Google was beloved as an employer for years. Then it laid off thousands by email

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/20/tech/google-layoffs-employee-culture/index.html

by doener • 3 years ago

157 137 3 years ago

SQueeeeeL• 3 years ago

Was Google really a beloved employer? I feel like that was vapor marketing hype most real people saw through as bs, you'd pretty much see constant stories of overwork and toxic teams run by incompetent "project managers" just like every other overvalued Silicon Valley FAANG shop

rootusrootus• 3 years ago

With enough total comp you can be my Beloved Employer.

tempsy• 3 years ago

never heard of Google being a place people were "overworked" at all, not compared to Amazon, at least, or as hyper-competitive as Netflix.

kneebonian• 3 years ago

No, that wasn't always the case, it's the same thing that happenned with MS. Back in the late oughts and early 2010's Google was a fantastic place to work based on the reports I've heard, that was considered work nirvana. They were the ones who introduced things like catered lunchs, and a lot of other amenities that many people consider now standard fare in many tech shops.

Based on what I heard it was a wonderful time, you got to spend all day working on interesting problems, with super smart people that were at the peak of their field, money was coming in hand over fist, and the people running the show had an understanding of engineering.

The problem is that success attracts leeches, you start getting lots of MBA types, PMs, bean counters, etc. Then things went downhill. But it wasn't always this way, it just so happens that once you become successful enough you will attract people that aren't interested in what you do, but in getting a piece of that pie, and those people and that thinking and mindset will ruin any organization.

P.S. It's an interesting line to draw between being overworked by a boss that is forcing you to spend 60 hours a week chained to a desk, and loving what you do so much that you are happy to spend 60 hours a week on it, just because you derive that much satisfaction from it.

candiodari• 3 years ago

But now the company has shown that it will use layoffs. So now Google is threatening the livelihoods of it's employees.

So most everyone is a leech now. Not because they want to or it's in their character, it's just something that will at least give you some basic safety.

dack• 3 years ago

it was definitely a great place to work in it's heyday 10+ years ago, as I believe most of the FAANG companies were. It was so nice back in the day having companies you knew would be great if you could just get into them. Are there any companies like that these days?

nradov• 3 years ago

If that's what you want then you can always start one.

Edit: it's interesting that this comment is being down voted on a site run by a VC firm dedicated to helping entrepreneurs found their own companies. If you don't like working for Google or some other big company then start your own any you'll have complete freedom to set your own policies.

eschneider2• 3 years ago

There are _definitely_ great companies out there, depending on what makes a place great FOR YOU. Working on great products with smart people? Yeah, there are places out there like that, and not always in the 'obvious' places. Great compensation? Yeah, there are places/industries that still offer that. Getting everything combined with one employer? That's more of a unicorn problem and you might have to compromise on something.

ahsteele• 3 years ago

Yes I would say that working in the United States at a Federally Funded Research and Design Center https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ffrdclist/ are great companies if only you can get into them.

mingus882• 3 years ago

Before the doubleclick merger, Google was absolutely the ideal place to work as an engineer.

I feel that perhaps after 2007 a lot of Google's reputation was still held up by what the culture was like in the years surrounding their IPO.

But of course, this is ancient tech history. I haven't entertained a Google recruiter in probably a decade now.

cmrdporcupine3• 3 years ago

I wasn't there in 2007, didn't get there til 2011, but looking at the facts think 2007/2008 era it seems like a juncture from one Google to the next, for sure.

The other, really major, shift -- which happened while I was there -- was Patrick Pichette leaving as CFO and Ruth Porat coming on. And then the subsequent "Alphabetization" which... it was so bungled and mismanaged... and it was clear at that point L&S were clueless about what was actually going on inside the company... that to me was when the company had seriously dramatically shifted in tone and structure. I think that was .. what... 2015?

Sundar taking over was just the formalization of that degradation.

For me, personally I wish I'd only stayed there for 4-5 years, and left around then. But before remote work there weren't any competitive options in my region, so I got stuck there for 10 years.

holografix• 3 years ago

From the lofty heights of your high horse I doubt anyone on earth would even hear you and run risk of being “entertained” by you.

aix13• 3 years ago

Overwork? Toxic teams? Project managers running teams?

I've been at Google for a very long time, in quite a few orgs, and none of those things ring any bells. (Some probably exist in some pockets, though the last one sounds particularly implausible. It's just not how Google job ladders and the management structure work.)

Now, I have to admit to having not read the article, but the headline does resonate. I've spoken to a lot of current Googlers about this, and their attitude towards the company has definitely changed rather dramatically, almost overnight. People in non-US jurisdictions are feeling this particularly acutely, due to how the layoffs have been playing out for them.

Shish2k• 3 years ago

I’ve been at Meta for a few years and would say similar - I’m pretty sure that at any company with tens or hundreds of thousands of employees, you are going to get some horror stories - but in general it used to be an amazing place to work (ranked #1 on glassdoor for several years for good reason), but now… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

super2563• 3 years ago

Overwork?

I don't know anyone working at Google, nor anyone who worked at Google in the past (except a single intern). Hell, I don't even live anywhere near a Google campus!

But I always assumed that Google wants you to spend your whole day there, from morning until evening. Because big tech is usually implicitly aiming at that.

- Serve three major meals a day, + you can bring your dog to your office, which eliminates any reason to go home (especially for those who don't have a house or spouse to take care of).

- Shuttle bus, where many employees have like, idk, 40min of free time? Why not just start working on the laptop already?

- Food servings are stretched out. Breakfast is till 10AM; dinner is served at 6:30PM, so if you started at 8:30AM, you need to stay another 1.5h to make use of dinner. Why not work in the meantime?

And some classical fear stuff which makes you want to work hard and long hours:

- Aggressive deadlines

- Get the promotion in 2 years or get fired

I dunno, I probably wouldn't mind working under these conditions, but I think there are reasons why the average tenure of a Googler is 1.5 years.

tdeck3• 3 years ago

Did you hear about "megablocks"? They ran the shuttles and cafes on the weekends and "encouraged" engineers to work through the weekend until that project was done. I wasn't in that org and joined Google a bit after the project concluded, but it had an infamous reputation that stuck around.

pwinnski• 3 years ago

At Google, developers were the product, not overhead. As such, they were supported lavishly, with meals and massages, at a level not previously seen, at least not in career available to people who weren't fifth-generation Ivy grads. And the pay, total comp is still trumpeted here at HN as among the highest around.

Sure, a lot of people saw those perks as being aimed a particular demographic: young people without attachments who were willing to spend nearly 168 hours each week on site. And a lot of us saw the selection of perks as those most likely to attract that demographic.

But people who joined Google didn't often leave for reasons related to Google, and I'm not sure there's a better way to describe that than "beloved." Low turnover tells the story.

cromwellian6• 3 years ago

Yup. I was at Google for over a decade, I should have left years ago for a startup, I had offers, but I loved what I did, I loved my fellow coworkers, and I was well compensated. There was little reason to leave, and a lot of reasons to stay.

tenpies• 3 years ago

As such, they were supported lavishly, with meals and massages, at a level not previously seen, at least not in career available to people who weren't fifth-generation Ivy grads.

I think if you push further back, we did see it. Go find the oldest retired IBMer you can and ask them what it was like in the good days. You'll find it was very similar.

Sure, they didn't do the whole come-be-an-activist-while-ignoring-your-actual-job thing, and there were no nap pods, but the perks were up there. From free food to the parties (and yes, your kids are coming to many of them and they and your wife/husband are going to get free gifts from IBM at every chance). There was a time when landing a job at IBM was like getting a job at Google was a while ago - except that they still did the employee-for-life thing and even if you were laid off, it was with your consent (and an obscene benefits package).

But you also did have to do actual work, not just attend one meeting per week with no deliverable.

Edit: Actually I think it may have been even better back then. There was no company shuttle to the office. You had a company car. There was no roommate while giving 60% of your income to a landlord, housing was still affordable and your spouse didn't really have to work unless they wanted to.

jldugger• 3 years ago

As such, they were supported lavishly, with meals and massages, at a level not previously seen

This is simultaneously true and the CEO wrote a book about how he did an across the board 10 percent raise[1] because Google was underpaying relative to the competition, _for some reason_.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703523604575605...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

908B64B197• 3 years ago

Sure, a lot of people saw those perks as being aimed a particular demographic: young people without attachments who were willing to spend nearly 168 hours each week on site. And a lot of us saw the selection of perks as those most likely to attract that demographic.

It reflects the demographics of the early employees and founders.

cromwellian6• 3 years ago

As someone who worked at Google for 15 yrs, who also worked at Oracle and IBM, I can confidently say that Google was the least toxic, least overworked place I've ever been. That's not to say there aren't management problems, especially around the erratic way they launch new projects and kill others with no real rhyme or reason, but working environment was never one of the complaints.

At IBM and Oracle, I'd regularly be in meetings with shouting matches. People were tear down others. There was excessive territorialism. Googley culture, although it changed over time, did promote cooperation and constructive criticism. Post-Mortems emphasized what went wrong and what could be done better, not who went wrong. Other teams were often, if not always, eager to partner or share their work.

Work location flexibility, the cafes, all of it was very good.

Now, I did perceive a cultural decline, I think it was sometime around the launch of Google Hangouts, I started sensing a more bean-counting approach, I think because the Seattle office brought in a bunch of MS managers in too short a period of time for them to absorb Googley culture. At one point, the initial launch of Hangouts didn't have presence indicators, and when employees brought it up, one response was "You are not the audience". As if presence indicators are something only elite engineers want, and not regular folks. This was totally antithetical to way products like Gmail were built, out of personal desire and need.

I didn't work in Cloud, but I suspect Thomas Kurian brought a more Oracle "Sales Engineer" driven approach, and that too can change culture. Might be bad for culture, but good for external customers.

One of the issues over the years that I feel an acute sense of now that I'm looking for a job again, is that Google invented a lot of technology early internally, from Borg to Map/Reduce/etc. Eventually, the outside world cloned these, and when they became on-par and standardized, at that point I really think Google should have switched their internal stack to the OSS equivalents. For example, Google still builds products on the internal Borg system, rather than using GCP/Kubernetes/Terraform/etc. If GCP/Kube is missing functionality to run say, Maps or Gmail, then perfect, that indicates a good driver for improving the external facing product. Working on some of Google's tech stack feels like an alien world compared to working on stuff outside.

In ML at least, there's synergy, as Tensorflow and JAX are used internally and externally. But in terms of major systems, there needs to be a lot more of this. Blaze was opened as Bazel way too late for example, should have been done years ago.

dekhn2• 3 years ago

I worked for Google for 10 years- at first in a great but intense (overworked) SRE team, then later as a SWE running my own project (again intense and overworked, but totally self-imposed) and then on various ML and 3D printing teams. By and large it was great, but it got worse over time (increasingly clueless managers with night-school MBAs) and more toxic.

Occasionally I'd see memes or posts from other teams that described business practices I couldn't believe (like, "I have to stay at the office until my manager leaves or I'll be fired, and he doesn't leave until 8PM so I dont' see my family much") which didn't make sense until I learned that entire teams were H1-B visas reporting to managers who applied caste in their jobs in the US.

Absolutely nothing I've seen compares to borg or a full TPUv4 cluster.

eitally• 3 years ago

I worked in Cloud from 2015-2023. I was personally hired by Amit Singh, who was the first "CEO" of "Cloud", back when it was just "Google Apps" + GCS/GCE/GAE. About 8 months later Diane Greene was brought in to scale the business because the org under Amit was too googley. Literally. Google's legacy culture of engineering meritocracy and ICs who vote with their feet on the "best" projects was not conducive to becoming an enterprise technology company. Diane brought in Diane Bryant as COO (from Intel) and PH Ferrand as sales president (from Dell), and while PH gave it a good try on the GTM side, Diane left after barely 6 months and there just wasn't enough enterprise experience across the org to make things work. Diane was likely brought in at least partly because she is googley, and her VMWare history probably looked like enterprise software success, but she was too googley to turn the ship and he org flailed for a couple more years. Then the board appointed TK, who absolutely knows 100% how to sell to enterprise. He spent 2 years almost exclusively hiring senior staff from outside: Microsoft, SAP, AWS, IBM, Salesforce, Oracle, etc, and rebuilding something that looks roughly like if Microsoft went back in time 20 years.

The upsides are that the business has grown mightily and Cloud is now almost exclusively market driven, at least on core products/services. The downside is that he broke the culture and alienated thousands of googlers whose advancement opportunities were essentially eliminated. Because of the hiring needs, the bar is much lower now, cronyism is prevalent, and politics+bureaucracy get in the way of progress.

During my years at Google, I sat in The Quad, Tech Corners, Moffett Park, and then back at Tech Corners, and spent time in many of the rest of the bay area offices. I will state with confidence that the Cloud offices do not feel "googley" when you walk around the cube spaces. There are few decorations, no buzz, not many people who appear to be enjoying themselves, very few tech talks, guest speakers or events, etc. Just taking a walk around the MP, Matilda or TC campuses and then visiting YT in San Bruno or one of the Android teams in MTV is a stark difference.

Cloud is not googley. Let's see if the consumer-oriented PAs can keep that alive.

drewg1232• 3 years ago

I was there 2013->2015. It was not viewed as "beloved" in my eyes; more like a benevolent, paternalistic overlord. There were certainly negatives. It was nearly impossible to concentrate at work, due to being in a large open space with many teams, and they would not let me be full-time remote (even as an L6 "staff" SWE), crowded bathrooms, crowded cafes, etc.

However, they put a lot of effort into the endless perks, and the feeling of job security. It really felt like they cared about you, and your career development.

I was shocked by the layoffs. My old group's PM, who was fantastic (and well connected) was let go in the purge.

cromwellian6• 3 years ago

If you remember, there was the great "de-frag" at one point, where they wanted to reduce # of satellite offices, and tried to move everyone into a few big HQ, this resulted in overcrowding, and one aspect of that was "no remote work". (post-pandemic, this sounds bizarre now).

The closing of some of the satellite offices resulted in some of the first shocking "layoffs", for example, the Google Atlanta office was shuttered, most of the former couldn't move, and so left for other companies. (technically not a layoff, but if you can't relocate, it's basically the same) :(

yibg• 3 years ago

For a while now Google has been seen as the place you go to coast, at least if you're not gunning for promotions.

linguae• 3 years ago

(Disclaimer: I was a software engineering intern at Google during the summers of 2013 and 2014.)

In the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s, Google felt like the dream place to work. Yes, a lot has been said about the perks and the generous pay, but another thing that made Google appealing was its cutting edge projects. I was a huge fan of Google Inbox (sadly long discontinued). As a graduate student researching storage systems and who enjoyed reading the MapReduce, BigTable, and Spanner papers, being able to work on Spanner as an intern was a dream come true. I also loved all of the internal support I received as a developer, from the amazing internal infrastructure to the various internal tutorials. I never felt siloed off from the rest of the company, compared to other employers I've had. It was an amazing place to work and I'd rank it as my second-best work experience (my best being eight months I spent at Fujitsu Laboratories in Kawasaki, Japan where I worked in a storage lab on an SSD cache....that was a downright magical experience), though granted as an intern I was shielded from the performance review process and on-calls, so I can't comment about these things.

I would love to work for a team similar to the teams I worked on during my internships at Google, as well as the general feeling of 2013-14 Google. However, I'm under the impression that Google's culture started changing a lot during the Alphabet reorganization and the rise of Sundar Pichai as CEO. I don't know if there's a place in the Valley these days that captures the feel of pre-Alphabet Google; it seems to me that the Valley itself has changed a lot (and for the worse) since roughly 2015, but that's another discussion for another time.

Yoric3• 3 years ago

If you find such a place, don't hesitate to spread the word :)

jimjimjim• 3 years ago

As a viewpoint from outside of the fang(whatever), I've always felt (and heard) that google was the best of the bunch in terms of employee opinion of the organization.

cmrdporcupine3• 3 years ago

As a Googler for 10 years, I'd say -- on the whole, yes, well loved. But steadily worsening over that 10 year period. And, no, most people I knew were not overworked. Not at my site, anyways. And certainly not compared to what I saw from people I knew at Apple or Amazon.

I had my beefs with the place always, and I was like a square peg round hole there -- BUT ... Not even talking about the pay -- above average -- benefits were amazing. Culture when I started was very engineering driven. Mostly a very respectful professional environment apart from one asshole TL I had to deal with, but I was able to route around him after a few months. Good mix of age ranges and not biased against middle aged or older like many other workplaces in our industry.

I didn't like the work / projects I had to do there. I didn't like the promo process. I didn't like the way projects were managed. But I liked the company ethic overall (obviously I always had issues) -- but it degraded every year I was there. But not because of overwork etc but because of bureaucratic dysfunction and ethical lapses.

zaphar• 3 years ago

I was there roughly about a decade ago. At that time Google was a fantastic place to work. I didn't have toxic teams nor was I asked to overwork. I left the office at 5pm nearly every day. Google at least in the Chicago office deserved it's reputation as the best place to work in tech.

I still know people there and talking to them it does seem like there was a dramatic shift over the last 5+ years or so. I don't think it can claim the same culture that it had when I was there.

newaccount20233• 3 years ago

the employees were fools for falling in love with their employer, not sure how else to say it

they should be grateful they were paid so well for so long to do so little...chances are they will never see comp like that for work like that again

...and hopefully no one is naive enough to think Google is "done"...after next earnings I expect an even bigger round

the same thing is happening all over tech - go down to a reduced staff of essential contributors and re-hire later for much lower comp

vineyardmike3• 3 years ago

I don’t think people were fools for falling in love with their employer. Naive maybe. But Google was really nice to employees and (intentionally) made it easy to forget you were a number in the capitalist machine. They listened and responded to employees, they made work more comfortable and easy with perks, and they regularly changed to stay up to date on what helped employees.

...and hopefully no one is naive enough to think Google is "done"...after next earnings I expect an even bigger round

I haven’t seen it talked about anywhere. I’m an ex-googler from layoffs. My old team was massively impacted and some coworkers were put on “delayed exit” to wind down their projects by fall. I don’t know the extent of it company wide but on my old team, the lay offs and delayed exit were 1:1 roughly.

newaccount20233• 3 years ago

I haven’t seen it talked about anywhere. I’m an ex-googler from layoffs

Why would you hear about a confidential layoff plan??

drstewart4• 3 years ago

the same thing is happening all over tech - go down to a reduced staff of essential contributors and re-hire later for much lower comp

If supply and demand stay the same, then why do you think the price will change?

sokoloff4• 3 years ago

Isn’t >100K cumulative layoffs in the industry and widespread hiring freezes exactly a reduction in demand?

Do you think the demand for SWEs will be the same in April of 2023 as it was in April of 2021?

Animats• 3 years ago

If supply and demand stay the same, then why do you think the price will change?

Fear. Much of this layoff activity is intended to induce fear. Employees were getting too uppity. Talking back to management. Doing side projects. Talking with each other about wages and working conditions. Even forming unions. That had to be stopped.

"A touch of the lash will keep them in line."

rvz• 3 years ago

A product of decades long quantitive easing with cheap money and near zero interest rate economic policy with a techno pseudo-utopian world view belief that Google is a forever day care and a "beloved employer".

As soon as competition is around the corner with a scarce and expensive dollar, it is crunch time and layoffs need to happen to remove the deadwood. (Seniors, managers, HR, etc affected.)

Don't worry though, I heard that the circus was hiring...

unity1001• 3 years ago

techno pseudo-utopian world view belief that Google is a forever day care and a "beloved employer".

The catch is that Google could have made that utopia possible, had all the funds and resources needed to do it, and actually did have that philosophy at the start and publicly so - until the bean counters took over and started minmaxing everything for the sake of absentee shareholders. The 'MBAification' eventually destroyed its mission. Various detailed comments from some long-time Googlers in different threads under TFA tell how that MBAification happened in minute detail.

Its just another case of capitalism destroying things while maximizing profits through 'MBAification'.

yownie• 3 years ago

when any company moves away from the motto "don't be evil" it's a pretty sure sign it's gonna end badly.

Mizoguchi• 3 years ago

Not sure what the author expected Google to do. Are they supposed to have individual meetings and a farewell party with 10K (ex) employees? My dad worked for the same company for 35 years then retired. In my 20 year career I have worked for at least half a dozen companies. There's no such thing as job security anymore, as long as you are employed by someone else you are disposable, no matter how hard you work and how loyal you are to your employer. If investors want more dividends they will let people go, doesn't matter if you are sick or just bought a new house. Actually the person making the decision to fire you probably doesn't even know your name. Think about how depressing that is. For that reason I became a consultant. It sounds harder and scarier than it actually is, but once you figure it out you realize how much more enjoyable working for yourself is and there's absolutely no way you will ever work anyone else again. I hope some of these ex Google folks take this opportunity to do something on their own.

jdsully• 3 years ago

Are they supposed to have individual meetings

Yes?

Surely they have managers proportional to their employees - I certainly don't expect the CEO to have the meetings but having their direct or skip level manager meet with them is the right way to do it.

aix13• 3 years ago

The GP paints individual meetings as an infeasible, far-fetched idea. However, Google has held individual meetings in some non-US jurisdictions, where the ratio of management to front-line workers is comparable to that in the US. This shows that it's not infeasible, it's a choice.

blastonico• 3 years ago

Not sure what the author expected Google to do.

Don't get that either. The company is not my mother or my wife, it's just a professional relationship; they buy my hours to produce what they want me to. If they don't want my services anymore, of if I don't want to provide my services to them, it's fine, life goes on.

Now, there's this sad article, with a sad lady framed like she has just cried, like if it's the end of world. Yeah, Google was the best company once, Rome was the most powerful nation once, things change and get over it.

Sorry for the rant.

kajecounterhack• 3 years ago

"How do you maximize talent preservation and minimize morale loss when firing employees from a tree structure with height O(15), where each level under SVP (2) may have layoffs?"

Feels like the execs didn't answer this interview question well. There were better ways to accomplish this.

croes• 3 years ago

I doubt that these 10k all have the same supervisor, so it's totally possible to tell everyone in person.

optymizer2• 3 years ago

Are you aware that developers have 1:1 meetings with their manager, regularly? It's entirely practical for them to schedule meetings and tell people in person.

costanzaDynasty• 3 years ago

I may be a very basic software engineer with neither high YOE or high quality skills but what would I get excited about from a FAANG job nowadays? These companies that I've used everyday for nearing 2 decades from even a user perspective have become stale. Mountains of money and the best talent and even simple issues that have lingered for years are not fixed in favor of big ideas that no one wants.

turdprincess3• 3 years ago

You get excited for one reason and one reason only - the money. FAANG jobs pay between double and triple of normal software gigs. Some folks want to optimize for interesting work, or groundbreaking products or autonomy. Thats cool - you might not find that at a FAANG. Some folks optimize for the biggest paycheck. For that its basically two options - FAANG (and adjacent) or High Frequency Trading. To each their own!

champagnepapi2• 3 years ago

How does one get into HFT?

cromwellian6• 3 years ago

I used to believe that, but searching for a job now, I see many non-FAANG companies with compensation in-line, or better, with the exception of those who aren't public. OpenAI for example, has base salaries in the $400k range for ML jobs at $250k range elsewhere at like an IC5 level, because of non-public equity.

randgoog• 3 years ago

There are other reasons too like scale. Obviously not everyone can work on those types of projects but few companies can claim their engineers' code will affect a billion users for example. At that scale, the problems that need to be solved can be interesting even if they're trivial for a smaller set of users.

moneywoes• 3 years ago

Prestige

deltree73• 3 years ago

Don't worry, you'll never get into FANG companies.

optymizer2• 3 years ago

What a mean thing to say to someone. I've been telling people the exact opposite for years - with enough time and motivation, anyone can get into FAANG companies, it's just a question of how much time and energy you want to dedicate to that.

Contrast this with becoming an astronaut or a gymnast, or a tennis player, or anything that requires you to acquire physical skills starting at a very early age and do it for decades.

I've been almost 10 years at FAANGs. There's nothing special about me. My GPA was 2.75. I suppose I can code and at this point I have some experience, but I'm no Carmack.

mlazos• 3 years ago

I’ve worked at a couple, I’ve probably been an outlier but I’ve really enjoyed them as long as you’re ruthless about finding projects that you enjoy. There is a ton of opportunity to work on pretty much anything you want at a large corporation. I’ve mostly focused on r&d hardware and compiler projects.

elforce002• 3 years ago

I think "Die a hero or live long enough to become a villain" quote applies here, right?

deltree73• 3 years ago

The only thing that matters in a layoff is "severance package"

Everything else is useless.

If your co-workers liked you and wanted to say goodbye, they will call and throw a party. If I'm fired, there is no reason for me to log on to my workstation. All relevant documents are given to you anyway. Your personal items will be shipped to you.

TremendousJudge• 3 years ago

I think many people would disagree with this assessment. It's akin to saying that the only thing that matters in a job is "compensation", and everything else is useless. While some people hold this view, many others like to be treated nicely in other ways: good working facilities, nice colleagues, fun perks, etc.

Same thing about getting laid off: it's never nice to lose your job, but even if the severance is good it's not nice to have your employer suddenly behave like an asshole, and that they think that your work is so worthless that it isn't necessary for you to wrap anything up.

kcmastrpc• 3 years ago

It's not that the things you mentioned don't matter, it's that employee<>employer relationships are transactional. While I maintain a friendly relationship with all the people I work with, very few are actually friends. If they are, we'll still talk after the relationship with my employer ends.

Unless you have a contract with your employer around the severing of that relationship, neither parties are beholden to each other and any expectation of such behavior is ultimately unproductive and quite unhealthy (mostly for you, $bigTech doesn't care).

aseerdbnarng• 3 years ago

How is this the top comment

mwest217• 3 years ago

I have lots of coworkers for whom I don't have personal contact information. It's very common to just use work email or work phones.

tpmx• 3 years ago

Linkedin is a hellscape but it has its usefulness once in a blue moon.

jjav• 3 years ago

This is where LinkedIn shines. I try to connect there with everyone I work with and have been doing so since 2004. Build a great network, keep in touch with people I appreciate as coworkers and hopefully future referrals.

munificent4• 3 years ago

This is true for spherical employed human resource units in a vacuum.

It is less true for living breathing members of Homo sapiens.

mc32• 3 years ago

For a small organization with single digit employees, it's possible to give the layoffs a human touch. For mass layoffs that does not scale.

Then there is the aspect where we can't have nice things because someone somewhere took advantage of some discretion and now HR sees any discretion as a potential liability so they don't afford that discretion but for rare exceptions.

more_corn• 3 years ago

No. It’s dehumanizing to get laid off in the middle of the night. The thing that matters is treating you like a person and telling you to your face.

How would you feel if your wife left you in the night without having the courage to tell you to your face?

That’s how getting laid off by 2am e-mail feels.

Google crowed for years about how employees are family. Middle of the night firings showed that was a lie.

muzz• 3 years ago

I view it more like a corporate version of John Locke's social contract, and that it's not the way they laid off people, but the simple fact that they did.

Some good performers were laid off, so the pre-existing situation-- where one could join Google and focus on work without worrying about downsizing-- no longer exists

hankchinaski• 3 years ago

there is no such thing as beloved employer. unless you work in your dad's shop

paganel• 3 years ago

employee in labor with her second child were all cut

Isn't this illegal to do in the States? If it isn't, why not? That's just cruel.

rejectfinite2• 3 years ago

This whole saga has been funny to someone in Sweden... Here it is 1-3 month lay off time, eg you need to find out in advance and your employer needs to find out in advance if you leave. For full time hires. There is 6month probation.

Expecting a company to do good when it does not have to is madness.

slaw• 3 years ago

Apples and Oranges. There are no jobs in Sweden that pay $300k.

rejectfinite2• 3 years ago

And yet the entire thread is people wanting to guilt trip Google.

kernal• 3 years ago

Apple is Next.

smith7018• 3 years ago

Apple was never viewed as an ideal place to work. They don't have the "amenities" that other FAANG companies have (had?), generally pay less, and their employees are forced into secrecy even amongst their coworkers. People work at Apple because they want to work at Apple, not because Apple provides a cushy work environment.

l33t233372• 3 years ago

I thought Google was also known for paying less.

lukas099• 3 years ago

Apple purchased NeXT in 1997 for $400 million, but I wouldn't go so far to say that Apple is NeXT.

rkhacker• 3 years ago

Feels like a nice dream interrupted for most of the googlers. Probably they felt tenured and even 6 months of severance cannot assuage the hurt feeling. Looking around and doing some reality check might help. Every company is trying to improve the bottom line when the topline is not moving up. The layoff didn't just happen this year, it has been in the corporate world all the time.

If there are true friends in the company then they will find a way to reach out. Others are just lunch/coffee buddies and they might be already enjoying their pastime with someone else. Find a way to put this in the rear-view mirror as soon as possible.

seba_dos1• 3 years ago

There was more or less a decade in between though.

lazyant• 3 years ago

"it laid off thousands by email" I know that the laying off thousands is the worst part but I also saw some people taking exception to the "by email" part (as inhumane or something; what's the alternative? also of course people were not able to log in right away all at the same time, it would be tremendously irresponsible to do otherwise.

jsnell• 3 years ago

The alternative is to shut off access to anything that could cause harm: production systems, version control, maybe Drive. But leave them access to tools like email, Meet and chat for a reasonable period. Let people actually say goodbye, hand their work off properly if they choose to. Make sure nothing personal is tied to their corporate account, and migrate anything that is in an orderly manner. Give them a bit of notice before bricking their corp phones and laptops.

They definitely have the capability to do access control at that granularity, as well as ample time as they had clearly been preparing for months. They just chose not to

hiyer• 3 years ago

12000 employees. A significant percentage of them probably working remotely. How else are you supposed to lay them off if not by email?

smsm42• 3 years ago

Google is a megacorp. Of course it behaves as a megacorp. And tbh what would you expect - if they fire thousands, there is no way they'd do it with individual attention to every person.

That said, I don't think Google has been "beloved" for years now. It has been just another megacorp that pays reasonably well.

Google was beloved as an employer for years. Then it laid off thousands by email

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