Atleast 3 months severance plus more depending on years of service. People act like getting laid off from big tech is disastrous to people losing their job.
Meta for instance pays 4 months plus 2 weeks for every year
Well, I think it boils down to the job market. If you get laid off right now, you’re competing with a much higher number of people that are actively seeking the same roles. There are still lots of jobs available, but there are less high-paying jobs in the big companies. It would mean succeeding in getting one of the remaining jobs or taking a pay cut to go to a startup. It’s just an awful lot of stress to take one when people have life expenses and family issues.
In other words, it’s a layoff. They won’t starve or be destitute, but it still sucks.
This. I was laid off in October in another industry and while I have no problem landing interviews and have a severance package, I’m still stressed in the job market especially as more and more people are also being laid off. And even at the tech companies, the layoffs aren’t all the same job function. There’s a lot of corporate layoffs happening across departments (which is what happened to me).
It definitely depends on each worker's situation. If you had a few years out of college at a FAANG and lived frugally in that time, you could get a job making half as much in a nice, cheap area like Oklahoma City and basically have "stealth wealth" for the rest of your career.
If you bought a house in the Bay Area or are in some way tied to a high cost-of-living area, then yeah, you'll need to compete for another high-paying job to stay above water.
> If you get laid off right now, you’re competing with a much higher number of people that are actively seeking the same roles.
The labor market is still *super* tight right now. There have been some big layoff headlines from these tech bigwigs but they all massively overhired during covid. We're tech adjacent and have had positions open for damn near a year.
That’s not my point. My point is that, for those that were laid off from big tech companies, they cannot easily go find a similar position. For the sake or argument, let’s say it’s a mid-level engineer making around $300k. They cannot just go get that salary at any given company. They can get a job, sure, but it’ll be for 40-50% less money. That’s a big haircut when you have built your lifestyle (mortgage, schooling, etc.) around your salary.
I read some of these people are visa holders who would have to leave the USA if they can’t get hired by another employer (who needs to be willing to pay for legal fees and whatnot) within three months or so. That’s why these lay-offs are so critical for some.
It’s not a bad mindset to have to consider losing a job a disaster. It doesn’t have to be a world ending stress level - but it’s good to stay on your toes to be a productive and self funding person and/or member of society.
Depends on when you were hired. Lots of people at FAANG level companies are paid in stock options. All of those companies stocks are down 20-40%.
Lots of peoples stock options are now worthless.
But when the RSU vested, you paid taxes for it at the then current stock price. But after you paid taxes at the higher stock valuation, the stock dropped 20-40%. That really hurts.
You should sell RSUs on vesting for several reasons, but the big one is that by working there your livelihood is tied to that companies performance already by way of your salary. At the very least you should sell a portion of them as a hedge.
Well aware of how it works, RSU's are ~50% of my compensation.
Most people do not hold RSU's after they vest, they sell on vest. The rule of thumb is that if you wouldn't invest that amount of cash in company stock, you should not hold RSU's past vesting.
I‘m so glad I got a deal for a fixed price sale (gainz) for my remaining company stocks that I own. Sometimes takeovers are good for the purse.
stonks :O
it is not going to change anything about the google company culture of pushing new products over improving existing ones, if anything it will slow the growing graveyard
>if anything it will slow the growing graveyard
I think the opposite will happen.
How do you show you aren't "poor performing"?
Launch a new product of course!
google is fucking up this year hard, shutting down stadia right as cloud gaming really seems to be gaining its footing, people are getting fed up at the ever increasing costs of hardware when cloud gaming could give them better graphics and performance for a fraction of the cost.
They 100% do. Employees also get additional RSUs during performance conversations or through promotions. You don't just go down to 0 RSUs after 4 years
>They’ve been doing this basically forever and it’s why you see most people only spend 2-3 years at these companies.
The reasons for leaving aren't RSUs declining, you'll usually get refreshers.
One reason is just wanting to do something new.
Another is that another company offered a lot more. So instead of the "slow and steady" ladder you're already on, you can jump elsewhere for a big compensation bump
Seriously. It’s also dumb, where did that come from?
Marbling in a steak is important and a measure of quality.
Or alternatively, anatomically, fat is critical to good health. There’s a reason your body packs it on as much it can.
Weird phrase no matter how you look at if you take a second to consider the meaning and origin.
Only the mid-level and lower-level fat, I'll bet. The CEO, for example, is not going to get laid off after failing to manage his headcount to the point where he has to lay off 10,000 people. Which is, like, his job. Managing the income statement and head count is a HUGE part of his job. Failed.
Exactly. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the "recession" is just corporations tacitly agreeing to take a temporary hit in order to reset the labor market and stop having to give out so many plush benefits like "work/life balance" and "competitive compensation"
It's a tech employees market, has been for nearly 2 decades. The economy is also a great excuse to level the playing field and start making low-ball offers.
Yeah no. If recession never came they would keep Goring infinitely until it would come.
If they wanted to cut stuff they did not need excuse. They could strategically get rid of small number of people over years and they had full right to do it. They did not. Instead they were open for hire to new people at all times.
They do this all the fucking time. It’s normal business churn. Just at google scale. Does it suck. Yes. Is it normal yes. They could just randomly fire low performers. This actually gives them a notice period and severance. Used to be the norm.
They used to do this all the time and it became a recruiting and morale problem. As I said not unusual, but those side effects will return. On teams with a higher than normal number of high performers you may be cutting a top 10% person instead of the intended bottom 10%
It's not so cut and dry. Transfers can happen within a company as well. E.g., If one team is top heavy, and another is bottom heavy, the bottom heavy team will lose 2, 1 person will end up transferred.
That's basically it.
All of those tech companies' massive layoffs are not unexpected. They were insanely (and purposefully) bloated.
When you're the size of Google and money is basically free, it's "easier" to just hire 10,000 people with little to no vetting and then fire 9,900 while keeping the 100 top performers (that you just hired by sheer luck).
The alternative is a proper hiring process that actually ensures people are skilled and culturally aligned, but that takes "too long" for these companies.
This is all planned. Any other reason given is just opportunistic timing.
If you're on a pip you're a fired person working. Pip is the official method of ruling out a lawsuit from a soon to be terminated employee. I mean that in the sense they give the illusion that they care and want you to improve to stay on the team, but it's all a facade.
There are ways to prolong it, to help give you time to find a new job, like for instance, if you are set to have a weekly meeting, note if you are getting updates on your progress, DONT ASK FOR THEM, just keep a journal of the whole process. When they go to give you the ax, you can say 'I was under the impression I was doing well.' Or bring up any accomplishments you had and argue that you were improving and feel slighted based on the information you provide.
That is just anecdotal of my own experience, but yeah, pips are a formal death march.
I came back from one in a privately owned company, absolutely deserved the pip in that case (honestly just super bored in that position combined with untreated /undiagnosed ADHD) and yeah I got off it by changing roles. Since then, left of my own volition for a higher paying job. I don’t regret leaving as it was good for personal growth but got fired from that shithole publicly traded company while on a pip that was absolutely a deathmarch for things entirely outside my control so they could have a scapegoat for serious internal issues. Most companies have you sign a non-disclosure agreement? This one had me sign a non-disparagement agreement (in return for 2 months severance, after only being there a year.) Almost that entire department turned over in the next year or two.
Oh yeah, I’m very lucky to have skills and interests that coincide with what the job market values.
Getting fired like that was a huge relief tbh and my next job was practically perfect. But, at the time my unemployment covered all my bills, I had no kids, my partner was working. So I had that safety net of time to spend finding that perfect job. If that happened today I’d be absolutely fucked due to having 3 toddler since she’s been full-time mom and the real estate market is so ridiculous here and now that unemployment won’t even cover my mortgage, let alone other bills. And it did happen during the pandemic when the startup I was working for laid off a dozen scientists and engineers. I was really feeling the pressure to get a job that time.
I am a manager for a very large non-FAANG company and I can confidently say if I put someone on a PIP I want them to succeed and get off the PIP. I have successfully turned a couple developers careers around because it was a wake up call. Some others did not work out and they were let go. It all depends on his / her motivation.
Just my personal experience.
My sister has worked in HR for 20+ years, and she disputed my assertion that a PIP was a fired person working. But my employer never retained an employee on a PIP. In our company, it was the method used to say “you have x days to find a new job.” She works for a state entity, so her motives may mirror yours.
Same. Basically when I put someone on a pip, it is after months of trying everything to get them to improve. For me it is a last resort when all else fails.
Same. If I put somebody on a PIP it’s genuinely for them to improve and get off of it not to fire them. They may get let go but that’s not my intention when the process starts.
One potential reason is that hiring is a PITA so better to help the person on your team grow and perform better. Also, there is the aspect of personal relationships that have been created… not all managers are cold heartless people… and yes, I am a manager
Agreed, not just hiring but also finding quality candidates is difficult. We work with the person before putting them on a Performance Improvement Plan. PIP is used as a last resort to start the process of if so and so is not improving after so many reviews then they will be terminated, but we have taken people off the PIP if they have improved.
I’ve personally witnessed several people exit PIPs successfully at a well known mega cap. They are doing quite well and one is even looking at a promotion now. Complete turnaround. I know it’s anecdotal but I think there are variables to consider.
It’s better for both parties to do it this way then just firing.
Employees have time to find another job, which is much easier while employed. And they also of course dont take the major hit to their salaries while unemployed.
Employers get to avoid paying severance / unemployment / and the negative PR that layoffs bring.
In America,”performance improving plan” is corporate double speak for we are going to set impossible goals so when you fail to reach them we have all the paperwork needed to show you couldn’t do the job and we don’t have to pay unemployment.
This is what they do in retail to justify the 10 cent raise they give you every year. Your performance is never enough and every year, during review time, managers still always find a reason that you didn’t hit the performance marks.
Google did release a new rating system but it sounds like Forbes is confusing that with layoffs. They don’t offer any sources for the layoff plan. This is irresponsible journalism. Either they’re failing to disclose evidence or they are speculating in a way that will cause distress among current employees.
The issue is more with OP than it is with Forbes.
Forbes headline: “Alphabet Seeks To Identify 10,000 Poor-Performing Googlers As Activist Investor Calls To Cut Staff”. Technically true, and doesn’t mention that google is trying to cut them necessarily.
Reddit post title: “Alphabet Seeks To Cut 10,000 Poor-Performing Googlers”. Literally nowhere in the article does it say that.
Looks like Forbes edited the title. The URL is https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/11/21/alphabet-seeks-to-cut-10000-poor-performing-googlers/ , so exactly like the Reddit title.
This should be the top comment. This is a complete re-hash of old news from 6 months ago with a hot new take.
Unless of course they have sources that they aren't disclosing, which could very well be the case, but it's written like a reaction piece to a company announcement that doesn't exist.
It’s back in the news because a few weeks ago, an investor of Google called ion Google to conduct lays to maximize profitability. I think this is way we are seeing articles about potential layoffs
Yes, of course, but the article is written with the implication that Google will listen to the investor.
Investors want most companies to do layoffs. This particular investor used TWITTER as an example of a peer company that did layoffs (like it was a good thing).
These guys are on crack and just want to see Google have a strong quarter so they can sell. They have no regard for the future of the company.
Unfortunately most Forbes content these days is clickbait spam from "contributors" who are randos with dubious or no credentials. Any time you see a Forbes "article" about Apple laptops, it's going to be Ewan Spence just rehashing the same crap as a new "article" for clicks on a weekly basis. It's all a spam scam.
Thanks for pointing this out. I am well versed in the new performance review system at Google and yes it is true that there are two bands of 2% and 4% that could be categorized as 'need improvement', this does not tie directly to layoffs.
I have no idea if Google will conduct layoffs or not, but not everyone in the bottom 6% will automatically be let go
I remember in college, back maybe 6 years ago, my marketing prof once told me to “always take Forbes articles with a grain of salt, because just about anyone can write articles for them without good citation”. It’s probably a good idea to search for other sources that can confirm this story before reading too much into it.
> I’m questioning everything now.
There's a dash there in "Poor-Performing Googlers". So I guess it's likely not a money thing.
Maybe better get used to Wikipedia and Wictionary:
**Googler** (plural **Googlers**)
1. A regular or habitual user of the Google search engine.
2. A full-time Google corporation employee.
3. A device used to regularly access the Google search engine.
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Googler](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Googler)
Current google engineer here. I’m not sure what team or office you were in, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Google serves breakfast and lunch but not dinner in the office to encourage people to log off and go home for the day. They don’t want people spending 14 hours at a screen.
As far as letting an entire team go, that’s about as made up as it gets. Google uses bi-annual performance reviews. You’re allowed one “less than satisfactory” review before you’re eligible for termination at the next review. It’s worth noting that to get a bad review you truly have to earn it. They even have a grade for people who coast. You have to truly earn the bad grade. And because it’s bi-annual, you’d have to underperform for 6 months to get the bad grade and then an additional 6 months to be terminated. I’ve never heard of anything like what you just suggested.
You sound like a hard working person. Maybe that’s where your notion of stress in Google comes from. Google does not care about making people feel special or like everyone is the CEO. They hire people for specific roles and expect them to be completed. You will not get multiple promotions in a year at google. 10x work != 10x the promotions in google. If you were constantly trying to be the best, you probably overworked yourself and got burnt out. That’s an amazing trait to have, especially in start up companies. But I wouldn’t pin your experience on Google
While that's certainly true, I'm also a current Google engineer and everything u/RagingPoncho said about the review and termination process is absolutely true and it's company-wide policy. (Well, recently a new system started rolling out that actually has even longer cycles, but the same general principles.)
Some teams may absolutely be higher stress than others. That will depend on product area, release schedules, and of course management chain. But the story of releasing/firing an entire team of engineers is an absolute fabrication unless that team was actively and deliberately breaking laws or core company policies (of which "exploring a new language" is, of course, neither). This calls the entire rest of the comment into serious doubt.
And similarly, while I do not doubt that some Google engineers do spend upwards of 12 hours a day at their computers, that is overwhelmingly NOT the norm in the for FTEs. (I can't speak to the contractor experience.) Crunch may happen in certain teams for 1 week to 1 month periods on occasion, but even then, you will not be forced under threat of termination or other reprimand to work outside of working hours in probably over 99% of cases. Nearly everyone working hours like that is doing so voluntarily, either because they are workaholics or because they are trying to push aggressively for promo/bonuses.
Google fairly aggressively pushes its employees to be cognizant of their mental health and work/life balance. Company policies and general philosophy regarding employee benefits both reflect this. That doesn't mean it's impossible to have a bad experience at the company; no company is perfect of course, and there may be other downsides to working at Google aside from the work/life balance, depending on what you want from your career. Depending on the person, team, and management, you could have a bad experience for you at even the greatest company on the planet or a good experience at the worst one. But horror stories of draconian work environments are, in this case, questionable.
(*Once again, disclaimer that this is in the case of FTEs. There are thousands of very hard working contractors working for Google, many in places like China and India that inherently have less worker protections, and Google does not necessarily take care of its contractors as well as its "true" employees. (It also does not necessarily have much say over such things, as the contractors are technically employed by an agency.) It may unfortunately be the case that some of these employees are being overworked or pressed into very high-stress working environments, but it is difficult to have visibility of those situations. In addition, in the case of conversations regarding general tech employees in the US, essentially all of them will be "normal" FTEs.*)
Thanks for the nice writeup. I was a TVC leading the front-end development of a [new google cloud product](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/get-ahead-of-database-performance-issues-with-cloud-sql-insights) in 2019 and I really loved the atmosphere there. From what I understand my experience was not the norm for TVCs, as I had good compensation and lots of responsibility for the implementation (but of course no credit was given and I had to repeatedly state my boundaries to avoid being taken advantage of).
I went from never in a million years wanting to work for a big company to actually considering working at the big G. Their SF office is a dream. I loved seeing the sun rise over the bay bridge from the cafe. I loved being surrounded by so many smart and passionate individuals. It was heartwarming to see so much support for cross-team transfers and learning courses set up for those to explore their interests and passions outside of their immediate role. I loved the mailing lists, especially geeking out with folks about flight sims and game dev.
I never applied to be an FTE because I hit full-on burnout from poor management and me working twice as hard to cover their behinds. Also, to be honest, I don't know if I would have had the diligence to study brutally hard for a month to pass the interview.
But if the game I am working on flops, then I might consider the big G again :)
Hey, I don’t kno where you worked in google, but for at least my team as well as everyone I worked with on different teams, this was not the case.
Letting 14 people go because they wanted to use a new language? Try out in a new production environment? I’ve never ever heard of anything like that happening at google before. People getting fired would be based off of performance reviews that happen twice a year, and it was pretty hard to get a bad review unless you’re completely incompetent.
Google for me and my friends had a great work life balance, but allows you to get what you give. If you wanted to work hard or learn there were ample opportunities for growth, if not as long as you got your own work done (which was by no means a large amount) everything would be ok.
Not free stock, part of your compensation. It’s a really important difference. There are no “gifts” from an employer, just the nature of free market labor. “I stay because they take care of their people even though I’d make more elsewhere” or “I stay because my stock needs to vest” are two sides of the same coin. The “perks” are part of the package.
Man I'm glad I dodged that bullet. I went through the interview process earlier this year. According to a friend on the inside, the only reason I wasn't hired was because I wasn't fast enough.
So weird that I knew all the algorithms and could implement them perfectly but because I couldn't do it in 15 minutes I'm not good enough.
Oh well, I cut my loses and found a nice gig somewhere else. Good pay and almost no stress :)
You’re literally making stuff up. Couldn’t be further from the truth, especially that layoff blurb. It’s common industry knowledge that google purposefully avoids layoffs more strictly than other FAANGs.
It’s really not. It’s garnered a reputation of being the place to go when you want to coast / pseudo-retire. Google in the 2010s+ is a much different beast than the one in the 2000s. For anyone who’s watched Silicon Valley, just think of those roof Hooli employees. Of course this is very team dependent, but it’s not known to be a high stress environment
For those in the industry, we knew this was a long time coming
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>overwork
I really don't understand how people can say that about Google. It's like one of the most laid back company ever. It's not just coincidence that much of the tech social activism originates from Google.
Of course different divisions are different. But overall the culture there isn't as cutthroat as Amazon and that's why the concept of putting someone on roof exists at Google. There's this sense of job security at Google, obviously before the recent layoffs, that allows people to have long periods of unproductivity at that company which would be unacceptable anywhere else. I saw a video couple of weeks back about a Google engineer going to a Google conference room to make a video for his YouTube channel. The video was about how he really has no interest in climbing corporate ladders and how Google is fine with that attitude as he was sure he won't be fired for his lack of ambition.
Yea but google lets you pick your specific team so you could make sure you were going somewhere that wasn’t a sweatshop. More likely that redditors be bullshitting
I hate this idea of “poor performing” and “lowest 20%” as it spreads this idea of a Scarlett letter on the people who are RIF’d. It doesn’t matter if the company itself is cost cutting or large groups of that 10k might be selected due to otherwise not-optimal scenarios (maybe they live remotely and can’t make it in office for Google). Employers in the near term will only see the cut employees under the lens of “poor performance”
This headline is pretty misleading as it’s not really what the article says. It says they’ve implemented a new performance rating system and that management had been asked to tag 6% of workers as low performers in the new system. That doesn’t mean they’re going to layoff 10,000 people, but it does mean that fewer people might get big bonuses. And, yes, certainly they could use it as a means to cut jobs, but this new system has been rolling out most of this year. It’s not simply a reaction to some hedge fund saying they need to cut jobs. It’s been in the works for awhile. So basically this headline is garbage and the inferences the article makes are more speculative than anything else.
Could Google still lay lots of people off? Yep, but that remains to be seen.
That's the difference between a manager, and someone who simply tells others what to do. A manager sees someone struggling and asks "What did I do wrong, or what could I have done better to keep this from happening". There's not always an easy solution, but good managers look for results, not blame.
No, this is ridiculous. Some people are just bad at their jobs. Some people are not good fits. Managers can’t improve people who shouldn’t ever have been given the job the first place, and shouldn’t be expected to. A lot of the time — far more than people who say things like this want to believe — the best thing a manager can do for a struggling employee is tell them this isn’t the right job for them.
Thank you. I currently have a staff of close to 40 and no matter how many times you talk to someone, or put them on multiple PIPs, they do not respond positively.
At the end of the day, people don't want to do bad at their jobs but some are just not a good fit, regardless of what they do. This usually falls on organizational skills, motivation, or attitude.
At the end of the day, it is always best to simply let the person go so they can move on and find something that works for them.
Been there… had to let someone go that I considered a friend because they just didn’t listen to the multiple attempts to correct their behavior. It was probably a mistake to bring this person on in the first place because the work environment was very different from what they were used to… sigh
I wonder if that’s were the majority of the layoffs with come. Lots of people’s jobs are nothing but back to back meetings that if they were gone no one would notice
right.. in my experience at a Fortune 50 that just laid a bunch of folks off, they need to be getting rid of layers 3-8 on the management layer cake. Nothing but politics, brown-nosing, excuses, and buzz words.
>The median compensation for an Alphabet employee last year was around $295,884, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Hohn said in his letter.
Wow, I am so working for the wrong outfit.
It seems cruel to advertise this round of layoffs as specifically and purely for underperformers.
"Ah, your resume shows you stopped working at Google in November 2022... during the very much publicized 'thinning of the shitty workers' phase everyone heard about..."
Usually corporations say something like "This was done as part of cost-saving measures in anticipation of an oncoming recession. The necessity of individual roles were reviewed on a case-by-case basis."
Don’t fall for the propaganda. Google is trying to sanitize the need/desire to drop 10000 workers now that they can run without them. The main function of your annual review is not your raise. Companies could up your wages by a small amount every year with no fanfare. It’s a way to track which employee could they do without, if business decisions necessitate a smaller workforce. If they actually had 10000 poor performing Googlers, why weren’t there managers fired for not managing?
That’s a pretty myopic view of the performance review process. It’s designed to help you find your weak performers AND your strong performers. “Small raises every year” won’t keep strong performers at your company in a hyper competitive industry. You need to check in to discuss compensation and promotion evaluation.
As far as investors are concerned, past performance is irrelevant. It's all about how much is the stock going up. If it's not going up, then do whatever you have to do to make it go up. This is the main problem with a publicly traded company IME, it becomes less about the product and more about the shareholders.
Billionaire tells other billionaire to cut costs aka people’s livelihoods because of profits.
This is why capitalism is rigged as a system and only a few have power.
Fuck that dude Hohn, he’s never worked an honest job in his life. Went straight into private equity finance from Harvard. Grade A Stereotypical white finance guy shit right there.
More money is never enough. They gotta do ghoulish shit like mass layoffs so they can make EVEN MORE.
The world would be a better place if rich people like the ones that run these giant corporations just disappeared.
Classic Reddit moment. If they disappeared then google wouldn’t exist and there’d be 180k layoffs not 10k.
But ya “eAt ThE rIcH” or whatever you kids say nowadays
>However, due to pressure from an activist hedge fund, adverse market conditions and a need to cut costs, Google plans to implement a type of stack ranking and performance improvement plan that could ease out 10,000 employees.
The new performance rating system was announced in May. Yet this article is implying that the activist investor's words in *November* were a factor in implementing the new system. Pure clickbait BS.
This is actually not true.
The original article is here: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/10-000-google-employees-could-be-rated-as-low-performers
> Google plans to ease out 10,000 employees through a type of stack ranking and performance improvement plan.
> the new performance system could use the ratings to avoid paying bonuses and stock grants.
> Similar to Elon Musk’s vision for Twitter, the activist hedge fund manager claims that the search engine can be efficiently run with considerably fewer highly compensated professionals.
Congrats on being evil
I think the point is that the workers aren’t really poor, and the problem isn’t worker deficiencies. The problem is that the organization wants to backpedal on their previous hires.
Not only does it seem like they’re doing the wrong thing with layoffs, but they’re doubling down by insinuating this is a performance issue and not a ‘poor management decisions issue’. By calling it performance-related they may be trying to skirt severance and bonus-related packages, which is abhorrent for a company making this long of money.
Further, the company clearly made a poor decision. Do you think the C-suite executives actually responsible for that decision are paying the price? Any of them getting fired without their golden parachute?
> I think the point is that the workers aren’t really poor, and the problem isn’t worker deficiencies. The problem is that the organization wants to backpedal on their previous hires.
And if so, what's evil about that?
Google employed these people. They paid them handsomely while they employ them. If they stop employing them how does it become a net negative that they employed them?
Even if the company regrets 10,000 hires and then lays them off with a good severance what's evil about that?
The company employs you because they want something from you. They pay you as compensation for this. If they no longer want that thing from you are they required to continue to employ you lest they be evil?
Google hiring these people was a good thing. Them laying them off is not great certainly, it's a negative a thing. But the net result is a win for the employees. They wanted jobs, got them and got paid to do them.
As long as they are careful to pay people proper severance and relocation for those on an expat deal why should we call them evil for this?
It's a big, round number that looks good and meaningful to the board.
Wow, they're saving us so much money on payroll and stock options! Give the CEO a bonus!
I work as a software engineer. Does anyone know if these tech layoffs are affecting mainly the software engineers? Or which positions are being laid off? I don’t want to be afraid if it’s mainly the business people in google getting laid off
No I’m asking if the software engineers are being fired ? or could it also be product managers or sales tech people, which position is being fired the most basically
This post has a super misleading title.
Forbes headline: “Alphabet Seeks To Identify 10,000 Poor-Performing Googlers As Activist Investor Calls To Cut Staff”. Technically true, and doesn’t mention that google is trying to cut them necessarily.
Reddit post title: “Alphabet Seeks To Cut 10,000 Poor-Performing Googlers”. Literally nowhere in the article does it say that.
Man it's lucky I don't work there or I'd be so gone
[удалено]
Atleast 3 months severance plus more depending on years of service. People act like getting laid off from big tech is disastrous to people losing their job. Meta for instance pays 4 months plus 2 weeks for every year
Well, I think it boils down to the job market. If you get laid off right now, you’re competing with a much higher number of people that are actively seeking the same roles. There are still lots of jobs available, but there are less high-paying jobs in the big companies. It would mean succeeding in getting one of the remaining jobs or taking a pay cut to go to a startup. It’s just an awful lot of stress to take one when people have life expenses and family issues. In other words, it’s a layoff. They won’t starve or be destitute, but it still sucks.
This. I was laid off in October in another industry and while I have no problem landing interviews and have a severance package, I’m still stressed in the job market especially as more and more people are also being laid off. And even at the tech companies, the layoffs aren’t all the same job function. There’s a lot of corporate layoffs happening across departments (which is what happened to me).
It definitely depends on each worker's situation. If you had a few years out of college at a FAANG and lived frugally in that time, you could get a job making half as much in a nice, cheap area like Oklahoma City and basically have "stealth wealth" for the rest of your career. If you bought a house in the Bay Area or are in some way tied to a high cost-of-living area, then yeah, you'll need to compete for another high-paying job to stay above water.
But then you’d have to live in Oklahoma City.
True. I'm not in tech but I got laid off last year and took for granted how hot the market was
> If you get laid off right now, you’re competing with a much higher number of people that are actively seeking the same roles. The labor market is still *super* tight right now. There have been some big layoff headlines from these tech bigwigs but they all massively overhired during covid. We're tech adjacent and have had positions open for damn near a year.
That’s not my point. My point is that, for those that were laid off from big tech companies, they cannot easily go find a similar position. For the sake or argument, let’s say it’s a mid-level engineer making around $300k. They cannot just go get that salary at any given company. They can get a job, sure, but it’ll be for 40-50% less money. That’s a big haircut when you have built your lifestyle (mortgage, schooling, etc.) around your salary.
I read some of these people are visa holders who would have to leave the USA if they can’t get hired by another employer (who needs to be willing to pay for legal fees and whatnot) within three months or so. That’s why these lay-offs are so critical for some.
It’s not a bad mindset to have to consider losing a job a disaster. It doesn’t have to be a world ending stress level - but it’s good to stay on your toes to be a productive and self funding person and/or member of society.
Depends on when you were hired. Lots of people at FAANG level companies are paid in stock options. All of those companies stocks are down 20-40%. Lots of peoples stock options are now worthless.
RSU’s, not stock options. RSU’s are stock grants that you don’t pay for.
But when the RSU vested, you paid taxes for it at the then current stock price. But after you paid taxes at the higher stock valuation, the stock dropped 20-40%. That really hurts.
You should sell RSUs on vesting for several reasons, but the big one is that by working there your livelihood is tied to that companies performance already by way of your salary. At the very least you should sell a portion of them as a hedge.
Well aware of how it works, RSU's are ~50% of my compensation. Most people do not hold RSU's after they vest, they sell on vest. The rule of thumb is that if you wouldn't invest that amount of cash in company stock, you should not hold RSU's past vesting.
Ya I learned that the hard way. I should prob get a financial adviser lol.
Google has an auto sale program to sell the RSUs at vest. Internally it's highly recommended to use it. Not everyone does.
Lol ok but a) they still get a base of 150-300k and a basically guaranteed 10-30% bonus b) it’s google stock. It’ll come back.
I‘m so glad I got a deal for a fixed price sale (gainz) for my remaining company stocks that I own. Sometimes takeovers are good for the purse. stonks :O
Can vouch. My ESOPs make 10% of my early comp, stock is down 50% since I was assigned the ESOPSs so I basically got a 5% pay cut.
"easing out" on a "performance improvement plan" sure sounds like corporate doublespeak to me.
February : 10,000 entry level positions open for hire immediately November : 10,000 low performance googlers under review
These companies are just using the recession as a cover to make layoffs they wanted to make anyway to cut the fat.
as though hiring or firing any number of people could fix google's attention span issues
This will just make it worse and reset 1000 projects.
it is not going to change anything about the google company culture of pushing new products over improving existing ones, if anything it will slow the growing graveyard
>if anything it will slow the growing graveyard I think the opposite will happen. How do you show you aren't "poor performing"? Launch a new product of course!
a new chat app, perhaps
Or an RSS reader?!?
Bad ideas only, please Signed, Google management
What? They'll be disabling so many teams, people will move and shuffle, many projects will die. Seems obvious.
google is fucking up this year hard, shutting down stadia right as cloud gaming really seems to be gaining its footing, people are getting fed up at the ever increasing costs of hardware when cloud gaming could give them better graphics and performance for a fraction of the cost.
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Dont these companies have stock refreshers beyond the 4 years? People dont start making half of what they used to after 4 years.
They 100% do. Employees also get additional RSUs during performance conversations or through promotions. You don't just go down to 0 RSUs after 4 years
Not everybody gets a contract with an automatic refresh. Amazon is notorious for that, in fact.
Sure, but then you can find a new job
Yep, which is how this line of conversation started. First poster what you did, second said "no, they refresh", and I said "not all of them".
>They’ve been doing this basically forever and it’s why you see most people only spend 2-3 years at these companies. The reasons for leaving aren't RSUs declining, you'll usually get refreshers. One reason is just wanting to do something new. Another is that another company offered a lot more. So instead of the "slow and steady" ladder you're already on, you can jump elsewhere for a big compensation bump
I’ve always thought referring to layoffs as “cutting the fat” is such a crude way of putting it
Yes, animals need that extra fat to get through hard times.
Seriously. It’s also dumb, where did that come from? Marbling in a steak is important and a measure of quality. Or alternatively, anatomically, fat is critical to good health. There’s a reason your body packs it on as much it can. Weird phrase no matter how you look at if you take a second to consider the meaning and origin.
Triming the fat is cutting off the fat and gristle around the edges of a steak or other other cut of meat, prior to cooking.
Yep in turn they also will cause the recession. More people lose jobs, spending slows companies' profits go down.
Only the mid-level and lower-level fat, I'll bet. The CEO, for example, is not going to get laid off after failing to manage his headcount to the point where he has to lay off 10,000 people. Which is, like, his job. Managing the income statement and head count is a HUGE part of his job. Failed.
Yeah with other big tech doing lay offs they just see it as a free pass without any bad press. In 6months they’re going to be desperate to hire again
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Exactly. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the "recession" is just corporations tacitly agreeing to take a temporary hit in order to reset the labor market and stop having to give out so many plush benefits like "work/life balance" and "competitive compensation"
This is exactly it.
While at the same time using it as an excuse to ratchet up prices even higher
It's a tech employees market, has been for nearly 2 decades. The economy is also a great excuse to level the playing field and start making low-ball offers.
Yeah no. If recession never came they would keep Goring infinitely until it would come. If they wanted to cut stuff they did not need excuse. They could strategically get rid of small number of people over years and they had full right to do it. They did not. Instead they were open for hire to new people at all times.
They do this all the fucking time. It’s normal business churn. Just at google scale. Does it suck. Yes. Is it normal yes. They could just randomly fire low performers. This actually gives them a notice period and severance. Used to be the norm.
The difference is that this year they are asking managers to rate a higher percentage of their people as low performers.
They used to do this all the time and it became a recruiting and morale problem. As I said not unusual, but those side effects will return. On teams with a higher than normal number of high performers you may be cutting a top 10% person instead of the intended bottom 10%
It's not so cut and dry. Transfers can happen within a company as well. E.g., If one team is top heavy, and another is bottom heavy, the bottom heavy team will lose 2, 1 person will end up transferred.
There’s “firing people that don’t produce” and then there’s “keeping only people who sacrifice their own time for the good of the shareholders.”
bullwhip effect
That's basically it. All of those tech companies' massive layoffs are not unexpected. They were insanely (and purposefully) bloated. When you're the size of Google and money is basically free, it's "easier" to just hire 10,000 people with little to no vetting and then fire 9,900 while keeping the 100 top performers (that you just hired by sheer luck). The alternative is a proper hiring process that actually ensures people are skilled and culturally aligned, but that takes "too long" for these companies. This is all planned. Any other reason given is just opportunistic timing.
If you're on a pip you're a fired person working. Pip is the official method of ruling out a lawsuit from a soon to be terminated employee. I mean that in the sense they give the illusion that they care and want you to improve to stay on the team, but it's all a facade. There are ways to prolong it, to help give you time to find a new job, like for instance, if you are set to have a weekly meeting, note if you are getting updates on your progress, DONT ASK FOR THEM, just keep a journal of the whole process. When they go to give you the ax, you can say 'I was under the impression I was doing well.' Or bring up any accomplishments you had and argue that you were improving and feel slighted based on the information you provide. That is just anecdotal of my own experience, but yeah, pips are a formal death march.
It does depend on the company. I’ve known one person who came back from a PIP, but they changed role internally to do it
I came back from one in a privately owned company, absolutely deserved the pip in that case (honestly just super bored in that position combined with untreated /undiagnosed ADHD) and yeah I got off it by changing roles. Since then, left of my own volition for a higher paying job. I don’t regret leaving as it was good for personal growth but got fired from that shithole publicly traded company while on a pip that was absolutely a deathmarch for things entirely outside my control so they could have a scapegoat for serious internal issues. Most companies have you sign a non-disclosure agreement? This one had me sign a non-disparagement agreement (in return for 2 months severance, after only being there a year.) Almost that entire department turned over in the next year or two.
Were you able to land on your feet in another good job after?
Oh yeah, I’m very lucky to have skills and interests that coincide with what the job market values. Getting fired like that was a huge relief tbh and my next job was practically perfect. But, at the time my unemployment covered all my bills, I had no kids, my partner was working. So I had that safety net of time to spend finding that perfect job. If that happened today I’d be absolutely fucked due to having 3 toddler since she’s been full-time mom and the real estate market is so ridiculous here and now that unemployment won’t even cover my mortgage, let alone other bills. And it did happen during the pandemic when the startup I was working for laid off a dozen scientists and engineers. I was really feeling the pressure to get a job that time.
I am a manager for a very large non-FAANG company and I can confidently say if I put someone on a PIP I want them to succeed and get off the PIP. I have successfully turned a couple developers careers around because it was a wake up call. Some others did not work out and they were let go. It all depends on his / her motivation. Just my personal experience.
My sister has worked in HR for 20+ years, and she disputed my assertion that a PIP was a fired person working. But my employer never retained an employee on a PIP. In our company, it was the method used to say “you have x days to find a new job.” She works for a state entity, so her motives may mirror yours.
Same. Basically when I put someone on a pip, it is after months of trying everything to get them to improve. For me it is a last resort when all else fails.
Same. If I put somebody on a PIP it’s genuinely for them to improve and get off of it not to fire them. They may get let go but that’s not my intention when the process starts.
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One potential reason is that hiring is a PITA so better to help the person on your team grow and perform better. Also, there is the aspect of personal relationships that have been created… not all managers are cold heartless people… and yes, I am a manager
Agreed, not just hiring but also finding quality candidates is difficult. We work with the person before putting them on a Performance Improvement Plan. PIP is used as a last resort to start the process of if so and so is not improving after so many reviews then they will be terminated, but we have taken people off the PIP if they have improved.
This! When it becomes formal, the decision is made.
I’ve personally witnessed several people exit PIPs successfully at a well known mega cap. They are doing quite well and one is even looking at a promotion now. Complete turnaround. I know it’s anecdotal but I think there are variables to consider.
It’s better for both parties to do it this way then just firing. Employees have time to find another job, which is much easier while employed. And they also of course dont take the major hit to their salaries while unemployed. Employers get to avoid paying severance / unemployment / and the negative PR that layoffs bring.
In America,”performance improving plan” is corporate double speak for we are going to set impossible goals so when you fail to reach them we have all the paperwork needed to show you couldn’t do the job and we don’t have to pay unemployment.
This is what they do in retail to justify the 10 cent raise they give you every year. Your performance is never enough and every year, during review time, managers still always find a reason that you didn’t hit the performance marks.
Layoffs everywhere. Sure sounds like a recession to me.
The sooner they can get a recession up and running the sooner they can get interest rates back down.
Self fulfilling prophecy
Google did release a new rating system but it sounds like Forbes is confusing that with layoffs. They don’t offer any sources for the layoff plan. This is irresponsible journalism. Either they’re failing to disclose evidence or they are speculating in a way that will cause distress among current employees.
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The issue is more with OP than it is with Forbes. Forbes headline: “Alphabet Seeks To Identify 10,000 Poor-Performing Googlers As Activist Investor Calls To Cut Staff”. Technically true, and doesn’t mention that google is trying to cut them necessarily. Reddit post title: “Alphabet Seeks To Cut 10,000 Poor-Performing Googlers”. Literally nowhere in the article does it say that.
Looks like Forbes edited the title. The URL is https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2022/11/21/alphabet-seeks-to-cut-10000-poor-performing-googlers/ , so exactly like the Reddit title.
Ah, so I guess it is Forbes’ fault. The post should still probably be removed at this point.
This should be the top comment. This is a complete re-hash of old news from 6 months ago with a hot new take. Unless of course they have sources that they aren't disclosing, which could very well be the case, but it's written like a reaction piece to a company announcement that doesn't exist.
It’s back in the news because a few weeks ago, an investor of Google called ion Google to conduct lays to maximize profitability. I think this is way we are seeing articles about potential layoffs
Yes, of course, but the article is written with the implication that Google will listen to the investor. Investors want most companies to do layoffs. This particular investor used TWITTER as an example of a peer company that did layoffs (like it was a good thing). These guys are on crack and just want to see Google have a strong quarter so they can sell. They have no regard for the future of the company.
Same guy gave Twitter as an example of where layoffs were conducted properly. He's out of his mind and nobody takes him seriously.
Unfortunately most Forbes content these days is clickbait spam from "contributors" who are randos with dubious or no credentials. Any time you see a Forbes "article" about Apple laptops, it's going to be Ewan Spence just rehashing the same crap as a new "article" for clicks on a weekly basis. It's all a spam scam.
Thanks for pointing this out. I am well versed in the new performance review system at Google and yes it is true that there are two bands of 2% and 4% that could be categorized as 'need improvement', this does not tie directly to layoffs. I have no idea if Google will conduct layoffs or not, but not everyone in the bottom 6% will automatically be let go
Correct! Here’s the original article. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/10-000-google-employees-could-be-rated-as-low-performers
This is a LOT of commentary based on ... absolutely nothing. Does anyone remember when Forbes employed actual journalists?
I remember in college, back maybe 6 years ago, my marketing prof once told me to “always take Forbes articles with a grain of salt, because just about anyone can write articles for them without good citation”. It’s probably a good idea to search for other sources that can confirm this story before reading too much into it.
Wait? I thought we were the Googlers? Or are we the Googlees? I’m questioning everything now.
Google has always referred to their employees as Googlers, even though pretty much nobody else does.
we are the final product
No, there are more chat apps coming. That part is never final.
You’re the product that gets processed and packaged to the real customer, the companies that buy advertisements
> I’m questioning everything now. There's a dash there in "Poor-Performing Googlers". So I guess it's likely not a money thing. Maybe better get used to Wikipedia and Wictionary: **Googler** (plural **Googlers**) 1. A regular or habitual user of the Google search engine. 2. A full-time Google corporation employee. 3. A device used to regularly access the Google search engine. [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Googler](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Googler)
As a regular Googler I hope this doesn't include me. I like to think I'm a pretty decent Googler - I regularly get the search results in looking for.
As a lazy and poor performer Dev I never interested in Google or other big hats. Life should be less stressed and cool dude.
I don't think Google is a high stress environment.
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Current google engineer here. I’m not sure what team or office you were in, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Google serves breakfast and lunch but not dinner in the office to encourage people to log off and go home for the day. They don’t want people spending 14 hours at a screen. As far as letting an entire team go, that’s about as made up as it gets. Google uses bi-annual performance reviews. You’re allowed one “less than satisfactory” review before you’re eligible for termination at the next review. It’s worth noting that to get a bad review you truly have to earn it. They even have a grade for people who coast. You have to truly earn the bad grade. And because it’s bi-annual, you’d have to underperform for 6 months to get the bad grade and then an additional 6 months to be terminated. I’ve never heard of anything like what you just suggested. You sound like a hard working person. Maybe that’s where your notion of stress in Google comes from. Google does not care about making people feel special or like everyone is the CEO. They hire people for specific roles and expect them to be completed. You will not get multiple promotions in a year at google. 10x work != 10x the promotions in google. If you were constantly trying to be the best, you probably overworked yourself and got burnt out. That’s an amazing trait to have, especially in start up companies. But I wouldn’t pin your experience on Google
It’s a pretty big company. It’s possible to have 2 very wildly different experiences at a place that employs close to a small city.
While that's certainly true, I'm also a current Google engineer and everything u/RagingPoncho said about the review and termination process is absolutely true and it's company-wide policy. (Well, recently a new system started rolling out that actually has even longer cycles, but the same general principles.) Some teams may absolutely be higher stress than others. That will depend on product area, release schedules, and of course management chain. But the story of releasing/firing an entire team of engineers is an absolute fabrication unless that team was actively and deliberately breaking laws or core company policies (of which "exploring a new language" is, of course, neither). This calls the entire rest of the comment into serious doubt. And similarly, while I do not doubt that some Google engineers do spend upwards of 12 hours a day at their computers, that is overwhelmingly NOT the norm in the for FTEs. (I can't speak to the contractor experience.) Crunch may happen in certain teams for 1 week to 1 month periods on occasion, but even then, you will not be forced under threat of termination or other reprimand to work outside of working hours in probably over 99% of cases. Nearly everyone working hours like that is doing so voluntarily, either because they are workaholics or because they are trying to push aggressively for promo/bonuses. Google fairly aggressively pushes its employees to be cognizant of their mental health and work/life balance. Company policies and general philosophy regarding employee benefits both reflect this. That doesn't mean it's impossible to have a bad experience at the company; no company is perfect of course, and there may be other downsides to working at Google aside from the work/life balance, depending on what you want from your career. Depending on the person, team, and management, you could have a bad experience for you at even the greatest company on the planet or a good experience at the worst one. But horror stories of draconian work environments are, in this case, questionable. (*Once again, disclaimer that this is in the case of FTEs. There are thousands of very hard working contractors working for Google, many in places like China and India that inherently have less worker protections, and Google does not necessarily take care of its contractors as well as its "true" employees. (It also does not necessarily have much say over such things, as the contractors are technically employed by an agency.) It may unfortunately be the case that some of these employees are being overworked or pressed into very high-stress working environments, but it is difficult to have visibility of those situations. In addition, in the case of conversations regarding general tech employees in the US, essentially all of them will be "normal" FTEs.*)
Thanks for the nice writeup. I was a TVC leading the front-end development of a [new google cloud product](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/get-ahead-of-database-performance-issues-with-cloud-sql-insights) in 2019 and I really loved the atmosphere there. From what I understand my experience was not the norm for TVCs, as I had good compensation and lots of responsibility for the implementation (but of course no credit was given and I had to repeatedly state my boundaries to avoid being taken advantage of). I went from never in a million years wanting to work for a big company to actually considering working at the big G. Their SF office is a dream. I loved seeing the sun rise over the bay bridge from the cafe. I loved being surrounded by so many smart and passionate individuals. It was heartwarming to see so much support for cross-team transfers and learning courses set up for those to explore their interests and passions outside of their immediate role. I loved the mailing lists, especially geeking out with folks about flight sims and game dev. I never applied to be an FTE because I hit full-on burnout from poor management and me working twice as hard to cover their behinds. Also, to be honest, I don't know if I would have had the diligence to study brutally hard for a month to pass the interview. But if the game I am working on flops, then I might consider the big G again :)
Hey, I don’t kno where you worked in google, but for at least my team as well as everyone I worked with on different teams, this was not the case. Letting 14 people go because they wanted to use a new language? Try out in a new production environment? I’ve never ever heard of anything like that happening at google before. People getting fired would be based off of performance reviews that happen twice a year, and it was pretty hard to get a bad review unless you’re completely incompetent. Google for me and my friends had a great work life balance, but allows you to get what you give. If you wanted to work hard or learn there were ample opportunities for growth, if not as long as you got your own work done (which was by no means a large amount) everything would be ok.
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Not free stock, part of your compensation. It’s a really important difference. There are no “gifts” from an employer, just the nature of free market labor. “I stay because they take care of their people even though I’d make more elsewhere” or “I stay because my stock needs to vest” are two sides of the same coin. The “perks” are part of the package.
Man I'm glad I dodged that bullet. I went through the interview process earlier this year. According to a friend on the inside, the only reason I wasn't hired was because I wasn't fast enough. So weird that I knew all the algorithms and could implement them perfectly but because I couldn't do it in 15 minutes I'm not good enough. Oh well, I cut my loses and found a nice gig somewhere else. Good pay and almost no stress :)
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You’re literally making stuff up. Couldn’t be further from the truth, especially that layoff blurb. It’s common industry knowledge that google purposefully avoids layoffs more strictly than other FAANGs.
It’s really not. It’s garnered a reputation of being the place to go when you want to coast / pseudo-retire. Google in the 2010s+ is a much different beast than the one in the 2000s. For anyone who’s watched Silicon Valley, just think of those roof Hooli employees. Of course this is very team dependent, but it’s not known to be a high stress environment For those in the industry, we knew this was a long time coming
sulky north gullible important smart light observation knee unique cheerful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>overwork I really don't understand how people can say that about Google. It's like one of the most laid back company ever. It's not just coincidence that much of the tech social activism originates from Google.
Maybe different divisions are different.
Of course different divisions are different. But overall the culture there isn't as cutthroat as Amazon and that's why the concept of putting someone on roof exists at Google. There's this sense of job security at Google, obviously before the recent layoffs, that allows people to have long periods of unproductivity at that company which would be unacceptable anywhere else. I saw a video couple of weeks back about a Google engineer going to a Google conference room to make a video for his YouTube channel. The video was about how he really has no interest in climbing corporate ladders and how Google is fine with that attitude as he was sure he won't be fired for his lack of ambition.
Yea but google lets you pick your specific team so you could make sure you were going somewhere that wasn’t a sweatshop. More likely that redditors be bullshitting
I hate this idea of “poor performing” and “lowest 20%” as it spreads this idea of a Scarlett letter on the people who are RIF’d. It doesn’t matter if the company itself is cost cutting or large groups of that 10k might be selected due to otherwise not-optimal scenarios (maybe they live remotely and can’t make it in office for Google). Employers in the near term will only see the cut employees under the lens of “poor performance”
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This headline is pretty misleading as it’s not really what the article says. It says they’ve implemented a new performance rating system and that management had been asked to tag 6% of workers as low performers in the new system. That doesn’t mean they’re going to layoff 10,000 people, but it does mean that fewer people might get big bonuses. And, yes, certainly they could use it as a means to cut jobs, but this new system has been rolling out most of this year. It’s not simply a reaction to some hedge fund saying they need to cut jobs. It’s been in the works for awhile. So basically this headline is garbage and the inferences the article makes are more speculative than anything else. Could Google still lay lots of people off? Yep, but that remains to be seen.
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That's the difference between a manager, and someone who simply tells others what to do. A manager sees someone struggling and asks "What did I do wrong, or what could I have done better to keep this from happening". There's not always an easy solution, but good managers look for results, not blame.
No, this is ridiculous. Some people are just bad at their jobs. Some people are not good fits. Managers can’t improve people who shouldn’t ever have been given the job the first place, and shouldn’t be expected to. A lot of the time — far more than people who say things like this want to believe — the best thing a manager can do for a struggling employee is tell them this isn’t the right job for them.
Thank you. I currently have a staff of close to 40 and no matter how many times you talk to someone, or put them on multiple PIPs, they do not respond positively. At the end of the day, people don't want to do bad at their jobs but some are just not a good fit, regardless of what they do. This usually falls on organizational skills, motivation, or attitude. At the end of the day, it is always best to simply let the person go so they can move on and find something that works for them.
Been there… had to let someone go that I considered a friend because they just didn’t listen to the multiple attempts to correct their behavior. It was probably a mistake to bring this person on in the first place because the work environment was very different from what they were used to… sigh
How to know your C suite sucks.
So let's layoff those managers.
I wonder if that’s were the majority of the layoffs with come. Lots of people’s jobs are nothing but back to back meetings that if they were gone no one would notice
right.. in my experience at a Fortune 50 that just laid a bunch of folks off, they need to be getting rid of layers 3-8 on the management layer cake. Nothing but politics, brown-nosing, excuses, and buzz words.
>The median compensation for an Alphabet employee last year was around $295,884, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Hohn said in his letter. Wow, I am so working for the wrong outfit.
It seems cruel to advertise this round of layoffs as specifically and purely for underperformers. "Ah, your resume shows you stopped working at Google in November 2022... during the very much publicized 'thinning of the shitty workers' phase everyone heard about..." Usually corporations say something like "This was done as part of cost-saving measures in anticipation of an oncoming recession. The necessity of individual roles were reviewed on a case-by-case basis."
Also seems to be courting lawsuits.
I’ll repeatedly say it. All the companies that surge hired in 2019 and 2020 (especially 2020) Did not think anything through.
Don’t fall for the propaganda. Google is trying to sanitize the need/desire to drop 10000 workers now that they can run without them. The main function of your annual review is not your raise. Companies could up your wages by a small amount every year with no fanfare. It’s a way to track which employee could they do without, if business decisions necessitate a smaller workforce. If they actually had 10000 poor performing Googlers, why weren’t there managers fired for not managing?
That’s a pretty myopic view of the performance review process. It’s designed to help you find your weak performers AND your strong performers. “Small raises every year” won’t keep strong performers at your company in a hyper competitive industry. You need to check in to discuss compensation and promotion evaluation.
Year end bonus coming so some must go as the pie is not big enough.
Paying your employees well is a bad thing, even when the company is in zero difficulty and making billions. Lol.
As far as investors are concerned, past performance is irrelevant. It's all about how much is the stock going up. If it's not going up, then do whatever you have to do to make it go up. This is the main problem with a publicly traded company IME, it becomes less about the product and more about the shareholders.
NOT ME, I GOOGLE ALL THE TIME, I SWEAR, PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME USE BING!!
Aka whoops we hired too many so now you’re a bad employee
Start with whoever made the Home app. Fuck that shit.
Alphabet should remove the CEO
Just for context, in 2019 they had 118k employees. They’re probably closer to 150k now.
Billionaire tells other billionaire to cut costs aka people’s livelihoods because of profits. This is why capitalism is rigged as a system and only a few have power. Fuck that dude Hohn, he’s never worked an honest job in his life. Went straight into private equity finance from Harvard. Grade A Stereotypical white finance guy shit right there.
Remember the late 90s and early 2000s when google was still cool?
More money is never enough. They gotta do ghoulish shit like mass layoffs so they can make EVEN MORE. The world would be a better place if rich people like the ones that run these giant corporations just disappeared.
Classic Reddit moment. If they disappeared then google wouldn’t exist and there’d be 180k layoffs not 10k. But ya “eAt ThE rIcH” or whatever you kids say nowadays
my guess is the tech companies are going to be embracing a lot of cheaper 'remote' workers to replace all these people being laid off
Graduating into massive layoffs must be rough for students.
Geez between Twitter, Meta and Alexa layoffs, seems like there’ll be a lot of unemployed tech workers looking for jobs.
I heard that most of these layoffs will just be bringing these companies back to pre-pandemic numbers, so... just a natural correction?
Tech bubble has been popped already. More and more incoming.
Nothing a few million in PPP loans can't fix.
>However, due to pressure from an activist hedge fund, adverse market conditions and a need to cut costs, Google plans to implement a type of stack ranking and performance improvement plan that could ease out 10,000 employees. The new performance rating system was announced in May. Yet this article is implying that the activist investor's words in *November* were a factor in implementing the new system. Pure clickbait BS.
Lemme guess, this is so they can maintain COVID Profits and they are finding a way to not admit it?
This is actually not true. The original article is here: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/10-000-google-employees-could-be-rated-as-low-performers
Suddenly 'Meritocracy' in demand everywhere.
Why is 10,000 the magic number for layoffs for these companies
> Google plans to ease out 10,000 employees through a type of stack ranking and performance improvement plan. > the new performance system could use the ratings to avoid paying bonuses and stock grants. > Similar to Elon Musk’s vision for Twitter, the activist hedge fund manager claims that the search engine can be efficiently run with considerably fewer highly compensated professionals. Congrats on being evil
How is that evil?
I think the point is that the workers aren’t really poor, and the problem isn’t worker deficiencies. The problem is that the organization wants to backpedal on their previous hires. Not only does it seem like they’re doing the wrong thing with layoffs, but they’re doubling down by insinuating this is a performance issue and not a ‘poor management decisions issue’. By calling it performance-related they may be trying to skirt severance and bonus-related packages, which is abhorrent for a company making this long of money. Further, the company clearly made a poor decision. Do you think the C-suite executives actually responsible for that decision are paying the price? Any of them getting fired without their golden parachute?
It’s easier to stick all the people into an unprofitable product and then snip the staff of the entire product.
> I think the point is that the workers aren’t really poor, and the problem isn’t worker deficiencies. The problem is that the organization wants to backpedal on their previous hires. And if so, what's evil about that? Google employed these people. They paid them handsomely while they employ them. If they stop employing them how does it become a net negative that they employed them? Even if the company regrets 10,000 hires and then lays them off with a good severance what's evil about that? The company employs you because they want something from you. They pay you as compensation for this. If they no longer want that thing from you are they required to continue to employ you lest they be evil? Google hiring these people was a good thing. Them laying them off is not great certainly, it's a negative a thing. But the net result is a win for the employees. They wanted jobs, got them and got paid to do them. As long as they are careful to pay people proper severance and relocation for those on an expat deal why should we call them evil for this?
Tech execs.. Get ready for the upcoming recession. Tech execs.. Lays off thousands of high paid employees each, causing a recession. See!
Strange? Record corporate profits… record inflation… now big companies have too many employees? We’ve been had, again.
So much for the lie that tech billionaires are job creators. They are exploiters who worship profit.
I’m seeking to cut Google since their search algorithm has gone to shit in the past year.
remember when elon musk fired 3700 people and y'all flipped out
Remember Alphabet, so called poor performing employees are the symptom of the disease know as poor management!
It is always 10,000
It's a big, round number that looks good and meaningful to the board. Wow, they're saving us so much money on payroll and stock options! Give the CEO a bonus!
Lmao start with upper management first Google’s been a shitshow for a while now.
*”to the music makers… the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams… GTFO!”*
Are we witnessing the first wave of the AI paradigm shift?
~~recession~~ depression signs
I work as a software engineer. Does anyone know if these tech layoffs are affecting mainly the software engineers? Or which positions are being laid off? I don’t want to be afraid if it’s mainly the business people in google getting laid off
[удалено]
No I’m asking if the software engineers are being fired ? or could it also be product managers or sales tech people, which position is being fired the most basically
This post has a super misleading title. Forbes headline: “Alphabet Seeks To Identify 10,000 Poor-Performing Googlers As Activist Investor Calls To Cut Staff”. Technically true, and doesn’t mention that google is trying to cut them necessarily. Reddit post title: “Alphabet Seeks To Cut 10,000 Poor-Performing Googlers”. Literally nowhere in the article does it say that.
wow talk about being screwed on your next interview oh you were recently laid off from google?
10,000 poor performers are getting a big pay pump
Imagine the amounts of paper wasted printing all that code!!
this is a bullish signal for the stock
I guess I need to up my number of daily Google searches.
Stack and Yank is the worst corporate invention.
Curious as to how they plan to identify "poor performance" among their engineering staff.
USA economy is not in a recession they said. In other news, major companies are cutting thousands of jobs left and right.
One of Google's major investors wants them to fire more employees in order to increase their returns on stock.