buy that the next generation is going to be more computer literate, I’ve been hearing that meme for a long time now and I just don’t see it.

My 17-year-old "zoomer" sister is unsure about what a browser is. She believes you need a Google app to access the internet. My millennial sisters aren't very proficient with computers. They mostly use Office and a browser. Things like VPNs might confuse them. Are my sisters a rare exception? Who knows? I know other female and male millennials with non-software developer jobs who barely know how to use a computer.

Yep, I tried to persuade my "zoomer" sister to learn how to program, but she declined. :( She is simply not interested.

They’re probably different kids we’re talking about. My personal perception is that the gap of basic reading/math skills between the top 10% and the bottom 90% is widening.

Why ? I’d say parental (real, no phone) presence in the kids life / education.

I'd say the modern obsession with dating your equal is having the unintended consequence of creating an academic elite

Did people back in the days date people that were far below their social group (economic and education wise)? I highly doubt it

You're right that it's not new. But now that women are getting tons of degrees for degrees sake, without even taking into account the school, it's creating pressure on men to do the same.

I have an BS in Mechanical Engineering from Berkeley, and I've had women from no name schools with a masters in marketing try to talk down my education.

For sure the top kids are doing alright, and sure those kids are taking some programming as well. I suppose they should just modify most articles by saying 'Top students' and stop implying that the school system that can't teach kids how to subtract fractions is going to teach programming as well to the average kid.

I think about it this way -- when I was a kid, being able to navigate a command prompt (DOS!) put you in a category way ahead of most adults using computers every day.

Of course, normal users use the terminal as much now as they do, then, but mostly because "they don't ever have to"[0], but yet they're able to accomplish things that might have been relegated to the category of "computer programming" just a decade ago.

Programming software is just another way of using a computer in a more advanced manner than mere mortals. Programming gets simpler, more enter the field, junior developers become more powerful and the difference between the expert and the novice increases or decreases depending on which direction you look at it from.

In 1986, my Dad, a non-programmer, and a "power user" but not expert in PCs, used Lotus 1-2-3 to design an invoicing and accounting tool that had a UI, forms, printed formatted output and tracked everything in a database-like manner in a file. I called him a non-programmer, but was he?

[0] When your PC boots into a `C>`, you better know what to type to get it to do something other than that.

> so the next generation is growing up with coding being a basic literacy skill.

meanwhile gen z have no concept of file browsers or the command line, they've only ever dealt in apps.

We've been having a phenomenon for years: engineers reported that it was hard to find a good job, while companies reported that they couldn't find good engineers. So, it may be that everyone can learn to code, but not everyone can survive the grind of the industry.

>But that is also why the "best of the field" get laid off - why pay FAANG salaries to get the best, when entry/mid-level salaries to get "good enough" still meets business needs?

Maybe a better chant for town hall meetings would be "We're number 2! We're number 2!"...

I know. But it has been parrotted in the last decade even by the (usually) smart folks of HN

Recently the only people who have been saying that it’s easy to become a programmer in a few months are the ones selling you the way to get there.

> only people who have been saying that it’s easy to become a programmer in a few months are the ones selling you the way to get there

Hasn't this group of people always comprised like 90% of the Everyone Can Code group?

THIS

> They keep saying that you can get a high paying job if you do a 9 month course.

It's good if this way of thinking dies. It does a disservice to those taking the course, and it does a disservice to the industry.

"High Paying Job" simply means more than minimum wage. There are a lot of Americans for which $40K to $50K income would be considered good. $60K to $70K would be considered great.

Erm, who says the folks being laid off are the "best of the field?"

Best of the field was an exaggeration but I just meant very experienced devs. For newbie devs, it is the same. People that either in paper, in practice or both are better than your average $NONAME company dev. To get a job at FAANG, you need to be a good programmer. The folks at FAANGs aren't regular devs. And they are being laid off.

Supposedly Google only hires the best of the best. Now it appears they hired a lot of mediocrity? So much for their lauded hiring process.

I've posted previously that I knew someone that went to one of the most joke low level public schools around (CSU East Bay - I audited a few classes with them even), and they were so goofy you had to help the through understanding the movie plot of basic movies even. They were fun to hang out with, but honestly pretty goofy. They were also a bit lazy, never really learning much about their field.

They were hired as a product manager by Google, based on their years of being a scrum master or whatever at a few other bay companies.

"Fun to hang out with" takes you further than you think. If the person is also attractive then he has a giant halo effect going for him

It was a woman actually, so 10x that.

Some are, some aren't. The decisions about who to lay off are not generally connected to how good they are.

Oh but they will get high pay compared to their bartending job.

will they? The job market is full of high quality experienced devs. I don't see why any company would hire for an inexperienced dev when they can get an experienced one for cheap. It's like buying Walmart cheese for $5 when you can get high end cheese for $10. No brainer

It's with respect to the smell

Can confirm. Core Developer is impacted, with what appears to be roughly an 8-10% layoff.

Can you elaborate what is the role of a core developer?

From my understanding core developer is somebody who works on something fundamental, like build system, general monorepo structure and architecture.

I would be curious to hear insights if anyone has understanding or experience in these roles.

Core Developer is the org that provides key software that developers use to build and deploy applications. Stuff like "we ship the java compiler" and "we ship the IDE."

Roughly what’s the Core Developer size?

let me know if yall want to come work at Microsoft. reach out to me about it https://www.linkedin.com/in/leepenkman/

Hey guys, this is a pretty decent gesture no matter what you think of Microsoft after mass layoffs. No need to be snarky.

How is this a decent gesture ? Any employer with visibility and cash flow wants to hire engineers. Do you think employers are doing workers a favor and being so nice and humane when they go out of their way and give us poor peons a chance at a job ?

I don’t see how it’s anything that’s not at least a positive gesture. You can have problems with the capitalist system as a whole but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what he wrote. It’s better than nothing.

I lost my job when my company closed a few years ago in the middle of the pandemic and I am very appreciative of those who reached out. That limbo of uncertainty even if I could survive for years with what I had didn’t feel nice.

Positive gesture to whom? It looks sadistic to the ones they got laid off from Microsoft

only want people from google?

My employer’s (not Microsoft) biggest problem has been getting any competent sysadmins to apply at all. Maybe one in a few hundred applicants is capable enough to interview; the rest are just cookie-cutter cloud-only SREs who’ve never cared for a server before. They’d love to be “DDoS’d with applicants”, because there might be a few capable sysadmins in that pile! And we’re a lot smaller than Microsoft — so, yes, most likely, they’re ready.

(Our job postings are all published on the usual job database sites under the usual sysadmin/opseng titles, and I don’t have any sort of special intake process to offer beyond that.)

This hits home. I wish I knew the company now.

Thank you.

Their revenue growth is still good. Stock price increased. We are in a bad economy for one or two more years, but it already started a year ago. So what could the the reason for this time mass layoff? Section 174?

Unlikely to be section 174

> Google: the tax change was minimal, because Google was voluntarily amortizing software development expenses for most staff, already. This was for all projects that reached “technological feasibility,” which is a milestone products pass before public release.

Source: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/

Well, Christopher Hohn demanded that the Fortune 50 correct salaries by performing mass general layoffs, and that's what they are doing.

bad economy? the economy is shit for tech, everywhere else, it's booming. there is a shortage of labor in education, hospitals, government, hospitality, retail

the reason it's shit for tech is the greed of wall street. they want more short term gains

> the economy is shit for tech

Even this is overstating it. It's shit for some segments of the tech sector, but in other segments it's going gangbusters. On the whole, it doesn't seem unusually good or bad.

Surprised to see another cycle of layovers happening here. What’s going on in the industry?

> Surprised to see another cycle of layovers happening here. What’s going on in the industry?

Nature is healing itself. The boom cycle is over. Correction is in the process.

Rewarding shareholders.

Investors want more money

If I'm already rich and healthy why would I prefer to make others poor so that I could become even MORE rich? We don't need to excuse greed. It's okay to criticize it without having to say "well I like having money too." It's not an either-or.

I mean the salaries have been kinda ridiculous in recent years

Not surprised

Hang in there Googlers :(

What I would give for 24 hours of access to memegen.

No doubt people have lost their jobs because of memegen.

they will land on their feet, stop it with the pity party

Empathy is free

Engineers affected.

The coasting day care is over and Google is in code red wartime mode in a state of panic.

Sorry. The market is brutal and it does not care.

No one is safe, not even Google.

Are you saying that "BigHead" kind of devs are doomed? And why does Google keep laying off people? You would think that they would do the relevant calculations and fire everyone they need to keep the costs down. The multiple rounds speaks of incompetency at Google. Given their unssuccessful attempts at besting OpenAi, it is not surprising. But still it is kind of scary to see how Google has become the old Microsoft and how the OpenAi is now the new Google

Hard to say if BigHead style devs are being affected here. Annual review ratings aren't quite yet finalized, so it is hard to know whether they could be used as input to a layoff system.

>Hard to say if BigHead style devs are being affected here. Annual review ratings aren't quite yet finalized

They aren't yet finalized, but pretty damn close. Don't you think this probably plays into it? VPs were likely told 'put 6% of your engineers below 'meets expectations', and some VPs probably thought about it and said "actually we have a really weak division, i'd rather axe that, than taking a 6% haircut across the board.

It makes sense, if you have a few teams of rockstars, a division of 'meh', and one weak director that has hired a few weaker managers who also hires weaker engineers, why give everyone the same PiP quota?

For a number of reasons.

1. This wasn't just entire divisions. I've seen massive cuts on some teams and ticky-tack cuts elsewhere.

2. This was clearly coordinated above the VP level and could not have been just individual unilateral decisions by VPs who saw specific grad numbers coming through.

3. I've seen people who were not low performers get fired in this ticky-tack manner.

4. Nobody on my team was fired, but I sure as hell wasn't told "don't worry about expected distributions of low performers since we'll just cut from elsewhere."

I mean, it's certainly above my pay grade, but why wouldn't they either take Grad results into account, or at least wait until they could. Another two weeks is not going to make or break someone's yearly budget, and it certainly seems like a good idea to maybe not lay off the person who was about to get "top tier" or whatever it is at google.

Second, why take the PR hit and not just crank the PiP quota or something?

What is "BigHead style devs"?

BigHead is a character from Silicon Valley who doesn't actually know how to do anything, does basically zero work, and manages to still fail upwards. This is describing devs that are sitting around and doing an hour of work a day and aren't actually achieving anything but have somehow managed to not get fired for low performance because their manager isn't paying attention.

This is actually the ideal profile at FAANG and a quick track to upper management.

> devs that are sitting around and doing an hour of work a day

I think for a lot of people this seems nice on paper, but in the past I've realized that you can be so bored that you actually start doing work.

What market?

Google stock is up 56% YoY. Fifty six percent.

What do you think it should be? 2000%?

It's a huge mature company. 56% in a year is unheard of.

> It's a huge mature company. 56% in a year is unheard of.

MSFT is up 60% yoy. To say nothing about NVDA.

Anyway, the market rebounded. GOOG and most of the market are flat from 2 years ago.

In the last quarter Alphabet reported "total revenues of $76.69bn, an increase of 11 percent year-on-year (YoY)."

Google Cloud alone grew 22%.

https://erp.today/storm-clouds-for-google-as-q3-misses-analy...

> In the last quarter Alphabet reported "total revenues of $76.69bn, an increase of 11 percent year-on-year (YoY)."

You’ve got to (a) zoom out and look at trend, (b) focus on profit, not revenue, and (c) look at forecast (future, not past).

Alphabet net income for the twelve months ending September 30, 2023 was $66.732B, a 0.39% decline year-over-year. Their annual net income for 2022 was $59.972B, a 21.12% decline from 2021. And their annual net income for 2021 was $76.033B, a 88.81% increase from 2020.

If you believe that companies should grow, then a trend of rapidly decreasing profits is very worrisome and that you need to turn around.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/net-...

yeah, and google cloud is hiring. They're winding down teams in non profitable areas.

I wish they were a little more strategic, but this time they are allowing affected team members to keep corporate access and apply internally to open roles.

The Alphabet stock went up ~50% over the last year.

Bubble.

Really? I've often thought that of all the FANGs, Google has a pretty low multiple and scores pretty damn good on essentially all metrics. And I don't mean just "compared to Tesla".

You think mass layoffs will start slowing down, or was last year a trend that's barely getting started? I just wish I could find well-educated guesses (because I know it's hard to predict definitively) but news sites are typically shallow / sensational.

I think this will likely last at the very least until the end of 2025 if not more. Companies seem to be delaying laying off all the people they need to layoff. To become strong, we must first experience weakness

Is money cheap again? No. There is no guessing, just some hysteresis.

Can confirm, this is true.

Related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947654

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947224

Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38948444 (NY Times article discussion)

Can confirm, this is true (from a friend)

Is Chrome team affected?