He’s saying lay off to 150k, not by 150k. He says getting down to that would be a 20% reduction, so that puts the then-current headcount at ~188k, so get rid of about 35-40k people.
I’m saying his complete disregard for these employees as people, with families, and lives, is unaffected by the difference. He’s proposing to fire 30,000+ people so that a number in his portfolio can grow. A number that he doesn’t need, and will never spend. He’s a fucking psychopath, regardless of it being 30k, 40k, or 150k.
35k is a pretty huge amount better than 150k. Are you just trying to say that it sucks either way? Because that I agree with, but when we criticize things, we should at least have the numbers right.
Yes, I’m saying he’s a psychopath regardless of the numerical error. He’s talking about destroying the livelihood of tens of thousands of people, just so he can make some more money he doesn’t need, and could never spend. So it doesn’t really matter if it’s 30k, 40k, or 150k. He would propose anything that benefits him personally, regardless of the suffering it causes.
Kinda glad I work in government/heavy industry. The highs aren’t very high and the lows aren’t very low. I will never be rich but I also will never be unemployed for over a week by choice.
The average time a software engineer, regardless of level, stays at a big tech company is around 18-24 months. That, surprisingly, hasn’t changed with the market slowing. Many are still taking jobs at a higher level at smaller companies, or leaving to do other things.
Given the severance paid out for many of these employees, alongside the operational damage caused, it’s likely that the people they laid off or forced out would have already left for another role. Funny enough, many of the companies that laid thousands of people off are still hiring external candidates, or people on boomerang deals to return to the company after 6-12 months.
It was always a short-sighted move, triggered by everyone else doing the same thing. While you’re not wrong, I don’t have enough faith in these companies to run things for the benefit of their current employees.
I read his wikipedia article and I must say I was somewhat confused. He does not eat meat, he advocates urgent action on the climate crisis and has given over billions to children’s investment f (don’t know if this is a good charity or not). And yet he is an asshole enough to ask a company to fire tens of thousands of employees so his investments are more profitable on short term. It is entirely possible that he does not eat meat because he thinks that it is healthier and would make him live longer (typical billionaire). Moreover he was directly affiliated to the mentioned children’s charity through his wife so god knows what is really going on in there. Also after their divorce his fund is no longer contractually tied to the foundation so don’t know if he is regularly donating some parts of his profit there anymore.
he thinks that it is healthier and would make him live longer (typical billionaire)
I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people who aren’t billionaires who do this. I’m not sure “wanting to live longer” is necessarily a billionaire exclusive trait
Yea for sure but I think you miss my point. I am wondering whether if he is a vegetarian because he cares about the environment and animals or just because he thinks it is healthier.
The Children’s Investment Fund Management (TCI) is not a charity, it is a hedgefund. Even this letter was sent on behalf of TCI. They’re apparently one of the most activist investors out there. And not activism in a good way, their only focus is maximizing profits. So activism means: demanding lay-offs, doing unsolicited take-overs of other companies, etc. And then after a few years dumping the company again. They themselves probably have all sorts of thoughts about how they play an important function in an economy because they are ruthless and force changes in the markets. To put ‘children’s’ in the name is just a scam that aims to make them sound innocent. But just this fact tells you a lot about how these people operate. Source: en.wikipedia.org/…/The_Children's_Investment_Fund…
He does not eat meat, he advocates urgent action on the climate crisis and has given over billions to children’s investment f (don’t know if this is a good charity or not).
None of these make you a good person. You can do all these things, believe in them, and still be a bad person.
Could be, I would still be interested to know however why an emotionless asshole would be doing these. Does he still feel the need to repent or want to feel morally superior to your average asshole rich person? Or does he just use them as a facade to prevent being blamed as %100 narcissistic sociopath? Or maybe humans are complicated enough that they can spiritually melt firing tens of thousands of people for profit and climate/environment activism in the same pot and don’t feel contradicted about it.
I don’t think it’s that deep, personally. I truly believe someone can analyze their behavior, like eating meat for example, and have moral or health-related objections. This in no way means they aren’t a rich asshole billionaire. At the end of the day, he’s watching his bottom dollar as an investor. I’m sure everything comes second to that for him.
And that’s how the owners control us in perpetuity.
Blue collar vs white collar.
The homed vs the homeless for lowering their property values.
Red vs blue and the race wars too.
Etc.
There are only 3,000 billionaires on Earth. Extrapolate that down to people with triple digit millions in net worth, about 28,000 people on Earth worth more than 100 million, and you’ve found humanity’s common enemies manipulating us into beating one another down when not making them more money.
Our common enemies are tiny in number, a few tens of thousands lording over billions, but they manipulate us into fighting each other.
I don’t disagree, but they are a symptom, not the root issue.
But hey, nevermind. I think they stole a few of our cookies. Some guy in a suit sitting on a mountain of cookies yelled down to warn me about them. Great guy, think his name was Warren.
I think if you realized how out of touch it is for somebody in the top 2% of income earners in the world to state that they are exploiting themselves sounds to other people, you probably wouldn’t have said it.
Haha 1) I don't care, 2) I'm not even close to the top 2%. I'm a broke college student who would be skipping meals if it weren't for the SAVE plan. I ended that business because $100/hr didn't leave enough for me to live on after covering my business expenses, so it wasn't worth my time (which it shared with classes and an internship). For a consulting fee in a Western country, $150/hr is pretty much par and hardly excessive.
A person who makes $300,000 per year (which is roughly $150 an hour) is in the top 2% of world income.
A small side business owner who bills clients $100 an hour is a completely separate conversation that I have to wonder why you would even bring it up unless obfuscation of my original point was the intent.
You’re fixated on the hourly cost and not taking into account expenses. Also, in the US freelancers have to buy their own health insurance and equipment which is insanely expensive.
Freelancers also don’t get full billing because they are not working all the time, so that 150/hour has tom over all the down time when work is not available. Freelancers also pay their own taxes and pension plans.
You’re just out of touch with operating costs for freelancers so maybe stop before you do some homework.
… This discussion is about former google employees not the contract work a commentor here used to do.
You are the second person attempting to make it about being a freelancer. I’m not interested. I would however be interested if you are going to discuss what I said in the context of the discussion.
Yeah I see what you mean. My bad. I did get fixated on the guy’s freelance thing. That being said, you should take COL into consideration when talking pay. I haven’t lived in the US in quite a while so I’m not sure what 300k gets you in some places like the west coast.
Irish immigrants and African free men were dangerously close to joining forces against the “captains of industry” in New England. Solution? They made the Irishmen into cops.
Those people are the best argument for increasing wages and conditions across the board.
Say whatever about big tech, it’s undeniable that they have been immensely successful - financially, in innovation and cultural significance. We can then go, “see if you treat your employees well and pay them well they give a shit about your company and perform well”. That’s how we leverage the good conditions of one group to fight for all groups. Divided, we fall.
“Reduce the ‘headcount’ but profits must not decrease by one single penny.”
Said no one who understands how businesses work, ever. If capitalism actually worked the way these people claimed it worked, we wouldn’t have so many idiot billionaires.
Every time some boneheaded CEO follows the whims of these billionaire types, the press should start running articles as though the company’s days are numbered.
“More sudden layoffs! Is Google worried about its own long term prospects?” … “Google’s stance has changed from cutting edge innovation and growth to shoring up its flagship products in the hopes it can weather the storm. Battening down the hatches is the order of the day, and anything not deemed ship shape is left to flounder until it sinks.” Cite that most companies only cut staff like that when they’re looking to artificially inflate their valuation for some reason. Question if the impact of any recent bad moves are worse than expected.
The press should circle layoff-prone companies like sharks until they stop listening to stupid advice.
Make them stop and THINK about what they’re doing first. Teach the people in charge how to recognize when they’re being manipulated.
We give CEO’s entirely too much leeway to do incredibly dumb shit.
Carly Fiorina, John Roth, Frank Dunn, Mike Zafirovski, I don’t know if John Riccitiello is it at fault for the unity debacle, but he should have been able to stop it, John Wendell Thompson, Bob Allen, Kenneth Lay, John Sculley, Stephen Elop (How the fuck do you destroy NOKIA?!?!), Martin Shkreli, Carol Bartz, Leo Apotheker, the list is ENDLESS.
C levels have too much power to make RADICAL decisions and the fact that boards of directors are broken-record-skipping on the words “short term profit” is what keeps causing it to happen.
The billionaires and other CEO’s are on Ron Vachris’ ass every time there’s a group call because he keeps making them look bad, but he’s proven that his way is SUSTAINABLE.
It’s time to nudge things back into healthier directions.
Doesn’t even question what employees are possibly doing. Just says there are too many and they must be put out on the street. Says the people who are left are making too much money.
I say this a lot but…seriously…when do we start burning things?
I’m not for people only interested in benefiting themselves being the ones rewarded most by society, let alone being the ones effectively in charge of society as they are.
It isn’t heroic, benevolent, or even minimally pro-social to spend your life trying to accrue private profit for the sake of private profit. It just makes you greedy and selfish. Or as they call it with their orwellian language manipulation, “rational self-interest.” being greedy, selfish, and unconcerned with the effects your actions have on others makes you a vile, broken, contemptible person, and humanity seems to have forgotten that entirely, or at least we’ve been propagandized to forget it by the owner class.
We punish people that dare to pursue vocations that benefit society, like teachers and paramedics, and reward selfishness.
I can’t root for my own species in this state. Slitting eachother’s throats when there’s another dollar to be had by it. If this is truly what our species has chosen as it’s most practiced purpose and meaning, I want no part of it, and I will be grateful when it’s time to leave it.
I’ve heard humanity described as being composed of “self-interested, rational economic actors” to help us understand economics.
Like, we all want the eggs from the farmers’ market that were laid by the happiest hens. A farmer can assume we’re rational & self-interested when pricing her eggs so she can try to sell enough of them to make a living. $2/egg won’t fly because stores sell them so much cheaper.
Think I’m saying morally bankrupt, anti-social hoarders have rational self-interest but so do normal people like you & me. I’m fizzling out here but either way hoarding’s bad :)
Right, but there’s no term for being greedy, sociopathic, or engaging in hoarding in economics.
They fall under Orwellian double speak terms that make them complimentary, “rational self-interest, creating externalities, curtailing redundancies” etc. Language designed to turn their sins into their achievements.
Considering the central prominence of greed in our economy, it’s a glaring ommission that the capitalists and economists themselves seem to have forgotten that word, or to create an economic term for greed that isn’t complimentary.
They are driven almost entirely by insatiable greed, yet the term is never uttered in their earnings reports or economic news.
They seem to want the concept of greed as the pejorative it is to be forgotten entirely, despite it demonstrably being their core value.
Greed is the best descriptive word and incredibly negative as you’ve said. No reason to make a more negatively charged word. The tale of Midas, and others, demonstrate how destructive and harmful greed is.
Midas has always stuck with me since I first heard the tale and in a way informed who I am today, especially my political leanings.
I own a little Google stock. I don’t mind they pay their employees a shit ton. I want them make good products. I’m not a fan of most their products but that’s just me
My hatred of the owner class is matched only by my disappointment in my fellow humans for not only taking it, but often defending it.
The people we struggle for have abandoned their humanity. That’s what it takes to be one of society’s supposed winners or be in their good graces: practiced sociopathy.
And half of the peasants fantasize about being the sociopaths instead of ending their reign and this despicable con game of an economy.
Summed up concisely. I’ve unfortunately given up hope that anything can be done or can improve. It feels the fight, whatever fight there ever was, has been lost.
Yeah, I’m not sure I really get this whole “reduce employment” logic. Like if some product just isn’t profitable and you lay off the employees you hired to work on it, that’s not surprising, but if the employees are doing something profitable, and you actually needed to hire that many to get whatever it was you hired them for done, shouldn’t it be more profitable to a company to keep them, even if one had a large number?
Moreover, if all the oligarchs are doing it, and they are, who will be left to buy their products/services?
They’re breaking their own ponzi scheme economy for a few more quarterly profit boosts because there’s nowhere else to grow/metastasize. Media companies are making less media. Food makers are making less product types. Their profit is coming out of gutting workers and their ability to produce what their economic sector produced in the first place.
This is a terminal stage market capitalism fire sale. The snake is eating its own tail having conquered the board.
Because this is the End of the Line. The snake has found its tail and Oroborous awakens to transform the end into the beginning. An ideology of everlasting consumption will eventually consume itself.
Bold of you to assume the stock market has anything to do with finite resources.
When the ultra wealthy and their companies run the system into the ground they will buy up the failed stocks and cheap land that nobody else can afford then come out ahead when the economy recovers like they have in the previous economic crashes. They can afford to buy low and cash out when it is high because they have zero pressure to act at any given point in time due to their ridiculous wealth and zero legal repercussions.
But even then there reaches a point where they run out of things to buy, and people to buy them from.
Eventually they poison the one thing they worship: the sanctity of private property rights. It has to serve at least some portion of the populace if it’s going to remain tenable, but they’re doomed to discover and undershoot that number.
The Western world spent a century demonising socialism with “they’ll take your home and car” but it rings hollow when you have neither.
The stock market is the reason for chasing quarterly profits and a massive part of what gets counted as the economy. It is the main driver of all the shitty late stage capitalism practices we are discussing.
Most of them are not. That’s the beauty of a cash cow like Google. They’re working on things that may be profitable in the future. By cutting the future, you’re cutting future growth.
It’s why I dislike hedge funds. They’re stripping value instead of creating value.
He says they aren’t needed “operationally” but Alphabet is not supposed to be merely operating anything. They are supposed to be inventing and experimenting and pushing the envelope. This discontented billionaire just wants ever-increasing rent on existing IP and should be called out as a simple landlord and not called an investor at all.
The rich person only cares about short term profits. They want to liquidate any good will and long term preparedness. Once the host corporation has been sufficiently bled of value, the parasite will move on to the next source of value it can find.
Correct. R&D only creates future value. Usually in the VC model, R&D is done by individuals or small groups and then funded (bought) by VC to get it to market. So even though the R&D do-er can cash out their future profits for immediate profits, the value of that R&D can’t be realized immediately.
I personally think the VC and legacy models are currently competing, and VC is winning out. As we see here, even large, established companies aren’t immune to impinging VCs.
I’m genuinely not super revolutionary but I didn’t get halfway through this letter before coming to the realization that this person needed to not exist anymore and same for anybody else of the same ilk.
Because he doesn’t care. He’s looking out for himself.
“Hey Googs, you have too many employees and that’s cutting in my investments. Shitcan 150,000 so my investments go up and I make more billions kthxbye”
The source matters, too. This is a dude exploiting people and hoarding so much needed wealth. To an obscene amount. Like, he has more than enough to do everything he could possibly dream of, for the rest of his life. And long after he’s gone, all his descendants will be set and will never have to worry about money for their entire lives…
So what does this psychopath obsess about? “Please kick people out into the street and reduce the pay of anyone who remains. Number go up… Fuck em, got mine lol”
I just got laid off last month and I was a revenue generator.
The decision came down from the board as a part of a total restructure that eliminated my position, which was transitioning to be in line with the ‘new’ direction. The day after I was laid off I had an 80k deal come through, and I was set to bring in double what it cost to keep me on in 2024. That revenue would have continued to grow, and now they have no one to pick up that work and carry it forward. It was a stupid decision and I let them know how I felt about it (respectfully, didn’t want to burn any bridges) in my exit interview and when I attempted to negotiate my severance.
With piss and vinegar and a sincere belief that you deserve better, but with the clear understanding that you’ll likely get nothing.
So set your sights on something realistic and smaller.
I got them to sell me my work laptop for well below its depreciated value (14” M1 MacBook Pro kitted out with memory and storage for $800) which is what I went in hoping for. I had some real strong arguments for more severance which were all expectedly shot down, so when I asked for a discount on the laptop, I got it and I won.
In my case I knew the worst that would happen is they say no. That’s not gonna be true everywhere so there can definitely be some risk of losing the severance all together by asking for more, but if you have a good relationship with management and know they’ll come to the table in good faith it’s worth the time. If nothing else you come to the table and let them know you understand what the severance is all about (the non disparagement clause is all they really care about) and sometimes that’s enough to get them to give you something more.
Remember when a rich asshole got an itch to see the president of a university fired and just crawled up her ass until it happened? Sundar knows what someone with resources and a grudge can do to your career.
We don’t begrudge you your rectal fixation but if you could please avoid using the words “asshole” and “itch” in the same sentence that’d be appreciated. Apt though the comparison may be.
I think anybody with their finger on the pulse of the tech world could have seen this coming and it’s a natural consequence of a decade of incredibly low interest rates vastly inflating the sizes and valuations of these companies past where they naturally should be
That is to say, any random person can tell the CEO of Google to cut back their headcount, but that doesn’t mean that’s why they did it
Please kill Christopher Hahn, rape his corpse, impale him through the anus with a spear, display his severed head at the entrance of the city, use this obvious heroic act to make your introduction to politics, with the ultimate goal to get a law passed that get psychopaths like him treated young, or simply disposed of if it’s too late and they’ve hurt (or intend to hurt) too many.
I mean, if you’re not busy or anything. Thanks.
Yours sincerely, because I hate myself and want to die, frfr on God no cap, just kill me if you see me, everyone can help with the execution, I give you explicit permission, regardless of local laws,
I think asking for lowered compensation is definitely shitty and he should be condemned for that.
However, can someone explain to me the vitriolic opposition to downsizing/layoffs whenever this topic comes up?
I don’t see how anyone has a right be hired and work at X company. It is, after all, their company and their decision. Surely we can all agree that sometimes companies make strategic mistakes in terms of hiring and need to correct them later on. Also, circumstances could simply change, products be canceled or no longer need as much manpower etc.
I imagine it is because many of us have had it happened. We worked hard and did what we are supposed to do and now have to suffer because of another person’s mistake. A mistake that they are shielded from. It isn’t like the upper management is going to get fired because they overhired.
Additionally it tends to come in waves and that seems to be more based on what they think they can get away with not based on what the market is actually doing. One of my main vendors just did that to their engineering department. They are publically traded and their financials are fine.
I’m not against it in it’s entirety partly because of the point you made, it is their company after all.
What I am against is the intent behind cutting employees.
First, it’s just irresponsible to grow a company outside of what it can sustain. But in the end, the company survives and profits while the employee is now unemployed. The worker suffers because the top fucked up.
Second, corporate greed. It’s fucking up people’s lives for profit it technically doesn’t need to continue to exist and be successful.
It’s a human sacrifice to an entity that doesn’t even exist.
A company can hire you and give you a temporary contract, usually a year, but it can de shorter. After that they can do that again and again. But after 3 temporary contracts (at most 3 years) they have to give you a permanent contract.
The advantage of this permanent contract is that you can quit, but if you don’t and the company wants to fire you they have to compensate it financially. This usually is part of the contract you signed, but it’s 1-3 months of salary per year you worked for this company.
So of you get fired after 5 full years, you will get somewhere between 5 to 15 months of salary when you go.
So companies don’t fire you without really having a good reason and even if you are fired, you have extra money while searching for a new job.
One of my friends has been at the same company for a long time and he told me it would cost them 150K to fire him.
In millions 2021 revenue: 75,325 2022 revenue: 76,048
Revenue is neither stagnant nor decreasing. Only reason to reduce pay and headcount is to increase profit at the employee’s cost. All corporations will get to an operational standpoint that reducing costs through better process and materials is no longer feasible and the only avenue to increased profits is to begin extracting wealth from the employee’s via layoffs and salary reduction.
It’s also a fairly reliable indicator that the glory days of the business are over, and they’re pivoting from innovation to capture / create new markets and products to a conservative stance protecting their dominant position at the expense of everyone else - customers, staff, suppliers, vendors…
It’s possible to run lean and innovate, but at this phase of the business lifecycle, they’re not retooling to remove redundant management and organisational bloat - they’re cutting the “doers” responsible for building the product because they know they’re now in a position to sell the same old BS and just crush new market entrants that would drive continued improvement.
My disgust with it is that it’s simply a call to reduce labor not that there should be less people working on x or we should stop working on y. He views that this many people can’t be productive simply because he wants the company spending less on staff so his profits or share price goes up. It’s short sighted but since investors only care about the next quarter it doesn’t really matter to him.
A sign of morons and psychopaths being in charge of the world’s largest companies is that they have access to more talent and manpower than they can even use. Expanding operations would be a clear solution, even if no longer at economy of scale they will produce more revenue in diminishing percentages. It’s like being both Rome and the Barbarians.
I have appreciated our recent dialogue concerning Alphabet’s cost base. I am encouraged to see that you are now taking some action to right size Alphabet’s cost base and understand that it is never an easy decision to let people go.
I argued in my previous letter that Alphabet’s headcount has grown beyond what is required operationally. Over the last 5 years, Alphabet more than doubled its headcount, adding over 100,000 employees, of which over 30,000 were added in the first 9 months of 2022 alone. The decision to cut 12,000 jobs is a step in the right direction, but it does not even reverse the very strong headcount growth of 2022. Ultimately management will need to go further.
I believe that management should aim to reduce headcount to around 150,000, which is in line with Alphabet’s headcount at the end of 2021. This would require a total headcount reduction in the order of 20%.
Importantly, management should also take the opportunity to address excessive employee compensation. The median salary at Alphabet in 2021 amounted to nearly $300,000, and the average salary is much higher. Competition for talent in the technology industry has fallen significantly allowing Alphabet to materially reduce compensation per employee. In particular, Alphabet should limit stock-based compensation given the depressed share price.
I hope to have further dialogue with you on these matters in due course.
Some people transcribe posts on the internet as a matter of public service.
A picture of text is not particularly accessible to the blind. But written text, well they can zoom that significantly without reducing clarity, if they have some vision…or they can use any text-to-speech tool.
I don’t know a lot of poorly sighted people though. I’m assuming that they have some sort of font packages they use that scale well to large sizes for increased legibility, just like there are fonts specifically to help with dyslexia.
All fonts scale well since they are vector, so a blind person would not need a specialized font. If you want to learn about how some blind people use computers here is a video about one persons workflow.
