Google To Cut 200 Jobs

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/changes-to-our-sales-and-marketing.html

by physcab • 17 years ago

56 41 17 years ago

googleblog.blogspot.com

ktharavaad• 17 years ago

At least they are firing sales and marketing people and not engineers.

kailashbadu2• 17 years ago

And why is that better?

Kirby• 17 years ago

Because I'm not a sales or marketing person. :)

old-gregg• 17 years ago

Perhaps because they realize that the company's long-term future depends on products people want, as opposed to products people are being convinced they want?

prakash2• 17 years ago

There is a pecking order, I guess the engineers figure somewhere and that makes it a question of when and not if they fire engineers/technical folks.

whughes• 17 years ago

What makes you think they will need to? It's possible that this was an independent decision and not entirely based on economic pressure. Google might not need to move down the pecking order.

skmurphy• 17 years ago

Is it a contest? I don't understand this sentiment.

sgrove• 17 years ago

A little bit sad about the tone. It's certainly a reasonable thing to do, reading this,

"We did look at a number of different options but ultimately concluded that we had to restructure our organizations in order to improve our effectiveness and efficiency as a business."

An ever-so-slight amount of corporate sheen on the writing, a little bit less emotion. A dangerous step away from being a personable company people trust.

On the plus side, they are being pretty generous with time for those let go, outplacement support, and possible severance packages. Just hope they can retain a personable face.

menloparkbum• 17 years ago

That's a nice way to put it. However, the reality is they went on an insane hiring spree over the past 3 years and hired a lot of useless people. I'm surprised they are only cutting 200.

gaius• 17 years ago

Isn't that like 1% of their workforce? 2000 would be news.

prakash2• 17 years ago

Most companies conveniently avoid doing a RCA (Root cause analysis) on why these folks were hired in the first place, who hired them, and who was responsible for created overlapping organizations.

Firing that person would really help Google, alas in most cases that is some VP making the firing decisions and is obviously not going to fire himself/herself.

olefoo• 17 years ago

It's the inverse to the Peter principle, an organization grows until it is unable to govern itself.

brent• 17 years ago

In their defense they probably didn't know a recession of this magnitude was on the horizon. If they were hesitant to grow in the early days they may have missed a number of key hires or growth areas.

sketerpot• 17 years ago

Perhaps it was an experiment. Hire people to do a bunch of things, then get rid of the ones that don't work. Science! Maybe!

ComputerGuru2• 17 years ago

Google is still actively hiring engineers. While they're letting go some sales & marketing people, recruiters, head-hunters, interns, and engineers are still green-lighted.

durin42• 17 years ago

I've not seen that to be the case - in fact, from what my friends have told me, they're doing only replacement hiring right now.

nostrademons• 17 years ago

Those two statements are not mutually exclusive: replacement hiring is still hiring.

ComputerGuru2• 17 years ago

I'm just going my what I've been told by G's head-hunters.

andreyf4• 17 years ago

I'm really confused as to why, aside from cash problems, any company would do otherwise...

Companies thrive on hiring more people, motivating them to create x amount of wealth (on average), and giving them salaries, benefits, and resources worth 0.9x (on average). More smart engineers means more x, means more 0.1x, and more profit. A recession is a time that there are more smart engineers in the market, not fewer.

Google To Cut 200 Jobs

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